Shattered War: Still Progressing

I realise that I've been less active on this blog of late that I would like, and probably less active than I should be.  This is partly because I've been slightly busier than usual and been able to dedicate less time to blogging and modding than I would like, but also because a lot of the modding work I've been doing lately for The Shattered War hasn't been terribly interesting for people to read about.

Why is that? Mainly because a lot of the work has either been testing and fixing bugs, or writing dialogue scripts. Dialogue scripts are the text files that get sent to voice actors once a role has been filled. This is a test file with a full export of all the character's lines, but heavily annotated. It provides a character biography, so the voice actor has an insight into their personality. It has any background information on the lore or setting that people may not be familiar with that is relevant to the character and their dialogue, along with details of any plots/storylines that the character may be involved with. It also contains a pronunciation guide for the names of other characters or locations.

Voicing a templar would be less convincing without relevant lore knowledge

Finally, the lines are divided up into logical segments to indicate the structure of the dialogue, and also an indication of the character's emotions or thought process behind the line is provided. This allows the voice actor to inject their own skill and take on the character's personality, while remaining true to the core persona with which the character has been written.  There is a delicate balance here - being too prescriptive doesn't allow the voice actor to act properly or give a good range of emotion and characterisation, but too little information and the voice actor may convey something completely different from what is meant in the context of the conversation or situation.

However, all the dialogue and all the scripts for the entire mod have been written, so I'll be running open auditions for all roles until they're filled. If you're at all interested in providing voice acting for any of the characters in the mod, please check out this page for details on characters and how to audition.

That said, there are still a handful of levels in the game that haven't yet been finalised. Some of these I'll be keeping in reserve and won't be publishing screenshots for them - I don't want to give away all the eye candy in the game. Of course, I can't tease you like that with giving a shot from another area that shows off the cold and unforgiving landscape of the setting...

Brrr, it's cold out there...

I'll endeavor to get back to more regular updates of progress on The Shattered War, it's been a very long journey of development thus far, and there's still a substantial amount of work left, but there will be quite a lot of gameplay to show for it once it's finished.