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As their 3rd-person Viking adventure game nears release, Human Head Studios has opened an official site for Rune under the domain RuneGame.com. It's an impressive site with some great graphics and enough content and links to get even the novice Viking acquainted with the game. To celebrate the site's opening, they have also added three new screen shots to their gallery, and an interview with audio man Mike Larson has also been posted. Here's an excerpt explaining just how much time the audio effects in this game take to create:

RuneGame: What about the sounds we'll hear in the game?

Mike Larson: Music seems to get considerably more attention than sound effects because songs are instantly gratifying. However, significantly MORE time has been spent on the creation of the sound effects for Rune. The game covers a diverse range of creatures and environments that all require sounds. So far, Rune has more than 2400 original sound effects!!!

All of the creature sounds in Rune were created from scratch. The challenge was to create a distinct language for each of the main character types that speak. These include Goblins, Dwarfs, Zombies and Vikings. NO sound effect libraries were used in the creation of these sounds.

Rune is currently in early Beta status. The Mac OS version of this game is being developed by Westlake Interactive, and will be published by Gathering of Developers; a near-simultaneous late October release is expected.

Rune Interview with Mike Larson

Official Rune Web Site

Rune Images Gallery

Gathering of Developers (add to watch list)

Human Head Studios (add to watch list)

Westlake Interactive (add to watch list)

Rune (add to watch list)

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