You're grasping so tightly at straws it's embersssing.

How does having a silent PC in mods equate to no dialogue check? Like, seriously. You're just making nonsense up at this point.

If you're making a quest mod for 4, just do what you've been doing the entire time. It's not going to be seemless, but it wasn't ever in the past games since suddenly all npcs lacked voiced.

You could have generic things said, but claiming this is going to be a jarring experience when it has been a problem since oblivion is just ignorant whining.

If I hop on steam and play any OB mod, I go from fully voiced npcs to those who have me reading all lines, and it works. It's not a jarring experience because I am able to distinguish between the base game and a user created add on.

I'm not expecting anyone to record their voice, and it doesn't take away from the experience at all. It isn't making the transition less seemless because there's no way a guy working alone can voice an entire mod without putting in tons of works.

If anyone is expecting the average mod maker to provide voice acting, you're being unreasonable. It's been this way for over a decade. The PC will be silent this time, and it's going to be different than in the base game, but it's no different than npcs suddenly becoming mute.

That was true for Oblivion but that was years ago and modding has changed since then. If you want to have a successful and popular mod, modders can and do spend an extraordinary amount of time writing, recruiting voice actors, recording and inserting hundreds and thousands of lines. Mods like Interesting NPCs, Inigo, Niner, Willow, Vilja, Mothership Zeta Crew, Boom tho the Moon, etc wouldn't have been half as popular with unvoiced lines. Players don't want to read these days and they will let you know your mod svcks because it's not voiced. Players as well as modders judge their mod by whether or not it injects seamlessly into the game. The biggest compliment I can receive is to be told that someone didn't realize they were playing a mod when they found my content.

With a voiced player character and the dialogue wheel as it stands currently, creativity will be stifled. If I can't find the dialogue I need to splice together (and splicing lines is a huge pain to begin with), then players will know they're playing a mod when they find one of my quests and their PC suddenly lost his/her voice.

"But they recorded 12,000 lines so there will be plenty of stuff to work with. Stop whining."

Sure they recorded a lot of stuff but there's no way they can cover everything. Someone else mentioned Mothership Zeta Crew and the Terran Starship Command as prime examples of lines/words that won't exist. Say Bethesda doesn't include low Intelligence dialogue and someone wants to mod that in for their mod. Where are you going to find lines to splice to make an acceptable version of "Hurr durr, me likey booberry ice cweam!" (and be in the proper dumbhead tone of voice and not in the tone we heard in the E3 gameplay)?

It's a challenge that some modders will find ways to work around but others will try and fail while still others never try at all and stay with older games without those limitations.

How many unique questions will you ask the companion?

best solution is to recycle the dialogue with another companion or npc.

Only problem is then you try do mod in dialogues who is not in the game and you can hardly tweak existing ones to like romance will be an problem.

Think about what you say first. If the modder writes a scenario, and includes a speech or intelligence check ~that's a dialog option, and the PC has to speak it. It's no good to have an intelligence check spout out "Yep", "nope", or "I think you're right". It demands a comment by the PC that is relevant to the topic, one that shows insight into the matter.
That won't be in the game assets.

Think about what you say first. It is only the PCs that require a specific voice, anyone can voice a generic NPC for their quests.

...And? What's your point?

I'd guess that the modder, if they really wanted the protagonist to be voiced, would go through and splice together words. If you have the time, and go through spoken line after spoken line, you could probably find enough spoken dialogue that sounds like it could go together to make a pretty decent splice, unless the protagonist doesn't have a lot of lines in the first place. But if you really think about it, even in FO3 and FO:NV, the majority of the time the protagonist response lines weren't that long in the first place, so if they use some generic "Yeah" "Okay" "Lets do it!" sort of stuff, I wouldn't have too much issue with that.

And I just thought of something, if the modder really wanted to go further, all they have to do is look for other appearances that the voice actor appeared on, like other games, tv shows, etc. etc., and they can use those as extra sources. So at some point, I expect someone to mod the female protagonist with "I WILL DESTROY YOU!" randomly during fights.

You will be able to speak to your modded companions, but only using the generic companion responses. Anything other than that will just be silent, which isn't a huge issue for me.

Now quest mods and entirely new dialogue is a problem. It will all have to be silent or voiced by a modder, which is going to break the atmosphere a bit, lol.

Both of these would work; and this is what was entailed by suggesting an official sound board; but both of these probably violate the GECK EULA unless Bethesda does it officially.

So guess what.

People acknowledge the fact that having voiced lines is impossible unless they want to record their own lines for him, which they are more than welcome to do.

There's not much else to be said. The final product shouldn't be held back because it makes mods less immersive, despite always being.

And there are still many mods that are silent. I've been playing a world of pain for NV and it is entirely silent, but it works fine. People don't like reading a lot, sure, but if you're looking at the entire picture from an objective point of view, you'll realize that some inconsistencies are going to come up.

People are still going to make mods, and there is no valid complaint. There are going to be pages and pages of mods for this game, just like the others. Will it be awkward to have a protagonist silent? Not quite, you've had it for over a decade now.

The best part is you can play the game in first person, and the dialogue will be done in first person. It's just like previous titles. Two silent characters exchanging words; it worked then, it'll work now.

If you want to have skill checks in your dialogue, have them. The PC being voiced does nothing to change this. You can still tag an endurance check, I'm not sure how the inclusion of a voice means suddenly there are no checks? That's an entirely different topic and has nothing to do with this.

Edit: the wheel changes nothing about the options avaliable. The average conversations in past games has around 3/4 choices. One good, one neutral and one evil.

You don't accomplish anything by making up nonsense like it stifles creativity, despite the old system doing the same thing.

Why? we can modify textures and models as much as we want, can not see that it would be restrictions to sounds.

Well, even if it violates the GECK EULA, it's not going to stop modders who want to do it, to do it. It will only stop them from posting on Bethesda's official mod site that would allow Xbox and PS players to mod their games. There shouldn't be much legal issues either as long as the modders list where their sound snippets are from and properly credit those sources, the companies who own it might put up a stink, but as long as the modders aren't making money off of it, there isn't really an issue.

I'm not certain that that applies to sounds; but in the case of other voice recordings by the actors, we certainly don't have rights to use that from unrelated works.

It does if they want to talk about it [here], or host it on Steam & Nexus.

*It IS an issue for those that own, and do make money from those recordings ~that are being freely distributed by a non-owner with no valid claim to them.
(Whether or not the owners consent to it, is up to them, but it's their decision, not ours.)

*I think it would be very awesome (and generous) if the two of them uploaded some dialog snippets as public domain, for modders to carve up for custom dialog.

I'm not sure either, but there are https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrhQoW12MD8 that make use of that resource for dialogue.

Under current US law, you can freely use music, videos, and yes, even voices, without consent as long as there is no monetary gain for those using it and you properly credit it. That's why the people who create music videos, or even video parody's, aren't being sued or serving prison time for copyright infringement. And while companies are free to try to force people/companies to remove their product from their websites, in this case recordings, they cannot sue or press charges if there is no monetary gain from said activities, and of course as long as the proper credits are given out.

As well, what they are taking those recordings from, would be from various movies, games, tv shows, etc. etc.. Chances are that most of those, are one time paid gigs, it's pretty rare for even the major voice actors like Steve Blum to get a job that also offers royalties. Voice Actors are some of the crappiest paid actors in the world... unless you're a huge celebrity before you go into voice acting. To be honest, I don't see any reason for any company to cause a major ruckus over this.

The Protag has 13,000 lines of dialogue am sure it wouldn't be hard to do quests and reuse stuff from the 13,000 lines of dialogue, you would just have to write dialogue from the protag's point of view around what available lines there are. Not like the protag won't have many lines of dialogue that could be easily reused for many different answers. NPC's would be harder as a lot of NPC's have very limited dialogue individually compared to the protag and am sure there will be a re-use of voice actors for different NPC's, just like we have seen it in every TES and Fallout game. If it a six mod or something and you want dialogue then obviously it would be a lot harder as I doubt Bethesda recorded much if any dialogue around actual six, but for quests it about finding what responses the protag has.

Not like we didn't have ton's of silent dialogue from NPC's in Skyrim and FO3/NV so its not that big of a deal really.

thx

I don't believe that, and would have to see it officially in print.
(I also find that quite disheartening if true; and a real incentive not to make any commercial recordings. .)

** Have you not noticed that companies that license sound libraries cannot usually release them for free when they release mod tools for their game. If the law is as you say, then one would think (based on that), that modders would be allowed to use the sounds ~~but it's apparent that this is not the case... This doesn't happen as far as I have seen.

What little I have read about it, implies that 'fair use' can be abused, and up to a certain number of seconds can be gotten away with without licensing the work.

I would recommend as a rule of thumb, that if it's not one's own material, and it's not labeled public domain/free, then it probably isn't free, and should not be used without permission from the rightful owner(s). This apples well to not only audio, but artwork, writing, character design, and 3d models.

The mods I've done with sound, have either used sounds from the game or I've recorded the sounds I needed for it.

I know for a fact, that if it was my own work, that I would not want anyone using it without my personal permission, and would not take kindly to finding stolen usage of my work in unauthorized works.

**I recall one fellow who made a recording that Jay Leno (or underling) swiped from Youtube, and used on the Tonight Show. Youtube served a content warning to the man who created it, and took it down from his channel, citing that it was property of NBC.
(It was in the Tonight Show; so of course he must have been the thief.)

Probably so... still, why rely on their (unlicensed) work instead of one's own? As for using unlicensed former works from the official FO4 voice actors... I can't imagine Bethesda would approve.

As per the typical EULA Bethesda maintains for their Creation Kits, we're allowed to use any of the assets packed in the game however we want; so long as it's inly for that particular game. So, I could make a mod using spliced together voice files and release it for Fallout 4 just fine; but I couldn't use any voice files from Fallout 3 or New Vegas, or bring assets from Fallout 4 into the older games. And if I used voice files from a DLC, I'd have to make the mod dependent on that DLC. Because of the third parties and middleware involved in making them, Bethesda's assets aren't licensed for any game other than the one they were made for. That's why we can't talk about mods that rebuild older Elder Scrolls games in the engines of the newer games.

Fair use means I can use Bethesda's assets to an extent, and only if money's not involved. So, Let's Plays, machinima, or a fanmade film are fair game. Something like a televised talk show, feature film, or a music video, or T-shirts for sale, will get your ass sued.

It might get a little murky when youtubers start making money from sponsors. That's why some publishers like Nintendo have shut down youtube videos in the past, but generally the originator has the power to send a cease-and-desist if they don't like something.

I'm no lawyer and this might not be completely accurate, so yeah.

Than perhaps you can explain why not a single person who makes music videos and post them on youtube have ever been sued or sent to prison on copyright infringement? I've done video work, used music in said videos without authorization for school and have put them up on youtube before. It's been taken down, but I've never been slapped with a Cease and Desist order or a lawsuit.

As well, everything can be and has been abused... and reality is that it's usually the minority of people who abuse the 'fair use'.

Also, the companies are usually purchasing the rights to use other people's sound libraries, they do not create their own. They might alter the sounds, either to fit the game or to adjust it to match what they think it would sound like in their game world. Licensing and making your own sound libraries are vastly different. And while the company has a right to use these sound libraries in their game, they do not have the right to let non-company personnel to use said library in say, GECK. This is to cover themselves from a lawsuit from whatever company they are licensing the sounds from, however how many mods in FO3 and FO:NV re-used soundbites? A lot.

As for Jay Leno/underling, first I'd ask if he/they gave proper credit to whomever they "swiped" it from. But I'd like to point out, that there's a huge difference between what Leno/underling does, and what a modder does. Leno/underling did it for ratings/job/financial gain, a modder is doing this as a hobby and is not really looking for financial gain, though I'm sure if a gaming company decided to hire them for it, they would have a hard time saying no doing something they enjoy doing.

Because the time and effort to record your own sounds to match what is in the game, takes a ton of time. You've done it yourself, you probably spent tons of time trying to get something that sounds crisp, clear and would fit into what you're working on. Where as if you can "swipe" from another work, with no plans of getting monetary gain from said, the legality of this is a non-issue really. If companies want to chase after modders for using FO4 voice actors works from other games/tv/movies, they'll be disenfranchising a lot of people.

As for Bethesda, I'm sure there are tons of mods they don't approve of... like the various nvde mods, or even the Skyrim six mods. Those probably won't be included on their official mod website... they've got to think of the children after all.

To my understanding they've already stated they will not allow lewd material. But yeah, they've got to think about the children purchasing a game with a mature content label.

We cannot forget the ME1 Fox news fiasco.

Where I live, it is illegal to chain a bike to city property; that includes poles in the side walk.

The law is never enforced; it's there so that they have the authority to cut the chain and confiscate the bike if abandoned.

Just because the music rights holder doesn't prosecute, doesn't mean that it's legal to infringe those rights, or that they should be infringed... They belong to someone else. What is the point in owning a thing if not to have a measure of control over its use? What kind of society doesn't respect another's ownership of a thing.

Jay is not the problem; Youtube is. I believe the guy was fine with his work used on the Tonight Show... Just not fine with Youtube deciding he'd stolen it from them.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", and I wouldn't stand for it being done to me.
It doesn't matter ~to me~ even were I not to care about unauthorized use of my own works, I understand that there are other people who don't want it done to them, and unless they explicitly label their work public domain, I consider it best to assume that they don't consider it public domain.
May I ask what you [personally] consider is the difference between public domain and not?

this may be an excessively stupid question, but why don't they just make a "if a bike's tied to city property longer than 48h (or whatever) it counts as abandoned and can be cut loose by the authority"-law?

Erm... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Common_misunderstandings.

It's a huge oversimplification of http://copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html, a legal doctrine that allows for copyrighted media to be used without paying the copyright holder or getting permission in certain instances (criticism, education, and parody being among them). But it's not a blanket thing, even for non-profit works. It's a case by case basis based on the purpose of the use, nature of the work, the amount you take, and the effect your use has on the monetary value of the work you took from.

It's a fairly labyrinthine part of law.

Fair use is pretty subjective (i.e. very subjective). Even if a work that isn't monetized, but is instead used in another work on someone's portfolio for example, it can still be slammed with copyright notices and take downs. It's [censored] murky as hell, and I prefer to keep my work as original as possible so I don't have to worry about stepping on someone's toe.

So we'll have to revoice the 12,000+ lines and then do some more for mods? I'll do it for free... called it, first.