It’s the month of voice actors! Remember just last month, when I was sending out my millionth plea for enough voices to fill three whole parts? Well, folks, crazy as it may sound, it actually happened! Let’s hear a warm welcome for the newcomers to the testgame team: Matt Gardner (surely you’ve seen his name around these parts before) as Thurston and the vine, and Matt Keels as Artie. Woah, they’re both named Matt. How crazy is that? But seriously, they did an awesome job. And Matt (the first Matt) even restrained from making the vine sound too creepy, for which I am very grateful.
And speaking of the testgame team, there has been some talk of trying to move the production process along by spreading out the artistic workload a little. To that affect, I started teaching Paul (the real life Paul) how to draw and animate on the computer. We didn’t get all that far, but you should definitely check out the new Paul drinking soda animation, for Paul had a definite hand in that one. 🙂
On a less fun notes, a couple very strange, quirky things popped up this month with AGS, the program I’m using to make testgame. Seeing as this was the month of voice acting, of course there just had to be a problem in that area along the way.
Apparently, as I have very recently discovered, when naming voice files to put into the game, “KILTMAN9” is perfectly fine, but “KILTMAN10” has waaaayyy too many characters. It cannot be handled. This meant that I had to go back through the whoooole entire script, changing every occurrence of the word “KILTMAN” to “ARTIE” (which is shorter). Oh, the things I do to put things like voices into the game.
Also, was I supposed to know that the filenames for each character’s voice are only supposed to be named with the first four letters of the character’s name? (Maybe that means I could’ve just stuck with KILTMAN to begin with…. Ah well, now I know.)
Oh yeah! There’s new progression in the story too! Well, sort of. For those of you who have been aching to get past Omar, now’s your chance! If you want to actually get across the stream and into the next screen, however, you’re gonna have to wait until next month for that one. 🙂 And would you believe that I actually even have an idea of what the next screen is going to look like?! I know, it’s crazy.
But enough of this jabber! Download testgame and be a happier person!
(no extra programs needed to run this file)
**Note** If you get an error message about resolution when trying to run the testgame.exe file, first open the winsetup.exe file and change the resolution option to 640 x 400.
Things to do/new features of note:
- You can now get Omar to move aside and let Paul pass! This doesn’t mean that you actually can pass, however…. That will come later.
- More voices! The cutscene with Thurston is now completely voiced, with GameCola’s own Matt Gardner providing the voice for Thurston. The cutscene with the vine is voiced as well, again utilizing the voice talents of Matt Gardner. The dialogue with Artie is now voiced, featuring Matt Keels. Some of these lines are missing however, for quality control reasons (having to do with the recording equipment, not the performer), but they should all be there by next month for sure.
- Nifty new animations, including things like Paul drinking soda, and Paul unlocking and opening the door.
- New ambience effect in Paul’s room: there’s a thunderstorm going on now, and I think it sounds pretty nifty if I do say so myself.
- And speaking of things in Paul’s room, there’s a new object for you to play with: a radio! It does, indeed, play music—a song by former GameCola staff member Brian Vanek and his band, The Word Problems, no less.
- Major work on the forest screen outside Paul’s door. It actually looks somewhat like a forest now.
- Some more work on the main forest screen, trying to make it look somewhat like a real place.
All the graphics and design are by Lizo. The dialogue was written by Lizo, with significant input by Paul. Paul is voiced (appropriately) by Paul Franzen. Lily is voiced by Lizo. Thurston and the vine are voiced by Matt Gardner. Artie is voiced by Matt Keels. Omar is voiced by Jenny. “Lets’s Go Skateboard” is written and performed by The Word Problems. Adventure Game Studio (the program used to create this game) can be downloaded at http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/
