Volatile Community Site

Having some sort of voice acting in Volatile was important to me. I want to make sure that when the player loads up Volatile, they feel like they’re getting a polished, well put together game. However, being an iPhone puzzle game, we realized that a large number of people were probably going to be listening to their own music while playing the game. This meant that we couldn’t have important information about the game conveyed to the player relying entirely through audio cues alone. Volatile would still be the same basic game without voice acting, but it would lack that polish that we think makes good games great.

Voice acting in video games has a stigma attached to it. You either do it well enough where no one notices it or you do it really bad and everyone cringes when they hear it. Here are 5 tips that we think will help you with getting voice acting in your indie project without it making your audience want to turn off the audio.

1. The Right Stuff

A Mic:

A decent mic in these days of amateur podcasting isn’t going to cost you an arm and a leg. We went with the Samson CO1U USB Condenser Microphone because of it’s quality, price and ease. It’s a great USB mic that works great and has excellent quality.

PopScreen:

If you want to step it up a notch and save yourself some hassle, buy or make your own popscreen. This will help you out a lot when it comes to cleaning up the audio in post.

Audacity:

We did all of our voice capturing and clean up in Audacity, a free open-source program. Didn’t cost us a penny and had everything we needed to get the job done.

2. Find an Actor/Actress!

Bad voice acting is usually the fault of the actor and direction, not the quality of the recording. There is no “Make Actor Better” filter in anyones audio recording software.

There are many ways to find actors and actresses. Hire Scott Stoked, check the help wanted section on Craigslist, GameDev.net Help Wanted forums or ask around your local college in the Drama department. Approach the teacher in their office, email or ask them about students who may be interested. It never hurts to ask. And since they’re students, they’ll more than likely work for free for the experience and exposure they could get from your game.

Unless you’re confident in your own abilities as a voice actor (even then, get a second opinion!) finding a local professional or inspiring professional is imperative. I’m sure David Hayter would still sound fantastic if he was recording on a Speak & Spell.

Local drama student Alex.

Audio before filters:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio after filters:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

3. Record at Night

This might be a no-brainer, but it’s quieter at night, which means less background noise for your mic to pick up and less noise for you to filter out in post.

4. Be Prepared

Script:

Your script should be well prepared before you even start looking for an actor. Read the lines yourself, make sure it sounds believable, the flow works right and words that are fabricated or hard to pronounced are spelled out phonetically some place for the actor.

Equipment:

Set everything up early so when the actor is ready there are no technical difficulties. Nothing will kill the mood more than having the mic cut in and out in the middle of a recording. We all know how angry some actors can get in those situations.

A Glass of Water:

Depending on the length of your script and how long you have with the actor, providing some sort of amenities will go a long way. You don’t need to pick out all the green Jelly Beans in the jar or anything but a few bottle of water should be fine.

5. Turn Off Your Cellphone:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

-Matt

Creating music for a puzzle game is a puzzle all in itself. It can’t be too distracting, it can’t be short, it can’t be too loud and most importantly, it should fit nicely with the theme of the game. Luckily, I had found a musician who was able to work with all of these restrictions and still come up with a great sound for Volatile.

I found Nishant of Wavestation from the help wanted section of Gamedev.net. When I first got in contact with Nishant, I explained the game a bit, showed him screen shots and told him about the restrictions. He took the information and quickly came back with a few samples that were only 25-30 seconds in length. For us, this was perfect. I could get a sense of what he was trying to accomplish with the samples and he could turn them around quickly. Some were great, some were okay and some didn’t work at all and had to be discarded. The audio sketches I liked the best were expanded upon, tweaked and eventually finished.

I’m not going to pretend to know just how Nishant works his ear pleasing magic, so I’ll let him explain the process:

“To get the feel of the music for Volatile, I listened to a lot of ambient and electronic tracks on Myspace and Acid-Planet. Matt also introduced me to Mass Effect’s music, which is absolutely brilliant and was a great inspiration for Volatile’s music.

For composition, I mainly use Cubase with virtual synths like Spectrasonics Omnisphere, Arturia Moog Modulator and the Waldorf Largo. I then bounce it to Pro-tools for mixing.

I mainly focus on getting a unique ambient sound that adds distinct atmosphere to the tracks. To achieve that, I had to create new synth presets. Most of the tracks were produced using different synths and piano except a few where I tried  experimenting with guitar, flutes and even strings. Each track’s arrangement consisted of about 30-40 different tracks.

I composed 30-second demos of every track and mailed to Matt for a review who got back with feedback and notes which were helpful in heading in a particular direction. It was a great experience working on Volatile’s soundtrack.”

Click the play button below to listen to a sample of Volatile’s music.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

-Matt