[TopAce]

No further explanation required. What the poll says.

If you pick #4, please elaborate.

I'm indifferent about the issue. I say that as long as there's a sufficient pause between the messages, neither is better than the other.

[General Battuta]

Messages without beeps just feel weird and wrong and I usually tend to miss them. Beep is mandatory.

[Snail]

For me, the dialogue bits really come together after adding the beeps. Without them they always tend to feel kinda awkward.

[TopAce]

Woot. Emptymsg.wav has gotten 7(!) votes already.

[-Norbert-]

I'm undecided on the matter actually.
On one side the beep helps to draw attention to new messages and thus makes it less likely that you don't notice it.
On the other hand, if someone want to play with text-to-voice switched on, the beep will make sure the message isn't spoken.

Is there a way to play the beep only when text-to-voice is switched off?

[BlueFlames]

Since my eyes are usually glued to my reticle in combat (epic target fixation) or my sensors, while out-of-combat, I personally like to have an audible cue to let me know that there's some kind of dialogue going on.  From a FRED'er's perspective, it's also marginally helpful for letting you know that dialogue is popping up when it should.  It doesn't tell you that the right messages are popping up, but if you've been inserting events into/before chains that include send-message/send-message-list events, the interest will be more on whether or not the messages are still playing at all.

Also, I like to have a couple of different beep sound files in a campaign.  That allows me to use one for one faction and one for another to help differentiate between speakers during a verbal exchange.  It also breaks up the audio cues a bit so that you don't get a constant, annoying series of the same beep over and over again.  It's a little touch.

Incidentally, protip:  Send stealth fighters at me.  You could give me five minutes warning with silent messages, and they'd still take me by absolute surprise.  (Not that the element of surprise is really necessary to make me dead in FreeSpace.)

[General Battuta]

I'm undecided on the matter actually.
On one side the beep helps to draw attention to new messages and thus makes it less likely that you don't notice it.
On the other hand, if someone want to play with text-to-voice switched on, the beep will make sure the message isn't spoken.

Is there a way to play the beep only when text-to-voice is switched off?

Emptymsg.wav will be ignored by TTS, so you already have this feature.

[-Norbert-]

Really? I didn't know that. In that case I'm all for the beep.

[Kopachris]

To me, having the beeps there with no voice-acted message makes it feel more like there's something missing than simply having silent messages.  Of course, then I'd also want default persona messages turned off, too.

[Mongoose]

I'm all for the beeps, since it lets me know when I should divert my attention from my surroundings for a second to check out the message text.  I usually do all right even without the alerts, but they're a nice reminder.  Personally, though, I think I prefer just the msgstart.wav to the whole empty message.

[Kolgena]

Beeps, so I know if I've missed something and need to press F4.

[chief1983]

There's a hardcoded handful of files TTS ignores.  I've seen it posted two or three times lately so google should probably find that for you quicker than I could.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

The beep for non-VA messages is needed, especially during those moments when you're paying more attention to your reticle than the messages. Without the beep, you might miss entire messages completely; the more wary would have their gameplay experience disrupted because they have to keep checking the message log.

[BengalTiger]

Else (please elaborate)
There are a few different beep files in the various mods, there could be one for pilots, one for command, one for capships etc.
It would make it easier to keep up with the dialogs than with a single emptymsg.wav.

[General Battuta]

Else (please elaborate)
There are a few different beep files in the various mods, there could be one for pilots, one for command, one for capships etc.
It would make it easier to keep up with the dialogs than with a single emptymsg.wav.

TTS only knows how to ignore a couple of them (unless you set up some kind of special table)

[chief1983]

4 hardcoded filenames I think, did we add support for customizing that list yet?

[Goober5000]

Yup.  Add this to the end of messages.tbl:

Code: [Select]

#Simulated Speech Overrides

$File Name: msg_1.wav
$File Name: msg_2.wav
$File Name: msg_3.wav
$File Name: msg_4.wav
$File Name: msg_5.wav
$File Name: msg_6.wav

#End

[General Battuta]

remind me which table again i am dumb

[Snail]

messages.tbl

[Klaustrophobia]

i like the beep most of the time.  however, it gets irritating when there are tons of messages and/or they go by faster than you can read.  like, say, WIH.