Traffic: Speech and Events

One topic we should begin to discuss early is what kinds of speech and sound events do we want in the traffic release.

Specifically, the kind of speech that happens when the player attacks a ship, or a ship drops cargo, or a ship gets destroyed. EoC was a little thin in this area compared to Freelancer. The PS traffic was excellent, but without sound was not well noticed. Ships attacked stations without a word from anyone. Those annoying tugs never say a word, and then attack.

This thread is for discussing what kinds of events we want to cover, and how those might be created.

Here are a few of the main events:

Ship gets attacked

Ship gets killed

Ship does a “mayday” signal for police or other help (with response) to let player pirates know there is trouble coming.

Group of ships arrive at a station.
Station dialog with those ships. (This could be real dialog, like asking for docking and getting a response, or just the station announcing that hostiles are inbound).

There are a few other items come to mind:

We could have real requests for docking (especially now with pod loading). And these speech items could be used for the player and for NPC ships.

Similarly, when the player gets refueled, the fueling ship gives alittle speech item. “Fueling completed”. A similar item (but not the same item) could also be used for other ships that are refueling near the station. Which will make the station feel busier.

Another speech item for ship repairs. When the repair ship works on the player (or a wingmen) and completes, a little bit of speech could run.

We should also think about dialog bits for the pirate tolls and customs checkpoints. Rather than try to have speech cover the whole dialog (it is easy to sign ourselves up for years of work) I think it might be better to just put in the “Halt your ship” kind of piece. That will catch the players attention and get them focused on the text dialog. (sound reasonable?).

Freelancer had another speech item that would run when an AI ship targeted the player and planned to attack. It was kind of nice to hear before your ship was pounded. Wingcommander did the same thing.

One last item (but whole can of worms) we should choose if we are going to put some varity in these sound bytes. This would really help the whole cluster feel more varied. But it would also really increase the workload.

We could also vary the text based on the faction that owns the ship. I am not thinking 52 varieties of dialog. But we might consider a standard version, a Leung Empire version, and a Sultanate version. I think that would increase immersion.

Ok, I am sure more events will come to mind. Please post your ideas. Then we can sort the list to get the ones we will do for certain. And calculate out how much work that will be.

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