Close-captioning for speech in PoE

[kanisatha]

Don't know if this has come up before, but I have a plea for the devs. Please have a really good and robust close-captioning system for speech that can be toggled on. I am sure I am not the only hearing impaired person who loved the IE games and is so looking forward to this game. CC cannot be expected to completely make up for not being able to hear all the sounds in the game, but it still goes a very long way towards making games enjoyable for people like me. Thanks!

[Hassat Hunter]

You do realise there's barely any speech in PoE... it's 95%+ reading. So don't worry about the text being present

[Silent Winter]

Perhaps he also meant to include descriptions of sounds (like 'English/other for the hearing impaired" subtitles)

For example: [crash of tree falling] "come on, we've got to clear this section of forest before the druids come back"

[Hassat Hunter]

PoE will also use descriptive text like that by default.

Though I  think it would be pretty awesome if they can add that SFX, I doubt they can time it on people's reading skills if mid-sentence or something

[FlintlockJazz]

Perhaps he also meant to include descriptions of sounds (like 'English/other for the hearing impaired" subtitles)

For example: [crash of tree falling] "come on, we've got to clear this section of forest before the druids come back"

Ah yeah and the selection and attack quotes of party members, didn't think of that.

[Monte Carlo]

Close-captioning for people with hearing problems is important (even text that helps describe ambient sound) *and* (if possible) variable text size for people who need glasses but hate wearing them in front of a screen.

[anameforobsidian]

I prefer floating text for ambient sound (as a separate option), rather than text on the bottom of the screen.  I'm not hearing impaired, but family members are, so I use CC for everything out of habit and comfort.

[kanisatha]

CC for SFX and sound based actions would be great if it can be practical and not unreasonably costly; the 'floating text' idea is a good one too. But I was especially thinking of situations like when you go into a location and there's a boss bad guy who wants to say some things to you before he smacks you, but because there's no dialog involved it doesn't show up as text. In my particular case, I'm not deaf and can hear most sounds. But I have significant hearing loss in one ear and a little loss in the other ear, and this unbalance causes speech to be highly distorted for me.

[Hassat Hunter]

When you go into a location and there's a boss bad guy who wants to say some things to you before he smacks you, but because there's no dialog involved it doesn't show up as text.

 

I'm confused... what?

 

But even so, I'm not suprised most baddies will talk your ears off before smacking you (if smacking you at all). It's an OE-game after all.

[Lephys]

PoE will also use descriptive text like that by default.

Though I  think it would be pretty awesome if they can add that SFX, I doubt they can time it on people's reading skills if mid-sentence or something

You know... thinking on it now, it seems like some kind of separation between the dia-"log" (little joke there -- the log of the conversations/speech) and the descriptive text.

 

In Wasteland 2, for example, you get really detailed descriptions of your surroundings on a very regular basis, but, it kinda floods the little text-log area, requiring a lot of scrolling if you need to re-read what someone said, or even what some description said before.

 

*shrug*

[Hassat Hunter]

From what we've seen of the PoE screens, the conversation will be place flat in the middle of the screen, almost full-screen... should be plenty of area for conversation.

Of course, might not do that for all conversations, but I wouldn't mind if it did

[Lephys]

From what we've seen of the PoE screens, the conversation will be place flat in the middle of the screen, almost full-screen... should be plenty of area for conversation.

Of course, might not do that for all conversations, but I wouldn't mind if it did

 

True... I just meant, I like having oodles of descriptive text (a la Wasteland 2), but it also tends to muddle the log up a bit when there's just SO much of it, all compacted into the same place as the recorded words of people.

 

It's not the end of the world or anything. I'm just curious whether there might be some prudence in separating them. Maybe have descriptive text emerge near people? Maybe on mouse-over? Right-click? Alt-click? *shrug*. Not all of it, mind you. Just... some of it. Maybe instead of the description of everything around you scrolling through on the "chat" log, the only stuff that shows up on there is stuff that's happening "to" you. Other stuff (like the description of some shady guy on the street) could be saved for specific inspection (some kind of input by the player, and/or the start of dialogue).

 

So, for example, if a building in the distance catches on fire, and people start running down the streets, you wouldn't have to actively find the building and inspect it just to figure that out, or inspect the fleeing people to know that they're all panicked and running from the north part of the city or something. However, shady guy in alley wouldn't just spout "In the alley stands a man blanketed in a tattered cloak. He's juggling a coin back and forth across his hand, between his fingers, and seems to be regarding you with a wary eye and a slight smirk." into your chat log. You'd have to actually something-click on him, or begin dialogue with him or something.

 

I kinda miss Fallout's "Use/Move/Talk/Look/Skill/Item" cursor system. You could inspect almost anything and get descriptive text about it (even stuff that just looked like scenery), but it wasn't just all tossed at you at once.

 

Anywho... sorry, that's mildly off topic. I just thought it might especially help out in regard to closed captioning to be able to know you can look in one place for descriptions of things, and another for dialogue and the like. (And/or to have more control over when you get descriptive text about things, such as by waiting for you to actively seek it.)

[Sir Chaox]

(if possible) variable text size for people who need glasses but hate wearing them in front of a screen.

 

Those people should embrace who they are. 

[Hassat Hunter]

@ Lephys

While I have no idea how PoE goes around it, my prefs (and what I would do did I make an IE-game)  would be;

 

Combat log: Combat.

Conversations log; Hidden inside a journal, not added the combat log

Conversations: Full screen.

Descriptive text: Click on item (magnifier icon?) get it in float, adds to conversation log, not combat log.

Random banter (aka the fleeing people or the guy trying to lure you in the alley); See descriptive text, bar having to click something.

(The actual descriptive text would appear once you initiative conversation, not as the lure to make you talk to him)

 

Anything I missed?

[Lephys]

That sounds good. I was just thinking of the way BG had it, etc. Where you saw:

 

 

Imoen - "Hey, maybe we should get going?"

A strange sound can be heard amongst the trees as a stranger approaches on the path.

Stranger - "..."

Stranger casts Magic Missile (20 vs 14 -- 5 damage to Imoen)

Imoen - "We're under attack!"

Lots more descriptive stuff happens

 

 

etc.

 

Not that most of that happened during battle. But, it was just all together. All different types of text. That's all I was frowning upon, in retrospect. I THINK it's the same in Wasteland 2, but I haven't fiddled with the beta in a couple of weeks. And, I think Fallout did that, too? Everything in one log.

 

So, yeah. Just seems like it's probably good to have separate logs, etc.

[Silent Winter]

@ Lephys

While I have no idea how PoE goes around it, my prefs (and what I would do did I make an IE-game)  would be;

 

Combat log: Combat.

Conversations log; Hidden inside a journal, not added the combat log

Conversations: Full screen.

Descriptive text: Click on item (magnifier icon?) get it in float, adds to conversation log, not combat log.

Random banter (aka the fleeing people or the guy trying to lure you in the alley); See descriptive text, bar having to click something.

(The actual descriptive text would appear once you initiative conversation, not as the lure to make you talk to him)

 

Anything I missed?

I like all of this except for the full-screen conversation box - I like seeing my character while they converse (even with no animation beyond the idle animation or battle-ready stance).  So I'd prefer IE style convo box (perhaps replacing the combat log temporarily) that can be enlarged upwards or shrunk down.

For the journal convo record, keep it as a separate page from the main journal.

 

Having said that - I never had any real problems with the IE way of keeping it all together - ocassionally had to scroll back a bit, but you could do that before.  (edit: before what? I have no idea what I was trying to say there, then I got distracted, clicked on post and then re-read it) *shrug*

Edited February 18, 2014 by Silent Winter

[Hassat Hunter]

Oh yeah, that works fine. I would prefer it to have a seperate convo HUD that's just the convo log at the bottom like the IE games, with the exception that all the HUD dissapears this time (in the IE games it was HUD and convo log... IIRC anyway).

 

I was just really liking the idea of the fullscreen with the artwork next to it as displayed in one of the updates, though it's probably too much to ask that for each conversation .