Chat pack update

[juckto]

I was wondering if it possible to update the chat pack, and if it is, whether the dev team has considered it?

As it currently stands, we have some VC that are in multiple locations (eg "I've gotcha, hold still" is `cs and `lq), some which are almost never used (eg "Defend towers") and other things which are used so often they could do with a VC (eg "Call drop").

Also, I would like them to be rearranged so that VC that mean completely opposite things aren't right next to each other on the keyboard - often people hit the wrong one (eg "They don't see me" and "Ohhh they see me I've been spotted").



To talk in more specific terms:

"They are pursuing unique tech" would be a great catch-all for GT pali & research, nix Trans, Omicron Hive's Colony of Knowledge and Support, and any future factions' weirdness. On that note, OH would benefit a lot from a "Fighter waiting for turrets", or even a "Scout waiting for turrets".

I would like "Get off my turrets" and "Don't kill pods" to be re-recorded since they don't seem 'urgent' enough - or maybe it's just the people I'm directing them at are too clueless. /wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink.gif" />

Some more VC that (I think) would be useful:
Are you eyed?
Go probe their @#(!
Stop pissing around dogfighting
Nan the con
Nan the bbr
Nan the ints
Nan the nans
... or I'll boot you.
sf on our miners NOW. (would be useful when you spot LRMs chewing apart the miner's escort.)
We got this camped
Solo bomb it
What distance are you?
Are you charged?
Is the aleph probed?
Escort the carrier
Reload please
Turrets STOP FIRING!
Stop ramming me.


So, yeah. I think it'd be nice to have an updated chat pack, but the question is: Can it be done, how hard is it, who is gonna do it, and when.

[Shizoku]

I think anyone can do it, whether or not it would usefull is another question as only some of the community would use it. This kind of thing you can't force on people, especialy old folks who have spent the past 6years using the same chats.

This is possible for anyone to do, there have been quite a few chatpacks released even befor the source was released.

[TheBored]

QUOTE (juckto @ Sep 15 2006, 06:27 PM) but the question is: Can it be done how hard is it, who is gonna do it, and when.

Can it be done? Easily.

How hard is it? Easy. Need a mic and some free time.

Who is gonna do it? Good question. Someone with a good voice, I would be happy to assist someone with getting the VCs into the game.

When? Whenever someone decides to do it. Also, don't expect this to go on the AU if you mess with the default configs. I know that personally, I will never use a VC pack because they all like to mess with the arrangement.

TB

[jgbaxter]

An overhaul would be good, it's on a lot of peoples to-do list to take a shot at, SgtBaker, Cort, myself, and who knows who else has/is thinking about it. Definately be a great thing to have happen. /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />

[juckto]

QUOTE Also, don't expect this to go on the AU if you mess with the default configs.[/quote]And theres the catch. It's hardly an update if it's optional...

That aside, when you say it is easy to do - is it easy to add more VC? Obviously rearranging/changing VC is just a matter of renaming/recording over already existing files; but adding more VC, or even entire new sub-menus? What would that entail? What do you need to actually edit the VC packs entries?

QUOTE Who is gonna do it? Good question. Someone with a good voice,[/quote]
I was just mulling that over. I was thinking that once a set of new VC had been decided on I could start a thread asking for submissions from anyone interested, and then conduct a poll for each VC to decide who's voice is most loved.
This would add variety to the VC, but more importantly would get the communitity involved/interested. And if people are interested they are more likely to download and use it. No good designing a chatpack which only I will use /tongue.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":P" border="0" alt="tongue.gif" />

[aem]

There have been others making similar posts about doing new voice chats but no one has followed through. Yes, it is a fairly simple process to create new voice chats and add them to the game. You just record them and make some new entries in sounddef.mdl and quickchat.mdl in the artwork directory. But in cases like this things get a bit tricky. Even if you try to maintain the original VC shortcuts or stick all the new ones in new submenus, you don't really want to push this out over autoupdate because there are people out there, including myself, who have a custom chat menu and the autoupdate process would simply overwrite it. If it's not required, then people are going to get sick of seeing "Unknown chat" in chat if they don't have it and they obviously aren't going to do much good if people don't see/hear them.

The only way I can think of doing this that might work ok would be to add a menu option to select between "Original" and "New" chat packs. This way everyone's quickchat.mdl is left as is. A second version would be added and if "New" is selected, a menu including the new VCs would be used instead of the original menu. And I'd guess if you were seriously going to start some kind of voice chat update, you'd want to start by running your plans by the senate to make sure they are up for this in general since I'm sure they would need to approve the final version before it could be put on autoupdate anyway.

[juckto]

Forget the auto-update for the moment then. I'll concentrate on just making my own, and hopefully I'll 'follow through'.

[aem]

Adding new chats:

1. Open sounddef.mdl in a text editor

2. Below

Code: Select all

use "gamepanes";
use "musicdef";
use "trainingsounddef";

DefaultVOTimeout = 10;t
DefaultSalTimeout = 10;

put some kind of comment in

Code: Select all

// juckto's sound pack

for each new chat add:

Code: Select all

voDidYouCopy = SerializedSound(MutexVO, DefaultVOTimeout, 0, true, GainSound(VoiceOverGain, ImportWave("vo_player_didyoucopy")));

replace voDidYouCopy with whatever name you want to give the chat (as long as it's not the same as one already in the list) and replace vo_player_didyoucopy with the name of the wav file in the artwork folder for the new chat

3. Open quickchat.mdl

4. In the section labeled

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//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
// Sonic Chats
//
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

For each new chat add:

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nameYouWantToGiveChat = SonicChat([ SonicChatVoice(nameYouGaveSoundInSounddef.mdl, "Text you want to be displayed in the chat box when you use the VC" ) ]);

5. In the section labeled

Code: Select all

//
// Sonic chat lookup table
//

At the bottom of the list, for each new chat add:

Code: Select all

(nextNumber,    nameYouGaveChat),

Just make sure the last entry does not have a comma.

6. In the section labeled

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//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
// Quick chat commands
// 
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

At the bottom of the list, for each new chat add:

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nameOfChatCommand = QuickChatCommand( nameOfChat, commandID , targetType, abilityMask );

I don't know too many details about this part but AFAIK,
commandID (examples: cidGoTo, cidDefend, cidAttack) : use one of these if you want your chat to correspond with one of the types of commands you can send to ships or cidNone if none
targetType (examples: ttFriendly, ttShip, ttStation, ttMyTarget) : filters for the target of the chat, such as if you put ttFriendly the target of the chat will be friendly and can be specified to be a ship (ttShip) or station (ttStation). If multiple descriptors, then separate each with a pipe "|"
abilityMask (examples: habmLifepod, habmFighter, habmCapital, habmMiner) if there is a specific class of ship to target, it goes here

7. And finally the quick chat menu:

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//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
// Quick chat menus
//
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

first define menus as:

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nameForMenu =
    QuickChatMenu([
    QuickChatMenuItem('shortcut character such as a', "text that will actually appear in the menu for this chat such as Attack!",nameOfChatCommand),
    QuickChatMenuItem('b', "textb",chatbCommand),
    .....,
    QuickChatMenuItem('z', "textz",chatzCommand)
    
   ]);

define the main menu which consists of menu items you just defined or individual chats such as:

Code: Select all

mainMenu =
    QuickChatMenu([
        QuickChatMenuItem('1', "Affirmative"                        , YesCommand                ),
        QuickChatMenuItem('2', "Negative"                           , NoCommand                 ),
        QuickChatMenuItem('3', "Shhhooot!"                      , shootCommand              ), 
        QuickChatMenuItem('4', "Yee-haaaaaw!"                       , yeeHaCommand          ), 
        QuickChatMenuItem('I', "INFO..."               , infoMenu              ),
        QuickChatMenuItem('L', "TACTICAL..."               , tacticalMenu              )
    ]);

Hope this helps you get an idea of what you need to do to add chats. If you browse through the two files you can see most of this pretty easily yourself but this should give you a head start. Just be extremely careful with your syntax because a missing semi-colon or anything anywhere in either of these files will cause Allegiance to crash immediately and if you've done a lot of work since the last time you opened Allegiance it can be stressful trying to find the syntax error(s).

[juckto]

Thanks a lot for that aem. I'll start having a play around when I'm slightly more sober.

[juckto]

The first thing I've done is 'clean up' the quickchat.mdl file, so that instead of looking like this it looks like that:



Completely unnesscary and all, but I did it anyway. If anyone wants a copy of this 'tidy' code before I start adding my VC, then say the word.