Paradox Interactive released today the second part of the developer's diary for creepy adventure Penumbra Black Plague, scheduled for a worldwide release in February 2008.
In the second part of the diary, Frictional Games go into depth of the creation of the voice-overs, one of the most important features when it comes to psychical horror. A voice sample comes with the diary to illustrate.
The developers continue by explaining how technical issues were dealt with and improved since the prequel, Penumbra Overture.
Developer Diary
Part 2
By Frictional Games
Voice overs
The voiceovers are an area that has received more attention in Black Plague than it did in our previous Overture game. In Overture we had one character speaking to the player through a radio, in Black Plague this has been extended to around five characters speaking to him through various media. As we are working with a small budget we have not done any animated and synced characters. This is also a design choice as we believe horror is created by being lonely and isolated in an unknown territory, so don't expect any friendly chats over a cup of tea! (…)
Technical issues
One of the more important things you need to do in a game is to make sure that everything is as optimised as much as possible. However, since optimisation often happens as one of the last things in development there is not always time for it and the game does not perform as good as it should at release. When it comes to Penumbra: Black Plague, the entire backbone for the game was already made which meant we did not have to spend a great deal of time to get things to work, instead we could focus on making things work fast at an early point in development. For the gamer, this means that Black Plague will run smoother than Overture and we have also been able to add more eye candy and can make the game look prettier without making it run slower. (…)
Read the whole diary: http://www.paradoxplaza.com/press/penumbra/DevDiary
Read more about Penumbra Black Plague: http://www.paradoxplaza.com/penumbra
Release: February 2008
Suggested retail price: USD 19.99