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There Came An Echo |OT| Out on PS4

Feep

Banned
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.
Well, just trashed that pan, at least.

Can you give me a little more info when you mean "lay down"? Like, they went into their feinting animation despite not being dead? They had energy left?
 

Capitan

Member
Just finished. I was really impressed. I got it for free from the thread, but I bought a gift copy, so i can share it/contribute.
 
I just got to the mission where
the Sequence connection is revealed
and this really feels like the mission where the game comes into its own in a big way.

One command I keep wishing I had was the ability to invert my unit selection with a generic 'everybody else' call, rather than specifically referring to the guys I don't want to command every time.

Also, it seems like often, alt tabbing will kill my ability to command. My mic still registers in the volume bar and I get a blue light in the voice calibration when I loud and clear, but whether I say give a command, say mark, say pause or resume, nothing else registers.
 
One command I keep wishing I had was the ability to invert my unit selection with a generic 'everybody else' call, rather than specifically referring to the guys I don't want to command every time.

You can do "Everyone but [Name]" to have everyone but that person do something, if that's what you mean.

Gah, having my save messed up is really killing me. I keep wanting to boot it up and continue, but then I remember that I can't... :(
 
You can do "Everyone but [Name]" to have everyone but that person do something, if that's what you mean.

Gah, having my save messed up is really killing me. I keep wanting to boot it up and continue, but then I remember that I can't... :(

I know, but I want to just be able to say "everyone else" and have it invert my selection. Easier than specifying who exactly I want to exclude. Especially since the person I want to exclude is VERY OFTEN the person (or persons) I just gave an order to, and thus currently have selected. It's a small thing, but being able to say 'everyone else' is quicker and a lot easier than remembering and saying (potentially multisyllabic) names, especially mid firefight.

Another thing - voice commands seem to fail after I go into the alias commands menu. It seems like backing out of the menu with the esc key is actually fucking up voice control here, because if you hit esc twice, it brings you back to game - but you don't resume voice control of your units until you SAY Resume, even though the action continues.

It seems to hang in a similar way when I go to voice calibration - and then when I get back into game from it, the only things it will continue to register is my 'loud and clear' and my 'back.' But despite registering the commands, no amount of 'back' will allow me to 'resume,' as I could with the command alias menu behaviour. I think this maybe have actually going on with the alt+tabbing behaviour I mentioned in my previous post, because I could 'loud and clear' outside of the voice calibration menu there too.

Edit: Just downloaded your beta patch. I think it fixed the alt tab problem, is that correct? That said, I'm still definitely duplicating the problem of exiting menus with the escape key locking voice commands. I learned I can fix the voice calibration menu lock by going back IN to the voice calibration menu and then issuing the 'back' command by voice. Another issue that just cropped up in mission 6 was that during one of the moments when they get fresh charge packs, Miranda never moved to get one. Since she never got hers and the game locks you out of control while they grab new charge packs, the game never returned control to me and I had to restart the mission using manual control. As an aside, it was a little annoying to not be able to issue an order for everyone to recharge after the fight was over, but before they all went and grabbed a new pack from the supply. I ended up with four nearly uncharged units, already full on recharges, going and grabbing four packs they couldn't hold. Desperately yelling at them to 'everyone recharge' as they run for the cupboard doesn't even work, cuz you're locked out at that point.
 

grimmiq

Member
Well, just trashed that pan, at least.

Can you give me a little more info when you mean "lay down"? Like, they went into their feinting animation despite not being dead? They had energy left?

I'll try and run though quickly to the mission where it kept happening over and over and take some screenshots. I went into the War Room to see if it happened there, I think they may have just gotten stuck in the Hold Your Fire animation despite never telling them to do that (Seriously, never, I didn't use it once).
 
Just hit the reveal.

Way to not only expand upon your own universe, Feep, but introduce a completely left-field
sci-fi
MacGuffin that doesn't feel forced at all.
 
I'll try and run though quickly to the mission where it kept happening over and over and take some screenshots. I went into the War Room to see if it happened there, I think they may have just gotten stuck in the Hold Your Fire animation despite never telling them to do that (Seriously, never, I didn't use it once).

Is it just them hunkering down behind a low wall? Cuz I just had this happen with Grace during the mission where
you have to leave people behind at various override stations.
It occurs to me that she is my sniper, so maybe she somehow got locked in suppression? I don't know. Regardless, no amount of alternating between hold fire, open fire, and target 15 or target 12, disengaging and reengaging would fix it. I believe I only won that particular playthrough in the level because Syll and Miri didn't fall down back at the previous terminals.
 

grimmiq

Member
Is it just them hunkering down behind a low wall? Cuz I just had this happen with Grace during the mission where
you have to leave people behind at various override stations.
It occurs to me that she is my sniper, so maybe she somehow got locked in suppression? I don't know. Regardless, no amount of alternating between hold fire, open fire, and target 15 or target 12, disengaging and reengaging would fix it. I believe I only won that particular playthrough in the level because Syll and Miri didn't fall down back at the previous terminals.

It was this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa0RDxnfcRk
 

PaulloDEC

Member
Played this at work briefly today with a Rode Videomic we had lying around, and the voice recognition worked beautifully; perfectly even. Got home to my Logitech webcam and the results were a lot less stellar, with a command failure rate of about 20%.

Time to upgrade to a better mic, methinks. Game is a lot of fun, especially when you're given lots of places to move around to.
 
Feep,

i just thought I'd let you know that the game now runs on my windows 10 machine that was giving me problems before.

Something you did in the last update fixed it

I can finally play at home.

Can't wait to spend more time with it.
 

Feep

Banned
Feep,

i just thought I'd let you know that the game now runs on my windows 10 machine that was giving me problems before.

Something you did in the last update fixed it

I can finally play at home.

Can't wait to spend more time with it.
Hooray!
I'm italian so maybe that's the problem, but even with my best pronunciation I have a hard time making the game understand my commands xD
It's possible. Can you maybe send me your logs (iridium@playiridium.com), so I can see if there's anything weirder going on? The logs are at (located at steam/steamapps/common/ThereCameAnEcho/ThereCameAnEcho_Data/output_log.txt and steam/steamapps/common/ThereCameAnEcho/VoiceCoreErrorLog.txt.
 

Kuno

Member
I installed this game not knowing about the forced CCCP installation. I use the K-Lite codec pack and There Came an Echo's CCCP overwrote all my custom AV settings without my knowledge (for example, my bistream audio settings in MPC). That was a big bummer. Since I don't remember all of my custom settings, I had to revert back to a pre-TCAE system restore point to get back to where I started.
 

Feep

Banned
I installed this game not knowing about the forced CCCP installation. I use the K-Lite codec pack and There Came an Echo's CCCP overwrote all my custom AV settings without my knowledge (for example, my bistream audio settings in MPC). That was a big bummer. Since I don't remember all of my custom settings, I had to revert back to a pre-TCAE system restore point to get back to where I started.
Yeah, the CCCP install is removed now. Lots of people were complaining about overwritten settings. Had no idea. = (
 
I had absolutely no idea what this game was about until I booted it up this morning. I soon found out this isn't a game I can easily play while drinking coffee, but somehow I managed. The idea of commanding a character
and apparently, multiple characters
with only your voice is a really neat idea and I had a ton of fun in the few hours I played it. I had to stop because my Razer headset was giving me trouble.

30 minutes later, my Kingston HyperX Cloud headset comes in the mail. Gonna have a fuckin' blast with this game after work tomorrow. I fucking love this game.
 

cj_iwakura

Member
I'll be honest: I think this would have been better as a traditional SRPG like Shadowrun Returns or some such. I loathe voice commands, and although this is a huge improvement on the gameplay style, I'm still no fan of it. Non-voice control is clunky at best. Maybe in the future have a normal SRPG mode, but I realize that'd be a ton of work.

I love everything else about it, I just wish voice activated hadn't been the core behind the gameplay(even though it obviously fits the story). The Sequence wit is still intact, too, I'm glad to see.
 
Feep,

I absolutely LOVE the game. I'm pretty deep into the story and have to say, that the voice command system is quite good, but does have some issues here and there. For the most part, the game recognizes what I am saying (I am using a clear studio mic), but there are sometimes where the game acknowledges my dialogue, but won't do anything (
The mission where you control the two turrets, I was not capable of changing the lanes or detonating the mines through voice and became slightly frustrating
).

In regards to the story, I really enjoy it so far, but would have liked a little more time getting to know the characters. It feels like once a conversation begins, we are being ambushed or attacked and it cuts some of the time that could be used for expanding on each character.

All in all, I really like it.
 

Feep

Banned
Feep,

I absolutely LOVE the game. I'm pretty deep into the story and have to say, that the voice command system is quite good, but does have some issues here and there. For the most part, the game recognizes what I am saying (I am using a clear studio mic), but there are sometimes where the game acknowledges my dialogue, but won't do anything (
The mission where you control the two turrets, I was not capable of changing the lanes or detonating the mines through voice and became slightly frustrating
).

In regards to the story, I really enjoy it so far, but would have liked a little more time getting to know the characters. It feels like once a conversation begins, we are being ambushed or attacked and it cuts some of the time that could be used for expanding on each character.

All in all, I really like it.
Were you having the Turret mission issues post patch (1.0.2)? Went live this morning at about 4 AM Pacific?

It's a really tough balance between story and gameplay. A lot of people wanted more expansion of characters and whatnot, a lot of people wanted more gameplay. The obvious solution would be to just, you know, double the length of the game, but I didn't have another $250,000 lying around. = (
 
Were you having the Turret mission issues post patch (1.0.2)? Went live this morning at about 4 AM Pacific?

It's a really tough balance between story and gameplay. A lot of people wanted more expansion of characters and whatnot, a lot of people wanted more gameplay. The obvious solution would be to just, you know, double the length of the game, but I didn't have another $250,000 lying around. = (

I just started playing it about an hour and a half ago, so it would be post-patch.

I understand. Regardless of my nitpicking, I really love your game. :D
 

Feep

Banned
Found it pretty funny that I trigger the pause command when I sigh. That's intentional, right?
"Pause" is a word that sounds lot like ambient noise, sadly. For a very long time you had to say "Pause Game", but playtesters *hated* having to say the full "Pause Game".

You can try turning your mic sensitivity to low, which will reduce false positives. Probably only best to do this if your recognition is working very well, though.
 
I just started the game. When starting a new file/save ... I see a black screen. It didn't load the intro movie I guess. After a fairly long time, I can see the game and it seems to work fine.
 
Played just a little bit before I had to get working on things, but I love the atheistic and voice acting so far.

The Sequence ringtone was pretty cute!
 

Feep

Banned
I just started the game. When starting a new file/save ... I see a black screen. It didn't load the intro movie I guess. After a fairly long time, I can see the game and it seems to work fine.
This was a temporary issue and should be resolved now, hopefully (new build pushed 30 min ago)? The issue, if anyone else sees this, is to install the CCCP codec pack for Windows.
 

gblues

Banned
I tried to give it a shot, but this just reminds me why I hate talking to computers. And the radial menu is just too clunky for real-time use.

What would really kick ass would be a "freeze" button. Like, I hold L2 and the action stops, I can queue up my voice commands, and when I let go of R2 the action resumes and my commands get executed.

I just can't process voice commands in real-time.
 

Kiru

Member
I couldn't get the "Perfect Override" achievement yesterday and also saw that 0% earned it. Today I see that number at 0.2%. So did it get fixed, or is just some dude cheating ?^^

EDIT: I read the changelog. Seems to be fixed now.
 

Spookie

Member
I give up. Each night I've tried to play this and it doesn't recognise commands 80% of the time. I work in a job where my key role is communicating to people clearly, I feel like I'm speaking with a thick Brummie accent.

cBj1LTf.png
 
Some quick impressions after being 70 min in. (PC)

- really nice voice acting, like really nice voice acting
- too many loading screens
- the models and animations are not really something for a close up. Everything looks fine zoomed out. The camera zooming in and out and panning left and right during conversations is distracting. I would prefer it zoomed out all the time
- The artworks are nice
- i had to turn down voice control. I don´t use a headset but a creative live webcam for skype etc, the game constantly pauses itself and doesnt recognize most of my commands.
- The moving zones(forget the name) should recognize clicks around them, i always end up right clicking instead and issuing a command i didnt meant to.
- controls are rather cumbersome, had to redo the coin tossing guards for at least 10 times until all the weapons, marks etc were issued. Even then i most of the time missed the shot because they had to talk before pulling the trigger.
- some dynamic lighting, or lighting at all could really improve the visuals, especially the character models.

Sorry for all the bad feedback. I really want to like it, i love isometric games. It´s just a little cumbersome at the moment.
 

missile

Member
There Came an Echo is live.

I have never worked so hard on anything in my entire life. No matter what happens, I'll always be proud of this. ...
Congrats for the release to all of Iridium Studios!

Good move with the Steam Key thread, Feep! Well done! :+
 

Kadin

Member
So how is the game if you completely forgo the voice commands? I'm at about a 60% failure rate and I've tried everything to boost my mic gain as much as I can. I've recorded myself in Skype (it does not have control of my mic and it's usually completely closed) and I sound perfectly normal, volume-wise.

So if I just try to play the game without this input system, is it worth it? Or should I wait a bit and see if it gets better and play with the voice commands? I've got a good bit of games in the backlog so that's okay if it's worth waiting for.
 
I'm already super hyped to play this. Everything I've seen thus far on it impresses me and just the opening was a great start.

But has anyone tried the Sony PS4 Gold Headset with this game yet? For some reason, while the game is clearly picking up my mic from the sound tests, I haven't had a single voice command register yet. It spikes into the yellow and drops down nearly immediately on the sound level, is that normal?
 

Feep

Banned
Big patch that fixes a ton of VoiceCore errors coming tonight. It will address your concerns, MDS.

And then I will write a very interesting story on the Steam forums, if anyone is interested.
 

Oreoleo

Member
And then I will write a very interesting story on the Steam forums, if anyone is interested.

Of course. It's rare we get such an unfiltered look at the dev process/behind-the scenes goings on, so anything you have to share I for one will appreciate :)
 

titch

Member
Big patch that fixes a ton of VoiceCore errors coming tonight. It will address your concerns, MDS.

And then I will write a very interesting story on the Steam forums, if anyone is interested.

Hell yeah - fingers crossed the patch can get me past level two!!!!!
 

munroe

Member
Patch is up.

Just tested it out, voice recognition seems that it has been improved, some commands take a few tries before it gets recognised, especially when trying to tell them to recharge but they get taken out before the command is recognised properly.

Mission 7, though may not be exclusive to this particular mission, the loadout appears to change mid game

16475400158_e725409dd7.jpg
[/url]2015-02-27_00001[/IMG]

Image one, I'm trying to tell Miranda to switch to screw as evident by the voice commands in the top right corner, however she's telling me she doesn't have access to that gun even though her loadout in the top left says otherwise.

So I manually click on the screw gun, Val tells Miranda to switch to Charge and then the loadout changes

16476826789_fe7726930b.jpg
[/url]2015-02-27_00002[/IMG]
 

Niahak

Member
Just tested it out, voice recognition seems that it has been improved, some commands take a few tries before it gets recognised, especially when trying to tell them to recharge but they get taken out before the command is recognised properly.

Mission 7, though may not be exclusive to this particular mission, the loadout appears to change mid game

I had a similar problem. I think I had loaded a save where in the loadout save, Miranda had the charge gun. I switched it to a screw gun. When I told her to switch to the screw gun in-mission she said she didn't have one. Then mid-mission her icon changed to charge.
 

Feep

Banned
If someone could send me a save file with that charge gun / screw gun mixup, that'd be great. We've been trying to track it down with very little success.

Saves are at steam/userdata/[somenumber]/319410/remote
 
Finally got around to giving this a go and while I have been enjoying the story, the voice recognition has been a bit wonky, especially when a lot is going on. I've tried two separate headsets (Sony Gold and some old Plantronics I had laying around) and neither have been perfect. According to the voice calibration screen everything is how it should be but commands are still taking multiple attempts. One command I will be told to speak up and the very next one I will be told to stop yelling. There doesn't seem to be any consistency. I've tried talking clearly and with pauses between commands but some times (especially playing on Difficult) you need to issue commands quickly. I really love the idea of using voice to play a game but it's not as refined as traditional methods just yet.

I managed to get up to chapter 9 before getting stopped by a technical problem. I made it quite far into the chapter before I was wiped out (due to commands not working first try mind you) and when it reloaded the checkpoint there were no enemies, no player UI on screen and no way of restarting the checkpoint again without starting the whole mission over. I could issue commands and make them move around the level but I couldn't trigger the next story point to unlock the next part of the map. I have retired from it for the time being and hopefully tomorrow brings better luck.

I have to thank you for giving us this opportunity to play this game as it has been quite a different experience and one that I have enjoyed for the most part. I will report back once I have finished.
 

Feep

Banned
Juuuuust patched that fix on M9. In fact, Patch 1.0.3 addresses a whole bunch of concerns, including the Screw/Charge mixup above. Not too many left to deal with now, I think. = D
 

titch

Member
Are there others still getting black screen issues? Still can't load mission 2 - tried 3 different mic setups.
 
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