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Episode 38: Priscilla Snow (Spooky Express, A Good Snowman, Patrick's Parabox)
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In this episode, hosts Alan and Syrenne are joined by Priscilla Snow the composer who worked on games like Spooky Express, A Good Snowman is Hard to Build, and Patrick's Parabox. Topics include the getting into composing for games, the specifics of working on Spooky Express, and weird bespoke instruments.
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Transcript
Introduction and Hosts
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to the Drakknack and Friends official podcast, where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them. I'm Seren, the producer at Drakknack and Friends, and I'm joined as always by Alan Hazelden, the head Drakknack at Drakknack and Friends.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hi there.
Guest Introduction: Priscilla Snow
00:00:36
Speaker
Today, we're joined by Priscilla Snow, who you may know from both the podcast you're currently listening to, as well as their works on games such as Spooky Express, A Good Snowman is Hard to Build, Patrick's Paravox, Immortality, Jet the Far Shore, and others.
00:00:54
Speaker
How are you doing today? I'm doing great. Hello. Don't forget Skin Deep. Don't forget Skin Deep. um Like I said, and others. yeah There's so many games. i Of course, I'm going to drop one or two off the list.
Priscilla's Background in Game Audio
00:01:10
Speaker
So yeah, other than the sort of gamography, can you introduce yourself to our listeners and kind of let them know what you do? Yeah, absolutely. um i am a composer and a sound designer, ah predominantly working in games.
00:01:26
Speaker
um I've been working in games since about 2014 when I started making little Twine games with my partner. And, um yeah, just ever since then, I've been working on more and more games and i have a blast doing it. i I really enjoy just audio in general, working with audio.
00:01:49
Speaker
I did a little bit of it in the theater back when I was in college. And i don't know, I just like I started doing it for games and I kind of never turned back. Awesome. Yeah. So what got you into games?
00:02:04
Speaker
So like I said, my partner and I um worked on some Twine games together back when we were both in college. And it was it was really funny because ah my partner's Kevin Snow, um a narrative ah director ah type these days.
00:02:21
Speaker
um But ah back in 2014, they had made a Twine game called the Doma Void, and it didn't have any audio. um There were actually people who would play the game and record a Let's Play and add their own audio to it. um So when they showed it to me, I was like, hey, do you want me to add some audio? Like I've done this kind of thing, you know, in theater and and and such, and I think I could figure it out.
00:02:48
Speaker
And so that was the first time I added audio to anything you know interactive online. And then I just kept going from there. We made a couple more Twine games. I worked on Voyager with Bruno Diaz, who's another really great narrative person in games.
00:03:05
Speaker
um And yeah, it just kind of ah blossomed from there. The the next, like I think, bigger game project I actually worked on was A Good Snowman is Hard to Build. Yeah.
Collaborations and Notable Projects
00:03:15
Speaker
And we were trying to find out how that happened.
00:03:18
Speaker
So, Alan, you take from here. Had we met at a GDC before I reached out to you for a good snowman? Or was that a cold email? I do not remember.
00:03:29
Speaker
don't remember either. i i i remember getting a message and just hearing that you were looking for for someone and But yeah, I don't, I honestly don't remember. Like, I know we met, I think we might have met briefly at a GDC, but i our first one was in 2017. So it's very plausible that happened.
00:03:52
Speaker
ah But I don't have like a very strong memory of of how happened. how one thing led to another. um i remembered being very excited when I got your, you know, when you reached out to me, I was like, Oh, this is really exciting, because I had always enjoyed puzzle games and and that kind of thing. And I thought the vibe of the game was really nice. And i was excited to write some music for that, you know, world and everything.
00:04:20
Speaker
Nice. Yeah, because ah I definitely met your partner before I sent that email. And yeah, that was in 2018. Like the the game itself released in 2015 and then we rescored it in 2018.
00:04:34
Speaker
And so, yeah, it's possible that I met you at GDC 2017 18. It's...
00:04:39
Speaker
it's also possible that I just was aware of your work from Voyager, although I didn't actually play that game. But it it's I think it's the kind of game that like a lot musicians I knew like really liked that soundtrack. So I was like aware of you via that maybe. That's so funny.
00:04:57
Speaker
But yeah, like since you did that, you've done so much else that I had kind of forgotten that you weren't like a well-known musician when we contacted you.
00:05:10
Speaker
yeah. yeah Yeah, I remember that being like, one of the and and i had also done the sound design for the um when we we did redid the audio in the game and that was my first like i remember like getting all the assets rendered out and like sending those over and we were controlling things in a json file and yeah the audio pipeline for that game was a new It was so funny. and But it was funny because like I hadn't really... like i had used a little bit of FMOD because I started teaching myself FMOD in 2017.
00:05:47
Speaker
But I hadn't actually used it on a project. And so like I didn't... I didn't have any like expectations. We just, we just gave you this project and this existing audio pipelines and you would have been like, well, I guess this is how it's done. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, I have no preconceived notions. I'm like, ah this is fine. I can work with this.
00:06:08
Speaker
um But yeah, i think like I think also, weirdly enough, working in the JSON file, like I actually did a little bit of that on Skin Deep. So recently, i had to do a little bit of that again, ah which Brendan helped a lot with like setting things up. And then I just kind of like copied the template when I was like introducing new ah pieces and things like that.
00:06:28
Speaker
um But it was really funny to kind of be like, oh, I'm back here again. and it also, like I don't know, I feel like it was weirdly... satisfying to work in that way because it is so no frills and it kind of reminded me of the things you have to do to get like interesting audio in a twine game because of how limited it is so you're having to do a lot of things like setting delays and like setting fades and things like that by just like
00:06:59
Speaker
writing it out like set fade point two or whatever um you know and and so like I had already been doing that very like text file type audio design uh working in twine um so yeah it was totally fine by me but you know I I do like my f mod these days And you're, I think you're having a lot of fun with F-Mod on Spook Express.
Technical Insights on Game Music
00:07:24
Speaker
Like i i I, don't know if you want to like geek out about some of the fun tricks you've been doing recently. Yeah, sure. i I've been having a lot of fun, um doing more like,
00:07:37
Speaker
i i I don't know what other people refer to it as because like like I said, I've kind of just taught myself FMOD over the past decade just using it. um But I refer – like there's these um ah things you can use and place on your timelines called command ah instruments.
00:07:55
Speaker
And i kind of refer to using those as like creating internal logic within FMOD. So a lot of times when I'm setting a parameter or I want a parameter to update in order to control a piece of music, I actually need to reach out to the programmer and have them put that logic in on the Unity side of things. um So it's kind of like external logic.
00:08:18
Speaker
um But whenever I'm able to use these like snapshots, not snapshots, that's a whole different thing. When I'm able to use these commands ah within FMOD and I create these kind of like ah references between different events that are playing, I kind of, I call, I refer to that as like internal logic because I'm doing everything within FMOD.
00:08:39
Speaker
But ah so, for instance, the other day we we decided to implement um pausing the music whenever you finish a level so that we're not constantly bombarding you with just the beginning of like, you know, if you're solving puzzles very quickly and it's triggering a new piece of music every time, you're just going to hear like the beginning of a song and then move on. And it's, you know, not...
00:09:02
Speaker
very pleasant, I guess, or it doesn't feel great. And so we introduced a pause that our programmer went in and you know called the FMOD pause function.
00:09:14
Speaker
And what I ran into was like, oh, this works great. It works exactly like a one. But the music is just suddenly stopping and suddenly restarting um or so suddenly resuming.
00:09:25
Speaker
And so there's no fade down or fade up. And so it's, you know, very abrupt. And at first I thought I was going to have to get, you know, um a parameter to be set up on the Godot side. I think I said Unity earlier. We're doing this one in Godot.
00:09:40
Speaker
But, ah you know, I was thinking about it and then i was like, well, maybe I can just... I know what's playing every time we're yeah you know using this function and it's though the winning loop. you know When you've won a puzzle, we trigger this loop of music that plays and it's always going to be that.
00:09:59
Speaker
That's the you know the only thing that's playing when we're using this pause function. So I went to that event that holds that piece of music and I put a command instrument. And I used it to set a new parameter I created that is basically just checking if the music is paused, because if that music is playing, the other level music is paused.
00:10:20
Speaker
um And so when we call the winning loop music, that command updates a parameter and that parameter is applied to all of the possible music events that can play in the levels.
00:10:34
Speaker
And it is tied to the volume automation on the master track of that event. And if it's paused, it gets set to, you know, true is paused and the volume automates down to zero.
00:10:50
Speaker
and it's set to a seek speed, which also just means that rather than going from you know zero to one immediately, it'll actually lerp, is that the word? Lerp the values between.
00:11:02
Speaker
And so it creates a nice smooth fade and it's not jarring and it feels nice and polished. So. you just set all of this up in af mods, no programmer time required. Exactly. just fiddling.
00:11:14
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. It's really satisfying. like The thing I like about Fmod is it does sometimes feel like I am solving a puzzle. um It's just puzzles all the way down.
00:11:26
Speaker
Yeah, then, you know, you get to experience that. ah With Fmod in Godot, is there anything that you're noticing that's like significantly different than Fmod in Unity? Or is it really just like...
00:11:42
Speaker
Fmod is Fmod and you're comfortable in your work environment. Yeah, I've been actually really surprised by how well Fmod works for Godot. um Because as far as I know, it's not like it's not like officially supported, but like there is a good community of people and the people making Godot that seem to be really active and and supporting this, you know, utility, um which is great because it is such a useful tool. I think so far, and I don't know if this maybe has been fixed since then. I haven't tested it since we updated to, ah what is this, 2.3.3, something like that.
00:12:20
Speaker
Yeah, 2.03.03 is the version we're on right now. And I haven't tested this yet, but when we were on the previous version of f mod So far, the only thing I could find in Godot that wasn't working as intended was the asynchronous seek speed, which means you can set two different lerp speeds based on if you're going to or from the value. um And it's really handy in certain scenarios where you want something to, you know, fade up quickly. But when you set the value back down, you want it to like go down, ah go go back to zero slowly or whatever whatever value you're traveling between.
00:12:55
Speaker
And so far, that's like really the only thing I've run into. That and the live update is like not as reliable, I guess, as when using it with you Unity. So the live profiler isn't quite as robust. um I it does work.
00:13:13
Speaker
I'm able to see like what events are playing, which that alone is really useful for troubleshooting. Like if something's firing when we don't want it to or we can't tell like what what sound effect is firing. We just know something's firing weirdly.
00:13:25
Speaker
um We can go in and look at that. And that's really helpful for diagnosing things like that. ah but yeah, for the most part, like it really like has been very seamless going from Unity and F mod to Godot and F mod, which is great because I i really like Godot.
00:13:41
Speaker
Great. Yeah, we there was like some initial issues with the GotOFMod implementation where it was very rare cases causing crashes. um But then we figured out a repro for that and took it to the maintainers of the GotOFMod API and they just fixed it really quickly.
00:14:01
Speaker
so Yeah, so it was awesome. Yay for open source. Exactly. I was like so impressed by how quickly that happened. Yeah, no, absolutely. Just, I, look, I, I love open source software. I love Godot. Like it's, it's great. We had, we had Adam, uh, DeGrandis on, i don't know the order of episode releases at this point.
00:14:26
Speaker
think it's going out before this one. Yeah. I just don't know how, how much before this one, but like, yeah, he's, he, he is Godot's biggest hater, but even he loves the spirit
Creative Inspirations and Interests
00:14:37
Speaker
of Godot.
00:14:37
Speaker
Yeah. Um, so keeping on spooky express for a minute, what like inspires you about the spooky setting? Oh boy, you've opened a big can of worms. Um, I, I just love, like, I'm a big Halloween nerd. Like i you know, almost every year i do like a really elaborate Halloween costume and, and do like a silly photo shoot.
00:15:06
Speaker
Um, and, Like, I just, you know, i was a theater kid. i i love wearing costumes and and all of that. um So that's like a big thing is I, you know, I just love Halloween. But, i you know, I love fall in general because it's one of the two good times of year, fall and spring, when the temperatures are not extreme in either direction. Thank you.
00:15:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. then I'm allergic to spring. No. oh yeah. Well, same. But like, at least I can wear either a sweater or shorts, you know?
00:15:40
Speaker
I don't care. I'm sneezing. It's fine. I've got allergy pills. Um, but yeah, I don't know. I just, I've always loved the fall. um I've always been a big Halloween nerd since I was a kid.
00:15:52
Speaker
um and I really also, i think around the time I got into college, I also got really into horror movies. Um, watching a lot of, cause you know, before then I really didn't watch many horror movies. I think I watched like the others when I was in like,
00:16:08
Speaker
seventh grade or something like that and that was pretty much the only scary movie I watched until college I don't know why just always shied away from them and then I found out that I'm a big horror nerd have a copy of Dario Argento's deep red on VHS on my desk you know so it's I like all kinds of horror. i have a really a big soft spot for like 1970s and like um even earlier horror. Like I really love the cheesy practical effects and the, you know, um Hammer movies and all of that. Like,
00:16:45
Speaker
Classic is horror, you know, scary monsters, Frankenstein and Dracula and the mummy and ah the werewolf and all that. Like, I just I love all of these old horror franchises and monsters and such. um And so, yeah, i just, you know, i like to be in a spooky mode.
00:17:04
Speaker
um I enjoy, i mean, my my branding for, you know, my my work I do has been ghoul noise since 2017.
00:17:15
Speaker
ah Because back then I was like really interested in working on horror games. Um, and I was like, oh, I want to do like spooky sound effects and like really creepy ambiences and that kind of thing.
00:17:28
Speaker
Um, so it's, it's kind of been in my DNA the whole time. yeah. yeah i like I really have been having a blast working on Spooky Express. It's it's a really great mix of like spooky things, but it's all very cute and very, like dare I say, wholesome.
00:17:49
Speaker
um
00:17:51
Speaker
so it's It's been good. It's been a boon to work on terms of creativity and and inspiration. yeah no i'm I'm glad. It's definitely a type of vibe that I associate with you, even though, like, I mean, I work with you. This is not the first. It's not the second time I've worked with you.
00:18:14
Speaker
But also, ah like, I follow you on Blue Sky. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, there's there's just a strong brand there.
00:18:26
Speaker
it's It's true. I i cannot ah hide my my love of spooky things. It's a deep and never-ending well.
00:18:37
Speaker
ah So do you still, like, are are you still out here looking for... horror games that you want to score for? Or like, have you found different ways to scratch that kind of itch? Have you fallen?
00:18:53
Speaker
Like, has there been anything that you have composed for that has like recontextualized what you what your goals are?
00:19:04
Speaker
As far as music goes, I really haven't gotten to write much music for horror. um On the sound design side of things, I definitely got to play in the space for immortality, like very visceral, ah psychological horror type ah type of beat.
00:19:23
Speaker
um Which I do find like really, really fun. um i I'm also working on Project C right now, which is um another Half Mermaid um FMV game ah that's in production.
00:19:39
Speaker
And, you know, on on Immortality, I had this kind of joke of like, I know I'm doing a good job with the sound design when I give myself a tummy ache. And so um we we kind of just use that as like ah a term where it's like, is this a tummy ache sound?
00:19:58
Speaker
ah Which is really funny to me. um But it's true. Like some some sounds, they can they can give you a tummy ache if you're having to like listen to it for a long time. um but uh yeah so that that was definitely like something i had a lot of fun with um on immortality it was working on those like really visceral like i said like psychological horror ah types of sounds and um Bringing that that kind of feeling into ah different elements of the sound design and um making it like both useful in terms of gameplay and also like effective in terms of like the the feeling it gives you when you hear it um in context in the game.
00:20:45
Speaker
So that that was a lot of fun. um i still I still would love to do audio um on like a, I don't know, first person horror game of some type, like literally of any fidelity. i don't care if it's like fully realism or it's like low poly ps2 vibes like i just i i would love to be able to score something that has like a storyline and it has some like real ah real scary moments uh in it so that's something i would still be like very eager to do in the future horror sookoban you heard it here first ala
00:21:32
Speaker
Look, think that would be fun. Yeah, we could we could make that that work. I mean, there's there's actually a surprising number of horror puzzle games. I played Scorn, some of it. i started know i So here i i did enjoy Scorn, i but then for some reason, it made me really sleepy.
00:21:57
Speaker
i don't know how that game put me to sleep, but like every time I would... Just bored.
00:22:03
Speaker
Oh, it's another H.R. Geiger inspired infrastructure. I can't. Good night. But I enjoyed like the, you know, a number of hours and then I got ah sleepy.
00:22:15
Speaker
um But I did enjoy like the grotesqueness of it. um But ah yeah, anyway, I, you know, there are horror puzzle games out there.
00:22:26
Speaker
Yeah, like if you if you look at the puzzle tag on Steam, like first you'll just get a lot of games that aren't puzzle games, but then you'll get a lot of horror games. But think a lot of horror puzzle games are way more horror than puzzle, or they are a type of puzzle that is like...
00:22:46
Speaker
not particularly exciting to me as somebody who's interested in the puzzliness of the puzzle. I was going to say a point and click room escape is is pretty, i feel like it's pretty common.
00:23:01
Speaker
Yeah. um But like, it feels like maybe there's like an angle for like, oh, you do good horror and actually good puzzles. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I'm nodding. I'm nodding. I'm just saying we need to, we should, we could just get Mari on board and we have the horror escape room dracnec pitch right here. Sure. I know, i know one listener who's been on the podcast who would buy that in a heartbeat. Yeah. Yeah, all of our games have been like really wholesome and family friendly, but next up we've got- Except for Bonfire.
00:23:37
Speaker
I mean, that's still wholesome even though it has blood. That game was rated as implicit launch. Like, there's like violence there, but it's still wholesome violence. Oh, this sitting you heard it here first. Getting an arrow plunged into your heart while blood comes out is wholesome violence.
00:23:56
Speaker
It is when you're made of voxels. um goodness anyways that's a that's a whole other story for people all you need to know is it's seven plus now and no we didn't change anything um but yeah i think like do you have any other like really key musical inspirations that you pull from other than like the themes of the project
00:24:25
Speaker
Um, I going into a project, I really, you know, I like to figure out like what kind of palette is going to suit it.
00:24:36
Speaker
You know, if it's, you know, should this game primarily use acoustic instruments and like real instruments? Or is this a project that's going to be very like synthesizer focused and very like MIDI based and that kind of thing? And you you know I also like to put together ah like references. like I know for Spooky Express, I i found you know i went in and listened back to a lot of things that I really liked from you know Nightmare Before Christmas or a Goosebumps video game from the ninety s or something. you know, whatever.
00:25:12
Speaker
um Just to see, like, you know, what are the common um elements to, like, a ah spooky Halloween-ish type of game. And, yeah, I don't know. i kind of... I try to cast a wide net, like...
00:25:26
Speaker
you know i might pull inspiration from like a song someone uses a wrestling entrance, or I might pull inspiration from a soundtrack for a movie you know or whatever. um and i try to keep really wide references and And then I don't like pretty much after that first phase, I really don't listen to anything so specific. um After that point, like I really try to just like find my own thing and then just kind of like keep exploring that and and making it more unique and more, you know, my own thing.
00:25:59
Speaker
Yeah, it's it really kind of changes from project to project to like how much space there is to explore.
Music Composition Approaches
00:26:07
Speaker
um You know, Skin Deep, for instance, is a very like I've described that soundtrack to people as like it's a fever dream soundtrack.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah. It kind of is. It is. Well, there's so much going on it. Like for that game, I basically like most of the music you hear in the game is like stuff you can hear on the radio um or you can collect it on cassette tapes that you find in the levels and you can listen to them in Nina's little Habitat.
00:26:35
Speaker
And so like I wanted to give the radio on that the feeling of having a wide range of things or that like the radios can't tune into any one particular station. So you turn it on and you never know what you're going to hear. And that's the kind of feeling I wanted to give to it. So I covered like a ton of different genres and made, you know, fictional ads for items you can use in the game and stuff like that.
00:27:00
Speaker
um So it was like ah all over the place in terms of like style and instrumentation. and like all over the place and then um you know for a game like patrick's pair box uh in comparison like that was very constrained like i really stuck to a very defined palette of sounds and kept things very like um like we used like the terms like pure and like mathematical lot um when talking about the music in that game And so, yeah, it really just like, you know, I'm always trying to suit the project um as best I can. And i think that's a really like one of the things I really like about working on games is that like, you know, every game I work on is different in some way, even if it's made by, you know, a team I've worked with in the past.
00:27:50
Speaker
And so it it's really fun kind of like finding, you know, what does this place sound like or what does this world sound like and and that kind of thing. um With Spooky Express, it's been fun because I've really just been trying to like run the gambit of like Halloween music. Like there's so many different types of music that people kind of consider Halloween music or music that feels spooky or whatever. And i because we have like, you know, a good amount of like themes and areas um across the game. like
00:28:24
Speaker
I wanted to try to introduce like a track here or there that really feels like it defines that area. So that's been really fun. Just like running the gambit from like very like spooky, scary skeletons kind of vibes versus like a Silent Hill type of vibe and making those kind of coexist. um So yeah, that's that's been a lot of fun on this game.
00:28:48
Speaker
Awesome. Real quick on Parabox. How far was the project along before ah you joined on? Oh, man. i I think I joined on in, I think, 2020.
00:29:04
Speaker
twenty twenty
00:29:07
Speaker
Um, and I think like I came on kind of early in the year, but then was having like a big move and, uh, I was like wrapping up jet at the time. so I think I really kind of started actually working on the game more towards the fall 2020.
00:29:25
Speaker
um And then, yeah, I was kind of just working on it pretty slowly alongside development. I know there was, like, a ah good period of time where, like, things were getting playtested a lot and um a lot of, like, fine-tuning and tweaks and stuff. And so i i just, you know, kept plugging away on music. and Yeah, because, like, there there was, like, a decent chunk of time between you coming on and the game shipping. like But the game itself, like...
00:29:55
Speaker
the The puzzles went through a lot of iteration, but if you look at like what the game like looked like and felt like to play, like it's basically identical throughout that Yeah, like a lot it was it was interesting because a lot of that game was like pretty pretty set when I when i joined.
00:30:11
Speaker
And then, yeah, most of the the time was just really like fine-tuning those puzzles. And I mean, you can tell. You can tell how much iteration and polish those puzzles went through.
00:30:23
Speaker
So yeah, I think like, um I feel like, you know, that game was pretty ambitious in terms of the amount of music I made for it. Every puzzle area had its own interactive piece of music that changed depending on what was going on while you were playing.
00:30:39
Speaker
And there's a lot of areas in that game. there's that That game is so big. It's a big game. um But I'm glad. And like, it's so it's like one of my...
00:30:53
Speaker
like biggest sore points from any game I've worked on, but there was so much music in that game that I ended up using one track on two different areas.
00:31:04
Speaker
And people have- Disgraceful. so disgraceful to reuse a piece of music in a game that size, but i we've gotten emails about it. Oh my gosh. The other thing that's really funny though is because they have two different names.
00:31:19
Speaker
And on top of that, when I was doing the final like mix master of the soundtrack, I gave them slightly different treatments. Yeah. And so they're like not purely identical, but they're it's the same piece of music.
00:31:35
Speaker
um So it's really funny to me. And like, it's so funny because like, I feel like every once a while I just get the urge to be like, Patrick, can I make a new piece of music for the one level? Can I just make another piece of music and we can patch it in and just not say anything?
00:31:52
Speaker
Because it's one of those because it wasn't an and intentional choice. It's like something that I'm just like, oh, why? Why? um But, I don't know, it's been long enough now that it doesn't i don't I don't wake up in a You should ah have that one area in the game have like a horror vibe.
00:32:11
Speaker
Yeah, there we go. Yeah, you have a shadow square following you and it's got a little knife attached to it. Patrick, just go patch the game.
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah, no, this it's funny because, you know, we picked up Parabox for console publishing, which means that Spooky Express is the fourth game with a Priscilla Snow soundtrack that we've published. ah And it is also the first one that has involved you in pre-production.
00:32:38
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's fun. Which is very... you know I don't know. um'm I'm not trying to pick favorites of your gamography. I will just say that there is so much clever audio going on in Spooky that it makes me really happy.
00:32:56
Speaker
so And Edge Magazine clearly agrees as well. i can't Yeah, i'm I'm still not over that full quote. but I made it my um my banner on Blue Sky on my profile now.
00:33:09
Speaker
incredible
00:33:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's very very, very funny, very fun. So last game I really wanted to hone in on that um we hadn't talked about, which is Jet the Far Shore. I want to talk to you about making a conline and working on that.
00:33:26
Speaker
That's a thing I did. um Yeah, it was such a strange role to have because i didn't start as that. I initially it was just contacted by um Andy or Scientific, who's the main composer on the game.
00:33:46
Speaker
and he was interested in bringing me on to help with a choral piece for the game. um It's the big choral piece that happens at the start of the game. And um he brought me on because I had been posting about my, like, family history, um which is just to say that I'm, like,
00:34:08
Speaker
My great great whatever grandpa was the sacred harp music guy, um which is to some people a big deal. I like there are videos of people you can find on YouTube of like people singing at his grave, which is interesting to me because I've never even been to it myself.
00:34:29
Speaker
um But it it was this weird thing where ah Andy was actually researching Sacred Harp as a source of inspiration for the choral music piece that was in the game.
00:34:41
Speaker
And so when he saw me posting about that, he was like, are you interested in chatting about this? And then we found out we lived in the same neighborhood in Seattle, which was really funny. Like I had just moved there from um the Arkansas in the south.
00:34:56
Speaker
um And yeah, it was just really funny to be like, oh, we live in the same neighborhood. Let's meet up at this nearby bar and talk about this game and um all of that. So I was brought on to write a choral piece. And in order to do that, I needed to know what they were singing. And there was already a kind of like kitbashed conling in the game that was made by like splitting up different chunks of existing languages and just kind of like mashing them together.
00:35:22
Speaker
And they had been talking about like wanting to make a conling, but I wasn't like specifically brought on to do that. But um when I wrote the choral piece, I started writing initially just like melodies and then i kind of improvised until I found like words that felt natural to sing to the melody I had written.
00:35:46
Speaker
And so I transcribed those kind of like just random words that I made up and gave them meaning and presented that to them. And then they were like, this is really good. do you want to keep making this?
00:36:01
Speaker
bigger and make it into a conling. And, you know, I was looking for more work at the time. so I was like, yeah, I can do that. I think I'm not a linguist.
00:36:12
Speaker
um I'm, you know, I like languages and stuff. um But ah yeah, but that's kind of how that happened. And I, the so the seed of that conling was just like the stuff I wrote for the choral music that plays at the beginning of the game.
00:36:27
Speaker
And then, yeah, I basically would get like English scripts translate those English scripts into my conling. And the dictionary just kept growing because, you know, every page of the script would have a word that I hadn't previously transcribed, you know, came up with a translation for.
00:36:47
Speaker
And I had to like try to make things feel like there was some sense of logic to them and like how they're structured and how they sound next to each other and the sort of grammar um in it.
00:37:02
Speaker
And I basically just used like English grammar because I was like, I'm already a little in over my head. i don't need to invent a new grammar system for this. say Save that for your second conlang. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
00:37:16
Speaker
ah like syntax, keeping that basic. um But yeah, it was it was really interesting because like I was the only person who could ostensibly like understand the conlang. Like at a certain point, I could basically just like say a sentence off the dome, like translating things without having to consult the dictionary, ah which was a very strange feeling.
00:37:42
Speaker
um And is that still like active in your brain? Could you still do that? I mean, really. Like I still remember some things um like, you know, Minel Teresham is like my old friend.
00:37:59
Speaker
uh i show is like i'll versus like aish's eye um that kind of thing but yeah there for a while i was like i could just like pull that out as a party trick if i wanted to but yeah no now i'm i'm it's been you know enough years where i like if i you know if i if i went through the dictionary maybe but but uh yeah and just to give a sense of scale like how how long were you doing that process like how long did that take you man's Um, gosh, a while.
00:38:32
Speaker
um I feel like the initial creating and translating stuff, I think I was working on that for at least a year. if And if you start it from when I wrote the choral piece, maybe a little longer than that.
00:38:45
Speaker
um And it wasn't like constant. um But yeah, a lot of my time was initially spent translating scripts and And then we actually realized that like we didn't have enough time in the recording booth with the actors to like translate every single line in the game.
00:39:04
Speaker
So then I had to work with Ashelle in the Pit, who's a um really, really fantastic audio studio that works on a ton of games. And i worked with them on a tool which let us have some flexibility with the language.
00:39:21
Speaker
And so we kind of decided that... In the cut scenes or the kind of like more scripted moments, those would be like purely these are translated. This is like as if it was being localized into that language.
00:39:36
Speaker
um And then for the kind of like outside of the um kind of like home base when you're out in the world. That would be what we called like fragment based.
00:39:48
Speaker
And the way that worked was that we chose things that were kind of like important words that would be consistent. And then there were other things that were nonsense fragments, which sound and mimic the conling sound like and mimic the conling, um but are not literal translation. Yeah.
00:40:09
Speaker
And this let us build the rest of the game from these like fragments that I wrote up. And I had to like write these fragments in ways where when you put them side by side, it sounds fairly natural.
00:40:24
Speaker
um Because it is, i don't know if anyone knows this, but it's really hard to make randomness sound natural. So it was a really um hands-on thing for me. Like, we actually tried to do randomization of the fragments where...
00:40:43
Speaker
Essentially, like certain the vocabulary words would be tagged and those would be present. Like if there was a vocabulary word like a go kabloom or, you know, the jet, which is what they fly on or a character's name, um those would be tagged and they would be in the sentence.
00:41:00
Speaker
And then the rest would just be random. But it created this kind of like uncanny valley sometimes where like it just didn't it sounded stilted. So I ended up hand authoring every single line in the game.
00:41:13
Speaker
Unbelievable. No. Yes. it It took so long to do. um and like, it was really funny because to me at that point, I was like, it would have been shorter to just have the actors record everything. But OK. Yeah.
00:41:31
Speaker
ah So, yeah, every single line in the game was hand authored by me. um Like I it was really funny because, like, you know, we had gotten all of the actors and I also acted as a character. I i voiced Caro in the game and we recorded all of these nonsense fragments.
00:41:51
Speaker
And like the nonsense fragments almost became their own vocabulary because like I would go into a sentence and be like, oh you know, i bet Aishomachia whatever would fit really well here. Like take three. I'm going to do like it's like I could hear all of these people's like takes just like in my head by the end of this.
00:42:13
Speaker
Yeah. um And so, yeah, I mean, it was really good for job security in the sense that no one else had a handle on it um the way I did. um but it also was like, man, it was it was pretty intense.
00:42:30
Speaker
But yeah, that that was, I think, probably the strangest thing I've done on a game to date. yeah Incredible. ah Do you have any questions for us?
00:42:41
Speaker
Oh, I'm so bad at questions. um I mean, i could I could ask you more, but... I mean, I'm really bad at asking questions, um but I am good at finding answers.
00:42:55
Speaker
i Here's the thing. Incredible. i I love solving puzzles. I don't think I'm very good at designing them. Okay. How... How about i I just completely knock you off kilter?
00:43:11
Speaker
um Who would win in a fight? Gotenks or Piccolo? Piccolo, obviously. Okay. The question that I knew you wouldn't be expecting.
00:43:23
Speaker
I've got a whole, I can see three different Piccolos from my desk. Okay. Oh, i I'm not asking your favorite. I'm not asking who would win the battle for your heart.
00:43:34
Speaker
Gotenks is very strong, but also fool. Deeply unserious. Deeply unserious, yes. um Yeah, I don't know. think I'm curious to know, what is the weirdest or like the most out-of-left-field type of game you think that Dracnek could potentially
Future Projects and Ideas
00:43:59
Speaker
make in the future? like if you if you were just like,
00:44:04
Speaker
you know, no concern about like budget or timeframe or the state of the world or any, any of those like ah extraneous factors. Like what's like the biggest swing that that you'd be interested in in taking?
00:44:19
Speaker
Nintendo published Legend of Zelda. That's a good one. Yeah. I mean, it it kind of like depends on the ah timeline. if you, if you go like, 10, 15 years out could be anything. Like I'm, I'm very pragmatic short term, but like if, if, if we got like millions of dollars and like, Oh, you could just, you could just do anything. Like in some ways that would be like too terrifying. I would be like too much choice.
00:44:47
Speaker
Yeah. um But ah yeah, I mean something puzzly, but like within, within that space, there's a lot of, there's a lot of games and odds, just a soccer band games.
00:44:59
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. we've We've talked about pitching Zelda game and it's a terrifying thought that we will not do. But...
00:45:09
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like, I don't know, like like I said, i i love puzzle games. like I've talked to y'all about this just like it in work. ah But you know I only realized the other day that one of my first like favorite games was a puzzle game. like I was obsessed with The Incredible Machine as a kid.
00:45:30
Speaker
And so like unbeknownst to me, I've been playing puzzle games since I was like six or whatever. So yeah, i I feel like, I don't know. i i I like what we've been doing on Spooky Express and I really like how characterful it is and like how specific the space is and everything. So i'm just like,
00:45:54
Speaker
you know, what kind of kind of shenanigans could we get up to with some like, I don't know, a game that has like a full narrative direction and and that kind of thing, but it's still like, you know, set in but a puzzle mechanic and that kind of thing.
00:46:09
Speaker
Yeah, i'm I'm very curious to see what what happens in the future and and what kind of games are being made. I mean, ah detective games are hot right now. They they have stories. I feel like he think you'd you'd have a lot of fun doing the music for like a game like that. oh Yeah, like a noir. Oh my God, please. I would and i would have so much fun.
00:46:31
Speaker
what what What does cozy noir look like? Because I feel like that that's the vibe. You know, okay. Cozy Noir, immediately, like, the first thing that comes to mind, ah which, you know, maybe to some people feels a little obvious, but, like, have you watched any of the anime Spy Family?
00:46:52
Speaker
Absolutely. Okay, like the first thing that comes to mind is not even like the core premise of that show, but specifically Anya, the little girl who's like a mind reader.
00:47:05
Speaker
Because she's always like going around and she's like, I'm gonna solve this thing I'm gonna just find out what mommy and daddy are doing and like... Doing all this stuff. And it's very funny because she's like interpreting the actions of adults through her like child mind and all like always going on, you know, solving cases and stuff. She's obsessed with this like a spy cartoon called Bond Man. yeah So that's like where my mind goes is like cozy noir would be like um a little kid, you know, things.
00:47:36
Speaker
solving mysteries or or Or, you know, the other example that comes to mind is like the noir episode of Adventure Time with BMO. That's a really good... ah I think all of these references are going over Alan's head.
00:47:53
Speaker
Yeah, i'm ah none of these... Alan does not watch the TV. I watch TV. I don't watch ah a lot of anime stuff. So, Alan, the premise of Spy Family is there's a world-famous spy who needs to pose in a family, and the person that he chooses to pose as his fake wife is a world is a lethal assassin, and they adopt a daughter, and the daughter is a mind reader, and then they get a dog, and the dog can see the future.
00:48:26
Speaker
Yeah, no, that sounds like a normal premise. And the ah the spy and the assassin do not know each other's identities. Yeah, yeah, sure. But the kid can read minds, so the kid knows everything. yeah But only from the perspective of a kid.
00:48:41
Speaker
Yeah. Seems deeply silly in a way that sounds about on track. Yeah, yeah. It's very, very cute. It's like, you know, it's pretty...
00:48:52
Speaker
it's a it's a pretty straightforward show you know you get all those elements together but yeah it's little sitcom-y it's a little sitcom-y but it does have some like very sweet moments um and i do just like enjoy the like little kid logic aspect of of the anya character yeah um But yeah, I don't know. Like, I feel like, I feel like you could easily do noir. I think it really depends on the setting, right? Like, what are the stakes in that setting? Yeah, like, Duck Detective is another example of cozy noir. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:49:31
Speaker
And yeah, I don't know. Like, I, I feel like, um, there's a lot of like ways you could do that and, and have it be a kind of twist on, on the idea or like less straightforward, I guess. Um, I, yeah, I do, i do love some noir flavor investigations and yeah.
00:49:54
Speaker
All right. Before we wrap, I think Alan wanted to tell you something. ah Yeah, I mean, so this came up on a previous podcast. the one um Priscilla, would you like to guess ah how many instruments Saren knows how to play?
00:50:14
Speaker
I don't, I don't, I'm ah and bad at guessing. I don't know. Like, I hate, I hate throwing out random number guesses. Just guess. Five.
00:50:24
Speaker
Five.
00:50:27
Speaker
like all of them hmm
00:50:34
Speaker
yeah um i don't know i've toured europe with violin I have taught all of the orchestra instruments and I know how to play all the but ah any instrument that would be in like a full orchestra with the band instruments there.
00:50:53
Speaker
and I could do full percussion suite and I can do hand bells and I can do one-off instruments pretty comfortably.
00:51:02
Speaker
so you want to You want to do an orchestral track for a Drak Knight game? We've got the entire band right here. No, that's good because ah string instruments like violin and such are my absolute weak point.
00:51:16
Speaker
Gotcha. Yeah, no, um I'm very used to ah transcribing and adapting people who write for piano and flute and then are just like, you could play this on violin, right?
00:51:32
Speaker
like well the instrument doesn't go that low yeah or can i or in some edge cases can i shift the whole thing an octave down yeah um but yes no it's um i've definitely had it music presented to me it's like the violin should be play this right and then the lowest instrument is uh four lines above the treble yeah And I'm like, I mean, maybe, but it's going to sound not right. you're not You're not going to get the lush tones that you're looking for. Yeah. Oh, man.
00:52:11
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like it's so funny because when I am working on music, I am constantly like paying attention to that stuff. Yeah. um And it's like, ah because you know sometimes i I'm thinking myself, like oh, it would be really cool if like someone played this song.
00:52:29
Speaker
some at some point like yeah you know because like i'm not a pianist i am ah very very mediocre piano player but i try to write things you know in a way where someone could ostensibly play it um And sometimes I start from like you know trying to play it myself and then I clean it up.
00:52:51
Speaker
But um yeah, it's that is something like I try to think about a lot when I'm writing. because i'm like i If it's you know this instrument that I'm going for. and Can that instrument reasonably play? Yeah. yeah yeah I will say, ah if you do need a sanity check on that, I do know...
00:53:09
Speaker
I do know the range on all of these instruments. um i I have, it's it's probably like, I'm going to need, I would need to do a full string replacement. the only like So the only instrument I have here in my apartment is my ah electric five string violin, so um which is a violin that has the string that a viola also has. So it's great for, it's perfect for teaching. So you don't need to swap instruments between violin and viola.
00:53:37
Speaker
Nice. um And it has the it it is an it is an acoustic instrument that also has a quarter inch amp jack. Oh, yeah that's handy.
00:53:49
Speaker
So for recording or for ah broadcasting on a stage. Nice. Yes, just a it's it's it's It's gotten me out of some jams. It's ah it's not an off-the-shelf instrument either. I got it second-hand after someone deeply modded the hell out of their instrument. And I'm like, hell yeah. And it still sounds great in acoustic. So I'm like, well, you did a bang-up job.
00:54:16
Speaker
um i can I can play whole sonatas on this thing, and it just sounds like an acoustic. So whatever. Whatever. Nice. Yeah, I'm like, i i don't know, I have like, pet instruments, like banjo is like one of my pet instruments that i yeah i've I've got gone a little harder in on and learning technique and stuff. But yeah, I've got, i don't know, like next to me, I've got my trumpet, an electric bass guitar, two electric guitars,
00:54:47
Speaker
My acoustic parlor guitar a recorder. um I've got my... um like Here, guess the instrument. Hold on.
00:54:58
Speaker
I
00:55:04
Speaker
mean... Oh. Okay. Ooh. I had it lost it. So it's not a harmonica.
00:55:14
Speaker
Is that an accordion sounding like a harmonica? ah It's one of the little,
00:55:23
Speaker
oh my God, melodica. oh yes, it's a melodica. I used it. ah The reason it's on my desk is because I mixed some melodica chords in with the ah disappointed train sounds when you fail level in Spooky Express. Mm. Great, great, great. Yeah, no, love love that.
00:55:40
Speaker
I can, again, I can talk music for hours, but I wanted, instead of just this being a music theory podcast where Alan just goes, h I did want to talk about games. Hey, if the two of you want to do a music theory podcast without me, go right ahead.
00:55:58
Speaker
I don't know. We can that out on the Dragneck feed. You know, it's really funny. That could actually be and entertaining because I actually, like, in terms of, like, being able to talk about the math of music theory, I got nothing.
00:56:10
Speaker
Nothing. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's that's interesting. Yeah, I am a vibes-based composer. I genuinely really respect that and, like, love that for you. um I treat music as an art and music composition as a science.
00:56:30
Speaker
That's like how I, like how my brain works. It's like, it treats them differently for some reason. Like as soon as I, as soon as I start writing notes, I'm like, all right, what's the Phrygian here? And I'm like, okay, we are, we are way past. Phrygian running about all that.
00:56:47
Speaker
Is your Phrygian running? That's about all that. Yeah, great. um This is, this is phenomenal. ah Thank you again for joining us, Priscilla. It's been a blast getting to talk to you again.
00:57:00
Speaker
uh where can people find you online and do you have anything you want to plug yeah um pretty much the only place i'm online these days is blue sky um rip co-host yeah rip co-host i uh i'm at ghoul noise there um i've got my website slash blog that i haven't been using as often as i'm should ah that's ghoulnoise.com and you can find my music on band camp uh and you can get there by going to ghoulnoisemusic.com i just recently got myself a fancy little yeah url oh nice here do you want me to ah change the outro of the podcast to use that instead of i've been saying ghoulnoise.bandcamp.com
00:57:45
Speaker
I mean, yeah, sure. GhoulNoiseMusic.com. Great. know I'll make that change right now. And then we'll but love love a vanity yeah URL. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If anyone's looking to hire me, you can go to Seren.com and you'll find my LinkedIn.
00:58:04
Speaker
um Because my first name is rare enough that i my whole my whole brand could just be my first name. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you very much again for joining. It's been a pleasure.
00:58:18
Speaker
And thank you for listening to the Drackneck and Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at the newly founded ghoulnoisemusic.com. Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis.
00:58:31
Speaker
Our podcast is edited by Melanie Zawadniak. Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
00:58:46
Speaker
The