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Game Forum / Role Playing Games / EverQuest / October 2004Tell me about the voices
Way back in the musty days of summer, one of the things we were speculating about regarding EQ2 was the inclusion of lots of voiced material for the NPCs. At the time, I said that if there was voice only content that this would be a game killer for me; I play with the sound off, which for EQ means I miss out on a few cue's as to mob movement out of my line of sight, but not much else. If I -have- to listen to the game in order to be able to do quests etc, then its right out. Perhaps I've missed it, but I haven't seen anyone say whether the voices in EQ2 are mandatory, or just background and the occaisional echo of written text. I mean, if there's a voice actor reading aloud the stuff thats showing up in the dialog box, I won't care since I won't have to listen, what with the sound on my speakers being turned off and all. Grage >Way back in the musty days of summer, one of the things we were >speculating about regarding EQ2 was the inclusion of lots of voiced [quoted text clipped - 13 lines] > >Grage No, it's all repeated in the chat box. Plus the quest journal is actually more verbose that the text/speech you receive when getting a quest, so you don't have to worry about missing anything in that regard, either.  SignatureBunnies aren't just cute like everybody supposes ! They got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses ! And what's with all the carrots ? What do they need such good eyesight for anyway ? Bunnies ! Bunnies ! It must be BUNNIES ! > >Way back in the musty days of summer, one of the things we were > >speculating about regarding EQ2 was the inclusion of lots of voiced [quoted text clipped - 20 lines] > > -- There's also an option to adjust the volume of voiceovers independent of other sound settings, for those who aren't in love with the voiceovers but otherwise want sound. It would be nice if there was a choice to just option out of voiceovers altogether and not have to download them when there are changes. > No, it's all repeated in the chat box. Plus the quest journal is > actually more verbose that the text/speech you receive when getting a > quest, so you don't have to worry about missing anything in that > regard, either. Good news then, now, can I actually turn the voices and other sounds off in my options so I don't have to spend CPU cycles on them either? Although I usually don't do that in EQ, so's I can turn the speakers up to hear a Ding every now and then... it would be nice, if the voice acting means slowing down a game thats' pushing the envelope of barely playable on my outdated early 2004 machine. > At the time, I said that if there was voice only content that this would > be a game killer for me; I play with the sound off, which for EQ means I > miss out on a few cue's as to mob movement out of my line of sight, but > not much else. If I -have- to listen to the game in order to be able to > do quests etc, then its right out. You really do a disservice to yourself by playing with the sound off on almost any game. Games with well-done sound add a whole new depth and immersion factor to the game. SignatureRob Berryhill >>At the time, I said that if there was voice only content that this would >>be a game killer for me; I play with the sound off, which for EQ means I [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > almost any game. Games with well-done sound add a whole new depth and > immersion factor to the game. Its a case of different strokes for different folks; I find the incredibly repetitive nature of sound in every game I've played downright insanity provoking after the first few repetitions. I've probably got over a thousand hours of EQ playing under my belt, if I had to do it with the sound on I'd have long since given up the computer and started running from here to california and back I also react poorly to musac tapes running in businesses, to top 40 radio (not just to whats on, but to the fact that tomorrow I'll be hearing essentially the same songs in a different order, and so on the next day and the next, till next week when a couple songs are dropped and a couple added to the "rotation" If you can show me a game where the sounds are different, not repetitive, during all the hours I spend playing it, I'll admit that I'd like to be able to "hear" the ambient noises and to be able to use those sound cues that tell me mobs are doing something out of my line of sight and so on. EQ isn't that game; even if I could ignore the zone music and the attack music, the -same- sound every single blessed time I cast a given spell (do you have any idea how many thousands of times I've cast CHeal, for one?... or think of my bard, singing 5 songs every cycle? GAH!) would just drive me around the bend, I'd be jumping off the Eastern Wastes bridge... oh wait I do that anyway. I'd turn on the sound for a splash noise when I hit the surface :) Only game I can recall where I didn't get that effect was Neuromancer, with a long enough DEVO soundtrack and short enough gameplay that it didn't really get old. Grage Grage "Lance Berg" <emporer@dejazzd.com> wrote in message > I also react poorly to musac tapes running in businesses, to top 40 > radio (not just to whats on, but to the fact that tomorrow I'll be > hearing essentially the same songs in a different order, and so on the > next day and the next, till next week when a couple songs are dropped > and a couple added to the "rotation" Muzak. Check out www.ckua.com and pipe them in via your computer. A very wide range of music, from classical to The Arrogant Worms to celtic folk music. A couple of times my boss has asked me if I'm channel-hopping. No, they just play a very eclectic selection. > "Lance Berg" <emporer@dejazzd.com> wrote in message > [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > A couple of times my boss has asked me if I'm channel-hopping. No, they > just play a very eclectic selection. My work environment consists of a combination metalshop/forge, my music comes from a pair of industrial strength ear protectors with a built in radio. When I get bored with one station's loop I switch to another, but I dont have any way to feed in anything from an external source of my own choosing. Well, I suppose I -could- wire together a small local broadcast and run that off a tape deck or something with a long cable... any tape deck/CD player actually inside the shop succumbs to the vibrations, heavy duty magnetic fields, 2000 degree heat range, and general layers of metal dust within a month. I also looked into an MP3player (no moving parts) and those little ear buds, but it turns out they annoy me, sticking in my ears like that... and I'm not so sure the player would last all that long either. The earphone/safety gear things seem to be holding up well, two years so far, but they are way up there on top of my head instead of down on my waist in the stream of sparks. None of which has any bearing on walking into a Sears or thru the mall or worse, contemplating actually -working- in an environment like that! Nah, I'd rather keep making swords for a living. Grage > Nah, I'd rather keep making swords for a living. > > Grage I still think that's cool! Do you have any qualification for that? Blacksmith / Swordsmith? How many in the state / country? Hard trade to get into? Did you always want to be one or did your job evolve into it? I'd guess you'd be a pretty rare breed now.... T. >>Nah, I'd rather keep making swords for a living. >> [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > in the state / country? Hard trade to get into? Did you always want to be > one or did your job evolve into it? I'm a professional. That means I do it for a living, which is to my way of thinking the best possible qualification. If I do a bad job, I can't support myself at it. No degree or certificate in the world can change that, my customers aren't interested in paper, they want steel. Lifetime warantee against breakage in combat, that helps keep me honest, can't cheat when I know if I do I'll be having to do it over, and do it right this time. I know quite a few blacksmiths and farriers, and some knife makers, but not many sword makers at all, its a bit of a pain at times, I get to hear about damascus and O2 and 1095 till its coming out of my ears, as though characteristics appropriate for katanas, socket wrenches, and hunting knives are really ideal for broadswords and claidhmore. I dropped out of colledge a year from completing a double major; philosophy and computer science with a minor in math, hitchiked around the country till I stumbled across a renaissance festival, started working hawking food and cooking, got a manager position, became half owner of a food business, then added the forge and a fight game, and then got out of the food business. I started forging weapons just hanging out with a friend during the week, and took over his business when his CPA business got to be a full time affair; 9 years later I'm still having a great time at it, I suppose if people stopped buying swords I could always finish my degree and go back to programming supercomputers to solve modal logic problems via brute force tautologies and helping liason between the DOE and the FSU high energy physics department... which is what I'd been doing to pay for school before I dropped out. (I might be a little out of date on the programming part though, they come up with anything new since 1986?) > I'd guess you'd be a pretty rare breed now.... Oh, I forgot to mention the 6 months in the CIA, if you call the personnel department they'll tell you I worked for the personnel department, which of course is the same thing they'll say of every other former "company man" who's record is public. My father's career was far more varied and interesting than mine, though; forest ranger, BS in cartography, Jump Sergeant, CIA (personnel department, says here), State department, consultant, ship's captain; hopefully there will be some more sudden left turns in the next 30 years, hate to let the side down. Grage > I know quite a few blacksmiths and farriers, and some knife makers, but > not many sword makers at all, its a bit of a pain at times, I get to > hear about damascus and O2 and 1095 till its coming out of my ears, as > though characteristics appropriate for katanas, socket wrenches, and > hunting knives are really ideal for broadswords and claidhmore. Neat=) our roommate is a farriesse, Phlip Alderton, she hangs out on The Forge list most of the time. She is working on recreating parts of the Mastermyer tool box [and I have no idea how to spell it=)] > I dropped out of colledge a year from completing a double major; > philosophy and computer science with a minor in math, hitchiked around ... > time affair; 9 years later I'm still having a great time at it, I > suppose if people stopped buying swords I could always finish my degree [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > pay for school before I dropped out. (I might be a little out of date > on the programming part though, they come up with anything new since 1986?) Well...for one thing, those "supercomputers" you worked on back then were quite a bit less powerful than the typical EQ player's gaming machine today. :-) Signature--Tim Smith > Well...for one thing, those "supercomputers" you worked on back then were quite > a bit less powerful than the typical EQ player's gaming machine today. :-) Nah, not quite, give it another couple years before you say that; we had a theoretical high end speed about the equivalent of 4 Ghz (Cyber 205)... although a more normal operating speed would admittedly be more on the order of 0.34Gz... but then I'll warrent most desktops are also normally not performing at their theoretical optimum speed. Too, of course that was with a mere 32 meg of memory, which would be put to shame by any desktop today, same for the 7.2 gig disk memory; we actually had to run a Cyber 835 as a file server, which would still only extend that to an anemic 20 gig. It was admittedly a lot more impressive in '85 Grage > EQ isn't that game; even if I could ignore the zone music and the attack > music, the -same- sound every single blessed time I cast a given spell [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > bridge... oh wait I do that anyway. I'd turn on the sound for a splash > noise when I hit the surface :) As you say, different strokes. I love having the sound on exactly because it IS the same sound for the same thing, and I can learn to notice those sounds when I'm otherwise distracted. So if I've forgotten to switch spell sets and start to cast a buff instead of a nuke, the sound often warns me that it's the wrong type of spell. Indeed, I recently came close to dying because I *had* turned the sound down. I was doing a bunch of faction quest turn-ins in Qeynos and turned down the sound so the repeated trumpets wouldn't wake my daughter. :-) I thought I was safe because all the nearby NPCs were at least dubious to me, but it turned out there was a scowling one lurking nearby, and he came up behind me while my attention was on the quest NPC. Fortunately I had the sound turned down, but not off, because it was the "me taking damage" sound that tipped me off in time to feign death. On the other hand, I admit I've long since tired of listening to my druid barking when I fight in wolf form.... -- Don. --------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Sukrasisx, Monk 45 on E. Marr Note: If you reply by mail, -- Terrwini, Druid 34 on E. Marr I'll get to it sooner if you -- Wizbeau, Wizard 32 on E. Marr remove the "hyphen n s" -- http://www.iCynic.com/~don > Only game I can recall where I didn't get that effect was Neuromancer, > with a long enough DEVO soundtrack and short enough gameplay that it > didn't really get old. There was a Neuromancer game? More detail, please? >>Only game I can recall where I didn't get that effect was > [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > > More detail, please? Long time ago, I think on the C64 I remember it only vaguely, I think it was a graphic adventure sort of thing, where you woke up in Chiba city, face down in a plate of spaghetti with your memory gone, and had to wander around, working up your computer, cybergear, skillsofts and software, hacking into mainframes and so on, trying to solve the mystery of your own existance. Eventually you got to the point where you could actually log into a kind of cyberspace, so the game became something completely different, sort of a tron environment, and in there you had to defeat an AI, something like that. It wasn't a huge game, a few hours worth of play... and as I said, it had a DEVO soundtrack, written exclusively for the game I think; you did end up hearing some repetition, but there was a lot of sound material and the game wasn't all -that- long, so it wasn't too annoying. Grage Googled up an ad for Neuromancer: http://www.lemon64.com/reviews/view.php?gameID=1780 "Lance Berg" <emporer@dejazzd.com> wrote in message > Googled up an ad for Neuromancer: > > http://www.lemon64.com/reviews/view.php?gameID=1780 That's the game. Mine's the PC version, however. Still have the box and everything. I should try reactivating one of my 5.25 drives, see if I can still run the game. > "Lance Berg" <emporer@dejazzd.com> wrote in message > [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > everything. I should try reactivating one of my 5.25 drives, see if I can > still run the game. The site with that ad has something to do with a C64 emulator on the PC, didn't see any info on getting it -or- the game though. A PC version would be more likely to work. I managed to get someone to email me a copy of SWOTL a few years ago, since I had it only on ancient 5.25's and no drive for that, some of the expansions I also owned came on 3.5 floppies... but I got the others emailed as well. Amazing how tiny games once were, emailing them on a 56K modem connection was no trouble at all. Thing is, some of the old games had no way of adjusting the clock speed, they ran flat out as fast as they could. You can imagine what SWOTL was like running roughly 100 times as fast as intended! Fortunately there was a way of turning the speed down, or a hack that let me do it, I forget which, but it was fun times again, crappy graphics but I still say thats the best flight simulator -game- ever (There are certainly better flight simulators, but they aren't as much fun) Nueromancer run on a 1.9gig machine instead of a C64 might be a little... blurred. Grage > > There was a Neuromancer game? > > > > More detail, please? > > > Long time ago, I think on the C64 Well, crap...here I was thinking I missed a game from last year or something. I was just imagining the cutting-edge graphics and the cityscapes and the trip up the well to Freeside and cutting a deal with W'mute and... Oh, well...nevermind :-). "Copacetic Ascetic" <groovy@monastary.com> wrote in message > "Lance Berg" <emporer@dejazzd.com> wrote in message > > Only game I can recall where I didn't get that effect was [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > > More detail, please? Oh, yes, and I still have it on 5.25 diskettes. 16-colour side-mover. You wander around, doing quests, and trying to beat the AIs that are trying to... do something, I've forgotten what. You pick up a 'deck, you can jack into the matrix and go find databases which you try to hack. That's where you meet and fight the AIs. The warez you can buy are limited; you get better warez by hacking the databases. That's also where you find clues to your next target. I ran into an interesting bug in that game, and actually called up the makers at the time. Found out that what I had really was a bug, and a weird one. If you're fighting one particular AI, it sounds like Dirty Harry. If you fire Arrest Warrant 1 at it, it dies instantly. It's the only AI I found with a weakness like that. Also, in the spirit of the game, I hacked it. Found out where it stored my personal and bank cash, then modded the values to give me max in both. The world's a better place when you're a multi-billionaire. Quoth Ken Andrews: >> There was a Neuromancer game? >> [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > you can jack into the matrix and go find databases which you try to > hack. That's where you meet and fight the AIs. Coincidentally, I just finished re-reading Neuromancer last week (on my PDA... I may yet wean myself off paper books altogether). I think I liked it even better than the first time around. "Sure, mon, I ain't the Rastafarian Navy". But on the whole, I think that my favourite William Gibson book is his latest, 'Pattern Recognition'; absolutely wonderful, even if not * exactly* SF. SignatureVenerable Hanrahan, Storm Warden (Human), Fennin Ro Molgarin, 40-odd Monk (Human), Fennin Ro "Bah!" "David Navarro" <david@alcaudon.com> wrote in message > Coincidentally, I just finished re-reading Neuromancer last week (on my > PDA... I may yet wean myself off paper books altogether). I think I > liked it even better than the first time around. "Sure, mon, I ain't the > Rastafarian Navy". No, no, no...it's even funnier w/the right quote, "I and I be the Rasta- farian navy" ("I and I" being ganja-speak for "you & me.") :-) > But on the whole, I think that my favourite William Gibson book is his > latest, 'Pattern Recognition'; absolutely wonderful, even if not * > exactly* SF. ALL of his books have been good, but "The Straylight Run" in Neuro- mancer blew me away the first time I read it. He just makes it sound so realistic, and you can actually imagine the logos for Disony (Disney + Sony multi-nat) and get buzzed on Case's dope :-). Sorry to be off-topic, found a copy of the PC game online, and will try it out this weekend. Quoth Copacetic Ascetic: > No, no, no...it's even funnier w/the right quote, "I and I be the > Rasta- > farian navy" ("I and I" being ganja-speak for "you & me.") :-) Christ, and me thinking it was an OCR error on the text. Live and learn. Of course, the first time I read it, I didn't even know what a Rastafarian was. :) SignatureVenerable Hanrahan, Storm Warden (Human), Fennin Ro Molgarin, 40-odd Monk (Human), Fennin Ro The post above may contain opinions. > Perhaps I've missed it, but I haven't seen anyone say whether the voices > in EQ2 are mandatory, or just background and the occaisional echo of > written text. I mean, if there's a voice actor reading aloud the stuff > thats showing up in the dialog box, I won't care since I won't have to > listen, what with the sound on my speakers being turned off and all. As stated by others, the voiceovers are optional and the sound controls offer considerable granularity. On just volume, for example, you can independently adjust for: 1) Master Volume 2) Music Volume 3) Combat Music Volume 4) Voice Volume 5) 3D Sound effects volume 6) Ambient Volume 7) Interface sounds volume There are lots of other strange options, like a choice to hear voiceovers only the first time they're uttered, setting the maximum footstep distance, etc. Smed was right when he said there was an unprecedented level of control offered over options, the options dialog is pretty complete, giving you control over a lot of other things like the targeting rings, targeting highlights over mobs and players. And to answer your first question, choice of hearing voiceovers without chat bubbles, chat bubbles without voiceovers and/or both. But I'm with Rob Berryhill on this one, I think you're denying yourself some real fun by missing out on the huge investment Sony's made on the audio side. I *still* get a kick out of hearing the centaurs in Thundering Steppes speak to me with their snooty aristocratic accents while we're fighting: "You'd best finish me off, 2-leg, for I shall not hesitate to finish you!" LOL! SignatureWinterfury Dwarven Mystic & Alchemist Loyal Citizen of Qeynos Descendant of the Elder Winterfury Thunderwolf Barbarian Prophet of The Tribunal Retired Citizen of Firiona Vie >>Perhaps I've missed it, but I haven't seen anyone say whether the voices >>in EQ2 are mandatory, or just background and the occaisional echo of [quoted text clipped - 29 lines] > "You'd best finish me off, 2-leg, for I shall not hesitate to finish you!" > LOL! This sounds very interesting actually, if I can set it to voiceover ONCE, and the various music volumes off... I don't mind the noises, its the repetition that gets to me. Clever line = fun. Clever line for the third time = boring. Clever line 50 times later? Camo paint and Exlax Tipped blowgun darts ready, I'm off to seek revenge on whoever did that damn voiceover, the author of the lines, and every SOE employee who could have had it stopped but didn't... including the janitor who could have passed a large electromagnet over the storage media. Grage > Clever line = fun. Clever line for the third time = boring. Clever line > 50 times later? Camo paint and Exlax Tipped blowgun darts ready, I'm off > to seek revenge on whoever did that damn voiceover, the author of the > lines, and every SOE employee who could have had it stopped but didn't... > including the janitor who could have passed a large electromagnet over the > storage media. Heh, grouch. Actually, those lines they speak out are on some kind of random timer that comes up maybe once every third battle or so. I still enjoy hearing them when they do, and it's one of probably a pool of 3 or 4 that cycle, so you don't really hear the same line but every 1 in 10 or so. Still, I hear your point and have had a similar reaction when I've encountered really obnoxious ones. SignatureWinterfury Dwarven Mystic & Alchemist Loyal Citizen of Qeynos Descendant of the Elder Winterfury Thunderwolf Barbarian Prophet of The Tribunal Retired Citizen of Firiona Vie |
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