There Came an Echo's Voice Commands Sure Look Convincing

Cool concept.

Seems cool if it works.. but it also -looks- a bit like a less inspired / more generic version of transistor.

@morningstar: It's a super-cool concept, but this is one where you really need to see the product for yourself. If it's a console game, it might using Sony's and Microsoft's built in voice recognition tools, and those probably work better than the Microsoft Voice stuff Bot Colony was using. I'm guessing those tools let you limit the vocabulary so that the voice recognition only needs to know a few hundred words at most, not the full universe of words Microsoft Voice needs to understand.

If it works, this could be pretty awesome.

More into the soundtrack than I am the game.

The problem with voice recognition games is that they often dont work that well if people have accents or if english isnt their native language.

Also I dont really want to speak all of the time that I am playing a game. It could get pretty exhausting.

That tech is impressive, but I'm always left thinking (fully aware of the thousands of hours of sweat and tears that surely went into these revolutionary new voiced control schemes)... isn't just clicking a button still better?

@joshwent: I want this game if I am always directly controlling 1 character. That way it acts more like a squad leader position, than a micro-managing commander role.

Holy moly that title. Next time maybe go with "Voice Commands look interesting for the game: There came an Echo"

@spitznock: If you like the sound track, I suggest checking out one of the composer's Ronald Jenkees.

'Pick up the pepper grinder'

You can use voice commands that maybe will work 90% of the time if we're lucky but still fail at the most inopportune moments... or you could just use a mouse.

The real problem with bot colony's VR was that it didn't have any kind of algorithm written to prioritize legitimate commands. If it had an artificial weight assigned to commands that were appropriate for the given situation at the time, I bet it would be a lot better. Instead it tries to use words that it doesn't even recognize. I think that this would be a relatively feasible thing to correct for a company with any kind of resources.

Voice commands, eh? That won't cause any problems.

Psst. It totally will.

As someone who kickstarted/ is following this closely I'd say the reason it looks more promising than something like bot colony is it is built to understand a relatively small set of commands and it is pretty good at fudging what it hears to follow commands.

Still might be total garbage, but I'm hopeful.

Haha, I REALLY hope they did this video as a reaction to all the shit Bot Colony is (deservedly) getting for being broken.

"You see, sir, everything was going fine. But then there came an echo and my entire squad died."

Move forward.

...

Move forward. Move forward.

I don't think Bot Colony's problem was necessarily in the actual voice recognition, but the fact that they seem to have fed it an entire English dictionary, instead of the words, phrases, synonyms and names that are actually used in the game. If you don't have thousands of irrelevant words in there (why did they even have "vegan on the weekends" as an possible word combination in a game that's all about "go to X, pick up Y"?), make sure to name characters, objects and places in ways are won't confuse the recognition (all the character's names in this trailer are pretty distinct, not Harry, Mary and Gary, whereas Bot Colony had Jimmy, Mimi etc.), the technology Bot Colony used would probably have worked - though it should probably have been something else than a terrible hidden object game too.

Did you mean?

Is this a Shadowrun Returns mod?

Switch to pistol.

"A pistol is pistol is a handgun with a chamber that is integral with the barrel, such as a pepperbox revolver"

"Ok"

He totally just talked that guy to death

I don't wanna talk to my games, I wanna play them.

I can't help but think how I could be quicker using a mouse but it could be cool for console. I guess. If it works.

As long as there are no pepper grinders involved, you should probably be okay.

Quick, put this up as a review on its Steam page!

There Came an Echo...Look Convincing...my heart is ready to love again. - Patrick Klepek, Giant Bomb

I'm sure voice recognition has advanced beyond the old Dragon Dictate for Windows. Just look at other examples of how computers have advanced our multimedia experiences. For example, 15 years ago I listened to talk radio, but now I listen to Bombcast.

"Jimmy, attack pepper grinder."

People associate Bot Colony with commands, and it is true that the first two episodes emphasize them, although you can say other things - like ask questions and provide facts. Most of Bot Colony won't be about commands, but rather investigation and other conversations (negotiating, playing 3 Card Monte, proving your human), so it does need to have access to the full language. As I said, Microsoft didn't work out well for us, we were doing much better with Nuance.

This is more representative of the gameplay you'll see in Bot Colony from the next upgrade

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ginpub8ztnmhfae/Bot%20Colony%20Robot%20Visual%20Memories.mp4

@botcolony: I still think you should look into filtering down the dictionary, if not by scene/level, then at least take out words that are clearly very similar to each other and thus often cause issues, or make the game accept words that sound similar enough, even if they are not the correct word, or the wrong morpheme of the word (accepting the plural dogs even if there is only one dog in the scene, or whatever).

Since it sounded like the game already connects to a server to check what commands you're inputing (at least that's the impression I got from the Unfinished video), maybe look at the common misspellings or misunderstandings that the game gets from what seems to be the correct answer, and add them as correct solutions.

Guam = Wal-Mart

Yeah, I did a double-take at the similarity between art styles/cyberpunk motif, too!

"... Oats."

Playing Lifeline meant my heart was never ready to love again.

"No! Not the ants!!"

I'm sorry, but my interest in VC based games has waned significantly

I think it's inappropriate to swipe an unrelated early access game while promoting other content. just seems unprofessional to me.

Assuming it works, I think it might be marginally faster with a mouse, especially if it doesn't have built in pausing waiting for your commands, with the assumption you aren't some DOTA or Starcraft master. Now with a keyboard...

Still, I think this is at least interesting, especially if there are even more units to mess around with in more dynamic arenas.

I'll never believe a trailer displaying voice commands.

Wasn't Shadowrun Returns largely built using assets from the Unity store though? If they are available for sale for anybody, it's probably inevitable that several games come out that use the same assets, kinda like how the sound effects in Doom, which were taken from a royalty free sample pack were in just about every game, TV series and movie from the late 80's until the early 00's.

Did I miss a voice-controlled hit title that spawned all these imitators?

I backed this. I should probably get a mic.

I think someone must have mailed them copies of Socom.

But why would I want to?

I felt like I was having a stroke trying to read that title.

I'm surprised this isn't an iphone/android game as well, considering the microphones on those devices are superior to what comes with consoles nowadays. Plus, voice commands would be better to use than the superimposed d-pad and touch buttons on said devices.

"That was indeed me, calling the shots. = D" (game made by a dude at NeoGAF, Feep)

@gkhan said:

It's coming out on Steam, too.

These are the same people (person) that did Sequence. That game was amazing, and I hope that this one comes together as well as that one did. Looks promising so far. And the music is tremendous in both.

Yo! Developer here.

As many have surmised, we're using a very limited subset of commands to drastically increase voice recognition accuracy. You may also enter in your own custom commands as alternates (for instance, replacing "fire" with "light 'em up"), if desired. It does not use natural language technology, however.

And trust me. There are no pepper grinders here.

I have to go with the trend that simply using traditional controls would be easier and, possibly, more entertaining. Still, if this game works as well as this video shows, that's fucking cool.

@iridiumstudios said:

And trust me. There are no pepper grinders here.

Well...can we request one?

Why am I not playing this RIGHT NOW?

I've never liked the idea of voice controlled games. Even if it works as well as possible there's a whole 5 seconds of lag actually getting the words out and having them react vs pressing a button or moving a thumbstick after thinking what I want to do. In terms of new control methods the thing I would be most excited about is someone putting the D-pad from my 3DS XL on a controller that works with my PC. (OK I'm pretty excited about my OR DK2 which should arrive soon and is technically a controller as well).

This looks like a mix of Shadowrun Returns and EndWar which I personally liked both. I will definitely consider giving this game a chance as long as the voice recognition isn't excessively infuriating/frustrating to deal with like Bot Colony.