Sound descriptor conditions

[Carreau]

So, I'm looking at adding some compound sound descriptors where in one instance, the player would play a particular sound file when the descriptor is called, and NPCs would play a different. Eventually, this will be expanded to have male and female player sounds and male and female NPC sounds.

 

Current conditions for the player based sound check the subject for GetIsID Actor: Player == 1 AND GetSex Female == 1 (currently testing on female player)

Current conditions for the NPC based sound check the subject for GetIsID Actor: Player != 1 OR GetSex Male == 1 (currently catching all NPCs and male players for this test)

 

Both sound descriptors are placed inside a compound sound descriptor (we'll call it pSoundDescriptor)

 

In script, I'm calling akActor.PlayAndWait(pSoundDescriptor)

 

However, in practice, NPCs are saying the player based sound right now, which is not the behavior I want.

 

My hope was that using Play() or PlayAndWait() would act a lot like SayCustom() where the actor being passed to it was treated as the subject.

 

Looking at vanilla sound descriptors, though. This may be intended behavior as NPC and Player oriented sounds are (so far in my review) never called by the same compound descriptor, and are usually labeled appropriately. But subject oriented gender checks do seem to work, so I don't know what to do. I may just be boned and have to double up male/female player sounds and male/female NPC sounds.

 

tl;dr sound descriptors aren't checking GetIsID, what do I do to make a compound play both NPC or player sounds?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Carreau]

So no replies. But I figured I'd share my solution. It could be a workaround, but it's consistent with Bethesda's approach.

 

I created two compound descriptors for each category. One for the player and one for NPCs. The player compound points to two standard descriptors. One for male, one for female, and the gender checks work against Subject.

 

In script, I'm doing a check for the player and calling the player compound. Or else call the NPC compound

If(akActor == Game.GetPlayer())
     akActor.PlayAndWait(PlayerSoundDescriptor)
Else
     akActor.PlayAndWait(NPCSoundDescriptor)
EndIf

Hope this helps others in the future.

Edited September 28, 2018 by Carreau

[montky]

Thanks for sharing this thread;

Carreau, sometimes RW means a few folks are busy hehe,

I'm sure they'll stop by for a chat.

 

I look forward to seeing what folks will do with this avenue.

 

 

 

Carreau, I've been fascinated by that kinda stuff since seeing mods like

"Musicals of the Wasteland" and "Charlie Brown audio replacer" etc,

which change between 'sing-speak' and 'regular talking' voices for each of the NPCs etc...

 

your solution does look interesting;

see, that would have been handy a while back,

saved a lot of hair-pulling, for some

embedded aural nodes -

with this solution, Klinger of Starlight City won't be saying random stuff from the wrong category!

that way, players won't mistake Klinger for a Synth Infiltrator...

prior, it was playing all the audio from the newLands NPC file pathing, so there was a chance it would play

audio from "Better Regionalization --> Swahili, Dinka, Avdahl, Svenskar etc"

as well as from female or alien voice nodes.

 

I mean, that's great if you intend to have an NPC 'speak in tongues'

but, not if you want 'consistency of character' hehe.

 

The NPC-ref-ID also includes in the string metadata, the 'gender' there,

(I think it's the digit structure and the logic on that ref-ID)

so, you can save a few checks and have more catchback by that.

there were a couple of Bethnet Threads with Miguel showing how some of that

can be kludged to make Natural-Language-Processing rebijectable aural nodes,

though those have 'vanished'.

 

------

I'm thinking you can have a lot of "synth infil-traitors"

and disguises for your NPCs via an aural node approach like that.

 

you can also use it for Cell-specific remarks etc.

such as, in proximity to the workshop items from "Strumpets & Gigolo's of the Wasteland"

some players might "Tsk-tsk" or other disparaging remark,

while other NPCs might be tempted to have a waylaid-over.

 

 

 

Looking at vanilla sound descriptors, though. This may be intended behavior as NPC and Player oriented sounds are (so far in my review) never called by the same compound descriptor, and are usually labeled appropriately. But subject oriented gender checks do seem to work, so I don't know what to do.

I think the reason it's not often if ever called in that way,

is partly due to how the QuestAliasRefID and quest stuff is handled...

there's a lot of 'floatingpoint' stuff.