Formatting Text Size

You may want to adjust your text font, depending on who's going to be using the spreadsheet. For your master copy, it's likely that you'll use a smaller text size, because if it's being read on a monitor, the reader can always zoom in, and if it's being printed out, you want all the columns to appear on a single page. So, a font size of 8 or 9 is advisable.

For voice actors, you should use a larger font size. For one thing, you've got fewer columns, so you can get away with larger text. Furthermore, your voice actors are going to be reading text off a page, typically while getting into character. I've seen voice actors close their eyes, hunch over, gesture, and recoil while speaking. It adds a lot to the performance, and it's easier to do when they can look down, glance at the line of dialogue, and immediately commit it to memory. You can facilitate this process, and get a better delivery, by using large, easy-to-read text.

After you've highlighted the text you want to format, you can right-click on a cell and select Format Cells, then click on the Font tab, or you can use the drop-down menu (Format --> Cells --> Font).

	Fig. 7: Formatted Text Size

I've seen spreadsheets in which the text in cells was scalable, shrinking to fit the cell in question (done with Format Cells --> Alignment --> Shrink to fit). The idea here is, you can fit more information onto a page, which can save your company dozens of dollars in paper costs a year. See Figure 8 for an example of scaled text.

	Fig. 8: Scalable Text

Not a great idea. But it can be done.

Paper Size

You can change the paper size to accommodate additional columns, or larger font size. Click on File --> Page Setup --> Paper Size and select Legal to switch to 11"x14". Don't forget to set the page to Landscape layout (File --> Page Setup --> Landscape). Legal size paper can be particularly useful when printing the master list. For example, if you want to go over all story content with all involved members of the dev team (designers, sound designers, sound programmers, producers, and so forth), you may want to use the Legal size.

Recasting On Short Notice

You may decide to recast some of the characters. If you need to change the Actor field, or any other field, there's a shortcut that can save some time. First, you delete one of the values in a field, and add the new value. You copy the new value to the clipboard. Then you highlight all instances of the given value, and you paste.

For example, you're replacing Jack Smith with Joe Schmoe. So, first you delete Jack from one of the fields, and type Joe Schmoe. Then, you highlight Joe Schmoe and select copy (Ctrl-C). You then highlight all instances of Jack Smith, and paste (Ctrl-V). Done.

Filename Issues

When creating filenames, you want to come up with something that's easy to recognize visually. It should be concise, and it should reflect your game's level structure.

For instance, King Arthur Up In This Piece employes the following filenames:
m01-a02-art01
m01-a02-lan01
m01-a02-art02
m01-a02-gue01
m01-a02-art03
m01-a02-mor01
m01-a02-art04

Let's check out the naming convention here.

First, the game consists of a series of missions, each segmented into areas (two or three areas per mission). There are numerous speakers in each mission.

So, the above filenames indicate that they're taking place in Mission 1 (m01), Area 2 (a02), and then each filename ends with an indication of who's talking (Arthur, Lancelot, Guenevere, Morded). Since each character has less than 100 speaking parts in a given section, but more than 9, a two-digit number next to the three-letter identifier is necessary. The game's parameters dictate the naming convention, more or less.

Locating and choosing alternates

Depending on how your voice data is going to be processed, you may wind up with alternates. For example, during the recording of King Arthur Up In This Piece, we recorded the line "What's up?" three times. We went with the first take, but kept the other two just in case. The first take was named m01-a02-lan01. The alternates were m01-a02-lan01A and m01-a02-lan01B.

During playtesting, it was decided that the first take, though it sounded great in the studio, didn't sound good while playing the game. It was just flat, and didn't deliver the necessary tension. Or whatever. So we decided to plug in one of the alternates -- m01-a02-lan01B.

The two ways to resolve this scenario are:

1. Rename m01-a02-lan01B to m01-a02-lan01 -- basically, drop the B -- and copy over the first take. This is probably your best bet, provided that you keep a backup of the first take -- don't just copy over it and consign it to the abyss. You never know, you might change your mind again, and you always want to keep your options open. It could turn out that your two alternates had the emotion you wanted, but sound bad because the speaker was mumbling.

2. Keep the filename for m01-a02-lan01B, but make sure that your scripting tool and your documentation reflect the change -- the addition of the letter B. This requires meticulous attention to detail, because if your documentation doesn't reflect the change, QA might flag it as a bug. If you don't make the change in your scripting tool, then the game pulls up the wrong file, ignoring the alternate.

Outro

It's easy to overdo it by adding too many columns, or by creating too many sub-variants of the spreadsheet -- one for the producer, one for the designers, one for the testers, and so on. Rule of thumb -- if you've got so many columns that you can't print out a legible page on 11"x14", you overdid it. Scale it back. And as for the spreadsheets, you may want to employ multiple tabs on a single spreadsheet. That way, you've only got one actual file to keep track of.

Speaking of keeping track of the document, it's crucial that the document versions are controlled through a program like SourceSafe. Also, it's a good idea to appoint a single person in charge of making sure that the document is updated with all necessary changes.

Best of luck.