Hcs voice packs altering other apps code?

Oh they know, believe me. They've been watching the EDCD Discord very closely today, and they've been pinged on reddit (including by Harry Potter).

Well, ok. But my (badly made) point is that this has only come to light in the last couple of days. Even if they know now, I wouldn't expect a knee-jerk reaction. I'd hope that they are considering things very carefully.
 
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I don't understand why they think they have the right to dictate the terms of how Voice Attack functions. That's not their software.

Jeez, what a bummer. I bought a pack from them a while ago. I can't in good conscience buy another. What a shame.
 
Thanks for posting. I've had unexplained problems, now cured with HCS (ASTRA) removal and a clean-up! Thanks again for the insight. Repped.
 
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Rafe Zetter

Banned
Even as an official explanation, I still find that HCS was complicit in this. Regardless of Mr. Barber's acceptance of the responsibility for the coding that rendered MY money obsolete, Mr. Watson was obviously on board with making these two products not work together. That is unacceptable and unexcusable any way you cut it. Just because he was ignorant to the method used, he was complicit in asking it be done. Telling me that my money spent on a competitors (in his eyes) product wasn't worthy to run on a program (VA) that again I spent money on.
Contrary to what I believe the point of the confession above was, this just made my resolve against buying another damned thing from HCS Voicepacks that much stronger! I already feel dirty for having bought ASTRA and the personalization pack from such a company...
Now I will update my purchased products and I will use the crap out of it, but they will not get any more of my money, nor will FDEV for any products they have co-operated with HCS on.

It's been suggested you consider a chargeback via your bank or paypal and cite that the product you paid for has been updated to deliberately interfere with another software package thus rendering GMP unusable.
 

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
I don't understand why they think they have the right to dictate the terms of how Voice Attack functions. That's not their software.

If they were concerned with a competitor's product interfering with their own they could simply tell their customers that running multiple profiles at once is not supported and would void any support or warranty.

Perhaps there are other issues here, but I can't see how their actions are justified regardless of any license squabbles that may be legitimate. I don't profess to know completely how both products work behind the scenes (like the plugins, etc.).
 
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I don't see how this is relevant to the current debate?
We are not commercial products either.

Its the bringing FD into the debate, nothing to do with them. The content they license from HCS does not interact with Voice Attacks at all. I also purchased the voice pack off the Frontier Store, so quite keen for them to carry on doing business with HCS. I mean if we want to limit who FD do business with to only ethical companies, we better all get used to installing LINUX on PCs.

Simon
 
Its the bringing FD into the debate, nothing to do with them. The content they license from HCS does not interact with Voice Attacks at all. I also purchased the voice pack off the Frontier Store, so quite keen for them to carry on doing business with HCS. I mean if we want to limit who FD do business with to only ethical companies, we better all get used to installing LINUX on PCs.

Simon

You're keen for them to do more business with HCS?
 
Ill be honest, I think all the addons are cool.

And not trying to take anything away from anyone that gives us the helpful tools for this game.

But I have NEVER, EVER been a part of the game where we were allowed to pull info from in game Data, as well as automation for our ships, pips, and other things through something like Voice Attack.

In every other game, they are not only considered cheats. But they leave the community very vulnerable as to what information they are allowed to grab.

Ive always wanted to use this stuff. But really never dove into it.

I like things like EDEngineer, but even that thing is capable of doing some stuff if the owner(god forbid.) got tired of the game and inserted malware or something like that. The community would update it and by the time we found out it would be too late.

So, if logic tells me anything. A lot of our bots might be on the way out. It would suck. But it would be safer.

Just my opinion. Id rather be safe and watch stuff go away. Rather than risk it for the biscuit. Know what I mean?
 

Rafe Zetter

Banned
Its the bringing FD into the debate, nothing to do with them. The content they license from HCS does not interact with Voice Attacks at all. I also purchased the voice pack off the Frontier Store, so quite keen for them to carry on doing business with HCS. I mean if we want to limit who FD do business with to only ethical companies, we better all get used to installing LINUX on PCs.

Simon

I'm not sure you are understanding what is happening here - HCS is going out of business, even if Mr Watson manages to evade a crippling lawsuit by GMP he's clearly broken some laws - and FDev needs to distance themselves from a company that wilfully breaks anti competition laws in the UK, quite apart from all the laws broken in all the other countries.

The supposed "lone coder / I did this by myself and watson didn't know" posted a sentence that is the smoking gun, and bullet to the heart of HCS:

"I was instructed to stop their product working alongside our own product."

HCS was forcing VA users to have to choose between HCS and GMP, while GMP had no such issues.

HCS also had no problems running alongside other NON GMP plugins. This was aimed squarely at GMP.

You're keen for them to do more business with HCS?

Some people have no morals as long as they get what they want, on both sides fo the fence.
 
I don't know what experience the owners at HCS actually have in business or in s/w development but I would hazhard a guess that it is not much. Perhaps all of this is just basic naivety. Some errors of decision for sure but this is how a person learns I guess. They also don't seem very experienced at recording or sound mixing as the quality of the voices is actually not that great. Perhaps they will learn and grow and be better for this experience.

Personally, I have Celeste and now have disabled the poor girl. I love her voice but I can hardly understand her around 50% of the time compared with FD's brilliant clarity. And the syncing gets mixed up all the time and lots of inappropriate messages and just generally a mess for use in my view. Just not fun. In some ways it is amazing what they have achieved with simple VA and scripting but really, it is insufficient to achieve what they are trying to achieve. In my view the only way to do this properly is to write a full-blown app. It needs the power of c++ I would think. The players journal provides lots of useful info and only a program can do all the necessary logic processing to make sensible decisions about what is appropriate to say at any given point.
 
Its the bringing FD into the debate, nothing to do with them. The content they license from HCS does not interact with Voice Attacks at all. I also purchased the voice pack off the Frontier Store, so quite keen for them to carry on doing business with HCS. I mean if we want to limit who FD do business with to only ethical companies, we better all get used to installing LINUX on PCs.

Simon

Was the hardware built ethically?
 
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