johnnylump

Wow, that's quite a few :) I guess it's a good thing we got so many volunteers because I suspect we'll have a bit of attrition. For the proof-of-concept, what would you like from the Voice Actors?

Cool. I don't have a preference on whether more languages or more voices in existing sets is better -- Technical feasibility comes first, of course. Probably the next step is to use MakeCharacterSpeak to research which of the 57 have multiple entries so we can get a picture of the full submission we would need from the voice actors. Also, can you PM me your email addy? I'll get you on a google drive where we'll take those submissions.

I just did a similar exercise by going through xcomgame.upk and noting every the parameter of every UnitSpeak call. There are 58 total. The following are not called ingame but do indeed have voices (tested with MakeCharacterSpeak xx console command): 1 / HunkerDown 53 / AlienMoving 55 / AlienReinforcements 56 / AlienSighting This is is called ingame, but no VO is present, so the soldier remains silent. 22 / FlashbangThrown The rest overlap, so by my count that's 57 sounds we'd need from voice actors.

Roger that. Would you like to come up with a filenames convention for the waves that includes all the variables in play here (echaracterspeech, index, speaker, language, accent, maybe some others? We're getting lots of interest. If it's OK with you we'll set up a google drive for submissions. I'm going to go through XComGame.upk and try to suss out which speech segments are actually called by the game.

Update; We have a couple of guinea pigs for a first pass at this, so I'll be working up a basic script. Does anyone sense they did post-processing to the ingame audio to make it sound like radio transmissions?

@ Liquid. We know there are at least some clips were recorded but aren't utilized in game -- in particular danger zone suppression. But others we haven't tested whether they point to any actual audio or not. @ tracktwo -- Thanks for looking it over. Making this up as I go along, but hopefully it will get a response :)

@tracktwo I've posted a call for voice actors here: http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?showtopic=2172704 Let me know if you have any suggestions. Thanks!

So 15 clips for each of these? Some of these are so rarely used I find that difficult to believe. Sorry I'm being pedantic here; if I get volunteers I don't want them doing a bunch of work that will never get used. I suppose I can try to do observations ingame on how many different clips are used for each enum.

Is it your sense that a specific number of clips is needed for each eCharSpeech_ entry ? Or can it handle a dynamic number?

If I read you right, it might be better to add extra English voices to the end of the existing English list, and deal with the accent differences in the Unrealscript?

Okay, great! A new "language" (or even multiple languages) would be fine for this. Also, we have been able to extend XGGameData enums without problem. (XGTacticalGameCore enums are another matter). Three more questions: * What .wav format does XCOM use? ( I refer to the list about 3/4 of the way down this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV) * Are you able to handle multiple wavs for a single voice, uh, segment (Not sure what the term of art is ... I mean each one of the entries in eCharSpeech_Confirmed ... "confirmed" may have several variations for single voice). * Anything else I should relay to potential voice actors? What could mess up their audio? (echo from a bad room, mic popping, anything else?) This is all new to me.

tracktwo, excellent work -- way to break some new ground. I'd be interested in including some new voicesets for Long War -- specifically, English with male and female English, Australian, Scottish, Irish and South African accents. I know that's a tall order -- the enum eCharSpeech shows some 85 separate entries (some of which many not be used, and some may have multiple voice segments for the same bit of speech), and we'd want the sound and voice quality somewhere above amateurish levels as well as matching whatever other audio characteristics the vanilla voicesets possess, so it integrates as seamlessly as possible. This will probably take someone who is able to handle sound recording and processing as well as voice actors with the proper accent. Is this technically possible at this point? I can put out a call for contributions on the Long War page and on Reddit. Way back when, this guy: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/columns/extra-punctuation/10029-Save-Scummer volunteered to make voice sets, so I can reach out to him and see if he's still willing (nearly two years after this post). What exactly would I need to ask for -- a bunch of ogg files, yes? And would you be willing and able to assemble them into a usable file?

We've got a thread devoted to this on the Long War forums. We're trying to figure it out and need help and savegames.

Nah, that's good news as far as I'm concerned, one less thing to worry about.

@ Liquid ... that with Long War or vanilla?

I believe you; I'm subtly trying to farm out the work :)

I'll definitely take alternate setups for council and EXALT missions for Long War.

Excellent! That explains some bug reports we've seen. In these cases are you eliminating the default version of this map entirely from the rotation in favor of the script-generated one?

That's excellent, Ghost. Will each map have exactly one alternate start location, or can we code multiple ones (or zero, if the map just isn't friendly to it?) And does the engine allow starting inside the LZ? I seem to recall it bumping one of our (7th or 8th) soldiers out of it on rooftops.

Nothing's wrong with it; if I gave that impression I was in error. I'm going to work it in as a type of council mission that is a raid on one of your air bases.

I reckon that's Ghost random pod placement code at work. Vanilla has specific alien spawnpoints; if there are none, aliens do not spawn. Ghost RPP code (in Long War) just throws em down. As an aside, I followed your (IIRC) suggestion and got that HQ defense MP map working, so I'll be working on trying to slide it in as a mission soon.

I was wondering if you were going to be able to create new working config variables, because we hadn't had any luck doing so. But instead of throwing out this method, why not get a little more hacky and repurpose existing config variables, as we've done a bunch of times in LW. There are some dynamic arrays that would seem to allow for open-ended configurations, which would be a lot easier to modify for a given modder over whole new streaming files (and would save Long War the trouble of adding a bunch of new files to its install). What's the minimum number of variables you need for a single alternate start location? I can think of 5, maybe 6? 1) Which Map 2) X 3) Y 4) Z 5) Rotation of LZ 6) Some kind of direction indicator where XCOM pawn 1 should go; the other pawns can be placed off of this. And this may not be necessary if based on 1 through 4. Yes, this means we can't do drop points away from LZ (although we might be able to encode something along those lines), but it still solves the basic problem. EDIT: If necessary, you could even pack variables into fewer numbers.

I just would like to remark that moving a truck is an accomplishment worthy of note.

@ Ghost So the new plan for basic LZ relocation is to leave off streaming files and instead use XComGame script + config settings, and number of config lines will determine number of alternate locations and limit map-repeating issue because they will all be counted as the same map. Works for me.

I'm afraid the constants in XGTacticalGameCoreNativeBase don't do anything when changed. (This is something every XCOM modder must learn.) Aim calculations are handled in the exe (native code), which we cannot edit directly. So if you want to change some aim-related function, you must deduce how it works and then address it in the upk. The problem is that aim calculations are clamped to between 0 and 100 in native code, so in cases where the REAL to hit is below zero or above 100, the difference in aim is lost and unrecoverable, and new bonuses and penalties you add start at 0 or 100. Long War makes a couple of changes like this anyway. We made Lightning Reflexes not automatic in XGAbility_Targeted_RollForHit, and put our range penalties on pistols there, too. So if you can accept the issue I described, I'd recommend RollForHit : Here's some garbage psuedocode If hasupgrade(coveringfire) && isreactionshot { if getprimarytarget().is in light cover tohit += (lightcovervalue from dgc.ini) else if getprimarytarget().is in heavy cover tohit += (heavy cover value from dgc.ini) } Again, if the actual hit came in at -15, the shooter is getting a substantial bonus because the additions start in at zero. No way around this except to rewrite entire XCOM's entire aim calculations from scratch. You'd have to figure out how to determine that the shot is a suppression-based reaction shot, or else recode the shot elsewhere to take place after the unit leaves cover.