Federation Online's career mode relies on little promos to explain what's going on, so they're quite important. They're not as straight forward as they seem though. Here's a look at how those words make it onto the microphone...

Writing The Script
Every promo begins life as a basic script, scribbled down with pen and paper. This is where I make a note of what I want to get over in the promo. Unfortunately, very little of what's written at this stage will make it into the final promo - as you'll see...

Working The Script
The promos in Federation Booker are acted out via cartoon-style speech bubbles. There are 3 types available: a 1 line bubble, a 3 line bubble, and a 5 line bubble. I choose which size I need and set about squeezing in the words as I had planned. The data entered at this stage tells the game which character should be speaking, what they should be saying, how long they should be saying it for, and finally how the crowd should react...

Acting Out The Script
This comes across as a cute little system, but it's actually a nightmare. As any cartoonist will tell you, it's extremely difficult to get across what you want to say in those bubbles. Your choice of words has to be incredibly precise. Too few and the bubble looks bare and unbalanced, too many and it simply looks terrible or unreadable - spilling over the sides. Worse still, the perfectionist in you wants each statement to get its point across and conclude nicely. And so you change a word here, cut out a few there, and hope you can knock it into shape. As you'd expect, creatively, those changes are rarely for the better. Being cool or funny are luxuries that there's very little room for...