Civilians with female voices

[Atrik]

1 minute ago, Atrik said:

28 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

RIght now, the have same voices as citizen-soldier and thats creates confusion

Agreed, I personally couldn't adapt, as sound feedbacks are so important. Knowing if something spawning, dying, or sometimes added to selection etc can be crucial.

Here is a small mod to make all civilians have the sounds of the previously females citizens.

CiviliansFemaleVoices.zip

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Or you could adapt and not give up after only a week.

[Atrik]

15 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Or you could adapt and not give up after only a week.

It's not like just a change of having to remap some habbits, it's loss of information. Visually I could very well adapt, to new civilians models, no problem. But losing the sounds differentiation between them and CSs is a small regression in UX.

[guerringuerrin]

16 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Or you could adapt and not give up after only a week.

 

Gendered-citizens are a great addition. I’m glad they were incorporated into the game. However, since they currently use the same response and spawn audio as Citizen-soldiers, an important feedback element has been lost.

Audio feedback is very important—sometimes players don’t even look at the screen to see what they selected, and this is only possible thanks to the audio. The same applies when spawning units: right now, there’s no way to tell by listening whether the unit being spawned is a soldier or a citizen.

I was thinking that we could edit the audio to give them male voices. Here’s a very rough example I put together. Please don’t take it seriously—it’s a very rough, low-quality sample, included only for illustration. I also believe there are some voice clips that aren’t currently used but are available.

That said, I don’t want to take this lightly. In my humble opinion, artistic curation is very important, and audio falls within that scope. A consistent solution requires approaching this carefully and responsibly, so as not to undermine the work of other developers and artists.

[Fabius]

I play the game on silent so this is not an issue for me. I do find it interesting using voice lines to make a distinction between units rather than visual though

 

[AlexHerbert]

Lol... I'd like to have Han in Chinese. And I think the mod I am missing now is ResetSeed 

Edited 2 hours ago by AlexHerbert

[Player of 0AD]

"Gendered Civilians" is a very bad change. Everything from Delenda Est should just stay in that mod (Germanics, for example). There is a reason why >99% of online players play vanilla instead of Delenda Est.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 minute ago, Player of 0AD said:

Germanics

this was not from DE

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Yeah audio feedback from actions is important. It would be awesome to have some additional work done in this area, something to distinguish a male citizen from a soldier.

[guerringuerrin]

22 minutes ago, Player of 0AD said:

"Gendered Civilians" is a very bad change.

Could you explain why is a bad change?

Edited 2 hours ago by guerringuerrin
adjust quote

[AlexHerbert]

Maybe he’s just upset the villagers now have healthy relationships. Now they’re literally holding hands with “some other guy.” Devastating.

 

Edited 1 hour ago by AlexHerbert
Edited for language

[DesertRose]

59 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

Could you explain why is a bad change?

From a gameplay perspective it's useless clutter that reduces clarity.

Like decorative "trees" around your CC that you can't harvest.

[guerringuerrin]

4 minutes ago, DesertRose said:

From a gameplay perspective it's useless clutter that reduces clarity.

So you're saying the AoE franchise is full of clutterness then

Edited 1 hour ago by guerringuerrin
adjust quote, again

[ShadowOfHassen]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Yeah audio feedback from actions is important. It would be awesome to have some additional work done in this area, something to distinguish a male citizen from a soldier.

I wonder if we could just get another male voice actor saying the lines, and then get the guy citizens say the new guy lines and the girl citizens say the girl lines we already have.

[DesertRose]

 

8 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

So you saying aoe2 is full of clutterness then

Yes, which is why two of the most popular mods for clarity, small trees mod and idle villager pointer, is now in-build in the game itself, and why the most popular mods either remove clutter or improve the UI.

Edited 1 hour ago by DesertRose

[guerringuerrin]

2 minutes ago, DesertRose said:

Yes, which is why two of the most popular mods for clarity, small trees mod and idle villager pointer, is now in-build in the game itself, and why the most popular mods either remove clutter or improve the UI.

Just to be clear, idle villager pointer adds a pointer in the top of every idle villager, it doesnt convert male villagers into women. I agree having the same voice sound of military units ads clutter. But I don't see why having a male model, totally different from the military models, adds clutterness too

[DesertRose]

It comes down to how you interpret " "Gendered Civilians" is a very bad change. "

• Gendered Civilians is bad, period

or

• Implementing Gendered Civilians in an unfinished state (no dedicated male voice for civilians) is bad

 

I was thinking of making a mod that completely reverts the gendered civilians change, but I found that playing with this mod gives enough sensual feedback regarding which unit I have selected that I don't feel the need anymore.

 

Edited 1 hour ago by DesertRose

[guerringuerrin]

1 minute ago, DesertRose said:

It comes down to how you interpret " "Gendered Civilians" is a very bad change. "

• Gendered Civilians is bad, period

or

• Implementing Gendered Civilians in an unfinished state (no dedicated male voice for civilians) is bad

I was thinking of making a mod that completely reverts the gendered civilians change, but I found that playing with this mod gives enough sensual feedback regarding which unit I have selected that I don't feel the need anymore.

That’s why it’s important to clarify what we mean when giving opinions about specific topics. Saying “it’s useless clutter that reduces clarity” is not specific enough about what the actual issue is: the models themselves, or the lack of distinct voices?
Since we were discussing this:

1 hour ago, Player of 0AD said:

"Gendered Civilians" is a very bad change. 

Which, stated like that and without further explanation, seems to refer to the introduction of the change itself rather than to any specific aspect of it. I’m clarifying this because this topic has been discussed in the game over the past few days, and from the arguments I’ve been reading, some people seem to be rejecting the very idea of having male citizen models.

1 minute ago, DesertRose said:

I was thinking of making a mod that completely reverts the gendered civilians change, but I found that playing with this mod gives enough sensual feedback regarding which unit I have selected that I don't feel the need anymore.

I guess now is clear you meant the audio feedback

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

54 minutes ago, DesertRose said:

 

Yes, which is why two of the most popular mods for clarity, small trees mod and idle villager pointer, is now in-build in the game itself, and why the most popular mods either remove clutter or improve the UI.

Absolutely hate the small trees mod. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

So, here's where being game developers and designers matters. It's where we who make the game make decisions based on a vision for the game. Every change we make angers some players, delights others, and has zero impact on others. We can't (and won't) swing back and forth after only a couple weeks of play. The time to make your voice heard was months ago. We've had several release candidates and the pull request is 9 months old and was committed to the repo 6 months ago. As far as I'm concerned, the feature is staying, and the only things I personally will entertain are ideas on how to improve it (and I'd wager many of the other developers would agree).

 

PS: The feature is only incidentally related to DE. 

[guerringuerrin]

6 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

So, here's where being game developers and designers matters. It's where we who make the game make decisions based on a vision for the game. Every change we make angers some players, delights others, and has zero impact on others. We can't (and won't) swing back and forth after only a couple weeks of play. The time to make your voice heard was months ago. We've had several release candidates and the pull request is 9 months old and was committed to the repo 6 months ago. As far as I'm concerned, the feature is staying, and the only things I personally will entertain are ideas on how to improve it (and I'd wager many of the other developers would agree).

 

PS: The feature is only incidentally related to DE. 

You’re absolutely right about this. There were several months available to test the different release candidates. In fact, the times I personally tested the RCs, I welcomed the inclusion of this PR, yet I didn’t notice this (important) detail at all. It was only after playing the final version of 0 A.D. R28 repeatedly that I realized this lack of feedback was causing confusion.

At least on my part, I take some self-criticism for not giving the testing phase the importance it deserved. There are a few other issues that could have been avoided if we had dedicated the necessary time and commitment to properly testing the RCs as we should have.