Requirements for voiced notifications

[Histidine91]

e.g. stalling energy/excessing metal, units received, commander under attack, unit lost...

Two general items are required for this:

1. A list of all appropriate notifications. The list should also include items that don't actually exist in the current game but are desirable to have. The list could be events or actual texts.

2. A list of artistic and technical requirements - tone, emotion, length, terminology (if text is not fixed), loudness.

We have a guy who's offering to do VA work and this list is important if we decide to take him or some future person up on the matter.

[Anarchid]

It makes sense to develop and tune the artistic requirements first and then, once the result is satisfactory, to apply this style to the list generated.

My initial take for the artistic/technical requirements would be:

• Length: every notification line should be as short as possible and spoken fast.
• Tone: Emotional tone is focused, slightly engaged.
• Accent: The text should be pronounced as clear as possible, with neutral (or slightly robotic) accent.
• Writing/Terminology: The text should be reasonably easy to understand for new players who are not fully aware of all game concepts and terminology.

If possible, it would be a good idea to obtain this in multiple languages.

The notifications could use sound cues for their type (threat, economy, game flow), but that is a separate concern. However, different types of notification could have consistently altered tone: it would be a good idea to specify how, in that case.

A starting list of differences could look like this:

• Economy/Production: focused/neutral-positive tone, medium speed
• Military/Threat/Enemy action: focused/concerned, faster speech speed
• Game flow: focused, neutral, slower speech.

Post-processing voice effects could also help with making these categories distinct.

[Anarchid]

The list of lines or voiceable events that i've come up with so far, in order of priority and whether they already exist. The events that are expected to repeat often should be throttled by the widget that plays back such notifications; e.g. "units under attack" should only be played if units were not under attack for at least the previous minute.

Ones that i think are good:

• Game loaded (currently voiced as "Command Console Activated"
• Game started
• Game paused (currently voiced as "Warzone paused"
• Game unpaused (currently voiced as "Warzone active"
• Nuclear launch
• Commander under attack
• Commander upgraded
• Commander lost
• Units under attack
• Metal excess
• Energy stall
• Strider completed
• Strategic weapon completed
• Superweapon completed
• Nuke stockpiled
• Enemy strategic weapon activated (Bertha, Tactical Silo, Behemoth, activated means fired a shot in a visible way)
• Enemy superweapon activated (Zenith, DRP, Starlight. Nuke has its own separate thing.)
• We achieved overwhelming superiority
• Enemy achieved overwhelming superiority
• Antinuke system activated
• Antinuke down
• Victory
• Defeat
• Campaign mission primary objective completed / failed
• Campaign optional objective completed/failed

Ones that i think could be good but unsure:

• Unit lost
• Structure lost
• Enemy strider detected (also possibly named)
• Stealth attack (scythes, snipers, eraser armies)
• Air raid warning (enemy bombers or gunships detected)
• Ally commander lost
• Enemy commander destroyed
• Incoming (non-superweapon) artillery fire
• Attrition threshold: 50% with total casualties over 1000 (we are losing badly)
• Attrition threshold: 200% with total casualties over 1000 (we are crushing the enemy)
• Attrition rate restored to nearly equal from above (we are losing our tactical advantage)
• Attrition rate restored to nearly equal from below (we are regaining our tactical advantage)
• Enemy superweapon located
• Strider/Superweapon project with over 50% completion detected

Economy events which apply to the player could also have versions for allies, e.g. "Ally strider completed".

For the test run during which the guidelines and performance part of this ticket are tuned against each other, i would settle for the first three or four.

[Licho1]

For some events, like enemy superweapon detected or used, there could be a change of music to unique one.

[Anarchid]

This is a separate issue, one that was formerly discussed here and never reached any conclusion.

I guess an events system required for the notifications project could be reused for the music project. Additionally the amount of composer talent we have is even lower than our amount of VA talent.