Voices

[MeTekillot]

Since it got mostly lost in natter in that other thread.

Set your voice description in chargen ala sdesc, would replace all instances where you hear a male or female voice with your described voice.

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

I fully support this.

Suggested form:

In character generation, able to choose 20 characters or less (suggested 'one or two words') to describe one's shouting voice. (For instance, "brisk manly", "shrill, feminine", "falsetto", etc etc)

Ideally would also replace one's voice in a storm.

Not changeable, except by description change etc.

[puella]

I might limit it to a small class of words.  This is because I never really liked reading some of the thesaurus-rich voice descriptors on other MUDs which allow this.  Those words might be:

1. high-pitched voice
2. low-pitched voice
3. voice

Mostly this would be for the 'shout' code, since other affectations to a voice can be added via the various emote options e.g., say (with a gravelly voice), etc.

[JohnMichaelHenry]

On board with this one, entirely. I'm all about more options. Just don't want anything to be taken away for those who are happy with things the way they currently are.

Edited to clarify: If I'm happy with male/female voice, let me keep it that way. I can always emote changes in tone or whatever.

say (in a high-pitched, whiny voice) Why can't I have sweetbread before dinner?

[only_plays_tribals]

+1 to this idea

Also could see it being helpful for immersion where you should be able to know if the guy in the hood over there is your best Friend Amos shouting "it's safe it's Amos!" versus arch Enemy wearing the same hood or some rando etc.

[sleepyhead]

I love the idea, and I'd want to further apply it to situations where someone is a 'faint shape', but I'm wondering how we would handle the weirdness around people apparently not knowing what your voice sounds like until they hear you shouting from the next room.

[only_plays_tribals]

I love the idea, and I'd want to further apply it to situations where someone is a 'faint shape', but I'm wondering how we would handle the weirdness around people apparently not knowing what your voice sounds like until they hear you shouting from the next room.

That I think would be on the player to emote according to the way they sound when speaking normally.

Say (in a husky grunt) Yeah Amos.

A husky, gruff voice shouts from the north, in southern-accented sirihish, "I said yeah Amos!"

Perhaps include the "Voice Sdesc" in Score or Stat so one would be easily aware of what they sound like? I'd probably forget without something to remind me since I'd never be able to hear myself shouting.

Give it the 35 character limit like an sdesc, including the words "A" or "An" and "Voice"

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An overly shrill, silvery voice
A deep, rumbling voice

edit:
Not that I mean you'd be forced to give your voice whenever you say stuff or even should feel you have to.
Same idea as a person with a missing eyeball doesn't have to emote they look at you with their only good eye... every time they look at you.

[sleepyhead]

I've had characters with distinctive voices before, and I've tried to emote it whenever I could, but I'm not sure I'd like the pressure of feeling like I should be emoting the sound of my char's voice all the time (I know, it wouldn't have to be ALL the time, but I'd have to keep thinking about it), especially if their voice is pretty meh-average.

What about automatically appending the voice emote to all says/tells/talks with a "before" emote, relegating all other appended emotes to "after." Or vice versa.

In a squeaky voice, the male wearing a blah facewrap says, in sirihish, looking around...

OR

Looking around, the male wearing a blah facewrap says, in sirihish, in a squeaky voice...

But whenever you wanted, you could turn on 'brief voice' and get rid of the spam, which would cause you to see the voice only when you otherwise wouldn't be able to make out the speaker.

[Brokkr]

Most of the listen/voice/etc. type stuff falls under one of the following:

a male voice/a female voice/a voice
a male/a female/someone

[only_plays_tribals]

I've had characters with distinctive voices before, and I've tried to emote it whenever I could, but I'm not sure I'd like the pressure of feeling like I should be emoting the sound of my char's voice all the time (I know, it wouldn't have to be ALL the time, but I'd have to keep thinking about it), especially if their voice is pretty meh-average.

I feel it all falls into the above category.

The weirdness of "discovering" something that wasn't obvious, which SHOULD be obvious, is kinda in the player's hands to prevent.

[flurry]

Love the idea of having voice descriptions.

I'm wondering how we would handle the weirdness around people apparently not knowing what your voice sounds like until they hear you shouting from the next room.

One idea that comes to mind is to have the voice come through occasionally when say/tell/talk is not used with a command emote.  I say occasionally because I think it would be cool to see from time to time, but annoying if it happened all the time.  Maybe something like a 20% chance for every emoteless say/tell/talk.

[LauraMars]

Love it.

[WithSprinkles]

I would prefer to not have a 'set' tone in chargen. I like being able to decide on the fly how to present a character's voice with 'say/tell/whisper' and such. Having it fixed, even if it only shows up occasionally, has the potential of looking awkward if my character is stressed in some way and I chose to append something that runs counter to what I chose for my base tone. Personally, I appreciate this game for letting me have all of that in my own hands. If it's something people want though, cool. Just please have an on/off toggle or a very low percentage for when it happens and we're good.

Most of the listen/voice/etc. type stuff falls under one of the following:

a male voice/a female voice/a voice
a male/a female/someone

I mentioned age range in tone before and this is what I was touching on. Instead of overhauling everything, how about tweaking voices so that they use the age code? Yes, some people who are older in the real world have more youthful voices and some younger folk sound older, but people could app for that. It would keep everyone's voices from sounding the exact same and use a system already in place. So the above possibly becomes:

a youthful male voice/a youthful female voice
a younger male voice/a younger female voice
a male voice/a female voice
an older male voice/an older female voice
an elderly male voice/an elderly female voice

Based off YOUR OWN character's age relative to THEIRS. This is would even be nice because it encourages you to assess people more or just plain negates a bit of that need if you hear those folks speaking around you. You can get a GIST or hint if you are not in the habit of looking at folk (you probably should be), though this is not foolproof because, again, people could app for a different voice category.

Being able to append messaging to the beginning and end of emotes as has been asked for on overheard messages would still be nice. You can't see anything before or after shouts in adjoining rooms, but the people in the same room as the person yelling can. As others have said, expanding that capability would be nice. As it is now, overheard shouts are only seen as:

You hear a man's voice shout from the north in sirihish:
   "Make way!"

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

I would prefer to not have a 'set' tone in chargen. I like being able to decide on the fly how to present a character's voice with 'say/tell/whisper' and such. Having it fixed, even if it only shows up occasionally, has the potential of looking awkward if my character is stressed in some way and I chose to append something that runs counter to what I chose for my base tone. Personally, I appreciate this game for letting me have all of that in my own hands. If it's something people want though, cool. Just please have an on/off toggle or a very low percentage for when it happens and we're good.

Most of the listen/voice/etc. type stuff falls under one of the following:

a male voice/a female voice/a voice
a male/a female/someone

I mentioned age range in tone before and this is what I was touching on. Instead of overhauling everything, how about tweaking voices so that they use the age code? Yes, some people who are older in the real world have more youthful voices and some younger folk sound older, but people could app for that. It would keep everyone's voices from sounding the exact same and use a system already in place. So the above possibly becomes:

a youthful male voice/a youthful female voice
a younger male voice/a younger female voice
a male voice/a female voice
an older male voice/an older female voice
an elderly male voice/an elderly female voice

Based off YOUR OWN character's age relative to THEIRS.

Most folk who support this want to customise their characters voice beyond just "oh thats a guy" or "oh thats a girl". And this seems like a convoluted alternative.

My suggestion, as a compromise:

Set an overall voice-tone for shouting and storms in chargen. Then get a notification "you can disable this later with 'change cvoice' for a more generic tone.". With CHANGE CVOICE ON, your voice tone is what you hear in storms and distance. With CHANGE CVOICE OFF, you just hear the generic 'a man's voice' / 'a woman's voice', as does anyone who hears you.

Additionally, suggestion that you can "CHANGE HVOICE OFF" to disable hearing custom voices at all.

That way people who are super against this can just... Opt out.

[WithSprinkles]

Yes, the option of a toggle or a low percentage chance is something I offered myself, just without syntax added in. I'm not super against the idea of voice customization, I simply offered an alternative that I am personally more interested in seeing.

I have other notions on the concept, but as I am not certain if they fit in the topic, I'll see how the discussion goes.


Edit - And apology, someone else mentioned the low percentage chance earlier in thread. I simply added it in as well because if it became a global base, that too was a good accommodation.