Runic Games Newsletter #1

Earlier this week, Runic Games sent out their “inaugural” newsletter with some last minute information about Torchlight’s launch and links to recent videos and screenshots. The bit at the end about their audio recording makes for good comedy:

People tend to think we’re exaggerating when we talk about our zero budget and DIY superstar skills. We’d like to give you a real life example you probably won’t see at any other studio, ever.

When recording in-game sounds or voices, you would ideally have a sound booth to prevent any echoes, not to mention ambient noise. Torchlight has professional voice actors for the main characters and NPCs, but we also used temporary voiceover as placeholders, or to add smaller soundbytes. (In Mythos, Brock and Wonder voiced the male and female Cyclops, respectively that remained in game till the end.)

Recording sessions for Torchlight have taken place in the tiny room that hosts our office supplies and printers, using a Rock Band microphone plugged into Brock’s laptop. Today, Brock was recording voice work for an NPC as a backup file. Instead of getting using the relatively echoey office supply room, he hunkered down under our third-hand futon, and recorded a couple takes of the dialogue. A little sound editing and presto, NPC voice! This is how we roll, folks. Straight up MacGyver style. Just another classic example of Runic Games getting the job done!

Pictures of said “hunkering down” can be found here.