With the deadline approaching, I set about recording the final round of voice lines for Scrimshaw. I had written out the next sections of the game, and confirmed with my sound artist a time to book a session. Sadly this time was 11pm-2am on Monday, giving little time to finish the sound mixing.
After the first round of dialogue was recorded and mixed, a discussion with my sound designer found that the best characters with the most engaging dialogue were those with strong accents or affects to their speech, and therefore, with the second round, we decided to voice all the characters in strong regional british accents.
The newest voicelines pertained to the game’s endgame content, and in contrast to the previous lines which were played out sequentially, and then forgotten, these lines had dynamic use, and were used by characters in a number of possible sequences.
Dialogue Groups
I grouped the dialogue by region, and enclosed the regions with gates that trigger closed as you pass through them sequentially, this leads the player towards the final destination of the game and converts it from free movement to a progressive level with branches. This is to reslove an issue that arose during playtesting with regards to players not knowing where to go. I’ll now detail the regions and their dialogue sequences.
Scrumpy Hoarder Region
In Mevar, a character you speak to will hint at something being present in this region and direct you towards it. The region is home to Malcom, an old man who fled Shurrick, taking a case of the finest scrumpy with him.
As you approach his abode, he progressively shouts voice lines at you as you get closer and closer, warning you to turn away. When within 100 units, he tries to fire a cannon at you that fizzles out (No time to program an aiming and firing AI so I converted it to more of a gag). You can interact with him at which point he pleads with you not to take his Scrumpy. If you do take his Scrumpy, you can interact with him once more at which point he’ll lament his loss. If you leave the region without taking it he’ll warn you to stay away. If you leave the region after taking it he shouts after you curses and whatnot.
Gambler’s Alcove
A small alcove can be accessed on the opposite side from the Scrumpy Hoarder. Upon entering you’ll be informed that you’ve been caught in a trap by the Gambler. Interacting with him he’ll inform you that you may leave after playing a short game with him. The game consits of two rounds, wherein you’ll select trunks in your inventory, opening them and revealing the items within. Whichever player’s item is more valuable wins, keeping both. This game really doesn’t make sense and is purely up to chance.
The value of the game is that the character sequentially entertains you, with 6 unique voice lines that string together. The voice lines include a Win, Loss line for the first round, as well as LossWin, WinLoss, LossLoss, WinWin for the second round. The sequence of Win/Loss, Loss/Loss and so on will create a small branching narrative in the region, with a material reward or loss based on if you win/lose. After recording these lines, I think it’s the best sequence in the game.
Jago Two
In Mevar, the player will encounter a character called Jago who hints at the location of Malcom. If interacted with, and you pass through Malcom’s region, he’ll appear just before Shurrick, with a proposal for you. You can trade in parts of your inventory, for empty/fake versions of them, the originals of which he’ll take back to Mevar to be enjoyed by your neighbors. There are two voice lines present, a proposal line and one that plays after you’ve accepted.
Shurrick Dialogue
Shurrick is the final region of Scrimshaw Demo, and contains two characters to interact with. One of them is Tristan, who you will know of if you spoke to Yeuni in Mevar. If you did speak to Yeuni and obtain the Personal Trinket, he’ll have one conversation with you about it. If you did not, he’ll have another.
Endgame Dialogue
The final dialogue of the game will be constructed sequentially as you reach the destination. It is a multi part dialogue that is constructed with a starting dialogue, an ending dialogue, and between a number of possible enqueued dialogues that are added to the dialogue queue depending on certain variables:
- Not Much Dialogue: If your inventory is relatively empty, a dialogue will be enqueued commenting on that.
- Jago Fake Dialogue: If you took Jago’s proposal and your inventory has fake items, this will be noticed
- Lots ‘o Ale Dialogue: If you have lots of Cask Ale’s this will be noticed. (More than 3 most likely)
- Bottl ‘o Beer Dialogue: If you have a Bottl ‘o Beer on you this will be commented on
- Trunks Dialogue: The presence of trunks in your inventory has a line associated
- Gambler Encountered Dialogue: If you encountered the gambler, this will be commented on, and more of his story will be revealed.
- Scrumpy Dialogue: If you have some of Malcom’s scrumpy on you, this will be commented on, and Malcom’s story will be revealed.
- Final Dialogue: A final dialogue will be enqueued to finish off the sequence, after which the game will end.
Failstate Dialogue
I also found that many players ran out of fuel, so while I had planned to make fuel exhaustion a failure state of the game, the number of people succumbing to this fate made me want to overdo it a little. We recorded 5-6 lines of dialogue for multiple reasons that players might run out of fuel.
The failstate is a simple fade to black, accompanied by the dialogue, after which the player transitions back to the main menu.
This is all for sound design, the sounds will be mixed and ready by the deadline, now all that’s left is to implement the functionality to trigger them.
The dialogue system already has VO functionality with about half the voice lines already in, the rest are a question of “plug and play”. Until next time, likely my last post, I’ll be going over the final steps to complete the prototype, and the final fixes and features I’ll be adding to polish up the game, likely: Fail State Polish, Endgame Polish, Settings Menu (Volumes and some accessibility functions), and Visuals for Mevar, Shurrick, the 5 game Regions, and polishing of the current visuals.