Why are almost all NPC's still silent?

[Mech_Donald]

<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.

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Exactly. It adds to the atmosphere. Every other game has randomized voice acting for NPC's. And yes it is sometimes more, sometimes less repetitive. But it is way better than completely silent NPC's. Imagine how lonely and separated you'll feel, when you travel outside the bubble and everything is quite now - unlike in inhabited space.

And for all those who are annoyed to listen to NPC's repeating lines - there is an option to turn it off. Win - win situation.

 

[Siranui]

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?

I honestly do NOT want to hear the screamed dying words of foes over voice comms.

Not only would the same stuff get tiresome very quickly (it's tiresome over text comms, but easy to ignore), it's also just... not what I want to hear while relaxing.

 

[Mech_Donald]

I honestly do NOT want to hear the screamed dying words of foes over voice comms.

Not only would the same stuff get tiresome very quickly (it's tiresome over text comms, but easy to ignore), it's also just... not what I want to hear while relaxing.

You are relaxing in the midst of a spacefight?

 

[Arioch]

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.

Urgh! I've just had a flashback to the last time they did that - FMV bulletin board greetings on the CDROM version of Frontier First Encounters
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Lest we forget: "Hello Sweetie!"
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I hope that one day we might get something like the text to speech from https://www.cereproc.com/ (there's a box at the top of the page where you can try it out and choose different voices)

 

[Sunsol]

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?

I'm 100% interested in this.

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I honestly do NOT want to hear the screamed dying words of foes over voice comms.

Not only would the same stuff get tiresome very quickly (it's tiresome over text comms, but easy to ignore), it's also just... not what I want to hear while relaxing.

Easily turned off in the options under sound.

 

[Aardwolfz]

To everyone saying that it would cost too much, I disagree with that statement... How many gamers do you think would turn down the chance of having their voice used in a game? It would be very time consuming because FD would have to go through all submitted lines (the voice quality and voice itself would need to be acceptable quality for using in game), but they would be able to get many thousands of lines for no monetary cost... They could send out lines where players could slightly improvise to liven up the lines to stop them from the exact same lines with different voices.

 

[thorn-]

That would get so annoying very quickly... just imagine your average mission, hearing that same stupid NPC saying "I've come a long way for that cargo!" over and over and over again for 40 minutes.

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To everyone saying that it would cost too much, I disagree with that statement... How many gamers do you think would turn down the chance of having their voice used in a game? It would be very time consuming because FD would have to go through all submitted lines (the voice quality and voice itself would need to be acceptable quality for using in game), but they would be able to get many thousands of lines for no monetary cost.

L-O-       g-L. How much audio editing have you done, professionally?

Holy frak, I would hate to be in charge of organizing and editing gamer-sourced submissions.

 

[Cobramac]

they could easily implement text to speech, engines these days are more than adequate and use proc gen for the combinations for the voice specs based on seeded qualities such as sex, age, profession, race etc etc

 

[Mech_Donald]

That would get so annoying very quickly... just imagine your average mission, hearing that same stupid NPC saying "I've come a long way for that cargo!" over and over and over again for 40 minutes.

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L-O-       g-L. How much audio editing have you done, professionally?

Holy frak, I would hate to be in charge of organizing and editing gamer-sourced submissions.

For this case there should be some more lines. Also, the voices should be mainly a response to what you do or what they do. Random speech during a mission should be very rare. With enough lines, there should be no problem to hear the same speech in a couple of minutes. Problem fixed.

I like the idea of getting help from the community. Frontier could make a test, where everyone can send in few test lines, so Frontier can choose the person who is able to speak professional. There are people out there who have decent voices. Obsidian Ant for instance has his own Voicepack for sale.