by TennisVoice » 21 May 2020, 12:33 topic15-31865.php
...I'd like to solicit ideas and also ask an important question regarding the commentary we're looking to include in the game:
1) Are there any specific lines of commentary you'd like to hear included in the game? This is along the lines of phrases you might hear after a point is won or lost - e.g., are there any particularly memorable lines you remember from any of your favorite commentators that you'd like me to incorporate into the game? Do you have a humorous suggestion for how I might transition between points? If you give me a workable suggestion, you can be pretty certain I'll add it or adapt it in some way to make it work in the game: anything from the results of a Hawkeye review (good and bad challenges alike) to great winners to terrible errors and anything else is fair game here. (I'm very happy to write all of these lines myself, but I just thought I'd give everyone a chance to contribute if you want to.)
2) Would you be willing to pay extra to have me record your own name for inclusion in the game's commentary? This is an idea I've been kicking around with our esteemed host and game designer...I mentioned yesterday in the other commentary thread that I'm scripting a lot of the commentary lines in two parts, so that you might say "[Player X] has his work cut out for him," but instead of "[Player X]" you might reference the player's nationality or world ranking or age, etc. And I've specifically designed this system in a way that you could also include a player's surname instead of one of his or her attributes. Speaking as someone with a very unusual surname, I'm conscious that I've never heard my name in the commentary of any sports game, and I'd love to be able to hear lines like "And Kilfara is painting the lines with some regularity," or "Kilfara is one game away from winning the opening set."
So here's the thing: it *might* be possible to set up a facility through which you could buy DLC in the form of me recording your name for incorporation into the game. The way this might work is that you'd submit your payment and specify your surname and any pronunciation guidance you want to provide, and then within a week - and hopefully less! - I would record several versions of your name in different formulations and at different levels of intensity and enthusiasm; then you would receive those sound files with instructions on how to incorporate them into the game for use within the commentary module. In theory, you could do this multiple times - e.g., you could pay twice to get me to record your surname and also a nickname, and then you'd be able to incorporate both sets of recordings into TE4. (Note that the commentary will always work perfectly fine without your surname being added - whenever a two-part commentary line is called for, the commentary module will default to using one of the personal attributes of a player instead of a name if no names have been provided.)
We don't know how much we'd have to charge per name to make this sort of project viable, but in theory this would be a way to let you support the game and give us each a bit of additional reward for our efforts, while at the same time giving you a unique level of customization in TE4 that isn't available in most other sports games. (I have seen a few games in which you can pick from a limited set of surnames and have the commentary use that name in the game, but that normally only works if you have a surname which is fairly common in the English-speaking world.) Before we go too far down this rabbit hole, though, I'd like to know what everyone thinks of this idea - is it something that doesn't really matter to you? Is this a feature you'd be desperate to have? Or would your attitude depend largely on how much this sort of addition would cost? (When you answer those questions, please assume that you've already decided you like TE4 as a game, and also the commentary module within it.)
