12/07/00
Fallout Developer Update
"Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy..."
- FDR, 8 Dec 1941
Yesterday two major things happened: we recorded the audio dialogue for the demo and we held a focus group. Hard to be in two places at the same time, but we managed.
The demo has 10 speaking parts, we used a total of three actors to do all the roles. The largest role is Paladin Ziskele. He is being played by Todd Susman, a veteran TV and movie actor. Mr. Susman has a great voice and really got into the part. The other nine roles are much smaller, and were split across three different voice actors. We recorded in Studio City (I dislike the drive from Orange County to Los Angeles, but going to a recording studio somehow makes up for it). The lines are being cut, processed and mixed this week.
The focus group happened at Interplay's Irvine offices. We had around 20 people show up, at varying times, to try the demo out for an hour or so. We had three questionnaires for them to fill out (two marketing questionnaires, one before the demo and one after, plus a development questionnaire). They got to see ad and box prototypes, as well. After filling out the questionnaires, we did interviews to clarify their responses and seek more input.
The focus group went very well. We had a bit of an issue getting all the machines set up in time, but thanks to Ron Austin, Dan Kingdom, Rene Hakiki and Edward Hyland for their help getting everything working. Tamara and Paco provided morale support and cookies (oh, and they ran the thing). Neat!
Most people who played had a good time to a very good time. Almost everyone who had played the Fallout RPGs thought we were keeping to the spirit of Fallout very well. Only one person was very disappointed we were not an RPG. The artwork was highly praised as being Fallout-y.
Most players did not have a problem with the interface after playing for a while, but there are some UI issues we will try and clean up.
The largest complaints were about friendly fire and the rate of fire of weapons in CTB mode. We're going to talk about solutions or possible changes.
One problem is that the first mission is currently a night mission, and the room was lit very strongly. It was hard to see some things (like Sneak mode) with the glare on the monitors.
Most of the people who played the demo were looking forward to the final game. That was very encouraging.
pax,
-Chris
