A Grab Bag of Stuff

December 6, 2024

It’s been a busy month. It’s been an odd month. It’s been one of those months where I’ve been moving forward in multiple directions on Sleuthhounds: Cruise. Let’s dive right in.

Casting

The bulk of the casting for the game has happened! Throughout October and November I was taking audio auditions from local voice talent. As a result, most of the game is now cast. There’s a couple of voices that I’m still looking for the right fit on, so there may need to be a second round of casting early in the new year.

The casting process has been a lot of fun for me. For it, I sent out sides – small excerpts from the recording script – to hear people’s readings on. It’s always a kick hearing the words I’ve written performed aloud.

For the character of Carmichael Portly, I’ve lived with his dialog in game for years. I knew his character, I knew how to write him, but bizarrely I didn’t know how he sounded in my head. Then the first audition came in and it was like the clouds parted and the sun came streaming down. I had a great moment of, "Ah ha! So that’s what Portly sounds like."

Then there was Carlotta Travail, a maid on the ship working to form a union. At one point in the game, she delivers a speech to rally the rest of the staff. Again, I’d written the words and had lived with them for a long time. I was startled to find how powerful they were when one of the auditions came in. I was set and ready to sign up and join the Carlotta army.

Hearing different people’s different takes for the various characters was also cool. In the past, I’ve gone to specific friends to help voice the much smaller casts on the much smaller Sleuthhounds games. This was my first time experiencing the auditioning process. Hearing different interpretations of the same character is delightful and, surprisingly, more difficult to choose someone for a role than I’d anticipated.

Now that the game is mostly cast, I need to sort out the scheduling of when people can come in to record. I’d also like to post some bios of the vocie talent I’ll be working with here on the blog. I’m not sure if it’s better to do that now, as I record people, or wait until closer to the game’s release, which is still a ways off. We’ll see.

Refining the Audio Process

From recording the audio to having it integrated into the game is a bit of a journey. The previous games have been small enough that I didn’t try to optimize that journey. For those, when recording voices I would record a person all as one big audio file. It was faster than interrupting the person to save separate files for each line and there are certain cleanup advantages to having everything all in one file. But, boy, is it tedious breaking that file out into separate lines afterwards and choosing between individual takes.

For Cruise I’ve programmed some new audio tools that allow me to record separate audio files at the touch of a button. That has allowed for all kinds of optimizations on prepping the audio for the game. I’ve already moved a couple of hundred lines through the process and estimate that it’s taken about a seventh of the time as it previously would have.

My main focus on the process this past month has been on the recording experience itself. I’ve been working to improve the recording quality as well as decreasing the time it takes to record. Previously, I either just recorded multiple takes of a person and hoped that at least one would be usable later on, or I would play those takes back immediately after recording so I could hear right there if I’d got it. With the first method, I’m gambling on getting something usable. With the second, the recording session takes twice as long because I have to record, then listen, record, then listen.

However, I’ve now got a set of noise canceling headphones, which I did not have before. With that, I can listen live to the exact audio samples that are being recorded to the sound files at the same time the recording is happening. It’s allowed me to tell right away if I’ve got the line reading I need or not or if any unwanted noise has gotten in. Increases quality, decreases time to record. Win-win.

Animations

I’ve also started moving forward on the animation front. The game already has some character and background animation in it. To this point, most of that has been for animationos that are spatially relevant. By that I mean animations like two characters exchanging an item, or a character opening a door or interacting with some other part of the background. Animations, where the precise positioning of a character are important.

Now I’m starting to fill in all the other animations for characters. I’m moving more-or-less through the characters alphabetically. For the animations, I shoot reference video and typically throw on clothes that are at least somewhat in line with what the characters themselves wear. This is to help get a sense of how the fabric behaves as the characters move.

I’ve already completed five characters and am working on the Colonel and also a bit of Edward Noble’s animation currently. The Colonel because he’s next alphabetically, and Edward because he’s involved in one of the animated scenes with the Colonel. It’s easier to animate them both and integrate those animations into the game code at the same time.

Expanding the Journal

All the Sleuthhounds games have had an in game journal to help players. The journal provides information on the case and suspects, hints, and can be used to access bonus features.

Previously, I wrote all the hints for the game. Now I’m working on the investigation details. One section of the journal lists all the high-level tasks the player has to work on. Sometimes, in the past, when I’ve been playing a game, life has gotten busy and I’ve had to set said game aside. When I come back a few days or even weeks later, it’s nice to have a game that provides a journal or something similar to remind me of where I left off and what I should be doing.

Writing up the details of the tasks the player has available is surprisingly time consuming. To do it, I basically have to review the flow of logic for the entire game so that I know when to show certain tasks in the journal. For example, it wouldn’t make sense for the journal to show a task about chasing the bad guy until, you know, the game actually gets to the point where the player has to chase the bad guy.

The side benefit of doing this is that it forces me to review almost all of the game code. From a quality assurance point of view, that’s a good thing to make sure all eventualities are covered.

That’s It

Yep, that’s about all for now. Not too shabby for one month of development on the game. I’m moving forward on multiple fronts now, which helps keep things interesting and has given the project a new energy. 2025 looks set to be a good year for the game. Hopefully, good enough for a release, but time will tell.