I am working up a mod to (very simply) add a significant number of professional grade PC voice sets to augment the originals that shipped with ToEE. This will have nothing to do with the old portrait and voice pack switchout functionality, but will instead install like a regular mod, permanently and without any switch-around-ery and the attendant headaches that went along with it. This is a reflection of the 'new way' for Co8, which will no longer involve portrait and voice 'packs.' There will be approximately 30 new voice sets. From where, you ask? I'm glad you asked. They will be almost entirely pulled from the first Neverwinter Nights game. It will also contain the two female sets I processed from IWD way back when for the original P&V packs. The reasons for this are that: I have NWN so I can easily get the voice audio (relatively easily anyway) and process it to a high fidelity standard. (The packs you can get from around the web - BG etc. - usually seem to be of marginal technical quality to me.) The voice acting contained therein is professionally done, so no cringe moments. NWN is a D&D game (also published by Atari of course, and from the near same time period as ToEE), and thus features all the necessary statements that a ToEE PC needs to be able to make. I would normally be more inclined not to rip off other games for ToEE material, but the plain fact in the case of voice acting is that good quality stuff is extremely hard to come by. In fact, it's basically only found in professional efforts, so there's really no choice but to expand by ripping off other games, if you want to expand at all, while maintaining a high quality standard. The primary use of NWN will hopefully limit the shotgun effect as well - i.e., they are all similarly themed so they should seem like they go together fairly well. STATS: Original ToEE voice sets: Female: 9 Male: 13 Additional NWN voice sets: Female: 13 Male: 15 Additional IWD voice sets: Female: 2 Total voice sets with the mod: Female: 24 Male: 28 Now to the poll question: each additional voice set will amount to approximately 1 MB of data. (Probably less, but we'll go with that estimate for safety's sake.) This would mean an additional payload to the CMF of around 30 MB. Personally I wouldn't think this a really big deal in today's age of widespread high speed internet, but I figured we should poll anyway. The question is, should we simply add the voice sets mod to the CMF patch, or should we offer it as an optional download? Just by way of reference and comparison, the cumulative size of all the other stuff I've got in the works will pretty easily outdistance the 30 MB figure, so the CMF is already going to get rather fat in the coming months anyway. Please participate in the poll, and feel free to discuss.
Personally I'm all for new content that increases my enjoyment of the game. Seeing the number of issues people (myself included) raise that end up being down to incorrectly downloaded / installed, having it all in one place should make it as idiot proof as possible. It also helps in troubleshooting if there is 1 standard configuration. I know, there never will be, but it can't hurt to try. I can't imagine anything in a voicepack that would cause a gamebreaking conflict, but just in case, having it all together should make this easier to find & fix.
Independant add-ons make for too many opportunities for this game to fubar on install. That is not what we need. Put it in the CMF - my broadband can handle it! (Even when I was on dial-up, I never ducked a d/l because of size issues - I just set up my d/l manager to run all night if need be.)
Yeah, this is the age of broadband all right: 30mb for something everyone wants? Small price to pay (says I).
Psh, go for the CMF. Personally, i would preferred to have instead 15 new PC voices, and 15 alloted to NPCs... the tower fight for example would be awesome with all the screaming, yelling and ranting :angry: The new release will be a complete success Gaear!
Thanks for the input, guys. It looks like we'll go CMF. :thumbsup: Well the PC sets don't preclude additional NPC sets, but of course we have to have actors to do those, as their lines are not generic. That seems extremely unlikely at this stage of the game, with Zorn and Co. gone away.
My mistake, i should have been more clear. I meant general NPCs, like farmers, temple soldier or witches. I assume the NWN voices have the tipical screams for battle, yelling etc, so maybe they could have those voiced. Anyways, is too late to ask for that kind of work.
Mod is up, see CMF thread for download link. 22.5 MB, not too bad in the end. As has always been the case with these things, there are instances where some of the lines may not seem entirely appropriate. This is unavoidable due to the fact that the audio wasn't recorded for ToEE specifically. (ToEE's PCs, for example, are far more concerned about encumbrance than any other PCs in the history of computer gaming.) I've minimized this side effect as much as possible though, so it shouldn't really be an issue for you. It's a shame the engine doesn't actually use a lot of these lines; it would be cool to see them in action some time. Thanks as always to Ted for his pioneering sound work with ToEE. Oh, and thanks for voting too. :thumbsup: Enjoy.
