Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
numbers up or down, can be immensely effective and much more effi-
cient.
For example, the tool could potentially detect and prevent repetition of
a line within X minutes of its previous playback. There could even be lines
that can only play once during a single play session, or even just once dur-
ing a player's entire playthrough of the game, spread out over a week or
more!
Why go to such extremes? Because some lines bear repetition better
than others do. The more generic a line, the more it can probably stand to
be repeated. Something more specific, however, should be tuned down.
And anything that is supposed to be funny should be tuned
way
down if
possible. Very few jokes are funny the second time, let alone the third, the
fourth, the fifth—at which point the player wants to strangle whoever
wrote that joke, even though the blame should probably be on the system
that insists on repeatedly playing it!
Testing and Bug-Proofing
It's very important to be in a position to begin properly testing the system-
ic VO performance as early in the dev cycle as possible. Good placehold-
ers are crucial in these stages to identify bugs early enough to begin de-
bugging the system. Waiting until final VO files are being dropped into the
game to unearth major structural problems will most definitely be too late.
Make no mistake: barks systems are, by their very nature, huge generat-
ors of bugs. However, these issues often tend to take the form of “C” or
lower bugs—the kind that don't always get prioritized over progression
blockers, inventory issues, UI problems or even visual glitches. A VO line
that breaks immersion by playing three times in a row may never get fixed
due to more pressing bugs, so designing the system to prevent these kinds
of issues from occurring in the first place is advisable.
My personal take on this issue is that I'd rather hear no VO line than hear
a bad one—one that repeats a joke, or seems incongruous to current cir-
cumstances, or otherwise breaks immersion. In my opinion, when it
comes to systemic VO, silence beats a mistake every time.
Environmental VO
Environmental sounds that vary from location to location in a game can
play a huge part in bringing the fantasy alive and making the player feel
even more immersed in the experience. This can include ambient VO (in-
