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Stellaris Dev Diary #77 - Ethics Voice Packs

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. This week’s diary I’m taking charge and going to write about Voice Over’s for the (unannounced) Story Pack coming alongside the 1.8 ‘Čapek’ update! We still can’t tell you any further details about the name or release date of the Story Pack, but stay tuned for future dev diaries!

For the upcoming Story Pack we felt that we wanted to experiment with VIR, our friendly advisor, see how it would feel to have different set of VO cues depending on your Empire’s ethic. A VO Cue is a term that we use to describe a Voice Over line that triggers at a certain point in the game as for example “Hostile Fleet Detected” or “Research Complete”.

We started with a test case in-house to try it out and we concluded that it was a great experience! From then on we moved on with the process and allocated time to write unique script for each role, character description, casting, auditions and finally recording sessions. It has been personally a long and hard process but in the end I’m really pleased to finally show of 3 samples out of 10 Voice Packs!


There will be a automatic settings for the VO Packs in the game so that the VO will switch depending on what Ethic you start with in the game and also switches while you're playing if you decided with switch Ethic's in your campaign. If you're not into that you will be able to select with set of VO Cues you want to play and you will always be able to switch back to the original VO if you desire.

Now that you have heard some of the results you might ask yourself how the whole procedure works with recording VO? So I’ll describe to a certain detail how the whole process goes by. :)

First of you need to write a script and if you have talented Content Designers. and we do have in our team, there is no problem to get good a script. Once the script is complete and approved it gets handed to me and I take it to the next step: Casting!

Casting of it’s own is also a long process which takes time. With help of a Casting Director you can get in touch with several possible Voice Actors that can help you to deliver the best result out of each script. When you have picked out potential actors that you think will suit for the role, you bring them in for a audition. In an audition you let the actor read a certain part of the script which usually depict the character the most and also give the best material for the Voice Actor so that they can perform as good as possible. After all the auditions are done you pick the actor that suited the best for the role. Sometimes during auditions actors comes for a certain role to read but during the session you realize that the actor would be more fitted for another role and that happened to our Militarist! We brought her in to do a audition for another role first but while she was reading the part for the first role I heard that she might be better suited as a angry general, so I asked her to try out for the Militarist and it was a really good fit! So good that we ended up with her as the Militarist.

With all the casting/auditions done you move on to the actual recording session, get as much possible material from your actors. It is important that you’re there to act as a “director” for the actors so that you can give the instructions and guidelines so that they can give you all the right emotions and takes that you require for your character in the game.

As soon as the recordings were done I moved on to editing. There is a lot of editing when it comes to VO since it is not only about how the recording equipment sound but also the sheer amount of assets you need to go through..

VY1grVq.png


While editing you usually “zoom in” really close in the waveforms of the recordings to mess around/cutting noise such as clicks and pops. So yes, we Sound Designers tend to get really nerdy when it comes to VO editing:

aHHJbEZ.png


After you have done all the editing which is removing “clicks” and “pops”, ugly breath takes, add fade in/out, you move into adding “effects” to the VO so we can get that cool Robotic style. For each VO I gave them something else than just using the same settings as for “Default VIR”.

So in short terms that is how you record VO!

That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about robots and robotic modification.
 
I think the hate for the Militarist voice is a little bit premature it's just one spoken line.

Let's just say that having some men on the internet being upset about an aggressive-sounding woman was not an unexpected development.
 
Let's just say that having some men on the internet being upset about an aggressive-sounding woman was not an unexpected development.

Really, is sexism the angle you're going with?
It has nothing to do with the voiceactor being female/male and i'm hoping we're better than that and to end that nonsense right here and now.

In this thread you've received some well constructed feedback regarding the militaristic voiceacting.
All of them are about the tone and feeling the voiceacting gives, none of it is about it being a female.
Seeing as how many people are already giving you feedback about that specific voice alone might give you a hint to probably bring that one back to the drawing board.

Again it has nothing to do with it being a female, but everything with it sounding tribal, undisciplined, like a frothing at the mouth warrior, not exactly like a well disciplined orderly soldier.

A good example of a militaristic voice well done is... this might surprise you... female Santiago, from Alpha Centauri.
The Spartans with Santiago at their lead were iconic for that game.
Keep the voice female, nobody really cares. Hell, we probably don't even care that instead of using voice actors you'd rub 2 lathered up coconuts and produce the voice acting that way. We DO care about the look and feel of the game that we all feel invested in.

So please, don't keep going the sexism angle, as it has absolutely nothing about that. But pursuing that angle will very likely upset quite a few people as we as Stellaris community are (hopefully) better than that.
 
...By the end of the day after this is released, the Steam Workshop will be filled with anime voices.
I can already imagine it being "onii-chan" for the xenophiles and "baka!" for the xenophobes.

Edit: I'm a bit worried that the first search result from Google somehow matched what I imagined :confused:.
 
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Any info if there will be another Bugfixpatch before 1.8 hits home? It is currently pointless to play insanity thanks to the starvation bug and me and my friends have put Stellaris on hold until it is fixed again.
 
Let's just say that having some men on the internet being upset about an aggressive-sounding woman was not an unexpected development.
I for one love the good Colonel in SMAC, anything like that is great in my book.:)
 
He's right, though.
 
Let's just say that this eventually becoming Wiz's most disagreed post was not an unexpected development.

Probably. I'm still right, though.
 
I think some people may be way too hung up on the labels. You'll be able to pick whatever voice YOU feel is appropriate for whatever empire you're playing, regardless of ethics. Did you know that in the game files, rooms are named after AI personalities? Even though in most cases their features are only tangentially related to the personalities they represent and, ironically, the room named personality_democratic_crusaders_room looks perfect for an authoritarian Star Empire?

And this matters even less in this case. Default rooms are at least used by randomised AI empires, but the announcer? Literally only the player will hear it and the choice is up to the player.

I think, if the provided sample is anything to go by, the "militarist" voice will be perfect for Fanatic Purifier type of empires. If there is indeed going to be one voice per ethic (9) there's going to be a lot to choose from and maybe we'll end up with a voice that's better suited for a less Klingon-y culture n_n
 
I wasn't keen on the Militarist sample either, could use the brutal gravitas of either Verse or Kills-in-Shadow from Tyranny. Maybe check voice clips from them for inspiration as you work on the Militarists?
 
I think, if the provided sample is anything to go by, the "militarist" voice will be perfect for typical Fanatic Purifier empires. If there is indeed going to be one voice per ethic (9) there's going to be a lot to choose from and maybe we'll end up with a voice that's better suited for a less Klingon-y culture n_n

Yes, this voice sounds quite psychotic to me, maybe I have gone overboard with interpretation, but for me the militarist ethos would stand for a highly militarized, ordered stratocracy, where this bloodthirsty attitude would be seen as incompetent and raving.

For me the the Militarist ethos represents the horrors of calculated, cold warfare in the depths of space and stands for ruthless military efficency.
 
I wonder how would it sounds like if that militaristic line is done by a male voice?
But personally what turns me off a bit is the "dog of war" thing, which feels a bit out of place in a space game.

Also I would prefer a female Hive Mind voice but maybe I am just used to the Zerg Queen voice in starcraft 2 and the version shown in the clip is not as glorious as starcraft 1 Overmind.
"Awaken My Child, and embrace the glory that is your birth right!"
 
I think some people may be way too hung up on the labels. You'll be able to pick whatever voice YOU feel is appropriate for whatever empire you're playing, regardless of ethics. Did you know that in the game files, rooms are named after AI personalities? Even though in most cases their features are only tangentially related to the personalities they represent and, ironically, the room named personality_democratic_crusaders_room looks perfect for an authoritarian Star Empire?

And this matters even less in this case. Default rooms are at least used by randomised AI empires, but the announcer? Literally only the player will hear it and the choice is up to the player.

I think, if the provided sample is anything to go by, the "militarist" voice will be perfect for typical Fanatic Purifier empires. If there is indeed going to be one voice per ethic (9) there's going to be a lot to choose from and maybe we'll end up with a voice that's better suited for a less Klingon-y culture n_n

See, that is the problem right there.
Several people already saying it feels right for Fanatical Purifiers, which i agree.
However, Fanatical Purifiers is only a niche, 1 of dozens of way to play militaristic, why should that than be the default?
It simply doesn't feel right. Nothing to do with it being female.
 
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