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Author Topic: Radio chatter  (Read 5990 times)

Morbo513

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Radio chatter
« on: May 18, 2017, 11:58:24 PM »

I was thinking, "What do my other favourite space games have, that Starsector doesn't?". One of the answers to that is radio chatter, ie voiced lines. Homeworld is one of the best examples of this - the ships have lines for a lot of things that go overlooked in other games - When their ship's heavily damaged, when they're winning or losing a fight, even the harvesters have lines for when they're returning with resources, when there's no resources to be found or the current asteroids are almost depleted. It really adds a lot of character to the forces you're commanding where there'd otherwise be very little. I'd say the dryness of their delivery adds to credibility, the captains and pilots being very level-headed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC64hB50GUI
(Note, some lines were added by the mod this video's of, should be able to tell which ones)

Freelancer is another great example, with pilots of different factions having their own voice sets and such. In addition to background chatter from the enemies you're fighting, they'll sometimes talk directly to you, taunting and such.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NODc1lXn0ak
(Skip to around 6m - prior to that it shows how you get missions, related discussion here)

So how would this fit into Starsector?
The first perk is dissemination of information, ie situational awareness - If you hear your ships' captains audibly complaining about how they're outmatched, or that they're wiping the floor with the enemy, or that their hull's getting ripped to shreds, the situation is overall a lot more readable on top of the resources already available. I'm not about to make assumptions, but it seems to me like the AI are robust enough to identify the key elements of a scenario, commenting on it isn't much of a stretch. This could also extend to fuel, supply and CR status outside of combat.

The seconds is, as mentioned, adding character. It's often easy to just see the battles as what they are - 2d sprites floating about throwing numbers at each others' numbers, rather than retain the impression they're a bunch of tin cans full of people trying to maneuver them to kill other tin cans full of people - it'd would help keep the player immersed and entertained, and help characterise your fleet/officers and the forces you fight against.

There are obviously some big concerns with adding such content though; The sheer workload to avoid excessive repetition of lines, and to have them in the first place for each event and scenario would be tremendous. Add in a few different voice sets for each faction and it's a mountain, requiring more than a handful of actors with a lot of time on their hands. I'm sure the community would be willing to pitch in, but that brings in problem #2 - consistency. From the technical side of things, there are a lot of variables to account for if voice acting were crowdsourced - different mike setups, levels of talent, and the character people are capable of adding will vary wildly. For such a niche community, controlling for these variables to ensure a level of consistency and professionalism would probably eliminate the majority of us from being able to contribute anything substantial - the alternatives are having every other voice line be too loud, the actor sounding bored and uninterested (Like one line in that Homeworld video, a pliot sounds more frustrated or bored than panicked about how his "ejector lever's stuck"), etc, or hiring professionals which probably isn't feasible. 
Then there's issue #3 - spacialisation and avoiding information overload. Again, Homeworld and Freelancer are excellent examples of how to deal with this, but they have the luxury of taking place in a 3d space, meaning you can more accurately tell which ship/squadron the comms are coming from, as the sounds have dynamics based on distance and position relative to the player. This means less important information isn't drowning out the urgent stuff. Of course, SS does have sound spacialisation already, but missing one dimension. So, it'd require a lot of work to first decide which snippets are critical, and then ensure that everything else is more or less background noise. It'd also be essential to control the pace of the lines' delivery, so as to not bombard the player and make sure you can still hear audio cues like weapons fire, hits, overloads etc.

So yeah, overall one of those things that'd be nice to have, but probably not worth it in terms of work - benefit. My question is, were this to be planned by either the dev team or modders, would you be willing and able to contribute? Does anyone have a professional-ish mike setup, and does anyone possess or the skills to edit the audio and ensure quality control?
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zaimoni

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Re: Radio chatter
« Reply #1 on: May 19, 2017, 12:50:27 AM »

The emphasis being voiced lines.  Otherwise, Combat Chatter is an exact match.
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PCCL

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Re: Radio chatter
« Reply #2 on: May 19, 2017, 01:56:18 AM »

voice acting is pretty much out of the question for this game, unfortunately.

I wonder though, if garbled radio chatter (like what we have when nearing planets/markets right now) can serve a similar purpose
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mmm.... tartiflette

SCC

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Re: Radio chatter
« Reply #3 on: May 19, 2017, 02:16:37 AM »

Alex and/or David talked about voice acting for SS aaaand that's a no-go. They don't have resources for this.

Morbo513

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Re: Radio chatter
« Reply #4 on: May 19, 2017, 03:58:22 AM »

Yeah, pretty much what I anticipated, fair enough.
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TrashMan

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Re: Radio chatter
« Reply #5 on: May 19, 2017, 06:07:40 AM »

Alex and/or David talked about voice acting for SS aaaand that's a no-go. They don't have resources for this.

You don't need professional voice-actors for background chatter, especially if you distort it trough a filter.

You can get random people to submit lines.
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Wyvern

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Re: Radio chatter
« Reply #6 on: May 19, 2017, 09:55:47 AM »

Voice acting is something I prefer -not- to have in my games, actually.  It's both difficult and expensive to do well, and poorly done voice acting is much worse than no voice acting.

I believe something like the combat chatter plugin would be a better fit for Starsector.

Though non-combat chatter would be neat, too; at the moment all we've got there are the occasional pings of someone's (usually fake*) distress call; having, say, friendly merchant captains warn about pirates on their route, or "independent" smuggler fleets pinging you with a tight-beamed "Hey, have I got a deal for you..." sorts of messages... that sort of thing would be fun.

_____
* I'm sure it's just RNG having some fun with me, but out of all the distress calls I've ever responded to, exactly -one- of them has been legitimate.  Most of the time I find pirates.  Occasionally I only find a derelict or two.
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Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Toxcity

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Re: Radio chatter
« Reply #7 on: May 19, 2017, 10:11:16 AM »

The arguments against Voice Acting are here: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12060.msg205338#msg205338

Even if you got random clips from people, they would have to be a certain quality even with the distortions. Otherwise SS would be another entry in the bad voice acting series of YouTube videos.
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Megas

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Re: Radio chatter
« Reply #8 on: May 19, 2017, 10:30:16 AM »

Voice acting is something I prefer -not- to have in my games, actually.  It's both difficult and expensive to do well, and poorly done voice acting is much worse than no voice acting.
I tend to evaluate game-by-game.  I have a fondness for retro-style arcade-like games, or at least games with some arcade-like elements.

Voice acting does not always make a game better.

Not just poorly done, but also poorly used.  Sometimes, you just want to tell the voice to shut up because Captain Obvious cannot stop saying the same old one-liners for the Nth time.

Although depending on the game, speech can give the game character.
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Morbo513

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Re: Radio chatter
« Reply #9 on: May 19, 2017, 10:33:06 AM »

The arguments against Voice Acting are here: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=12060.msg205338#msg205338

Even if you got random clips from people, they would have to be a certain quality even with the distortions. Otherwise SS would be another entry in the bad voice acting series of YouTube videos.

Oh wow, didn't realise there was a thread about it so recently, my bad
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nomadic_leader

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Re: Radio chatter
« Reply #10 on: May 19, 2017, 11:29:20 AM »

Somebody with a good mic and acoustics could make a mod for this if they spend an hour listening to youtubes of commercial and fighter pilots; basically just reading out the combat chatter mod's texts with a "The Right Stuff" inflection.
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