Changing English female officer voice file

[Tingyun]

@Jack Rackham Has been kind enough to prepare a large amount of possible English female officer voice files: Mod Release - Now included in latest patch: Trade Winds, AI armor, weapons variety, captain rebalancing, etc | Page 6 | PiratesAhoy!

The current voice for English female officers doesn't really match most of the officer models. It is the same voice as the "what a distinguished young man" line, and sounds a bit like a peasant woman of 40+ years old.

Jack Rackham prepared several dozen possible greeting sounds, all of which have a more youthful quality and fit the character models better. I narrowed his posted voices down to 5, all of which seem very well suited for greetings from the current range of female character models.

I suggest we use the one I titled Eng_f_c_003 to replace the current one, so that female officers use it, and renname the current version of that file to Eng_f_c_0026, to keep for later use (possibly for older looking models). Then use the other four voice files, named Eng_f_c_022-025, to be put into the mix for other random npcs and such to use them as well in the future.

@Darby McGraw Can you have a listen and see if these sound good for the current character models? Obviously, it would be nice if we later vary it up so female officers don't all look like they are in their 20s, but seems best to get an appropriate voice file for most of them in the meantime.

If anyone wants this for their own game right now, you could just extract into RESOURCE/sounds/VOICE/ENGLISH

What might be nice later is if someone could look into enabling the other 4 included voice files for NPCs as well, Jack Rackham has given us a very good selection I think and it would be nice to have them all in the game.

Archive attached.

I won't be around after this for further discussion, just since Jack Rackham finished this I wanted to make sure to put it out there to be used before I leave. If people think I've made the wrong choice about which to make the new English female officer default, and you prefer one of the other four audio files included, I think all of them are pretty great and would support any of them. Eng_f_c_024 "Oh, yes?" seems like a very good alternate option to be the new Eng_f_c_003 as well.

EDIT: deleting archive, reuploading at bottom with Grey Roger's requested change to names.

 

[Darby McGraw]

@Darby McGraw Can you have a listen and see if these sound good for the current character models? Obviously, it would be nice if we later vary it up so female officers don't all look like they are in their 20s, but seems best to get an appropriate voice file for most of them in the meantime.

I totally agree with you in these points. The new voice files fit pretty good in my opinion. Many thanks to you and @Jack Rackham.

 

[Grey Roger]

They all do sound good. I've downloaded both @Tingyun's selection and @Jack Rackham's full set from the FTP site, and may play around with "Greetings_alias.ini" to incorporate some of them. Possible aliases to modify to include some of the new files are "Gr_Pirate_f", "Gr_Officer_f common" and "Gr_f_officer".

Rather than rename files, I'd suggest leaving existing voice files as they are and simply edit "Greetings_alias.ini" to use the new files instead. Looking through that file, the only references I can find to "Eng_f_c_003" aren't in the officer greetings, but in "Gr_greenford_citizen_01" and "Gr_Woman_English Citizen", so I'd be inclined to leave the file as it is. Rename the new "Eng_f_c_003.wav" to "Eng_f_c_026", then use that as one of the options in the officer greetings.

And with the work having been done to create those files, I'd rather like to use as many of them as possible. Hence the suggestion to add them to all the female officer greetings. Unless, that is, @Jack Rackham has specific uses in mind for any of them - are there any you don't want used for greeting aliases?

 

[Jack Rackham]

Feel free to use them the way you like. I agree with @GreyRoger, don't skip any sounds.
They can have been used already somewhere (for ex. in WoodesRogers) and except that more variation is good.

 

[Tingyun]

That's awesome @Grey Roger . Your plan sounds great, and I am very thankful you will be looking into making full use of @Jack Rackham 's great work!

I'm really not at all sure how officer greetings work, you seem to have a much better understanding of the system. I know basically all my english female officers used the 003 files, maybe because I tend to start in Greenford and hire them there. There is also use of it in the permanent crew members dialog file, not sure if that matters though.

The broader use of varied greetings idea of yours sounds great, and in particular, many of the townsfolk models could probably use access to some new greetings (seeing as how many of them draw from similar models to the officers). But I'm not sure of the system of how much work that would be.

Have a great week everyone, and thanks for looking into this Grey Roger!

 

[Grey Roger]

The greetings themselves are defined in "RESOURCE\INI\ALIASES\Greetings_alias.ini". The aliases are typically used in character definition files - look at any file in "PROGRAM\Characters\init", characters will have a line such as

ch.greeting = "Gr_Reynard Grueneveldt";

But you'll also find them used in "PROGRAM\DIALOG\Enc_Officer_dialog.c" - here's where it assigns greetings to female officers:

       switch(sti(NPChar.nation))
       {
         // no Spa or Por female voices! using a second Dutch one for now.
//         case ENGLAND: NPChar.greeting = "Gr_greenford_citizen_01"; break;
         case ENGLAND: NPChar.greeting = "Gr_f_officer_English"; break; // Grey Roger: replaces one citizen phrase with new audio files
         case FRANCE: NPChar.greeting = "Gr_Sylvie Bondies"; break;
         //case SPAIN: NPChar.greeting = "Gr_Jaoquin de masse"; break;
         case PIRATE: NPChar.greeting = "Gr_greenford_citizen_01"; break;
         case HOLLAND: NPChar.greeting = "Gr_Tanneken Oremans"; break;
         //case PORTUGAL: NPChar.greeting = "Gr_witness-dialog"; break;
//         NPChar.greeting = "Gr_f_officer"; // second Dutch
         NPChar.greeting = "Gr_Officer_f common";//MAXIMUS: replaces one boring phrase
       }

That's actually from the revised version attached here. See that commented out 'case ENGLAND' line? That's the one which I reckon was assigning "Gr_greenford_citizen_01" to your female officers - and "Greetings_alias.ini" defines that as only using "Eng_f_c_003.wav", which is why you kept getting it.


Put "Eng_f_c_003.wav" back the way it was and rename your alternative to "Eng_f_c_026.wav". That way English female citizens will still sound like citizens. Meanwhile, see the new 'case ENGLAND' line? That should now assign the new alias "Gr_f_officer_English" to female English officers. And in the attached "Greetings_alias.ini", that's defined thus:

[Gr_f_officer_English]
minDistance = 5.0
maxDistance = 50.0
volume = 1.0
name = VOICE\ENGLISH\Eng_f_c_022.wav
name = VOICE\ENGLISH\Eng_f_c_023.wav
name = VOICE\ENGLISH\Eng_f_c_024.wav
name = VOICE\ENGLISH\Eng_f_c_025.wav
name = VOICE\ENGLISH\Eng_f_c_026.wav

Which should mean any future female English officer will now take her choice out of those five files.

There's a similar block in "PROGRAM\DIALOG\prisoned_dialog.c" which I'm guessing is used if you're talking to an officer imprisoned in your hold. I don't know how an English female officer is going to end up there, but if she does, she'll use the new files too.

Incidentally, we could do with some Spanish and Portuguese female voices - there are comments in both "Enc_Officer_dialog.c" and "Greetings_alias.ini" to that effect, and it wasn't I who put them there. Some Indian voice files, both male and female, would also be useful, both for the regular Indians on Aruba and the ones on Isla Mona in the "Ardent" storyline.

 

[Tingyun]

@Grey Roger let me express sincere thanks for your wonderful work here, and my excitement at enjoying your modifications thoroughly once I can return and start playing again.

 

[Grey Roger]

Wait till you check that it works. If it does, then you can thank me.

 

[Tingyun]

@Grey Roger I look forward to doing so. Sad that work will delay it.

Here is the archive with the rennamed file you requested, so all audio is from 022 to 026.

 

[Tingyun]

@Grey Roger one quick thing I noticed (just had a moment to take a peak), you left this line in enc_officer
case PIRATE: NPChar.greeting = "Gr_greenford_citizen_01"; break;

but you replaced it in the prisoner one:
// case PIRATE: NPChar.greeting = "Gr_greenford_citizen_01"; break;
case PIRATE: NPChar.greeting = "Gr_Pirate_f"; break; // Grey Roger: no idea why female pirate prisoner used the old English citizen greeting, this one is the normal female pirate greeting

In case it was an oversight, I've made an adjusted file with your change implemented in enc_officer as well.

Anyway, thanks again, I enjoyed seeing how you made the changes even if I can't play with them yet.

 

[Tingyun]

Eck, the old female pirate sounds are actually kind of a mess--the elderly lady voice saying "my word, what a distinguished young man", and a french voice begging for her life. Not exactly what your pirate officers would greet you with. Maybe that is why they were disabled?

@Grey Roger I made some alterations to the female pirate assignments in the greeting file, to replace those with a couple that seemed appropriate from each nation.

For Spanish and Portuguese female voices though, as Grey Roger notes, we would need actual audio files for female voices of those nations. I don't suppose @Jack Rackham has any Spanish or Portuguese female voice greetings?

For the nations we do have audio files for, maybe over time we can apply this same approach Grey Roger implemented to the other voice files, creating random variation among officers? We have plenty of audio files that work I think, both female and male, for most nations.

Anyway, better turn to work now--Thanks so much for doing this @Grey Roger . I'll see everyone in a couple of weeks.

 

[Jack Rackham]

I don't suppose @Jack Rackham has any Spanish or Portuguese female voice greetings?

No, that was what I've got of female voices. But I've got 8949 other sounds in my library so if anyone
needs something I may have it. Also many item pictures ready for use. Just ask.

 

[Tingyun]

Here are the current versions of all the files in one post, for convenience (provided @Grey Roger agrees with the alterations I made above to his files?) Greetings goes in RESOURCE\INI\ALIASES\ , the two dialogues go in PROGRAM/DIALOGS, and the sound files go in RESOURCE/sounds/VOICE/ENGLISH

In that case, spanish and portugeese females would have to wait. Probably the next step is to repeat the work @Grey Roger did for female english officers to also be done for other sexes and nationalities--change the enc_officer and prisoned_dialog file to point them to a proper list of variations, and then expand those lists in Greetings_alias to incorporate more of the appropriate audio files already present in the game.

Because I think many male/female officers of most nationalities are currently only pointing to one sound, like the english female officers used to do, which is a bit boring and repetitive.

Anyway, that's it for me for the next couple of weeks, just didn't want to waste the great work @Jack Rackham did by leaving too soon. @Grey Roger thank you so much for taking this over and implementing it so well! Bye everyone!

 

[Grey Roger]

Have you any Indian voices? Male or female - at present we have none of either, which is why the ones at Aruba all sound Dutch, and the ones in Ardent's village on Isla Mona all sound Spanish, as does Ardent's Indian companion.

 

[Jack Rackham]

Have you any Indian voices?

Sorry not.
What I have of voices is:
male english,
male english with french, dutch, danish, spanish or russian accent.
english boy and girl.

 

[Grey Roger]

Eck, the old female pirate sounds are actually kind of a mess--the elderly lady voice saying "my word, what a distinguished young man", and a french voice begging for her life. Not exactly what your pirate officers would greet you with. Maybe that is why they were disabled?

I prefer the original French and Dutch ones. This is a pirate officer, either you've just boarded her ship or you've already recruited her. In the first case she's not going to salute and call you "sir". In the second case she's still probably not going to salute and call you "sir" either. (Especially not if you're a female character yourself. As for the English voices, I've been through @Jack Rackham's collection and picked a couple more which seem suitable, renamed them to "Eng_f_c_027.wav" and "Eng_f_c_028.wav", and used those in "Greetings_alias.ini". So, for your further entertainment, I present the following...

 

[Grey Roger]

Some of this seems to have been missed out in more recent versions of NH. Not any more - "Eng_f_c_022.wav", "Eng_f_c_023.wav", "Eng_f_c_024.wav", "Eng_f_c_025.wav" and "Eng_f_c_026.wav" are going into the next update. Female English officers will never sound the same again...

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

Some of this seems to have been missed out in more recent versions of NH. Not any more - "Eng_f_c_022.wav", "Eng_f_c_023.wav", "Eng_f_c_024.wav", "Eng_f_c_025.wav" and "Eng_f_c_026.wav" are going into the next update. Female English officers will never sound the same again...

Nice, better late than never!