Galnet Audio: The most useless thing in the whole game?
- Thread starter biohazard15
- Start date
Can't really give you internet one, because that's what I got from chat with Sandro and co during Frontier Expo 2017.
But as Barking_Mad already pointed out, they have indicated their intentions in various QAs.
Engine/SDK. It is not theirs - it would be insane amount of work required while there's few good options to license from - and as far as I understood it is very versatile and customizable.
So expect more things like GalNet Audio.
Tbh I suspect they probably just made use of Amazon Polly (what Ivona recently turned into), which is reasonably inexpensive and bundled in with all the other AWS things these days.
It'd also give them a pretty wide range of voices in different languages that they could use immediately with little to no effort.
I don't think it's that big a deal. I might use it for long supercruise trips, but beyond that, I don't see much use for it. It's just a little QoL/immersion feature, not really worth getting up in arms about.
I'll admit that I was hoping for it to be a little more interesting than just a direct TTS for the rather dry Galnet articles, though. Something like an in-cockpit radio station, complete with music, news broadcasts, and advertisements would've been far preferable, though obviously a lot more time consuming and resource intensive.
Either way, Galnet Audio is the furthest thing from my mind with the looming Engineers changes on the horizon.
I'll admit that I was hoping for it to be a little more interesting than just a direct TTS for the rather dry Galnet articles, though. Something like an in-cockpit radio station, complete with music, news broadcasts, and advertisements would've been far preferable, though obviously a lot more time consuming and resource intensive.
Either way, Galnet Audio is the furthest thing from my mind with the looming Engineers changes on the horizon.
I agree, it does. But then, so did the current GalNet. If the quality of the delivered content is the same in GalNet Audio as in the current (written) GalNet, it won't matter.
The delivery method becomes secondary to me if the delivered package contains simply more of the same drab content.
So hopefully FD's ambition with GalNet Audio goes further than making it just that, merely a new delivery method.
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I quite like it as a starting point, but given the quality of Frontier's audio this is an area of the game that they should milk imo. In a similar kind of way if we think of the effect radio stations had in GTA, then that's the kind of thing I'd be looking for Frontier to do with its text-to-speech. Creating a whole series of stories, gossip and articles that bring the universe to life by introducing a wide range of characters that don't currently exist as well as ones that do. No, we're not going to get quite the same thing with the unique voice styling etc., but what it loses in that it gains in the sheer variety of stories they could put out.
Additionally I think that having voiced missions from selective NPC's would be a good thing too. It could give any missions givers a personality and perhaps make missions more engaging. You could have similar standard missions but bring them to life with a wide variety of NPC chatter as to why they need you to do x,y,z.
So for instance:
A few spoken lines for the same fetch and carry escape capsule mission could be:
Or you could have
There's literally as many of these as you can think of a few lines of text for, and each would give a little more feeling of being involved in events rather than having them be simple text based missions. Sure there's issues with itonation and variety of voicings, but Im sure nothing EDev Audio can't handle
So for instance:
A few spoken lines for the same fetch and carry escape capsule mission could be:
Or you could have
There's literally as many of these as you can think of a few lines of text for, and each would give a little more feeling of being involved in events rather than having them be simple text based missions. Sure there's issues with itonation and variety of voicings, but Im sure nothing EDev Audio can't handle
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Additionally I think that having voiced missions from selective NPC's would be a good thing too. It could give any missions givers a personality and perhaps make missions more engaging. You could have similar standard missions but bring them to life with a wide variety of NPC chatter as to why they need you to do x,y,z.
So for instance:
A few spoken lines for the same fetch and carry escape capsule mission could be:
Or you could have
There's literally as many of these as you can think of a few lines of text for, and each would give a little more feeling of being involved in events rather than having them be simple text based missions. Sure there's issues with itonation and variety of voicings, but Im sure nothing EDev Audio can't handle
You cannot call yourself barking mad and then put forward a thought out thread containing a good idea.
Or can you
Hah Well my ideas usually sink without much comment (ie turning hiring npc crew into a Championship Manager style scouting system) so I fear for your sanity!
This is quite cool: http://www.assistiveware.com/secret-tip-how-bring-your-text-speech-voices-life
Galnet Audio is the thing I'm 2nd most interested in (for this Q1 update). It means I may *finally*
I also suspect the text-to-audio functionality will end-up getting used in other parts of the game later on (rather like how player face tech ended-up getting used for mission givers, etc).
e.g. Not hard to imagine NPCs speaking to you, rather than just printing their words on your screen. FDev like to learn to walk before they try running...
e.g. Use for in-game events, such as detecting a Signal Source, receiving an (automated) distress call, station warnings, announcing the system name of the next jump and/or security level, etc, etc.
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I shall use it for immersion, such as "What if Russia had won the space race?"
Did they not?
Or do the US still pretend they did
I think it’ll be an underground success. It will make it easier for people to soak up the lore of the game while doing things that are more engaging than reading the news. If we’re correct about it’s positive uptake, I hope we see an expansion of the available text. I’d love to hear story content, get “Breaking News” alerts (configurable of course ) and see it creep into missions.
I will be using it as im sick of falling asleep at the helm because exploration gameplay is akin to watching grass grow. I also hear we will be getting different voice packs too. No doubt a paid store item.
Not the local news. Where Jacques clues were hidden and require you to visit the stations to find them. Now if they allow galnet audio to read the local news as and when you arrive in the system then you are more likely to stumble onto clues planted by dev in the local news.
I suspect an announcement of their acquisition of hcs voice packs isn't that far into the future.
This will be another weapon in my armoury. My Mrs knows if the computer is speaking she has to wait. Eventually she goes away. I did manage to keep this up for 10 days once without her speaking to me, but it ended in a few broken components.
Another tool will be most welcome.
Another tool will be most welcome.