I would be happy to contribute voice work as well. However, I would like to point out that providing the voices is less than half the work; the audio editing is more difficult and time consuming than the recording, regardless of the quality of the provided audio (and donated audio is frequently not of the quality needed). Without someone donating a LOT of editing time, including voices in any fashion will still be cost-prohibitive for Josh.

In the spirit of Pareidolic icons, all that matters is that patterns can be recognized as language, those patterns have real and actual meaning, and they can be constructed procedurally to create a wide variety of patterns so that any species you encounter can communicate any idea.

Some actual Alien speech

A different kind of alien speech

A language humans have created with the idea


I haven't played any of the space games that LT appears to be a sequal too, so I have no nostalgia attached to chatter. Maybe I don't know what I'm missing, but as far as procedural audio communications goes, meaningful clicks, chirps, whistles, squeaks, growls, rumbles, with pitch changes, repeats, speed changes, tone changes, reverberations, shifts, fugues, and so on could go a rather long way to create a real sense of atmosphere, profoundly alien, yet if you give it time to learn the differences that each race uses, you can really understand that 6 rapid clicks in a high pitch, as a growl grows in volume and changes tone, followed by 2 whistles, one short and high pitch, one long and lower pitch really means that there is a wormhole about 3000 km beyond the planet Jarbunthis in the direction away from the star.

This is only an initial idea, not given much thought, If anyone thinks it deserves more development, I can do so.

Hyperion wrote:I haven't played any of the space games that LT appears to be a sequal too, so I have no nostalgia attached to chatter. Maybe I don't know what I'm missing

The chatter added a lot of immersion to my Freelancer game, Hyperion. Unlike some I never tired of it. I know Josh wanted to include chatter back in the early days but I got the impression that he was loath to include it if he couldn't do a good job of implementing it.

Anything that adds immersion to my game gets a I like using my imagination but the days when I could just be satisfied with good game play with naff visuals and audio are gone.

I think my zealous over-investment in Star Citizen probably demonstrates how important graphics are to me now.

I would happily contribute to anything related to chatter. It's just too good a thing not to at least try to implement!

MyrddinE wrote:I would be happy to contribute voice work as well. However, I would like to point out that providing the voices is less than half the work; the audio editing is more difficult and time consuming than the recording, regardless of the quality of the provided audio (and donated audio is frequently not of the quality needed). Without someone donating a LOT of editing time, including voices in any fashion will still be cost-prohibitive for Josh.

I agree with this.

One possible saving grace is that, unlike a game in which characters are bodies talking to each other in person, background chatter for a space game doesn't need a high level of clarity. In fact, I'd expect crackles and pops and hisses and static to be added as a step in the process of editing submitted dialogue. That would tend to compensate for some imperfection in recording quality.

But it wouldn't save the worst recordings, and it wouldn't do anything to fix voice acting that doesn't "fit." Plus every clip would still have to have proper levels, and adding "spacenoise" to chatter is a processing step that some editor/audio engineer has to perform.

That might not be so horrible, though, if we're only talking 10-20 pieces of chatter.

How many pieces of chatter are people here expecting? What about non-chatter dialogue?

Personally, I think that if it was a mod, I'd expect something on the order of hundreds - enough so it didn't feel like everybody sounded exactly the same, which would get annoying and tedious very quickly. That's a bit of a tall order.

Skyrim, for instance, had a large number of characters with the exact same voice, which was an element I didn't like so much.

And in Oblivion, NPC's voices would sometimes change completely mid-dialogue. Now that was weird.

MyrddinE wrote:I would be happy to contribute voice work as well. However, I would like to point out that providing the voices is less than half the work; the audio editing is more difficult and time consuming than the recording, regardless of the quality of the provided audio (and donated audio is frequently not of the quality needed). Without someone donating a LOT of editing time, including voices in any fashion will still be cost-prohibitive for Josh.

I nominate Sky. He's got a decent setup and already does it on a regular basis. This would seem up his alley by far.

I'd love to help, but my microphone isn't near perfection. I'd have to find (or make) a clip of myself speaking so people would have a better idea of how I sound... hmm.

Flatfingers wrote:That might not be so horrible, though, if we're only talking 10-20 pieces of chatter.

Can you imagine how annoying this would be with so few responses? Repetetive. You wouldn't go 5 minutes without hearing repeats, and this is a game you will play for tens or hundreds of hours. You need hundreds of voice responses to minimize repeats, or the chatter will just get turned off in minutes.

As an example, X3 had about 50 'station' responses, and you quickly got tired of hearing about Suzie getting lost. Chatter, to be effective, needs to have a lot of variety.

I have a good mic, but a bad accent

Dinosawer wrote:I have a good mic, but a bad accent

While practically, that is a hindrance, I think it's a stupid one. Why do all space faring cultures have to be American or British? Fuck the man, fight the power, and record voice over lines in your native accent! What's wrong with an Indian, Mexican, Greek, Chinese, Russian, Somalian, or Egyptian accent? Do those countries not have pilots in the future?

This is background noise, chatter... being less than perfectly clear to the player is not necessary, so an accent is no hindrance. Record away! Do your part to eliminate the perception that only the US colonizes the galaxy!

MyrddinE wrote:

Dinosawer wrote:I have a good mic, but a bad accent

While practically, that is a hindrance, I think it's a stupid one. Why do all space faring cultures have to be American or British? frak the man, fight the power, and record voice over lines in your native accent! What's wrong with an Indian, Mexican, Greek, Chinese, Russian, Somalian, or Egyptian accent? Do those countries not have pilots in the future?

This is background noise, chatter... being less than perfectly clear to the player is not necessary, so an accent is no hindrance. Record away! Do your part to eliminate the perception that only the US colonizes the galaxy!

In that case, maybe I should record stuff in Flemish

Dinosawer wrote:

MyrddinE wrote:

Dinosawer wrote:I have a good mic, but a bad accent

While practically, that is a hindrance, I think it's a stupid one. Why do all space faring cultures have to be American or British? frak the man, fight the power, and record voice over lines in your native accent! What's wrong with an Indian, Mexican, Greek, Chinese, Russian, Somalian, or Egyptian accent? Do those countries not have pilots in the future?

This is background noise, chatter... being less than perfectly clear to the player is not necessary, so an accent is no hindrance. Record away! Do your part to eliminate the perception that only the US colonizes the galaxy!

In that case, maybe I should record stuff in Flemish

I think this is an awesome idea. Why even have everything in English in the first place? The point isn't what the chatter is saying, it's that there is chatter to begin with.

I think a certain orange knight we all know and love would strongly disagree with you.