Auditions have begun for voice acting parts in our nearly-complete game,
DROD: The City Beneath, which is the successor to our previous two titles,
DROD: King Dugan's Dungeon and
DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold. We have 80 pages of dialogue waiting to be recorded. We have 40 different characters in need of a voice. You are encouraged to try for a part. It isn't hard to audition. You basically just need a microphone, a computer, and some functioning vocal chords.
There's a lot to cover here. I think I'll do it FAQ-style...
What is this game about?
DROD is a hard game to classify. Ed Pegg, Jr. of the Mathematics Association of America called it the "
World's Greatest Puzzle Game"
. Greg Costikyan of Manifesto Games called it "
Sokoban meets Gauntlet"
. My wife called it "
that annoying thing you spend so much time on"
. As an actor, you may be most interested in the story told through the game. The main character, Beethro Budkin, battles the ultimate bureaucracy in a subterranean world crafted fresh from our writers' imaginations.
What do you need?
Lots of people of all shapes and sizes to record voices over the internet. Well, actually maybe ten to twenty people. There is no single type of voice we need. Actually, the more distinct types of voices we have, the better. There's no particular bias against accents, other than that your English should be clear. Women are particularly encouraged to audition because we typically have less female voices to choose from when casting.
What do I have to do to get involved?
First audition. If after hearing your audition, we feel we could use your talents, then we will contact you privately to invite you to join our team and record real lines used in the game. You will need to sign a contributor's agreement with us before we can use your work in our game.
How do I audition?
Links to the eight sample parts for which you can audition are listed below:
The Pit Thing
Gossiper
King Dugan
Drokkendut
Stalwart Captain
First Librarian
Prombly
First Patron
The lines in these sample parts are not the totality of what each character says. And some of the lines in the above parts have been deliberately changed to avoid blurting story spoilers. We would like recordings of these parts just to get an idea of your capabilities. To submit your audition for a part, record the lines on your computer and save them to a file. Then post the file as an attachment in a reply to the corresponding topic from the list above. The file can be in OGG or MP3 format. You can also use WAV
only if you put the file in a ZIP or RAR archive so people can download it easily.
Please don't apply special effects to your recording such as pitch-shifting or reverberation. Even a noise reduction filter is problematic. We need to hear what your unaltered voice and also your home recording environment sounds like.
We will not use any of your recordings without getting a signed agreement from you saying that we can.
I sound bad because my home recording setup sucks. Will this affect my chances of being picked?
Unfortunately, yes. We have to work with people that can produce recordings of reasonable technical quality. On the bright side, you don't need a professional studio to meet indie game standards. A lot of people get by with a fifteen dollar microphone and a quiet room. Here are some tips to help you get a good recording:
* Turn off things in the room that make noise. Printers, fans, cd-rom drives can all add to the noise level.
* When recording, find the right distance to be from the mic. Basically, get as close as you can without causing clipping. "
Clipping"
is a distortion in the recording caused by your voice being too loud (or your mouth too close) to be correctly captured by the microphone.
* Certain sounds like P's and S's tend to generate artifacts in the recording from the extra wind leaving your mouth. A microphone with a windscreen over the end (a foam cover) will help avoid this. You can also try recording with your mouth just to the left or right of the microphone.
Which parts should I audition for?
Any or all of them. We just use them to get a rough idea of what you can do. Casting decisions may involve some more targetted auditions afterward.
How should I record the lines? I don't understand who these characters are or how I should portray them.
Just record the parts some way that you like and call it good. We aren't looking to give specific instructions at this stage. You can always post more than one version of the part, i.e "
funny"
version and "
serious"
version.
What do I get for auditioning?
Well, nothing necessarily. But there will be a contest running in parallel in which all audition entries will be entered automatically. That will be announced and described in detail in November. I did want to point out that even if you don't get shoulder-tapped to record a part in the game, you can still have a fun time with the upcoming contest.
If I get chosen to record a part in the game, what do I get then?
You get a free copy of
DROD: The City Beneath shipped to you on CD with a nicely illustrated jewel case. You get your name in the cast credits for the game. You get to participate in a unique type of audio production which we've been gradually honing to semi-perfection over the years.
Huh? "Unique type of audio production?" What are you talking about?
The script itself is generated from the game levels. The script does not follow a linear progression, because of branching storylines, and this creates additional challenges. We record all the parts online, through the forum, with contributors logging in to a private board. Everyone can download and listen to everybody else's recordings. Smaller parts will be open to multiple versions from different actors, and we'll just go with the one we like best. Other parts are cast to one actor after more targetted auditioning. You record from home, but there will be a community of peers to have fun with.
We've done all this stuff before, by the way. So don't get the idea it's a wacky out-of-control experiment. Well, maybe slightly wacky and out-of-control, but we basically know what we're doing.
What's the schedule on this thing?
The auditions start now and end as soon as we have enough actors for the parts we need. Practically speaking, the auditions will be finished by end of November. Ah, but here is the important part... We will start privately contacting actors as early as
November 1st, and begin recording parts even
before the auditions end. When we're no longer casting parts, we'll make a public announcement stating so.
The separate contest will begin first week of November and run until the end of the month. The contest's outcome does not affect who is invited to participate in recording for the game.
And also...
Feel free to post any questions you have in reply. I can also be e-mailed at
erikh@caravelgames.com, but public discussion is preferred.
-Erik
____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
dev journals |
twitch stream |
youtube archive (NSFW)
[Last edited by ErikH2000 at 10-25-2006 07:24 AM]
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