» Wed Mar 02, 2011 2:05 pm Dialogue Needs an Entire Overhaul and I Have a Large Plan For Maybe How to Do That: (I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I was intending to create my own thread on this shortly called the same things, so why not use this one, I guess, huh?)
1. Voice Acting Reduced Considerably & Spread Out Into New Areas ... Let's save energy, time, and money and cut costs on voice dialogue by reducing the dialogue to a variety of smaller tidbits seasoned throughout the game ... In item #2, I will explore how we can still have the flavor of voice dialogue without every line needing to be spoken. In this way, we can increase the number of voice actors, to get a stronger impression of their sound, style, and ambience without hogging up too much development time, DVD space, and other things. When we first meet new characters, they should speak for about the first few minutes of dialogue, to help establish their sound, their character, and such. But after that, the game should reduce their vocals to some random mumbling in the distant background and go back to using on-screen text. With each dialogue line written on the screen, there can be an enormous amount of audio emotes prepared such as: /laugh_jolly ... /laugh_tired ... /laugh_angry and so on all the way around the wheel of emotions for every kind of expression. In this way, the on-screen text should be seasoned well with real voice backing. Finally, the last line of dialogue they say to us after we close the dialogue window should be spoken out loud again, to round out the experience. Whatever the mood the written dialogue is trying to express should then be queued to that line of text. There will be more about this down below, but I want to keep the flow of the idea moving along. So ...
2. Get Rid of 1st Person & Third Person and Introduce Story Mode ... show a triple-pane window with Pane A: on the left (being the character you are speaking to), Pane B: in the middle (being all of the realtime text choices available) and Pane C: on the right (being your character) .... the imagery should be 3D and of your PC & NPC's from the waist up. All of the dialogue options available at the moment (updated in realtime) show up in the middle pane, Pane B (let's call it B for Between although I didn't do that on purpose, hahaha!) If a person is currently speaking and showing emotes, there mouth is moving to the words which are being displayed in large bold text in Pane D: the underpane, where the text is being shown. Each person sets up in their default text reading speed based on a setup engine that helps you determine your base speed through a variety of experiments that are recorded in your character. The reason the text is colorized word to word is because on each word there is a chance for the game engine to add a vocal emote like a laugh, sneer, snort, guffaw, snicker, sigh, etc.... so that as you are reading, you are hearing their actual tone and reaction to the words. Your imagination fills in the most of it, but some parts can be tweaked to the author's wishes. This is why there needs to be a lot of cool and various audio backing sounds to use here. And the total dialogue is still less than if they used all in-game dialogue everywhere. And then the Mod makers could use this system without having to record so much audio on their own, and Mods could be produced a lot faster, and the Skyrim too. Getting back on point: As the NPC is talking, sometimes Pane B will flash with a chance to interrupt them. Clicking on it can change the direction of the conversation in realtime, where you cut off what they were saying to say your own thing. If something important that was supposed to be said wasn't covered, the interruptor already knows which keywords existing further into the dialogue to add back into its engine to offer you to help continue the thread later, so you can move the story along, but in this way, you can truly interact with the dialogue in realtime, and feel like you have a say in how it goes at any time. If they are saying something very serious but you decide to "laugh" at them, they may become very angry with you, lowering their disposition, or they may find your laughter charming and end up breaking their stony seriousness for a rowsing & hearty laugh with you. And still get back onto the thread once you decide to press forward. Dialogue is, after all, where the story of the game comes from, and to have some guy standing there staring at your for hours at a time with no emotion is pathetic. I know they fixed it, and now have characters doing other things, but we're still talking a lot of voice dialogue that eats up space on the disc, cuts down on development time for other things, and also limits the amount of stories you can produce because you have to constantly be thinking about how much more you're going to have to pay the developer and how much space is left on the disc ....
The NPC's in this system could still go about their activities as you have already scripted and programmed them, but the camera for Pane A: would just go ahead and find the most interesting angle to film the NPC from, while your character could also be seen producing his own reactions if those reactions were already scripted into Pane B's realtime options for that moment's dialogue. Say a woman friend of yours was telling you how a man attacked her last night in the woods ... and just then you got a dialogue option popping up "Emote: Rage" ... and you clicked on it. You'd see your character's face change to a snarl, and your eyes widen with surprise to match your own feelings about hearing that news. Now the woman sees your reaction and tries to assure you: "NO, no, really, I'm fine! Don't worry. I clubbed his skull in with a tree branch and left him for the wild dogs." In which case you get two more options suddenly popping up in Pane B: 1) Laugh hysterically 2) Sigh w/ Relief ... and you watch your character reacting just as you want him/her to. By the way, Pane B is arranged vertically, all the options align vertically, 1-4. The options available are only 4 at any given time. With PC, you can click on the option, or press 1 to 4. On the console, you press the icon for one of the four directions of your D-Pad. So this system is already worked out to Todd's tastes and would be useful for all 3 of your chosen gaming systems, Mr. Todd Howard! Are you getting this Todd (wink) ?
3. External Chat with Visual Chat Bubbles ... For external dialogue, the game would use floating chat bubbles above the NPC's heads for the bulk of the dialogue, with only a few comments spoken to add flavor here and there and to give you a taste of their voice to use in your imagination when reading the remaining text. The text would only be visible from within the audio-range of their speaking level. If they are screaming, then the text is visible from a long way away, perhaps its even enlarged so that it can be read from a distance. If a person is speaking, you have to be within 2 to 10 feet to "hear" them (see the words in the bubble), otherwise you see the bubble but only a few dots indicating you hear some speaking but can't discern it. If you want to sneak into close range, you could "hear" (see the text) of of someone whispering to a friend, too, if successful at sneaking. This would allows thieves (from my other thread's idea) to overhear private conversations about interesting items people own being discussed leading to potential (self-obtained) quests to break in and steal these items. Another side benefit of this system are the Language applications, because now every race's language can be simply reduced to gibberish onscreen should you not have the requisite Languages in your character's arsenal. If you are intelligent, you can gain 2-3 additional languages, and you can learn more languages as you progress through the game is you apply some work into Language Acquisition. In that way, every race could speak their native tongue in the game, and the text-system could determine (based on your level for each Language) how much of the text you can decipher in realtime, and produce a bubble with a mixture of real words and jumbled asterisks and ampersans where you don't know what was said. This could spur you to learn more language, take more training, and work harder to craft your character's development as a mage, or theif, beyond simple thieving skills. Thieving and magic are often about needing and having to use vast intelligences, and those opportunities should be reserved for the people who worked hard to develop them, and be non available for warriors and such that did not build those skills and focused on their strength.
Now in addition to the above system, one has to factor in special abilities like Elven hearing. Elves would be able to see the dialogue (hear from great distances) of others at much further ranges. Of course the system would have to be built in a way to allow the text bubble to grow in size to display the text from further away and still be readable, but it could just be a mathematical scaling system and all of the text could programmed as assembly machine code, not based on fonts, so that the whole thing is mathematically expandible in real-time, meaning if you are running toward a NPC who is talking, his text will shrink and remain the same size no matter where you are in relation to them.
Also, mages may be able to use spells to augment their hearing, allowing them to spy on people very far away. Imagine being on the top of a hill not too far away, basically on top of the town, looking down into it and seeing two guards patrolling. You cast your "Augmented Hearing" spell, and suddenly you can see what the two guards are talking about from where you are way above them. That would be really cool for assassination quests, Thieve's Guild quests, and and just a number of things I can't even begin to imagine yet.
-----------------------
If anyone should happen to Reply to this post, please [snip] everything out but the part you want to mention to save room since I went on for so long, thanks.
1. Voice Acting Reduced Considerably & Spread Out Into New Areas ... Let's save energy, time, and money and cut costs on voice dialogue by reducing the dialogue to a variety of smaller tidbits seasoned throughout the game ... In item #2, I will explore how we can still have the flavor of voice dialogue without every line needing to be spoken. In this way, we can increase the number of voice actors, to get a stronger impression of their sound, style, and ambience without hogging up too much development time, DVD space, and other things. When we first meet new characters, they should speak for about the first few minutes of dialogue, to help establish their sound, their character, and such. But after that, the game should reduce their vocals to some random mumbling in the distant background and go back to using on-screen text. With each dialogue line written on the screen, there can be an enormous amount of audio emotes prepared such as: /laugh_jolly ... /laugh_tired ... /laugh_angry and so on all the way around the wheel of emotions for every kind of expression. In this way, the on-screen text should be seasoned well with real voice backing. Finally, the last line of dialogue they say to us after we close the dialogue window should be spoken out loud again, to round out the experience. Whatever the mood the written dialogue is trying to express should then be queued to that line of text. There will be more about this down below, but I want to keep the flow of the idea moving along. So ...
2. Get Rid of 1st Person & Third Person and Introduce Story Mode ... show a triple-pane window with Pane A: on the left (being the character you are speaking to), Pane B: in the middle (being all of the realtime text choices available) and Pane C: on the right (being your character) .... the imagery should be 3D and of your PC & NPC's from the waist up. All of the dialogue options available at the moment (updated in realtime) show up in the middle pane, Pane B (let's call it B for Between although I didn't do that on purpose, hahaha!) If a person is currently speaking and showing emotes, there mouth is moving to the words which are being displayed in large bold text in Pane D: the underpane, where the text is being shown. Each person sets up in their default text reading speed based on a setup engine that helps you determine your base speed through a variety of experiments that are recorded in your character. The reason the text is colorized word to word is because on each word there is a chance for the game engine to add a vocal emote like a laugh, sneer, snort, guffaw, snicker, sigh, etc.... so that as you are reading, you are hearing their actual tone and reaction to the words. Your imagination fills in the most of it, but some parts can be tweaked to the author's wishes. This is why there needs to be a lot of cool and various audio backing sounds to use here. And the total dialogue is still less than if they used all in-game dialogue everywhere. And then the Mod makers could use this system without having to record so much audio on their own, and Mods could be produced a lot faster, and the Skyrim too. Getting back on point: As the NPC is talking, sometimes Pane B will flash with a chance to interrupt them. Clicking on it can change the direction of the conversation in realtime, where you cut off what they were saying to say your own thing. If something important that was supposed to be said wasn't covered, the interruptor already knows which keywords existing further into the dialogue to add back into its engine to offer you to help continue the thread later, so you can move the story along, but in this way, you can truly interact with the dialogue in realtime, and feel like you have a say in how it goes at any time. If they are saying something very serious but you decide to "laugh" at them, they may become very angry with you, lowering their disposition, or they may find your laughter charming and end up breaking their stony seriousness for a rowsing & hearty laugh with you. And still get back onto the thread once you decide to press forward. Dialogue is, after all, where the story of the game comes from, and to have some guy standing there staring at your for hours at a time with no emotion is pathetic. I know they fixed it, and now have characters doing other things, but we're still talking a lot of voice dialogue that eats up space on the disc, cuts down on development time for other things, and also limits the amount of stories you can produce because you have to constantly be thinking about how much more you're going to have to pay the developer and how much space is left on the disc ....
The NPC's in this system could still go about their activities as you have already scripted and programmed them, but the camera for Pane A: would just go ahead and find the most interesting angle to film the NPC from, while your character could also be seen producing his own reactions if those reactions were already scripted into Pane B's realtime options for that moment's dialogue. Say a woman friend of yours was telling you how a man attacked her last night in the woods ... and just then you got a dialogue option popping up "Emote: Rage" ... and you clicked on it. You'd see your character's face change to a snarl, and your eyes widen with surprise to match your own feelings about hearing that news. Now the woman sees your reaction and tries to assure you: "NO, no, really, I'm fine! Don't worry. I clubbed his skull in with a tree branch and left him for the wild dogs." In which case you get two more options suddenly popping up in Pane B: 1) Laugh hysterically 2) Sigh w/ Relief ... and you watch your character reacting just as you want him/her to. By the way, Pane B is arranged vertically, all the options align vertically, 1-4. The options available are only 4 at any given time. With PC, you can click on the option, or press 1 to 4. On the console, you press the icon for one of the four directions of your D-Pad. So this system is already worked out to Todd's tastes and would be useful for all 3 of your chosen gaming systems, Mr. Todd Howard! Are you getting this Todd (wink) ?
3. External Chat with Visual Chat Bubbles ... For external dialogue, the game would use floating chat bubbles above the NPC's heads for the bulk of the dialogue, with only a few comments spoken to add flavor here and there and to give you a taste of their voice to use in your imagination when reading the remaining text. The text would only be visible from within the audio-range of their speaking level. If they are screaming, then the text is visible from a long way away, perhaps its even enlarged so that it can be read from a distance. If a person is speaking, you have to be within 2 to 10 feet to "hear" them (see the words in the bubble), otherwise you see the bubble but only a few dots indicating you hear some speaking but can't discern it. If you want to sneak into close range, you could "hear" (see the text) of of someone whispering to a friend, too, if successful at sneaking. This would allows thieves (from my other thread's idea) to overhear private conversations about interesting items people own being discussed leading to potential (self-obtained) quests to break in and steal these items. Another side benefit of this system are the Language applications, because now every race's language can be simply reduced to gibberish onscreen should you not have the requisite Languages in your character's arsenal. If you are intelligent, you can gain 2-3 additional languages, and you can learn more languages as you progress through the game is you apply some work into Language Acquisition. In that way, every race could speak their native tongue in the game, and the text-system could determine (based on your level for each Language) how much of the text you can decipher in realtime, and produce a bubble with a mixture of real words and jumbled asterisks and ampersans where you don't know what was said. This could spur you to learn more language, take more training, and work harder to craft your character's development as a mage, or theif, beyond simple thieving skills. Thieving and magic are often about needing and having to use vast intelligences, and those opportunities should be reserved for the people who worked hard to develop them, and be non available for warriors and such that did not build those skills and focused on their strength.
Now in addition to the above system, one has to factor in special abilities like Elven hearing. Elves would be able to see the dialogue (hear from great distances) of others at much further ranges. Of course the system would have to be built in a way to allow the text bubble to grow in size to display the text from further away and still be readable, but it could just be a mathematical scaling system and all of the text could programmed as assembly machine code, not based on fonts, so that the whole thing is mathematically expandible in real-time, meaning if you are running toward a NPC who is talking, his text will shrink and remain the same size no matter where you are in relation to them.
Also, mages may be able to use spells to augment their hearing, allowing them to spy on people very far away. Imagine being on the top of a hill not too far away, basically on top of the town, looking down into it and seeing two guards patrolling. You cast your "Augmented Hearing" spell, and suddenly you can see what the two guards are talking about from where you are way above them. That would be really cool for assassination quests, Thieve's Guild quests, and and just a number of things I can't even begin to imagine yet.
-----------------------
If anyone should happen to Reply to this post, please [snip] everything out but the part you want to mention to save room since I went on for so long, thanks.
Interesting ideas. I'd be used to that kind of style too considering it is very similar to the Way of the Samurai series.
However, if they could manage to get as many actors as Obsidian did for New Vegas, I'd be pretty happy with fully voiced NPC's everywhere. They got a good variety of actors, and even when they used the same actor more than once, they directed them to speak differently for each character, adding a lot of personality. I'm not use people would like to see bubbles popping up, not just because they don't like to read, but also because it would break the immersion.
