Bridge Talk v1.2.0

Release notes

Chatter: choose which moments are spoken for

A new pane, Chatter, sits on the band between Missing takes and Settings; the Audio menu reaches it
too. It lists every moment the game raises, 262 of them, under twelve categories such as Combat and
danger, Docking and stations and Fleet carriers. Each moment has a slider switch.

A moment switched off stays quiet whichever voice is cast. It holds nothing back either: it starts no
cooldown and makes no machine voice line, so switching it back on lets the next one be heard straight
away. A moment switched off while it waits its turn is let go; a line already playing finishes. The
Status pane records each of these as off, so a silence still explains itself.

A header above the list stays in place while the list scrolls. It holds Switch all on, Switch all off
and a switch for each category; the list keeps each category's heading in view while its moments go
past. Anything that would change more than one moment at once asks first, naming how many.

The switches belong to no voice, so casting another voice leaves them as they are. They are kept in
the settings file for the next start.

Station traffic is a moment of its own

Messages from the station, settlement or carrier you are approaching (docking answers, welcomes and
no fire zone notices) used to be answered as any other message from a non player character. They now
answer a moment of their own, so they can be switched off on Chatter while other messages are still
spoken.

Every machine voice has lines for it. A recorded voice has no take for it until one is recorded, so
station traffic stays quiet with a recorded voice until then; the Missing takes pane lists it.

The website

The Bridge Talk site now carries a picture card showing its icon for any service that shows
one when a link to it is shared.

Bridge Talk v1.1.1

Release notes

Fixes

• Bridge Talk no longer closes when a line on the Audition pane finishes while no voice is cast. With
  nothing cast, the application ended as soon as the first auditioned line stopped playing, leaving
  no message on screen.

Bridge Talk v1.1.0

Release notes

Speaking in answer to the game

• Pirates get a reaction. The ship's voice speaks when a pirate arrives, scans your cargo, decides it
  isn't worth taking or finds none, starts an interdiction or declares its attack. Every version of
  those messages the game sends is recognised, whatever words it chose.
• A recorded voice has these six moments still to record. The Missing takes pane lists them with the
  folder each take belongs in; until then the voice stays quiet for them.

Setup

• The Install screen can put Bridge Talk in a folder of your choosing. Change opens a folder picker;
  the install goes into a BridgeTalk folder inside the one picked, so uninstalling never takes
  anything else with it.
• Setup refuses a folder that already holds other files and one your account cannot write to,
  saying why before anything is written. Updates, repairs and uninstalls follow wherever it was
  installed.

Bridge Talk v1.0.0

Release notes

Bridge Talk is a ship's voice for Elite Dangerous. It watches the game while you play; when something
worth saying happens, the voice you cast speaks for that moment. Cast one of its 28 machine voices and
your ship talks straight away; record a voice of your own whenever you like. It talks and never listens: there is no
microphone, no speech recognition and no voice command. It ships no recordings.

Machine voices

• 28 machine voices speak British and American English, female and male, each named for who it is,
  such as "Emma (British, female)".
• The Cast pane offers them in a panel for each accent and sex, the voices in each sorted by name.
  The one cast stands apart above the panels with how far its lines are made.
• Every moment has three lines written for it. A voice makes a line on your own machine the first time
  its moment happens, then keeps it, so nothing is downloaded and nothing is sent anywhere.
• Casting a machine voice has it speak within five seconds.
• A line that ends by calling you commander leaves a short, natural pause before the word rather than
  jumping in pitch.
• The Audition pane plays any machine voice before you cast it, making a line first where it has not
  been made yet.
• The notification area's Voice menu lists the machine voices after your recorded voices.

Speaking in answer to the game

• Follows the game's journal and its status file four times a second, starting from the moment it
  opens rather than replaying the session so far.
• Knows 256 moments, each named in the game's own words: a hyperspace jump beginning, docking
  granted, the landing gear going down and many more.
• Plays one take per moment. Where a voice holds several takes for a moment, one is picked at random
  and never the one that moment played last. A moment a recorded voice has no recording for stays
  quiet; nothing is played in its place.
• Decides what gets said. An alert cuts in over anything less urgent; a notice waits its turn; an
  idle remark gives way when something is already waiting. Many moments keep a minimum interval
  between two firings. A repeat arriving within 900 milliseconds is ignored.
• Nineteen takes in twenty begin within 150 milliseconds of their moment.
• Mute silences every answer to the game.

Recorded voices

• A recorded voice is one directory of recordings per person, inside a recordings directory you
  choose. A recording is found by its name. It can be a folder named for the moment, holding any
  number of takes under any file name; it can also be a single file named for the moment.
• Plays WAV, MP3, FLAC and Ogg.
• The Cast pane lists every recorded voice found. Casting one makes it the ship's voice; where the
  voice holds a recording for taking the part, it plays that unless the window is muted. The choice
  is remembered for the next run.
• The Moments spoken for dialog, opened from any recorded voice's row, lists every moment that voice
  has a recording for and every moment it has none for, whether it is cast or not.
• A voice's voice.toml can give the name it is shown by and a credit line.
• Refresh reads the recordings directory again, so a voice filled by hand appears without a
  restart.

Recording a voice

• Make folders on the Cast pane gives a new voice a folder for every moment, each already named.
  Where no recordings directory is chosen yet, the folders go in the application's own Recordings
  folder.
• The Missing takes pane lists every voice still missing a recording. For the one chosen it shows
  each missing moment with a line saying when it is heard; Open folder beside it opens the folder
  its recording belongs in.
• Record in any program you like, such as Audacity.

The window

• The Status pane shows four cards across the pane: the cast voice, Moments covered, the journal
  directory and the status file, each with a line beneath saying what it means. Moments covered says
  plainly when a figure short of the whole is nothing to worry about.
• Beneath the cards, the Status pane logs every decision with its reason, including the ones that
  produced no sound. It also says when no audio device was found and when the device ran out of audio
  before it was refilled.
• A strip along the foot of the window holds a donate button and a live indicator saying what Bridge
  Talk is doing: listening, the moment just played, lines being made, muted or what needs your
  attention.
• Volume and mute sit on the band at the top; the volume is remembered.
• Light and dark themes, a guide under Help, the licence and an About dialog.
• Every dialog closes from the cross in its header, from Escape or from a press outside it. On the
  question asked when the window is closed, each of those cancels the close and changes nothing.
• Keyboard navigation moves through the controls on one focus ring. The ring marks controls alone,
  never the panels holding them; the Status log shows where you are by its current row, which rests on
  the newest entry until you walk it.
• Settings chooses the journal directory, which takes effect at once. It also sets whether Bridge
  Talk starts when you sign in.
• A refusal says what went wrong in plain words, naming the file or folder once.

Running in the background

• Lives in the notification area, where its menu switches voice, opens the window, mutes and quits.
• Closing the window asks whether to keep it running in the notification area or to stop it.
• Can start when you sign in to Windows, waiting quietly in the notification area.
• Each run leaves a log in the application's own data folder, so a crash leaves its report behind.
• Command-line flags choose the recordings directory, the journal directory or the voice for one
  run, list the voices found, list what the chosen voice cannot say, run without a
  notification-area icon and start hidden.

Setup

• A setup program of its own, in the application's palette, light or dark to match Windows. It
  carries everything the machine voices are made from.
• Installs, updates, goes back a version, repairs, reinstalls and uninstalls, for your account
  only, so Windows never asks for administrator rights.
• Offers a Start Menu entry, a Desktop shortcut and starting at sign-in; Reinstall applies the boxes
  as they stand.
• Offers to close a running copy rather than failing part way.
• Uninstall removes the machine voices' made lines and can keep or forget your settings. Your
  recordings are never touched.