We had an urgent need for a male voice actor to play the role of our father-character. We didn't want him uttering and mumbling with a strong Finnish accent (you know, that most horrible one), so basically every one of us was out. We didn't really trust our acting skills either. Instead, we decided to search for one.

The requirements for the task were quite simple: fluent pronunciation of English, charismatic male voice, preferably some experience of acting (but mostly an ability to throw oneself along), and maybe some love for digital games. The role was offered to the students of University of Jyväskylä via posting lists.

Offering a job based purely on voluntary work was a task I personally thought to be kinda hard. I expected to receive about five applications, since it wasn't a job to be paid for. We considered offering movie tickets or at least some credits for studies, but even those thoughts had to be buried. The only catch we had to offer was a different kind of acting experience, and a chance to do it better than somebody else would.

How wrong was I! :o We received 42 applications. Not one of them would have been a bad choice. People seemed actually excited to participate. Selecting only one was probably the hardest thing I've had to do within this project. I also realized that there might be something more to me not getting job interviews than a failure on my part.

Nevertheless, we found and chose one awesome fellow, Tapio Hänninen. Tomorrow we shall do some seriously fabulous voice recording, spending most of the day at a studio.

---

Kai
Producer of Kaamos Games

Producing sound´s to this game has been an interesting task. This is the first game project I have been in and I have learned a lot about audio production of video games, and also about teamwork and time managing etc.

Creating music for this game has been quite challenging task. I have produced some ambient music and also some minimalistic orchestral stuff. Later we will see what musical pieces will fit in with different levels of the game. I have no previous experiment in producing ambient music but I have found some useful tools like time stretching and various synthesizers, so I´m gradually getting a hang on it.

Producing sound effects has also been interesting and I have used various methods in producing them. To mention a few, I have showed the sneezing panda- video to my girlfrind and recorded the laugh. I have also recorded frying an egg as well as the usual running and jumping sounds.

Important aspect of the game will be the speaks and we have started looking for voice actor for the role of "the father". Speaks will be recorded in the near future.

Recording sound effect-"Main character gets fried"

I will maybe add some music examples when I have time/I´m not in so lazy mood.

Sincerely yours

Santeri/audio designer

Cube Horizon has moved forward with a nice pace this week. On Friday we gathered together for half a day at the university with the whole Kaamos team to work together on the project. So far we have worked mostly separately at home and only gotten together to have a meeting once a week. Working together felt very useful as we could help each other with problems and discuss solutions. Katariina worked with the first level and it's starting to look pretty good. Eetu was working with a later level from yet undefined part of the game and the tricky jumps he created seemed really challenging.

I worked myself with two new features this week. It's now possible to collect the minerals in the levels and the game keeps count of the number of minerals left in the level.


The other new feature implemented this week was a visual help for the camera turning controls. Speaking of the camera turning controls, we should implement an option for the player to change how the keys work. Mikko always complains about the keys working in opposite to what is intuitive for him but I like the current settings myself :)


The next thing I'll start working with will probably be the animation code. The hours resourced for the game are starting to wear thin on my part and I want to make sure that we have an animated character when the prototype will be published in May.

It's time to reveal something more of our game, which carries the working title CubeHorizon.