Manuals and Boxed Goodies
Q. Who's writing the manual?
A. (S.M. 1/21) I think Tim will be writing our manual in the upcoming months. It is going to be a difficult write because the 3rd Ed. Players Handbook and Dungeon Master's guide combined have about 550 pages of text and are much larger in [width and height] than our manual can be.
Q. What will it focus on?
A. (S.M. 1/21)I think it will focus on what is specifically important and pertinent to the module and how our interface explains 3rd edition rules. We are also hoping to include a lot of in-depth in game help. I personally feel that if you don't care or know anything about 3rd edition you can still play the game, but if you are a D&D junkie you'll love all the attention to detail.Q. Will the manual have a table of contents? An index?
A. (T.C. 2/21) I don't believe it will possible for me to forget a table of contents or an index in the ToEE manual. I'm still mad it wasn't in Arcanum, but I have only myself to blame. I should not have assumed it would be added.
Q. Will there be a collector's edition?
A. (S.M. 2/11) That's up to the publisher; I'd like to put little lead figurines of all of us in it if we get one, but who knows.
Q. Will the game CDs come in jewel cases or paper envelopes?
A. (S.M 2/11) Packaging is beyond our control. Sadly we just make as good of a game as we can and hope you love it.Voice Acting and Audio
Q. Who is in charge of the audio?
A. (T.C. 2/11) Infogrames is supplying music and sound fx.
Q. What type of background music will be used in the game?
A1. (T.C. - RPG Vault) Our music is ambient and used more to provide mood for a particular map than to provide a melody. As you can tell from Fallout, I really like ambient music. However, in combat, the music becomes more orchestral. Infogrames is providing the musician, but he is taking direction from samples of ambient music from my collection.A2. (S.M. 3/4) So far the Soundtrack seems like it will be mostly dark ambient. But I haven't heard the samples that have come back yet. I just bugged Tom (our in house designer/producer) he said there are about 30 pieces of music that are being done and each one is a few minutes long so around one hour to two hours.
Q. Will the music be available on a separate disk to play?
A1. (S.M. 3/4) I had mentioned in a meeting that I think it would be cool to put on an extra CD or as a download or as part of a special edition. But nobody listens to me.A2. (S.M. 3/4) I said it when our producer and the sound guy came down for our first meeting and they said they wanted it in WMA format and I said... oh boy...
[I.B. - Will it be separate? Inconclusive...]
Q. Will there be voice acting?
A1. (S.M. 2/1) [Yes.] Our in-house producer/designer Tom Decker was able to convince our publisher to let us handle most of the voice acting. I'm not 100% certain who he is planning on having to do it; and we have not even reached text lock yet (so we wouldn't start recording for a little while anyway).A2. (T.C. - RPG Vault) As far as voice-acting goes, the important characters, as well as followers, will have voice over - that's roughly a third of all of the characters in the game. We are using professional voice actors for all of these characters.
Q. What characters will have voice acting?
A1. (S.M. 2/1) I'm under the impression that our budget isn't that big, but should be able to cover voice for all major NPCs and followers. Auto commentating PCs are on the cool stuff list and will most likely get added. I will ask Tom on Monday what the exact voice count (for PC, NPC, follower, etc) is.
A2. (H.N. 2/3) hehe, Tim has already voiced one NPC (as a temporary thing, of course). he did quite well! well, meaning, well, hilarious...I'm voting to keep it in!