Hello Riftbreakers,
We have been spending our time lately putting the finishing touches on the first World Expansion for The Riftbreaker - Metal Terror. We are extremely grateful for your patience and feedback on the Experimental version of the update. This World Expansion is not just an additional Campaign branch. It is going to be the most extensive update the game has received thus far, addressing many issues that you have been reporting to us in addition to introducing new content.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1945600/The_Riftbreaker_Metal_Terror/
Coming next month!
Today, we would like to show you a little bit of what goes on behind the curtain while working on the new game content. We’re going to focus on something that doesn’t often receive a lot of attention (and it definitely should!) - the audio design. More specifically, we’ll take a look at voice acting and the process of creating voiceovers from scratch. You’re also going to learn how we gave Mr. Riggs his signature voice and how you can replicate that on your own. Read on, maybe you will get inspired and try audio design on your own?
What would Mr. Riggs say in this situation?
Everything starts with an empty spreadsheet. We come up with a rudimentary list of dialog lines that our heroes are going to deliver during a specific point during gameplay. The list is just a collection of writing prompts and is not that complex. It can really boil down to something like this:
| Ashley: we landed, wow, look at this place |
| Mr. Riggs: roger |
| Ashley: we should focus on our task |
| Mr. Riggs: yes, here’s a breakdown of what we must do |
| Ashley: let’s get to work, we can research the nature some more later |
| Mr. Riggs: snarky remark that the nature will probably come to research us first |
To let the game understand which part of the dialog it should play, we assign a string name to each line. String names are important for two reasons: once the game gets the instruction to play one such line it will:
1) play the associated voiceover audio file,
2) show the text for that line on the screen, taking the language settings of the game into account.
After adding the string names to the table, it looks like this:
| ashley_test_mission_start_01 | Ashley: we landed, wow, look at this place |
| mech_test_mission_start_01 | Mr. Riggs: roger |
| ashley_test_mission_start_02 | Ashley: we should focus on our task |
| mech_test_mission_start_02 | Mr. Riggs: yes, here’s a breakdown of what we must do |
| ashley_test_mission_start_03 | Ashley: let’s get to work, we can research the nature some more later |
| mech_test_mission_start_03 | Mr. Riggs: snarky remark that the nature will probably come to research us first |
From this point onwards we will refer to the voiceover lines by their string names, as it makes it easier for us to locate the corresponding files and texts.
We have reached arguably the toughest point in the voiceover creation process. It is now time to write the actual voice lines. In true indie fashion, we do this ourselves, influenced by all the science fiction we have consumed in our lifetimes. The process involves copious amounts of tea, several sleepless nights, and a healthy dose of self-doubt sprinkled with bouts of anxiety. Sometime later, the first iteration of the script is born.
We will have you visit some weird sceneries in the Metal Terror World Expansion. Be ready!
It is one thing to read the text from a spreadsheet. Hearing it in the game is a different kettle of fish. It might turn out that some lines come out completely wrong within the context of the gameplay. This is why we record prototype versions of dialogs ourselves. Well, ‘we’ is a slight exaggeration. One person does all the voices, which is not ideal. Listening to monologues imitating a real conversation is not the best way to test things. That’s where the magic of Digital Audio Workstation comes in.
Obviously, it would be easier to record Mr. Riggs himself, but he gets a bit shy in front of the mic. Also the mic is unplugged, which makes recording difficult.
To make it easier to differentiate between the ‘actors’ we apply some effects to the lines spoken by Mr. Riggs. We do that in Cockos Reaper. Their built-in library of VST effects is just enough to get the job done.
First, let’s listen to the raw audio. [CLICK ME]
To achieve the robotic sound of Mr. Riggs, we copy the original track two more times and play them all at the same time. Without any effects, this would just result in the sound being louder. We apply different effects to each track.
Track 1 is pitch-shifted by -2 semitones. It makes the voice slightly deeper and unnatural.
Played together, they sound like this.
Much better than listening to one guy having a conversation with himself, isn’t it? We play through the entire game with the placeholder voiceovers and make necessary changes. After the script is finalized, we send it to voice actors playing the roles of our characters:
Francesca Meaux as Ashley
Ryan Laughton as Mr. Riggs
Tori Kamal as Colonel Norstrom
(They are available for hire, too, so if you need voice actors, we can totally recommend these fine people!)
The new World Expansion content will allow you to make your bases more flashy than ever.
The same effects that we used during our in-house recording sessions are applied to their voices, with just a couple of small tweaks.
Once that is done, we replace our glorious homemade audio with the real deal.
By the way, have you ever wondered what Ashley would sound like in the role of Mr. Riggs?
As you can see, it’s not really that difficult to play around with sound. There are plenty of free tools to get you started - Audacity, for example. It has all the basic effects you would need to make your first steps into the world of sound design. Who knows - maybe this is the thing that you will do for a living one day?
We’re going back to work on the World Expansion and Co-Op (we’ve had some sneak peeks during our streams this week). We hope you enjoyed this article. If you have any more questions, feel free to reach out either here or through our Discord at www.discord.gg/exorstudios.
See you next time!
EXOR Studios