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There Came An Echo |OT| Out on PS4

Tanwo

Member
Today I had some time to try the game, I was curious about how well the voice recognition would work.
When the first command (“Yes”) worked on my first try, I was amazed. But I was not able to get the next command (“Shut up”) to work, even after trying changing many things. I skipped it using the mouse, but I couldn’t get next one either.
After this, I restarted, and I was able to get the first two commands to work (although not on first try). I don’t know if it was a bug, or a problem with my mic or pronunciation, as neither are really good.
By the way, the first time I launched the game the language was in Spanish, and after restarting it changed to English. Where is the option to change it?
Anyway, I’ll have to keep trying. Thanks for the code, Feep!
 
Finished it.

Holy shit. That was AMAZING.I don't normally play RTS games, but that voice control system just made it work.

Huge props to Feep and everyone else at Iridium.

Where do we go from here, though? Is this an ambiguously happy end for Iris' little experiments? Or is there still something left to do?
 

Neidii

Member
Interesting game, so glad I managed to get it in the other thread. The voice thing works kinda eh with me, I think my english sounds too terrible lol. But it's still a cool part of the game. Love the opening scene, awesome soundtrack. And the voice acting is top notch. Overall a cool little game, not exactly what I'd usually play but it is very charming.
 

Ezalc

Member
Game keeps crashing for me on the start of the second mission. Don't know why. Tried running only the game, tried running it as an admin. Just deleted it and downloading it again, maybe that will fix it. Anybody else get this problem?
 

titch

Member
Game keeps crashing for me on the start of the second mission. Don't know why. Tried running only the game, tried running it as an admin. Just deleted it and downloading it again, maybe that will fix it. Anybody else get this problem?

Yip same for me - tried all that - installing again on a different faster drive just in case.

w7
i3 4160
amd 260x 2gb
4gb

Any similarities?
 

Nbz

Member
Finished it.

Holy shit. That was AMAZING.I don't normally play RTS games, but that voice control system just made it work.

Huge props to Feep and everyone else at Iridium.

Where do we go from here, though? Is this an ambiguously happy end for Iris' little experiments? Or is there still something left to do?

How long did it take you to beat it? Kinda stunned seeing as it only came out yesterday
 

Rafy

Member
Ugh, I am stuck on the mission where
you have to leave corrin at the mainframe to keep blocking the system every 60 secs. Splitting up the team and checking both at once is hard and the slow pan speed doesn't really help.
 
The game seems to be a bit buggy unfortunately, but it's great fun when it works.

The game sometimes stops responding to all my voice commands until I exit and come back, with no adjustments to my mic or how I'm speaking. I'm still enjoying it though, and the narrative is great so far.
 

Feep

Banned
The game seems to be a bit buggy unfortunately, but it's great fun when it works.

The game sometimes stops responding to all my voice commands until I exit and come back, with no adjustments to my mic or how I'm speaking. I'm still enjoying it though, and the narrative is great so far.
Could you perhaps send me your two logs at iridium@playiridium.com? Trying to narrow down the random stops some people are having. They're getting rarer, but still happening.

Found at steam/steamapps/common/ThereCameAnEcho/VoiceCoreErrorLog.txt

and

steam/steamapps/common/ThereCameAnEcho/ThereCameAnEchoData/output_log.txt
 
Took me 4 hours to complete, I really liked it. Sometimes the voice controls were frustrating but I am glad I was given the chance to play the game. I really enjoyed it and it was a good experience, the story was great (I thought it was a bit too all over the place at first, but it pieced itself together very nicely in the end).

It was fun.
 
Ugh, I am stuck on the mission where
you have to leave corrin at the mainframe to keep blocking the system every 60 secs. Splitting up the team and checking both at once is hard and the slow pan speed doesn't really help.

Had to keep a
stopwatch going on my phone for this one.
 

Feep

Banned
I have no idea how much it would matter, but is it strange if I don't have this file? Wouldn't be the cause of any of my issues, would it?
It's...interesting, certainly. It just means the error isn't being caused by the VoiceCore system...which, to be honest, has been most of the errors. Just the output_log.txt, then.
 

Hazaro

relies on auto-aim
Ugh, I am stuck on the mission where
you have to leave corrin at the mainframe to keep blocking the system every 60 secs. Splitting up the team and checking both at once is hard and the slow pan speed doesn't really help.
Luckily StarCraft habits die hard and you can double tap 1-4 to focus the camera on that character. Made things a lot easier :p
 

titch

Member
It's...interesting, certainly. It just means the error isn't being caused by the VoiceCore system...which, to be honest, has been most of the errors. Just the output_log.txt, then.

Any word on the crash starting level 2 - noticed someone else having the same problem? Is it happening to anyone else?
 

Rafy

Member
It's not a documented feature, but double click on characters' portraits to zoom to them. You can also use the voice commands "Zoom to Corrin" and so on.

Luckily StarCraft habits die hard and you can double tap 1-4 to focus the camera on that character. Made things a lot easier :p

I wish I had known that when I was trying to brute force my way through...
Well, at least now I know, plus, someone might find that information useful so I'll definitely be including it in my review.
 

kinoki

Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.
Played through the tutorials and it went fine. In the main game it really didn't. Really need to get a working, and/or better, microphone.
 

W1SSY

Member
Just finished that game and really enjoyed it. Voice commands didn't work perfect but when it did it felt amazing. Only had one issue of the voice commands not working at all and a quick restart fixed the problem.
 

P3P5I

Member
I'm liking the game so far, I'm a few missions in. I had trouble with the voice recognition not picking up my commands, but after starting a new game my commands work flawlessly.
 

RionaaM

Unconfirmed Member
Any word on the crash starting level 2 - noticed someone else having the same problem? Is it happening to anyone else?
It happened to me last night, and then again after finishing that mission. That was before the patch, no idea if it's fixed now.

Already sent the logs to Feep, hopefully they helped.
 

Paganmoon

Member
Not sure what's up with my mic. Got a Logitech G930, voice chat works fine, tested soundrecorder, snaps my voice up jus fine, but in game, I can hardly get it to go into the "yellow" bar, which results in half my commands returning "you need to speak up, sam".
Settings are maxed in Windows and in-game. I'm getting the feeling I've missed something.

And god damn the music is good, any chance of seeing the soundtrack on Spotify?
 
Well, here's something interesting (that seems to have completely broken my save file).

I had to quit at the end of Mission 5. The mission itself had just finished (
Grace sniped the guy
) and the game started a cutscene back at base. I had to quit, so I did (having exited out during an earlier cutscene, I had deemed it safe).

Now whenever I load that file, I load into an empty base where the cutscene should start, but doesn't.

I've isolated my save file and tried playing around with some values but I couldn't make it work. Feep, if you want me to PM you the save file contents let me know.
 

Alastor3

Member
I just tested the game in the war zone with my Blue Ball, it work perfectly, except maybe I need to speak a little bit near the microphone, I set the sensibility on High tho.

Need to finish other games I started before playing it.
 

Oreoleo

Member
All my commands worked flawlessly up to the airport section when I needed to direct Corrin to "Move to Alpha 1" and then just... nothing. Tried talking softer, louder, moving my mic away, closer... nothing.
Edit: I guess I should have at least glanced at this page before posting, seems I'm not the only one having this crop up.

And it seems like even on high sensitivity the mic sensitivity is actually pretty low. In other games I can talk at a normal speaking voice and people can hear me just fine, but in the mic calibration, with it on high, and speaking slightly above normal volume, the slider still barely moves. Seemed like the game heard me just fine (again, up to the airport), but the slider wasn't getting anywhere near the yellow section.

Hope I (or Feep, with a patch if necessary) can sort this out because the game seems pretty novel.
 
So feep, my game started in spanish, but went to the voive recognition menu, and in the laguage settings only the english ones were selectable.
When I exit the menu, the whole game was swtiched on to english instead of spanish, and the change language menus dont work becuase they only show english.
Cant even change the languge of the game in the steam properties (some games let you do that).

EDIT
Oh just read that it was deleayed, is that why they dont appear in the game?
 
Hoooooooly fucking shit this game is amazing.

Feep, I want you to know that RTS isn't even a genre I generally like, but this is fantastic and so much fun. I'm not done yet, but I can already tell that I'd kill for more when the ride is over.

I'm controlling with voice and I've only had a couple cases where it didn't pick me up, but I think it's my fault for setting the mic sensitivity and volume too high. I was just having too much fun to go back into voice calibration at that point.

AND GODDAMN, DAT SOUNDTRACK.
 

Stitch

Gold Member
Is CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack) installed with the game? I just freaked out for a second when I saw new software was on my system that I did not install myself.

oh that explains why all my settings in some codecs and media player classic were messed up...
 

Feep

Banned
So feep, my game started in spanish, but went to the voive recognition menu, and in the laguage settings only the english ones were selectable.
When I exit the menu, the whole game was swtiched on to english instead of spanish, and the change language menus dont work becuase they only show english.
Cant even change the languge of the game in the steam properties (some games let you do that).

EDIT
Oh just read that it was deleayed, is that why they dont appear in the game?
Yeah, Steam is auto-detecting language on startup. We removed that for the next patch.
oh that explains why all my settings in some codecs and media player classic were messed up...
This was a mistake. We're just going to install XViD on the next patch.
 

Feep

Banned
I think I have a solution for the "Voice Commands Suddenly Stop Working For Seemingly No Reason" bug. If anyone was getting this and is amenable to helping, I'd love for you to test out a beta build with the changes.

You can access the beta build by right clicking There Came an Echo, clicking the "Beta" tab, and entering in "IridiumElement77".
 

grimmiq

Member
Awesome, had another go and got to the mission where you
Rescue Naia
but getting similar problems with units not wanting to do what I tell them to..Leave Miranda at one of the consoles to activate and despite selecting only Miranda..Corrin decides to start running all the way back to activate it. In the end I just got overwhelmed with Corrin laying down and each console being attacked by 2 enemies simultaneously.

Very frustrating not having a tactical view to assign commands while paused in situations like this where I'm commanding 2 units to move and fight, and 2 seperate units to defend a location and activate consoles frequently.

Also, in the previous mission it sucked how the units automatically picked up the battery packs after the fight..I thought to myself, I'll win this fight, recharge and then pickup the packs..nope, 1st room I had to waste one of the packs..second room, I'll recharge when the last enemy is on half health..nope, the command was delayed for 2 seconds then the guy died and they didn't recharge before picking them up.
 
Also, in the previous mission it sucked how the units automatically picked up the battery packs after the fight..I thought to myself, I'll win this fight, recharge and then pickup the packs..nope, 1st room I had to waste one of the packs..second room, I'll recharge when the last enemy is on half health..nope, the command was delayed for 2 seconds then the guy died and they didn't recharge before picking them up.

Making it a command to collect the energy packs after clearing the room would be great.
 

RionaaM

Unconfirmed Member
I decided to restart the game after the patch, and I was able to reach the car in the parking lot without any crashes. Unfortunately, the game froze with a black screen while loading the next mission, and now it crashes every time I try to load my save (the level finishes loading and the game automatically exits to desktop).

Feep, I'm sending you the logs now. Sorry for being annoying :(
 

Valkrai

Member
I beat the game and loved it.

Has anyone gotten the
Fire at Wil achievement yet? I thought it was supposed to be unlocked by saying Shut Up Wesly but didn't unlock.

There was also an odd bug where if you put a Screw Gun in the second slot of Miranda's inventory then switch to the Charge Gun, the Screw Gun would disappear entirely and leave you with only 2 weapons.
 
I think I have a solution for the "Voice Commands Suddenly Stop Working For Seemingly No Reason" bug. If anyone was getting this and is amenable to helping, I'd love for you to test out a beta build with the changes.

You can access the beta build by right clicking There Came an Echo, clicking the "Beta" tab, and entering in "IridiumElement77".

You need to fix the installscript.vdf for that beta branch. the commandline specified for xvid.exe "/VERYSILENT" is wrong.
 
Okay, so on Missions 4 on up, voice command is 50/50. When I'm in combat, it hardly ever works. After combat, it hardly ever works. Before, it works fine.
 

Despera

Banned
Just finished the game. Thanks again, Jason, for giving us the chance to play it for free, and for all the hard work squashing all those bugs early on.

If it's any consolation a friend of mine heard me play the game over the phone (was going through mission 8) and decided to get a copy. He never heard of the game and was impressed by how the voice recognition was able to successfully register the never ending string of commands almost without fail (I say almost because every dozen or so commands one was bound to be either misheard or pronounced too loudly/softly by me).

In any case, here are some quick thoughts on the game:

Gameplay:

I can say that I enjoyed my time with TCAE, especially on the later missions where you could see the benefit of voice command over traditional controls for this type of game. The ability to give orders to units that are off screen without the need to switch back and forth between different areas is one of those benefits, for example. However, there simply aren't enough tools or tactics available to the player to give this game some depth as a strategy game. The game is very simplistic and bare-bones as far as strategy titles are concerned and there's little to no variety when it comes to levels or enemies.

It seemed like I was going through a tutorial up to the last few missions, and by the time it felt like some sufficient depth was being injected into the gameplay along with more player freedom, the game was almost over. It doesn't help that you get interrupted constantly during missions whether for narrative exposition purposes or your party doing an action automatically, which wouldn't be a problem if the playable sections of each mission were longer than they were. Basically, the ratio of playable to non-playable segments of the game are disproportionate.

And even though voice recognition worked like a charm for the most part (which is pretty damn impressive), there were a few issues that I encountered. For example, I can count up to 20 and the game would recognize all the numbers up to that 100% of the time, but as soon I say 21, 22, 23... it all registers as 20. I tried different pronunciations but to no avail. It'll probably be fixed with a patch soon though, if it hasn't been fixed already, so I wouldn't worry that much about it.

Story:

It is clear to me that the game's main objective was delivering a story, which is a decent sci-fi plot with obvious inspirations and a few twists thrown in. It is above average as far as videogame sci-fi plots go. My only problem with it is that everything happens a bit too fast without enough time for character development or for the cast to realistically connect the way they did (For example: I can understand why Corrin
would be upset over Adam's death, but the way he reacted was a bit too much for someone who barely knew the dude.
). Another thing is that I found the world to be very interesting, but I wish I could know more about it.

One thing I really loved is how Sam's (you the player) role was integrated into the story, which gave it a fresh and unique feel. If we ever get a sequel, a branching story influenced by voice input would be great. Also,
loved how Sequence's story was integrated into this one. The way Ky's portrait changed after all those years while Naia's "echo" still resembled her old self was a nice touch
.

Artstyle, Music and Voice Acting:

Artstyle is good. Music is very good. Voice acting is top notch. Nothing more to add here.

So to summarize:

Gameplay was hit and miss (hit for having a surprisingly functional voice recognition system and miss for lacking depth). Story was decent, but would've been great if the player was given the chance to dig up more information on the world and characters. Music, artsyle and voice acting were all superb. Overall, it was a good and unique, albeit flawed experience.

With that over and done with I'm definitely looking forward to Iridium's next bizarre creation :p
 

grimmiq

Member
Just finished this, had to drop it down to easy for the last 2 missions because every attempt at least 1 of my characters would be useless and lay down even when not being fired upon. Really liked the voice acting and the overall story was pretty good.

Gameplay was very inconsistent for me, both voice and manual, I gave up on voice completely in mission 4 or 5. Little things like no map or paused tactical view irked me a little, there were a few situations throughout the game where you could plan out your strategy beforehand..but most of the time you'd go into a cutscene with 0 control and suddenly have 3-5 enemies around you, tactics went out of the window and it was just charge gun spam on the main group.

Several times I'd double click the portrait of a character to go to them on the battlefield and they'd recharge, but maybe that was just me hastily trying to switch to different characters in different rooms to activate consoles.

There were occasional annoying lack of control of camera, the worst being in the first mission with Grace..You move to a waypoint and as soon as the first character gets there, the camera pans over to the building she's talking about, while your team is under fire and you can't do anything with them..Which wouldn't have been so bad if that camera pan wasn't completely pointless, Grace runs there automatically as soon as that fight is over anyway.
 

Sulla1980

Member
I am only about an hour in, but really digging it so far. The voice commands seem nice and fluid.

Looking forward to getting more time in.
 
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