Switching Profiles In Voice Attack Made Easy...

[CMD Malandark]

[SIZE=+4] Switching Profiles in Voice Attack Made Easy...[/size][SIZE=+3] Using 'Switch to Another Profile' And 'Include Commands From Another Profile'​ [SIZE=+1]By Commander Malandark[/SIZE] [SIZE=+1]March 28th 2015[/SIZE][/SIZE] Using VoiceAttack Version 1.5.7.62 (Beta) Download ​ ​

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[SIZE=+2]What is Voice Attack?[/SIZE] Voice Attack is a software Recognition Utility, at it's simplest level it acts on a pre-defined set of commands (called Macros) and using your voice, simulates the pressing of keys/buttons on your keyboard, mouse or joystick. Think of Voice Attack as an extra Controller for your games/applications, with the added benefit that once taught, will happily repeat repetitive or complicated key/button presses in your game/application. In Elite Dangerous for example, it takes several key presses in a particular order, to Request Docking, Voice Attack is able to store these key presses and simulate you pressing them using a single, voice command, that you choose. [SIZE=+2]Who is this guide aimed at?[/SIZE] Everyone who uses Voice Attack while playing Elite Dangerous, especially those who already use 'Switch To Another Profile' and find themselves having to duplicate most of their Voice Attack commands into different profiles just so they can access those commands!. There is a much better way!. This guide may be of help to you. The techniques that you learn here and from reading other Voice Attack guides (links provided at the bottom of this guide) can all be adapted to work with a whole host of other games that you may have, the more complex and repetitive the key strokes are in those games, the more appealing using Voice attack will be. [SIZE=+2]Why are you writing this guide?[/SIZE] Good question. I am a BIG fan of Elite Dangerous, all my spare time is spent playing this highly addictive game, therefore, immersion in whatever role or profession I find myself in plays a major part in the overall experience I get from playing Elite Dangerous. Having recently took the plunge and bought Voice Attack, I now have an extra layer of game-play that not only saves a lot of wear & tear on my now battered keyboard, but also provides a sense of realism when piloting ships with a 'computer' to assist me. I am in no way affiliated with either Frontier Developments Plc or the creators of Voice Attack, writing this guide is my way of sharing information about Voice Attack that I have personally found to be useful. Oh, and no pixel was harmed in the creation of this guide.

[SIZE=+2] A General Overview on Profile Switching...[/SIZE] One of the many features implemented in Voice Attack is the ability to automatically switch between one or more profiles on-the-fly, thereby eliminating the need to Alt-Tab out of our game each time we wanted to use a different profile. This in turns opens up a great many possibilities in how we can use this feature in our games, such as splitting our profiles into different categories and testing out new key / joystick layouts etc . There is little, or no written documentation on how to use profile switching and this then makes profile switching an 'Advanced' feature. It's only an 'Advanced' feature until your shown exactly how to implement it and just as importantly, how to use it, then it becomes a normal feature that everyone can use. Their are in fact, TWO methods we can choose from within Voice Attack, that will implement 'Profile Switching' in our games. For the sake of clarity, I'm going to briefly summarize the two Switching Profile methods that we can use, based on the following scenario. Imagine if you could instantly instruct your computer to configure your ship's commands according to the role and ship your currently playing in, you might be an unarmed trader right now, and maybe later on you'll jump into a Vulture and be a pirate or Bounty Hunter, or decide to fly out in an Asp and start that 26,000 Ly exploration trip you've been putting off. Which ever role your in, you will have a basic set of voice commands for operating ship lights, landing gear, docking requests etc but in a addition, each role will have a different set of commands that are unique to that role. An unarmed Trader or Explorer for example, wont need any commands for putting pips into weapons and will not require any commands to use the Kill Warrant Scanner, Cargo Scanner, Frame Shift Drive Interdictor, or Fear Messages to name but a few. But if playing as a Pirate or Bounty Hunter, you would more than likely have these commands and many others that a Trader or Explorer, would not normally use.​ [SIZE=+2]Method One. Duplicating Switching Commands in all our profiles.[/SIZE] An obvious solution to the above scenario would to to create a profile for each of these roles and insert into each profile, duplicate 'Switch To Profile' commands so they can switch between each other. Then, you would insert duplicate ship commands (of which there are many) into each profile so you can maintain control over the ship your piloting. Then, insert a few commands into each profile that are unique to that profile's role. This method is an *cough* easy one to implement, yet it's clunky, restrictive and involves duplicating large chunks of your Voice Attack commands into each and every profile that your using. Perhaps some of you who are reading this guide have already opted for this method?. If we were to implement this method in our demo profiles, we would need to copy all three switching commanding in our Bridge profile and copy them to the Trader, Explorer and Pirate profiles. OK, now we can switch back and forth between any of our profiles quite easily now. But, suppose one of our profiles contains all our Elite Dangerous ship commands such as Lights On/Off, Gear Up/Down, Request Docking, Jump to Hyperspace etc etc. How would the other profiles access these commands? Yep, you guessed it, you would have to copy all those commands into each and every profile where you wanted to use them in. If you have any voice packs and wanted to use some commands from one voice pack so that all your profiles could use them, then again, you would copy those commands into all of your other profiles. Mass duplication of commands and editing between profiles can best describe this method. [SIZE=+2]Method Two. Sharing One Profile Between All Connected Profiles.[/SIZE] A more elegant, flexible solution to the above scenario is to use just one Profile (our Bridge Profile for example) to store all our generic and customized ship commands and have that profile then *share* those voice commands between all our other profiles. For those commands that are specific to a particular role/profile we can safely store them in their respective role/profile. Since this method does not require any further duplication of commands in any of our other profiles, it means that should we ever need to edit/change any of our shared commands we only have to go to our Bridge profile, make the required changes and instantly, all connected profiles will be updated with the changes. Using this method we would also need to use the 'Include Commands From Another Profile' accessed from the 'Profile Options' menu on every profile we were using. In Voice Attack, you can access the 'Switch to Another Profile' command via the 'Add New Command' Button. It is tucked away in the Other button.​ Using this command in your profiles allows you to then switch between them easily and seamlessly without having to Alt-Tab out of the game each time you require a different set of voice commands. But that's just child's-play, what we want is immersion and seamless control over our VA profiles and we can indeed have both.

[SIZE=+2] Demo: Creating a simple, switchable profile set.[/SIZE] What we are going to do is to create four empty profiles from within Voice Attack, three of these will represent a sample of the many rolls that we can play in Eliteangerous. After this, we will insert four 'Switch to Another Profile' commands into our starting profile called 'Bridge'. These voice commands instruct Voice Attack to load and activate the profiles we want and in the order we want. It is worth mentioning here the importance of our 'Bridge' profile. Think of it as building bridges to all our other profiles so that they are connected to it. This profile is therefore quite special, in so much that it will be here that we can store all our custom-made, general ship commands and modified voice commands without having to duplicate them in any of our other profiles, this includes any voice packs we may be using. Once connected, any and all commands stored in the 'Bridge' profile will be made available to all our other profiles. Just to hammer this point a little further, suppose you have a number of VA profiles that you change to every now and then, they are all equally great in what they do and then one day, FD updates Elite Dangerous and you now have extra key binds to tie into all your profiles. You can either duplicate these new commands in all your profiles so that they are available to you regardless of what profile your using, or, you can simple put them into your 'Bridge' profile and achieve the same outcome. From within Voice Attack's main Screen, create 4 empty profiles via the drop-down box, selecting <Create A New Profile> each time, name the profiles (without the speech-marks) as - "Bridge" "ED - Trader" "ED - Explorer" "ED - Pirate" ​ Now select the 'Bridge'' profile from Voice Attack's drop down box and then click the Edit Profile Icon. Since our profile is empty, we need to create a new command, so click on the 'New Command' button as shown below. For the Spoken Command type: Trader in the 'When I Say' box Next, select the command Other, then VoiceAttack Action followed by 'Switch to Another Profile', as shown below. Once 'Switch to Another Profile' has been selected, a small pop-up window will be displayed 'Other Stuff' asking you to choose which profile you want this command to activate when executed, in this case you want to choose the 'ED - Trader' profile as show below. When done, click on the OK Button.​ Now we need to put in a voice command to let us know when our profile changes and we do this using 'Say Something with Text-to-Speech' Command. Once again, click on the the 'Other' Button and select 'Sounds' then 'Say Something with Text-to-Speech'. Once again the 'Other Stuff' screen pops up, now it's asking us to type in a message that will be spoken by our default, computer Text-to-Speech voice, which will usually be Microsoft's Anna, unless of course you have installed another third-party TTS voice such as those from IVONA. Type in 'Ship now configured for trading commander' When done, click on the OK Button.​ If all has gone well, your Voice Attack screen should match the screen below. It is VERY important that you now click on the OK button and then, in our previous screen, click the Done button. Only then will Voice Attack save the changes you have made so far. Now we need to repeat steps two to nine in order to add two more 'Switch to Another Profile' Commands. This is necessary because at this point we have only joined the Bridge profile to the Trader profile. We still need to join the Bridge profile to the Explorer and Pirate profiles. Here then are the steps you need to take. To join the Bridge profile to the Explorer Profile. From the main Voice Attack screen. Click on the Edit Profile Icon. Click on the New Command button. Type in 'Explorer' in the 'When I say' Box. Click on the 'Other button and select VoiceAttack Action then 'Switch To Another Profile' Select the ED - Explorer profile in the drop-down Box Click OK Click on the 'Other' button and select 'Sounds' then 'Say something with Text-to-Speech' In the 'Say something with Text-to-Speech' box type Ship now configured to Exploring commander. Click OK then Done to save the changes. To join the Bridge profile to the Pirate Profile. From the main Voice Attack screen. Click on the Edit Profile Icon. Click on the New Command button. Type in 'Pirate' in the 'When I say' Box. Click on the 'Other' button and select VoiceAttack Action then 'Switch To Another Profile' Select the ED - Pirate profile in the drop-down Box Click OK Click on the 'Other button and select 'Sounds' then 'Say something with Text-to-Speech' In the 'Say something with Text-to-Speech' box type Ship now configured to piracy commander. Click OK then Done to save the changes. Hang in there, we are almost finished, just one more itsy-bitsy step left!​ Our final step now is to tell Voice Attack to share any and all voice commands stored in our Bridge profile with our other profiles. Fortunately this is every easy to do. From Voice Attack Main Screen, select the ED Explorer Profile then click on the Edit Profile Icon, this will take you back into the Edit Profile Screen that we have seen many times so far in this guide..​ To the right of our profile name, click on the Icon showing a box with a tick inside it. This will take us into the Profile Options screen. ​ Look down the list of profile options until you see this line: Include Commands From Another Profile. In the drop down box select the 'Bridge' profile. Now click on OK then Done to save our changes. Now repeat this Step twice more, this time on the ED - Pirate and ED - Trader profiles. Make sure to select the 'Bridge' profile in the Profile Options screen.​ Congratulations! All the hard work is done, now you can relax and experiment further with the 4 demo profiles. For starters, you can put in some voice commands into the Bridge profile, then have Voice Attack switch to another profile (which are all still empty) and then you can try issuing some of those voice commands we stored in the Bridge profile, even though they don't exist in the profile you just switched to. If your feeling adventurous and know what your doing, then you might like the following example. If you have one or more voice packs (lets say you have Leo & Astra) you can connect them to the Bridge profile using the method shown at step 11. Then, in the 'Bridge' profile, insert a 'Switch To Another Profile' command and point it to the Astra Profile using the following phrase in the 'When I say' box, 'Astra to the Bridge'. You can then insert a Say something with Text-to-Speech and type 'Astra reporting for duty commander'. Do the same for the Leo Voice pack, change the phrase in the 'When I say' box to 'Leo to the bridge' and change the reply message to 'Leo reporting for duty commander'[/color]. Now, if you go into the 'ED - Trader' or 'ED - Pirate' profile and say 'Astra to the bridge, Voice Attack will change the active profile to the Astra voice pack. If you repeat this again using the phrase 'Leo to the Bridge' while still in the Astra Profile, Voice Attack will automatically take you into the Leo Profile. [SIZE=+2]So, what else can I do with this switching profile method?[/SIZE] When I originally wrote this question I listed several decent examples here of what's possible using Switching Profiles, but then thought it's probably more fun for the reader to come up with their own ideas and let them have the enjoyment of making them work, than me firing off several ideas that I have. [SIZE=+2]For Further Reading On Getting The Best Out Of Voice Attack...[/SIZE] Voice Controlling Eliteangerous - A Guide by Commander Flak Voice Attack Beta: Conditions Guide By Commander Dizzy B High The Voiceattack Discussion Thread by Commander Spiggs 3D Icon graphics created by Visual Pharm​

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[CMD Malandark]

A shameless bump on my part.

 

[nosscar]

A great guide and well presented.
But i do fail to see the need for different ship profiles, as in ED, the main difference with ships and careers type is weapons load outs, and fire groups. Both can be activated by generic VA commands that work well on all ships. ie : deploy weapons (being what ever you fitted, and next fire group, for other scanners ect.

Only reason i change profiles is (as you suggest) to bring another character/voice into the game. Such as "Spock to the bridge" where he could then take over for all combat ect. I use Astra and Dark voice packs to do this.
But i just have all commands in both profiles, and just switch when i want to using one command, then switch back with another. As both profiles are supplied with the packs.

 

[CMD Malandark]

Thanks for replying nosscar.. I picked a simple scenario and followed this through my guide as an example/demonstration of how switching profiles using 'Switch to Another Profile' And 'Include Commands From Another Profile' would work in this scenario, giving at the same time, a fair assessment of how both methods of switching profiles operate, and listing their weaknesses in the case of not using the 'Include Commands From Another Profile' option..

However, having a central profile (Bridge) in my example, that stores all the generic and user customized commands that then shares this across unlimited profiles, negates the need for further duplication of commands in any other profile(s) and is, imho, more suited to handling multiple profiles such as user profiles & voice packs etc.

 

[Spanners44]

Wow thank you for this info. I have yet to try the new VA beta so will have to look at it now. I've tried my own version of multiple ship profiles in the current full VA release and it is a bit messy, the only problem I see in converting my current work to this method is that I call my voice responses from within my main command. Because you have the commands in the bridge profile and the responses will be in the ship profiles I'll have to change the method I used.

@nosscar The main reason I see for doing this is so your different ships will respond to the same commands with different comments. For example when in your Trading ship you say 'Target Hostile' it might respond with 'Do we have to fight, cant we just dump some cargo and run?' where as your while in your Combat ship it might respond with 'Lets kill this guy!'. You can even have the use different TtoS voices instead of the same old boring voice for all ships. It just adds the immersion factor in the game.