Sectorgame

Is it just me or does anyone else get annoyed when you load a campaign and there's no voice in the game?

Don't get me wrong I'm really greatful for the people for making it (and I enjoy it), it's just that I can't read and dogfight at the same time. I don't know about anyone else, but when I was playing a campaign with the voices (BWO demo I think) it made tons of difference.

Does inserting voice files into the game take tons of effort?
(genuine question I know very little about programming)

The effort is in finding and co-ordinating people to do the voice acting mainly. That and editing the samples to the right format/adding the message bleep, static etc.

It's not difficult to do but it is time consuming and pretty repeatative.


In the meanwhile you could always turn on the voice synth. It's ugly but it's better than reading the text.

Voice synth!? This sounds pretty useful

Go to the speech panel in the SCP launcher (assuming that you're using FS2_Open. If you aren't look in my FAQ for more info and an installation guide).

Aside from the general voices (more enemies, rearm, etc.) i never had any voices, so i'm used to having to read while dogfighting. Course, i do it in Descent 3, Descent 2, and pretty much every other game i have, so i don't really mind

But trust me, voice acting is a PAIN. I tried it once. Not only do i sound horrible but its often annoying to put out sound files for upwards of 100 text messages. Thats a lot of voice acting.

I wouldn't say voiceacting is a pain, but it can get a little tedious. Especially when one is a perfectionist and decides to redo the longest single debriefing section from Derelict some fifty times before getting it right.

Yes, I am a sad, sad person.

That aside, I've never had any problems with non-voiceacted campaigns, simply because that's how most of the fan campaigns I've ever played have been. Those with voiceacting are a happy exception. It's really not that hard to glance up at the top of the screen for a second or two to read a line; unless you're playing on Hard or something, you probably won't get killed by taking that short amount of time to read. Most good mission designers leave the lengthy dialogue for lull times in missions and put rather brief lines in during full combat. Even better mission designers use the message start sound when dialogue appears, which gives you a nice heads-up. If you happen to miss a line or two, hitting F4 brings up the entire mission text. Personally, I'd much rather read the mission text than subject myself to a bizarre robo-voice.

Top Gun wrote:Even better mission designers use the message start sound when dialogue appears, which gives you a nice heads-up.

Doing that prevents anyone from using voice synth so I'd say it's a sign of a selfish mission designer rather than a good one. What we should do is add an option to the speech tab that means that if you have no voice acting you can choose between the voice synth and the message beep.

I can read faster then just about anyone can speak, so it's never really been an issue. Voice adds to the atmosphere, certainly, but it's not critical.

I usually TRY to put in a notification sound for the text in my missions, simply because
1. i didn't know there was a voice synth
2. the notification is very, very useful
3. the voice synth sounds horrible and you'll usually end up spending the 2 seconds it'd take you to read the message decoding what it just said

In anycase, please don't go calling mission designers "selfish" just because they decided to put in what they thought was a useful feature. I, for one, am going to continue putting in that notification, its another issue of "you can't make everyone happy." Choose one and run with it.

The trouble with getting people to VA for missions is that often they take longer than you expected, meaning you have to rearrange all your message SEXPs.

BlackHole wrote:In anycase, please don't go calling mission designers "selfish" just because they decided to put in what they thought was a useful feature. I, for one, am going to continue putting in that notification, its another issue of "you can't make everyone happy." Choose one and run with it.

Don't mind me. I was just reacting to Top Gun's comment that good mission designers use message beeps.

If you didn't know about the voice synth then it's forgivable but kindly remember that some people have managed to get hold of AT&T's natural voices which actually sound pretty decent.

karajorma wrote:Go to the speech panel in the SCP launcher (assuming that you're using FS2_Open. If you aren't look in my FAQ for more info and an installation guide).

Thanks very much karajorma, I'll give that a go.

I agree with the comment that it adds to the mood, as do the mission briefings animations. A perfect mod campaign would have full voice throughout (including briefings) and animations, but it seems like this would be a massive headache for the programmers.

Would a possible solution be to open it up to a forum like this, allowing people to submit .wav files of them reading out the lines.

1) This would circumvent the problems of getting people physically around to do recordings. Or listening to your own voice (everyone hates their own voice, I should know I'm from Birmingham).

2) Pressuming the forum was relatively active (i.e. more than one person submitted a recording) the programmer could pick and choose the recordings he liked the most.

3) The people who had submitted their voices could also have the added buzz of hearing their own voice in the game which would be awesome!

Just an idea from someone who knows a very little about ... well anything really.

thats what i would do. its what i DID do. Still a pain.

Yes, that's how it's generally done. The trouble is getting enough people interested in the first place, actually getting them to record their lines, without wanting to appear rude by constantly pestering them, and then hoping that they don't sound awful once you have them.

However, the short campaign I'll be releasing once the cutscene subtitle stuff is sorted out should be fully voiced, as all the buggering around to get people to do it will give me an alternative to doing Uni work. Yes.


But it's still a pain, as BH says.

BlackHole wrote:thats what i would do. its what i DID do. Still a pain.

Hmm ... fair enough. Which campaign did you do? (please forgive my ignorance, I am a newbie)

Rather than chase up after people who said they'd do it, I think a better way of doing it would just to post the lines required (with a link to a relevant recorder) and then wait for people to submit the .wav files, then (hopefully) you get a selection of files.

If no one does it then it's a bit of a sad reflection on the community. Also I suppose if none of the recordings are professional enough then it reflects poorely on the programmer.
... Interesting ...