I'm currently writing out the text dialog of the ship interaction part of the game now, that's the easy part to do so I just made simple little batch file to navigate my way around all the text  diaglog parts pressing keys to move around with each of the shjip's crew members that I interact with..    Along with writing the text, I also set up all the Values like the number of Credits, any credits in the ship areas to be found, Moods and attitudes of crew members, or goodie items you find ect.  

so on.

The batch format is just temporary.  It alows me to see the diaglog of the game and move through it through all areas of the ship and change anything But Once all the tweaking to the text is done then I can cut 'n' paste the text I need into the Unreal game engine, and then try to hook the dialog up to the 3d  models.  The hard part will be finding the audio files to match the dialog.of each character. Then the other tricky part, how to animate their mouths so it looks like they're really talking when the text shows up on the screen..

I bult the text diaglog all outside the Unreal engine so I didn't have build and rebuild the level all the time just to build and test and tweak all the text when all the adding and changing and tweaking of diaglog can be all done instead outside the engine, saves time...

 If I can figure out how to do text dialog announcements on Unreal 4 then I can start intalling the text diaglog announcements in the level.

One line for a fiver?, thats in English Pounds isn't it, that would work out around OMG you kiddin me, over quarter of a million dollars just to get all the audio of the game all done by these guys. where am I going to find that kind of money, For a game like this will have nearly 50-60,000 lines of text because its a vast game.. 

You mention using a voice program.  Yes I found one one online Well Let's test it out and see..  So I gave it this text to speak.

"Ten thousand credits were deducted from your Alliance account.  The alliance won't fund ship captains who refuse to obey their orders.."

And here's the result the Mp3 file it gave me.

Ten thousand cradits were deducted framyar Allynance account, blergh warble warble(OMG,)  The Allayanncee won't fund ship captains who refuse t bey their ooorders.. 

Verver ver ru s rus veru sur su su, why is it speaking so funny to me like that, can't you talk properly have you got no mouth to form your words or something you stupid ai computer??  Speak Properly ! It sounds like I'm listening to Dr. Sebastio from microshot windows ! 

Are you only talking about only paid freelance work here like with the Five for a line site which voice actors charge you $5 to do a line, or or the Voluntary freelance non-paid stuff which people in here do as long as they are given back credit for the work with the game assets and other resources that they provide up on here?  I know that not all actors (voices) in video games speak with perfect clear cut english, they sometimes do throw in strange accents with one or two of their characters to make things a little bit interesting.  There will be characters that use heavy voice dialog which will need to speak clear english, and there will also be those few characters that you don't meet often that don't play a central role at all in the storyline have very little voice dialog needed like in a certain city or marketplace where those characters ony appear in that area.    Yes the computer generated voices are interesting to listen to as I go through all the different versions and most of them sound like different versions of Hawking, so I hear Hawking Ver 1.  its and you got Hawking Ver 2.- (improved), Hawking Ver 3 (more realistic sounding Hawking). Improvise Hawking, refined Hawking. and so on.   No matter what one I listen to, Ann, Sally, Jane, Mitchel, Paul, Steven, blabla I can still can hear HAWKING clones

To change the subject for a short moment.  These ai generating speech programs remind me also of Makehuman, these programs have one thing in common, have very limited options... 

Now In my version of Makehuman (a simple 3d modeling program of the most basic level I've seen it don't let you near any actual 3d sculpting tools except or moving some basic sliders around which some sliders have very limited ranges, so you have to use blender or some other program to modify the model once you export it from Makehuman, but in my version of Makehuman,  there's no RANDOM tab on the menu to let the computer generate its own random 3d Models from its own limited library for me so I can export them out to Unreal 4 and start creating different people in my level., I wonder why its missing the random generator tab when in the Pictures on the makehuman site, it shows the random function tab in the menu options in the photos.   So the program that I downloaded is a watered down version of the full version so it differs from the one actually advertised.... The power of the program will only start to show when you start adding acustom items to its library of clothes, hair pieces and acccesories and so on and add in more different models.. Or use the Random Function which it don't have on my version.. Now back to the main subject.

The only free ones I can see is text to speech and also Festival by the looks of it.. not much avaliable at all.......

 AHH I see so I have to clean up the audio ater the program has generated its junk it if I want it to sound better.

I have over 2tb space free on my hdd......  Well I did find a way to add commas to stop the irregular speed up and slow down of their speaking. the other way is just to edit it in a wav editor and shift it around to put the timing right.   The other way I can think is to simply drown some of it out by having some bgm music playing while they are speaking.But you can't replace the richness of custom voices with synthesiized ones.

Oops Sometimes I hit the wrong key on here and it just deletes my words all out.   So I have to rewrite again.  Do you mean if people were downloading from places like Steam?  No 2 terabytes was the space that I have got free left on the computer.....Once the storyline is developed then it can go into the Unreal Engine.

I might beable to turn the BSD brushes in Unreal 4 into static meshes which will make my job more easier to construct the level with. 

This is the game story so far: WARNING THIS IS LONG. VERY LONG...

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You start of with getting a brand new sleek military ship from Central which happens to have a faulty engine. which you first find out when the ship's pilot informs you about needing a new manifold.  They also forgot to stockpile up the armory before rushing the new prototype out of docks, so you start with only 2 rifles. Fusion Rifle (Standard Issue), Multi Phasic Charge Rifle (Standard Military Issue)   and 10 Infra Red Sensor mines in the armory. That's all there is.   So the armory starts off almost bare like Old Mother Hubbard with just a few bones left in her cupboard.  Just a couple of weak crappy guns and a few mines is all you get..

Ship crew are mostly insubordinates rebels, who do their duties but cause also problems. Not everybody is loyal. there is 100 people altogether on the ship. So there are attitude problems on the ship and friction among crew but there's still some order..

Ship has a new security system to stop munity, if you abuse the crew, it will zap you with a stun beam. Some new idea that came from Central.  You soon find out that Central is going to be a Pain in the A.

Lindsey and Daniels are two insubordinates who appear at random places in the ship always wasting time talking until you eventually do discipline them.

The game starts off with receiving a distress signal from Teseract Prime, and a mysterious plaque that strikes the colonists at the complex science labs area then losing the signal then reading the Logs from the signal to learn that the pilot's brother is trapped deep inside the complex and now you have to rescue his brother and if you say yes that Starts the Lost brother mission. if you turn the lost brother mission down, and get into a big argument with the ship's pilot choosing renegade instead of paragon, then his friend Yurobi will follow up later on with a punch in the stomach.

or you can choose to do Find Loana Shields (Lost Scientist Misson). 

Storm, you meet him also in the mess hall, Storm is a headstrong ex-military Alliance Commander who puts himself into missions he just shows up at without any warning and throws himself in the action without even being asked and soon you begin to wonder just who is in command here him or you..  Hes your main Goto guy., but He has a problem of wanting to assign himself to everything dangerous that pops up because hes used to telling others what to do and now hes telling you what to do with your own missions,  Storm is loyal to you but hes also at times acts like a nanny he will even tell you how to point your gun if you keep on missing the targets, he will watch your back and cover you and warn you, as well as give you jibes about your own incompetennce and how you need to improve.  He will say silly things during combat as well and sometimes important things.

Storm is going to be annoying with you later on in the game  as you and him over time will soon heat up and have a big power struggle over whos in power and who is in command. Especially if you keep on taking the renegade options with him. Things will start to break down on the ship if you keep on taking the renegade options with the crew.

THE HIGH COMMAND IS INCOMPETENT:  The Central Alliance (your high commanding organization) who continually screw things up because half of them up in Central are blind as bats.

Find the lost pilot's brother) hes alive in the colony but very deep inside the lab complex, but hes all barred up with level 15 security forcefields all around to try to keep all the plaque infected creatures away and since the power generators can only keep the forcefields up for so long before the creatures finally reach the generators so its a timed mission to try to get to him. If you take this mission first before doing the Loana Shields mission, then you go in with those scant little pea shooters without knowing if you can avoid the affects of the plaque or not.  You get half an hour of time to mow down through all those hundreds of genetically altered screaming wailing creatures to try to locate and rescue him before all the lights go out because if the lights all go out when those creatures start attacking the power generators , you're going to be in big serious trouble with having no lights to see where you are going. There will be cutscenes of the creatures banging an attacking the power generators, and getting zapped they will be swaming all over them. the lights in the complex will over time graually get dimmer and dimmer.

You soon find out when the lights go out that those blind bats up at central had screwed you again, didn't fit your latest combat suits with holographic portable light visors. its just one screwup after another with your High Command..........., and so you are busy stuck in the dark along with Storm cursing at Central's imcompetence yet again while these creatures bide their time and start slowly closing in.,

This level will be a HUGE MASSIVE scientice lab COMPLEX with tons of halls, doors and endless labs and cyrotubes and other strange experiments....So Storm has to come to the rescue by flipping out his portable shield holographic generator which he does after you're done complaining about Central, and his shield will keep back those creatures at bay and give you some light until you make your way to find this lost brother, or abort the mission and find your way back out because Storm can only hold his shield up for a limited time, so you make it back outside then you can try the mission again or take the renegae option and just slam the gates behind you then order your ship pilot to get into range and blow up the whole complex and destroy all those creatures that are in it, but it won't be the last of them. So you can choose to rescue his brother or not but your ship pilot won't be happy if you failed to rescue him and will give you an huge earful when you get back on board the ship about your failure. If you don't have the right weapons, the weapons won't be effective and soon these creatures will soon overrun you... They will also slow you down as you try to get to his brother.

So if you choose lost brother to do first, then you go in all blind not knowing what you're up against.   If you do the Loana Shields mission (Find Lost Scientist) first then you get to learn some more about the plaque and what firepower you need to deal with these genetic creatures so you know a little about what you're up against.

But if you do the Find Loana Shields mission and don't dock your ship to purchase any weapons at Teseract Prime before you leave for the cascades system to Vinus you will be harassed by Vinus Security down at the docks about wanting to confiscate all your weapons as the planet just went through a firefight recently from some rogue faction that attacked them over a treaty dispute and so they will DEMMAND to see your papers..  So you get a few crap weapons to start off with because of the screwup Central made with the armory, only to have them all taken from you.   However, you get to keep your weapons and walk through without the hassels of having to show papers only if you mentioned to them that you're a member of the Alliance and that the Central had sent you and then if you choose Paragon option, you then threaten them saying that if word got back to Central about this little "insult" then it would 'threaten' the treaty between the Alliance and Vinus, and 'we wouldn't want that would we' and so because Vinus dossen't want another war on its hands when its trying to drag itself out of the current one, so they get the message and the security officer just steps aside and says its not necessary to see your papers because only Alliance members knew of the secret treaty and let you through with your weapons as long as you don't cause any trouble....But If you choose paragon your weapons will be confiscated...

REFUSING TO LEAVE OR PAY DOCKING FEES......HOWEVER if it turns out you stuffed yourself up, spent up all your credits, BECAUSE you do get deducted credits if you abuse ship crew too often.  and you don't have enough for the docking fee, then the droids will tell you you're been locked out of Vinus's docks until you have enough credits. and threatened to leave or be blown out of the sky. and they are NOT bluffing.

Now if you are stupid and decide not to leave and stay and get yourself blown out of the sky and lose your ship so you and the crew do escape into shuttlepods when the warp core breaches then you're not going to get another brand new ship from Central, no they will instead demmand 10,000 credits down payment from YOU to make an example of you and so you will be stuck at Teseract Prime grinding in the shopping complex running boring little errand jobs for people earning measly credits to do certain tasks for them for an hour until you earn back enough credits before Central is willing to loan you another ship.........

You will also get an big earful also from the governor of the planet as well as getting angry emails from people for your recklessness but the governor has faith in you and will give you another chance, but if you get the second ship desetroyed then you will be stripped of your command for a period of time.....so the more ships you end up destroying, the harder it is to get back into their graces and that will be a black mark against you on your reputation and news will soon spread out to other worlds and they will start refusing to sell you ships when they learn of your bad reputation.   So if you don't have the docking fee, you have to do menial jobs to earn the credits or hunt around places to look for credits, so don't get your ship blown up.....So you can set yourself back several hours in your missions if you do get your ship destroyed because you got to hunt or grind doing jobs to get back all the credits... For Each ship you destroy, the downpayment fee of the ships will just keep getting higher and so will the docking fees and you will be locked out of more and more docking ports if you can't pay the fees.

But of course you're going to cause trouble because this game is all about trouble, and get into firefights with rogue factions still on the planet that Vinus security forces are still not able to yet bring under control  while trying to find the Research Scientist who was the last one that was seen leaving the stricken colony back on Teseract Prime and she may have the information you need to know about this plague so you can fight against it.. But you have to find her hideout first deep in the mountains, and you have to go through several fighting factions through the mountains to get to it and then try to convince her to come along with you.  After you destroyed her droid army first that inhabit all the hideout base.

Then she screws you over yet again, by saying that in her rush to get away, She left the cure back at the labs, on a computer disc right where the lost brother  is located just a few hallways away when he activated the secuity lockdown protocols and you need to go and work your way into the lab to get to the formula if you haven't done lost brother mission first.)....   and NOT blown up the complex.  If you blow up the complex (choose renegade) without getting also the seceret formula, well you screwed. you can't cure the colonists and will lose that colony, and that will be one black point against your Intergalactic Reputation which will turn more factions against you and you wil be fine 50,000 credits also by central for failing in the mission to save the colony........... So you can't just rush headlong into things.  And when you get near where the formula is, there will be half a dozen security droids there with bodies of the creatures piled all up to the ceiling busy shooting them down as they run across the room these droids can only be deactivated with the code that only Loana Shields knows how to disable because its a genetic code.  You can shoot the droids, but soon as you do they just self-replicate and replace the one destoyed  So This mission can only be fully completed if you bring Loana shields with you so she can get past the security defenses to obtain the formula for the plaque and then your ship's doctor which you meet up on teseract prime, when you visit the hospital if you do hire her, she can then beable to cure the colonists....If successful, you get rewarded 10,000 credits, enough to upgrade the ship armory.

So you are going to be crisscrossing over into other faction conflicts and creating friction while trying to carry out your own missions on all these worlds.

I do high velocity touch typing, that's one of my greatest strengths I have on the keyboard.  So 60,000 lines of text is not a big job (well to me it aint).   for I've already typed up 2,000 lines of code already with the text diaglog all in it. so I can move from place to place in the ship and test all my text dialog out before I put it into the game engine.  and I started typing it just only a couple of days ago. 

Yes, The game script won't take long at all to type up that's only a small job,. NOT all the audio will be in every line of the script, but ony with the main characters speaking... and maybe a few audio from market vendors and stuff....NOW for the time being, I decided to use the synthesized audio in the script in places, most of it i with the commander (the main character of the game), so I can at least see a working prototype of both the audio and the text before deciding to put it into the game engine. 

What I have in mind may work for UNREAL 3 rather than for unreal 4.  Mass Effect had tons of text diaglog in it and its set up with a trigger with Kismet, very simple, Set a trigger, then use kismet to plug in just one touch trigger item and select text announcements and just link the two.

But in Unreal 4 you have to plug in nearly TEN nodes to do the same thing and it takes far longer to set up.

But the best solution I think is a Diaglog text file which is an ID diaglog database containing the text Dialog Strings with the String ID and Audio ID numbers to tell the game to display what text and play what audio file, except I don't know how to make unreal look inside a diaglog file to get those things. but for doing games with alot of diaglog rather than using just Triggers or blueprints as too many blueprints files or too many triggers in a map may end up crashing the engine........