Just posted 1.62 which increases compatibility with oscillating house fans and pet snakes

Hey Minsc,

Still having some weird trouble. I start your SHIV speech batch file. I start up SHIV. I speak after making sure the microphone is set. Nothing.

I try to set up by telling the program how many tubes I have but it does not react. It does follow instructions and set up the dials but that's pretty much it.

I ordered to go to the bridge... nothing happens. I minimized the program and the SHIV speech program window indicates that the command was received... just not followed. Ugh.

Whoops, I see the problem... give me a few minutes. You might have noticed this in the sh4speech window:

Undefined subroutine &main::KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY called at go.pl line 470, <STDIN> line 1.

UPDATE: Fix posted. http://knepfler.com/sh4speech/sh4speech1.63.zip This was probably broken from 1.6 through 1.62.

Geez - just when I thought I might have a little time before the next release to actually play with this at sea, I check back here and there's been TWO releases since I last checked :o

I must say, however, that this hectic pace seems to be taking its toll on your documentation work :nope: I checked the readme for version 1.63 and (1) saw no mention of the "compatibility with oscillating house fans and pet snakes" changes from version 1.62 (I was really looking forward to reading about those, too) ; and (2) noticed the last version mentioned with change log seemed to be 1.3. You really need to be more considerate of us readme file junkies :lol:

[edit] - lol - just saw that I'd opened the "readme.txt" rather than the "readme.htm" - apparently that readme.txt is still in the zip file from version 1.3 - you might want to scrub it out of there in the next release.

On a more serious note, I found this wording in the readme, which I'd seen before but it didn't register on me at the time: "If you dock or otherwise think all of your tube doors are closed again, just say "set all tubes closed" (id=95). Note that this doesn't actually close any tube doors, it just sets the internal status so that they can be opened."

Does this mean that if you forget to close one of your tube doors, you can't use this "close all outer doors" command (id=95) to actually close all the doors, and you need to either (a) make sure you remember to close each door or (b) cycle through each tube individually and close its doors? (There's no visual indicator in game for when the doors are open, is there?)

Don't get tooo worked up over the release pace. If you have customizations just delete my CSV files from the zip, then copy everything else over. Most updates I just update go.pl anyway.

I deleted readme.txt from the zip.

You should never have to go tube by tube and close them individually.

It doesn't actually close any doors, it just sets the internal state so that it assumes they're all closed. If you opened the tube with voice, forget to close it, and then restart the game, port, end/start a mission, or restart the game, then you need to use id #95 "reset tubes". That's what it's for.

Here's a good way to remember:

Anytime you see the game "loading" bar in SH4, say:
"setup 6 tubes" [or 4 or 8 or 10]
"reset tubes"
"reset dials"
(you don't have to wait until the game starts but it's probably a good idea.)

And if you think it's hard keeping up with my releases, I haven't played a single mission since I started sh4speech 1.0. When I get free time, I think, "I could play sh4 or I could fix bugs and add new features to sh4speech... hmm..." guess which one I always pick (lucky you!)

But I warn ya, if NVidia ever gets off their asses and fixes overscan/desktop resize on GeForce 8800s, and I can play the game in 1080i mode, you'll never hear from me again. :)

Well, what I had in mind was being in game, opening a tube door getting ready for a shot, and then for some reason not firing it, but wanting to dive later in the same game session. I don't know if the game models taking damage from this, but I assume it would not be a good idea to dive deep with an outer door open, so I was looking for a way to make sure all the tube doors were actually closed. I had planned to use this ID=95 "close all outer doors" type command for this, but it sounds like this doesn't actually close any doors?

If the game doesn't model this damage, then it's a moot point, but if it does I'd like to make sure the doors are really closed before diving - if this command doesn't do it, is there a way to actually close all the doors without doing it manually/individually for each tube?

Not that I know of, unless there's some hidden key mapping that does close-only that I haven't heard about. Maybe you can try save/load and hope the game is buggy enough to forget which doors are open :)

Strictly speaking, as the Captain, if you order a door open and then dive and kill everyone on board, that's on you, isn't it. :) Had to say it! hehe

It really shouldn't come up in game that often, right? Generally if you open a door you plan on shooting.

But, if you must ensure they're all closed, the quickest way would be to quickly use the cycle/close keys, making sure to closely watch the message window to ensure they're all closed, select tube 1 and say "reset tubes".

I was just tweaking up my customized version of the handy new reference card, and I noticed another small error in the voice commands .csv file you may want to fix when you do another version - the alternate command for TBT is currently listed as "Torpedo Bearing Transmitter", but TBT actually stands for "Target Bearing Transmitter" - you may want to change/correct it, or maybe just add the right one and leave the wrong one in there anyway, just in case other folks fall into the same error (certainly an easy enough one to make - I read over it a few times myself while tweaking other commands before it dawned on me that it wasn't right).

Keep up the good work :up:

1.7 status
 

I'm working on 1.7 and I thought I'd post a status report. 1.7 should be released in the next week or two, with the primary goals being A.) working with any resolution and B.) new voice commands for all the torpedo computer stuff (PK, exploder, torpspeed, gyro, torpdepth, TDC target speed, TDC AOB, stadimeter, and maybe a few others I forgot.)

I do not plan on supporting "increase target range X feet" via the TDC range dial, because that dial is especially weird and I don't see a real need for it. ID'ing the ship and using the stadimeter already does the work for you. The only reason you'd want to increase/decrease the range is if you're using the Attack Map to look at your PK line and cheat a bit (that's how I play) and even a correction only takes a moment and often is not necessary. If my range is too far I usually just increase the gyro angle a bit to compensate.

Resolutions are fixed up where it should support any resolution the game is using. It's using a very simple algorithm, and I'm so confident it will work I've deleted all data from the CSVs that isn't 1024x768 specific, since it now just calculates it from those base values.

Late last night I was successfully increasing and decreasing torpedo depth settings by voice, which is a new type of dial where it has to click and drag. It's not that complicated and works fine.

My nemesis in this game is toggle switches, like the speed/heading/depth dials, and I found a new farkin' toggle to deal with: That little PK Mode / Torp Settings Mode switch looks like if you click the bottom of it, that will go to torp settings, and if you click the top of it, it goes to PK mode, but that's not what it does. Try it. Regardless of where you click on it, it toggles. So, I have to always know the state of that switch so I know whether I have to click it in order to bring up the torp settings panel (which is the only one of those two panels that has anything clickable.)

Some low-level enhancements have been made with the "parent ID" thing so that we can string commands together infinitely, and of different types. So you could have a single voice command that presses a key, clicks a button by mouse, drags a dial a certain number of degrees, all in one shot. It's not a perfect system yet but it's coming along, and it's usable enough for me anyway, to get the core stuff working.

Keep in mind also that BioShock comes out today and I'll be playing that, so this might take more than a week :) Oh also Shells of Fury, if I can get my hands on it!

Okay... something weird here... I order battlestations and I get the depth under the keel. What's my issue?

I can't look at it right this second, I'm at work, but first thing when I get home.

Wait, that's really weird, since Battle Stations isn't even remotely close to depth below keel on the command_bar.

1.) Which voice command appears in the command window after you say it?
2.) What resolution are you playing at?
3.) What does the "battle stations" entry look like in command_bar.csv?

and are you using any mods that change the command bar?

LOL yeah I meant to ask that and totally spaced it out. That's the key question really.

Playing Trigger Maru.
1152x864 (I think)
The command bar says what it is supposed to say... battlestations.

That's the problem. Only 1024x768 and 1920x1080 (to an unknown extent) are supported right now. 1024x768 is best, if you change to that it will all work.

My latest fixes make it work with any resolution and that's a top priority for me to finish right now, so this is truly usable by everyone. I'm very close.

If you absolutely must use 1152x864, and want to use sh4speech, make a backup of command_bar.csv and dials.csv, and then delete everything inside them (the file must remain, but empty is OK). You won't be able to control any of these but at least you can use the keyboard functions.

I expect to finish 1.7 within a week or so which will have support for any resolution, plus control over a lot of TDC, torpedo settings, and PK.