Developer Commentary

Nanu · Post by **Nanu** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:17 am

(For those of you coming from the Showcase, please don't necromance me.)

In Half Life 2: Lost Coast and Episode One, Valve included a toggleable feature called Developer Commentary. This feature, when turned on, added several "commentary nodes" to the world. When activated, these nodes played a voice recording of the Valve developers talking about that particular part of the world or the scenario that Gordan found himself in.

I'm asking what you guys would think about adding this inside of Stirk. It would only require one person to record all of the nodes, but I'd like to see the HoQ do the Quest nodes, the interior modder that made the interior do that node, and the Core/other people that worked on Stirk do the general stuff.

Since we're using Stirk as a sort-of lure to get people to come and work for us on the Oblivion project, I think that it makes sense to include something technical like this to help. Plus, I found Valve's commentary to be interesting.

What do you all think?

IAMTHEEMPEROR · Post by **IAMTHEEMPEROR** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 2:26 am

I think that would be cool, for the time being. Use those to attract modders and point out key features of Stirk and other beta areas as they are released, and once you get close to completion or have a sizable new group of people we can remove them. You can choose to keep them as optional though, but I think it would break immersion if they were included in completed areas ready playing.

Nanu · Post by **Nanu** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 3:01 am

It would always be optional. Activated by something easy to find, like the statue or a doorbell on the fort. (Those are off of my head.)

El Scumbago · Post by **El Scumbago** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 10:57 am

I'm not sure if players would enjoy this (although I think every TR modder would), but we may include commentary as a separate low-quality audio file. Each of the participants can record himself as he describes the parts he's been involved in and all would send their audio files to one person for the final mix.

But I seriously doubt that any site would host a mod's audio commentary. Except of Youtube, or Putfile. We can always upload such a file there and provide the link in the Readme.

Post by **Haplo** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 4:55 pm

Another problem would be the lack of recording equipment in the case of some of the folks involved. I mean yeah, I could record myself with my phone for like 5 minutes max and send the recording to my email via a text message in .wav format, but that's not really preferable, and I can't guarantee any sound quality. I don't know if the other non-equipped members involved have any such means of recording themselves.

groza528 · Post by **groza528** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:43 pm

I think this would be pretty interesting, but absolutely should be optional. Is it something that we could do as a separate plug-in file?

Nanu · Post by **Nanu** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 8:21 pm

I have a mic/headset that I got from our good friends at Wal*Mart for about $3. The equipment doesn't need to be that good for this, as it's not meant to be spoken by an NPC in-game.

Actually, only one person has to read the text that others typed. He'd just say "he" or "she" instead of "I."

A 2:15 *.mp3 is 2.07MB. I summed up the entire mod-making process we use from CA to the *.exe installer in that time. More like it, 0:30 is 472KB. It looks like a MB a minute from this model. Current OoT is about 44.2 MB. I'd guesstimate that we'd be under 20 MB TOPS. (That's 50 0:30 *.mp3s, file size could be lower if we could lower the sound quality somehow.)

Valve had six people that talked through the whole game, instead of each team member talking about what they did. They talked about level design, what they encountered during playtesting, how they made a scene, and about how long they took to make it.

I was wanting to do this because it would be the kind of think that would get me interested in modding to start. If the DC brings in even one talented modder, it paid for itself.

El Scumbago · Post by **El Scumbago** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 10:57 pm

Actually, all you need for decent quality is a $4-5 mic and Nero's Wave Editor, or any freeware that covers the basics of recording. Heck, even a bunch of .wav's from MS recorder would work fine. But I insist on my opinion that uploading the final audio file to a free host like PutFile and giving a link to that is better.

Nanu · Post by **Nanu** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 11:42 pm

Actually, we are going to do voice acting for DoT (Dialog of Tamriel), right? If so, couldn't you just include the commentary with that? It's already going to be a large optional file anyway.

Post by **Haplo** » Thu Jul 26, 2007 1:50 am

Actually we still have to discuss spoken dialogue; we've had lots of talks on it in the past but never really come a concrete solution. More on this after my movie.

NexUmMonastica · Post by **NexUmMonastica** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 9:11 am

well, I hope Haplo doesn't forget to return Spielburg's phonecalls.

I actualy played through the whole HL2 game just to hear the comentary. It made the game and my 3d modding work much more interesting. Thankfully they had that invulnurability option.

as to voice recording: go to download.com and get a free trial of Mixcraft. its a multi-track recordng software that gives you a few days to test it out for free. I've done cool layered choir and chorus effects with only a headset microphone.

Nanu · Post by **Nanu** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 6:10 pm

I use Audacity. It's free. Unlimited uses, at least I think.

Magelord648 · Post by **Magelord648** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 6:49 pm

I listened to some of the half episode one commentaries and I thought they were good. In my opinion a commentary is more suited to a RPG than a FPS. Most younger players wouldn't appreciate it but at other boards I go to there are older players who would like it.People like to know how things are done.

Post by **Haplo** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 7:59 pm

Well as I said above, I'm coming back to this.

We obviously need spoken dialogue for the major people, but who are the major people? We need to decide at what level NPCs start being worthy of spoken dialogue in relation to the amount of voice acting we can get done for them.

We also need to decide whether spoken dialogue will be entirely optional entirely mandatory, or partially either.

Macar · Post by **Macar** » Sat Aug 04, 2007 9:30 pm

Well, I suppose my opinion here counts for something.

Basicaly, the way it has been left is that we are A. not going to have race consitstant dialogue- the dialogue will be devided by groups depending on who we have willing to work at the time the recordings are done. B. some people having no voice is okay.

I for one, am a talented voice actor (humble too) who has nothing to do- we have many others in the same situation. I still have not received any lines that need recording- and I assume this wont happen untill we get the quests finished. I am optimistic that I will be able to get the help of some talented people when that time comes.

El Scumbago · Post by **El Scumbago** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 12:43 am

I say that we ignore consistency with Beth's 4 voice actors and give each race multiple voices, but keeping the accent. Sooner or later, someone's gonna start a Diverse Voices mod or something and we'll be very consistent with that.

Thrignar Fraxix · Post by **Thrignar Fraxix** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 4:03 am

Macar wrote:who has nothing to do- we have many others in the same situation. I still have not received any lines that need recording- and I assume this wont happen untill we get the quests finished. I am optimistic that I will be able to get the help of some talented people when that time comes.

You are head of sound and music, and basic dialog for stirk is done, along with several quests. Why don't you find the dialog and start organizing our voice actors.

Macar · Post by **Macar** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 5:18 am

Well can someone get it to me? Or just tell me where it's posted? I dont have OB so I cant get it if it's in there.

groza528 · Post by **groza528** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 11:43 am

I'll see if I can export some of the dialogue for you today when I get home, unless someone beats me to it.

groza528 · Post by **groza528** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 11:08 am

Dialogue!
Sorry, a bit later than intended.

Nanu · Post by **Nanu** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 2:40 pm

Also, we could use a pronunciation guide for some of these words. I don't know how to say pretty much all of the names on the island, nor the sea Stirk is located in. I pronounce it, but I doubt it's right.

And I hope Lady Nerevar can voice act.

lb003g0676 · Post by **lb003g0676** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 12:40 am

It only works with games like Half life becuase it's linear, so it explains as you rpogress. It's still difficultto script. But since Stirk is free roaming, it wouldn't work.

Althoguh I'dlove to do it.

Nanu · Post by **Nanu** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 7:55 pm

Of course it would work, Pound. They commentary would be for regions of the game, not talking about it as a whole. It wouldn't be "since you've done X, Y", but rather "Here's X, and here's how we did it."

Lady Nerevar · Post by **Lady Nerevar** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 9:43 pm

instead of placing it in game (and bumping up the size egnificantly), perhaps we can do it out of game? in a tutorial like blog type video. not realy expalining everything in detail but in a general sweep and providing info on ourselves. one video could for instance talk about concept art creation and insperation, another about how that concept art becomes reality in a model and how it gets into the game. it would not only be interesting material for those playing the mod but also for mod makers, and it would keep the file size at a minimum.

Nanu · Post by **Nanu** » Mon Aug 13, 2007 11:57 pm

Also a good idea, N.