Why are almost all NPC's still silent?

[Mech_Donald]

Hi there,

i wonder why Frontier don't apply any voices to NPC's? We have some really cool station-announcements and radio chatter going on. Now, with version 2.2 beta i noticed that there is new voice acting for the commander of your ship when you fly in one of your boarded fighters.

I would love to hear that great voices also for every NPC who talks to me. In the heat of a apcefight i can hardly read the text messages in the textbox upper left. Mostly i forgot about it. But i want to hear: "Oh my god! My shields are down!" or "Now you are toast!" or something.

Has Frontier mentioned something about it?

 

[knowles2]

They haven't made any mention about it.

But Braben have personally invested in Speech synthesis startups in the past so we can make assumption he is very interested in giving NPCs across the board a voice.

 

[Sardu]

Mostly because the missions are dynamic, and there is no feasible way to actually record voice actors to handle all the permutations. The speech itself would have to be dynamic too. Not an easy feat.

 

[Mech_Donald]

Mostly because the missions are dynamic, and there is no feasible way to actually record voice actors to handle all the permutations. The speech itself would have to be dynamic too. Not an easy feat.

Yes, that's true. But what i meant is just all the "spoken" text you can read in the chatter-box in the upper left corner. Something like "Scan completed. You are clear to proceed. Good luck, Commander!" in the case of a standard local ship scan by the "police" for instance. It would be so cool to hear the anger of your opponent in a harsh dogfight. Currently all is so anonymous and sterile in space. Some cool voices would be a great addition to the atmosphere in the game, especially for solo-players like me.

 

[Lightspeed]

My guess is, that will come. The NPC fighter crew interraction is a breakthrough, and probably only a first step of more in future.

 

[Mech_Donald]

My guess is, that will come. The NPC fighter crew interraction is a breakthrough, and probably only a first step of more in future.

I hope so. I also hope for some new events for a decent reaction from NPCs. "Get your hands off!" - when i scan a ship for instance.

 

[AutoMechancal]

Maybe they just have nothing to say?

 

[Lightspeed]

I liked the sarcastic response of my femail pilot in the fighter ..... "Shields down, taking damage ...... could do with a little help here, Commander !"

 

[Spacecat]

A text message saying "Too much damage!" isn't doing it for you?

 

[CMDR M. Lehman]

1) Voice acting is expensive, so FDev has to allocate wisely to get the greatest bang for their buck. I think that they were smart to invest in station voices, since those aren't something that you hear as often, and are therefore less likely to get old.

On the other hand, hearing the exact same "I'm gonna burn you up!" sound file would irritate the daylights out of most players!

 

[Spacecat]

1) Voice acting is expensive, so FDev has to allocate wisely to get the greatest bang for their buck. I think that they were smart to invest in station voices, since those aren't something that you hear as often, and are therefore less likely to get old.

On the other hand, hearing the exact same "I'm gonna burn you up!" sound file would irritate the daylights out of most players!

Yes. Yes, it would.

 

[lysan]

The technical investment is not that easy to over come. As others have said, recording voices for NPC is not possible as it is now, so we just have to wait, I'm sure FD are aware and as soon as they got the tech ready it will be implemented.

 

[Codger]

I offered to sing Row Row Row Your Boat and send it in so they could use it in the game, but never heard back. Maybe they don't want voices in the game.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

I offered to sing Row Row Row Your Boat and send it in so they could use it in the game, but never heard back. Maybe they don't want voices in the game.

I would hunt down and destroy the source of that communication...

Nah, I'd like voiced NPCs, but I don't want to hear the same 3 lines over and over and over again...
FD would need to add more lines to the NPCs, then voice them, with multiple voices.
It would be costly.

If they can nail voice synthesis well enough to not feel to fake, that'd be cool, but also costly.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

VA is expensive and hearing the same thing over and over becomes annoying.

 

[Mech_Donald]

VA is expensive and hearing the same thing over and over becomes annoying.

Is this that expensive? An alternative is, to make the voices by themselves. I guess these people have decent voices and they are not germans, who are not able to act convincingly.

I have no problems with repeating lines as long as there is a big variation to it. It is a game, so there will ever be some similarities. Look what you can do with VoiceAttack. There are large Voicepacks out there.

 

[Toumal]

VA is expensive and hearing the same thing over and over becomes annoying.

That's the danger, yeah. But personally I'd love to be able to send NPCs some messages like "give me your cargo or die" as a selectable text thing. Voiced NPCs would be cool but ultimately there's real limitations to how varied they would sound.

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

There's no voice synth capable to deliver dynamic voices at level required.

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That's the danger, yeah. But personally I'd love to be able to send NPCs some messages like "give me your cargo or die" as a selectable text thing. Voiced NPCs would be cool but ultimately there's real limitations to how varied they would sound.

You are talking about NPC comms in general. They are in plans, but we know nothing else.

 

[Winterwalker]

"I consign your remains to the void!" .. ho yes

Would be great, but agree with the cost/ priority analysis of 'not yet' at least.

 

[Lobstris]

<Points at Falcon 4> Oh look, NPC wingmen and other AI traffic speaking ~30,000 words and phrases back in 1998. Whether it ultimately becomes repetitive or not, I absolutely long for the NPCs to have a voice, and for populated space to feel more alive.

Now if we get comms on separate channels to tune in on using different frequencies, that would be a bonus too.