New SS2-mission from Christine: Shocking Ruins

[Bjossi]

And I really doubt, that I will find voiceactor for my next mission

You can count me in if I ever buy the hardware needed.

[Skandalos]

Yeah the voice acting was the worst I've ever heard in a fan project of any kind.

Which makes it obvious that you havent played a lot of fan projects yet. I do and compared to the rest I found the voice acting in Christines mods surprisingly high quality. Some of the voices, pro or not, do have professional quality.

Certainly some of the voices cannot hide a total lack of talent, which is the normal level of voice acting in the normal fan mission. But even the weaker voice "talents" in Christines mods succeeded in a surprisingly good performance.

So what you're saying everyone makes chomping noises, over/underacts and is terrible, not mediocre at voiceacting provided they're not professional.

Uh, I read it twice, triple, quadruple, and I still dont get what youre thinking what Im saying ... I think I was clearly enough in my former statements so I refrain from explaining my opinion once more.

I am not criticizing criticism. It is the sound that makes the music. If you have to criticize something that you get for free and that other people put loads of time and effort into, you should do it with some tact and respect. If you think Christine should consider to hire new talents, there is certainly a way to do it without pissing people off.

[TF]

DYYYYYEARRRRRRRR DON'T CRITICIZE THE FAN WORKS!!!!!


*********>

[raph]

... indecipherable accent ...

Original French™, actually. You prefer Delacroix's?

To be honest however, I found my log once in context was way too loud, and I'll try to fix that in the next logs I do, if there are any. As far as I'm concerned, I know it's not Oscar material, but I'll always be ready to help for a FM

[AR Master]

Original French™, actually.

I knew there was a reason for why it made me so angry!

[TheNightTerror]

Yeah the voice acting was the worst I've ever heard in a fan project of any kind. Not a big surprise when you have TNT and Enchantermon strutting their voice acting goods about.

Er . . . hate to break it to you, but I didn't voice act in this FM, and as far as I know, Enchantermon hasn't voice acted in any of Christine's FMs. The only FM were we both had logs was RTUNN, and I know very well I did a god awful job in it.

I keep voice acting for the experience and because I enjoy it, so Christine, the offer still stands. You need more voice acting done, I'm still up for it. I don't care if people hack my voice acting apart. It's still fun to do.

[Dinksmallwood]

Original French™, actually. You prefer Delacroix's?

To be honest however, I found my log once in context was way too loud,

That was my fault, raph... When I mix the files I also increase the loudness because for SS2 you have to make them very loud. And your's got under my skin very much so I mixed it a little bit louder for I didn't want the player to miss a word.

If there will ever be a version 2 of this FM I promise to decrease the loudness a little bit.

[SlyFoxx]

I just started and am having a blast! (Well except for all the bad voice acting ) I've been at it for 30 minutes or so and now am

spoiler:

batteling the mages...guess I should have just snuck around the fire elementals! But with the shotgun...man Garrett could sure have used one in The Lost City.

It's kind of strange playing a thief map in SS2. The main reason I bought SS2was to play Christine's stuff. I haven't even finished the original game yet.

Good work all. Time to get back to blasting everything in sight and resist the urge to steal everything!

[Dinksmallwood]

...and resist the urge to steal everything!

Can you imagine that betatesting this FM nearly drove me (born and bred tafferette) insane?

[Christine]

Wow great Slyfoxx... I'm very flattered that you like Shocking Ruins, and that you even bought SS2 only because of my FMs *blush*.

Thank you Slyfoxx and all other Shocklings who made so many nice comments. This really encourages me.
Ok, and now off I go... back to my work for the sequel to Ponterbee...

[SlyFoxx]

Just finished. Weeee that was fun. That lazer sword came in real handy for battling

spoiler:

the (I guess they were the) saurians. Big lizard things.

I only had a little bit of trouble finding one of the researchers.

What's next? Lord Ashton for SS2?

[Christine]

What's next? Lord Ashton for SS2?

I'm trying to make a sequel for Ponterbee Station

[Enchantermon]

Let me just say: No, the voice acting in Ponterbee and in Shocking Ruins is not as good as the voice acting in SS2.
They're amateurs. Deal with it.
Personally, I don't care that the voice acting isn't up to professional standards because I know that it isn't going to be. But I'm not going to complain, because I find that voice acting adds a lot more depth to an FM or FC than just text logs. I'm just glad that people took time out of their lives to help out.

And I really doubt, that I will find voiceactor for my next mission

Please don't do this just because of what others have said. The thing is, there is a way to stop the audio from playing in SS2, so if people don't like the logs, they can use it.
Alternatively, you can always offer the logs as a seperate download. Yes, that's two downloads for dial-up users, but its a price I'm willing to pay for voice acting in FMs, especially yours.

For the record, I've done a voiceacting log for Return to the UNN, and I full well know it sucked, which is why I decided to lay off the voice acting until I could do it decently or just give up on it, as opposed to EnchanTNT who quaintly show up in every ss2 campaign.

First of all, I didn't voice act for Ponterbee or Shocking Ruins. Second, there is a reason I lend my help to FM authors who need voice actors. Why? Because there are actually very few people aroung willing and/or able to help! In Ponterbee, for instance, there were a few logs with "Voice output malfinction" audio attached to them. Why? Because a voice actor couldn't be found for those logs. It's not like Christine, or blaydes99 for that matter, have voice actor offers out the wazoo.

[TF]

Which is why you reach out and contact individually rather than ask in a thread and then wait for offers.

[redrain85]

Awesome! Another FM from Christine!

Sorry I'm a bit late to the party. Been absent for a bit. I'll be downloading this ASAP and playing it, just as soon as I finish the updated Ponterbee Station.

I can't believe all the unfair criticism, but then again I've seen the same situation repeat itself with other games and fan-made projects for them. Even when something is free and done as a gift to a community, people have to try and put it down in some way. Don't listen to them, Christine! Unless they can do better (which they can't), they should shut up.

BTW, my offer to voice act for a Ponterbee follow-up still stands. I've already done one stint as a voice actor on another fan mission (not SS2 or Thief related).

[Dinksmallwood]

redrain85, I wholeheartedly agree

And... you are already on my list of voice-actors.
Christine's already working on the next FM so I'm sure we'll need your help soon.

[AR Master]

I can't believe all the unfair criticism, but then again I've seen the same situation repeat itself with other games and fan-made projects for them. Even when something is free and done as a gift to a community, people have to try and put it down in some way. Don't listen to them, Christine! Unless they can do better (which they can't), they should shut up.

Yeah, let's oust the critics that work for papers and such. They gave Stay Alive a bad review? Fuck 'em, let's see THEM make a better movie! We should never criticise in any way unless we can excel at their hobbies/profession in every possible way.

And if something is free, then there's no WAY you should even BEGIN to open your mouth about it! Be grateful you got something without having to fork over your devil dollars, ungrateful cur. Didn't you learn to ever close your mouth and grimly tolerate anything that was free so all the well wishers can overwhelm 100%?

If I shit in a box and send it to you, it's good to know that a) You won't complain because it's free and b) you won't criticise it because, jesus, you'll never shit in a box as good as I will

[Zygoptera]

I'm printing that post and putting it in a cornfield.

That post is going to Oz to receive a brain.

I'll burn that post on November 5th.

Haha, strawman, geddit, haha?

&non-sequitur FTW

[AR Master]

strawman quid pro quo and furthermore,

[redrain85]

Fuck 'em, let's see THEM make a better movie! We should never criticise in any way unless we can excel at their hobbies/profession in every possible way.

Hmm, well, you know . . . I think there's a slight difference between recording a voice on your computer, and working on a motion picture. Poor choice for an analogy. And if you think the voice acting is so bad, let's see you volunteer instead of just tearing into some of the people who worked on it.

And if something is free, then there's no WAY you should even BEGIN to open your mouth about it! Be grateful you got something without having to fork over your devil dollars, ungrateful cur. Didn't you learn to ever close your mouth and grimly tolerate anything that was free so all the well wishers can overwhelm 100%?

You can make your point, without being such a dick about it.

jesus, you'll never shit in a box as good as I will

Yeah, I believe you. No question.


Time to stop feeding the troll. Fin.

[Dinksmallwood]

OMG, a few others and I fed the troll and now he's back.

If only they wouldn't look so cute at first glance...

Ok, you live and you learn...

No more chow for this pesky trolls from me... Let's starve them...

[redrain85]

I finally finished the updated Ponterbee Station and now wanted to try out Shocking Ruins, but the game always crashes during the first level load. I get the intro cutscene, the loading screen shows the progress and then . . . bam.

I've checked the obvious things. Zip archive isn't corrupt. Using Zombe's Mod Manager to install and activate. Disabled all other mods. Tried turning off hardware sound (something I've had trouble with in the past). Always the same result. Earth.mis has been backed up and replaced with a new one. Ruins.gam is also there.

Anything I might have overlooked, or could try?

EDIT: Forgot to mention . . . yes the game is patched, and I'm using the texture manager fix. And I don't have dual cores/hyperthreading.

[Christine]

I don't know if the mission works with Zombe's Mod Manager.

Make a backup from your shock.cfg and override it with the one that is in the zip file.

[redrain85]

Yes, that was the problem! The Mod Manager didn't replace the original Shock.cfg with the new one. I managed to overlook that. (I'm not familiar enough with the ins-and-outs of the Dark Engine yet.) Would GarretLoader be any different/better in this regard? The Mod Manager usually works well for me.

Thank you!

[Enchantermon]

GarretLoader is better for FMs than the Mod Manager.