Overcome language barriers with a "chat wheel" with standard messages

Language barriers basically prevent teamwork, or restrict it to a few pings, while there is an easy solution available. Having a chat wheel or list with standard messages translated into all needed languages.

1. We would need to first list the required messages.
2. Get people fluent in the language to make a good translation
3. Mod it into a menu of sorts. In my opinion the menu should be prominent, immediately visible to new players (like 0 games played new).

This topic focuses primarily on the required messages, I would like to structure the discussion into two areas:

• #S Specifications
• #msg Messages

Please separate your post into these two parts, and use it as a title for your post or use the hashtag. If you comment on only one include only that title.

Gathered messages from all responses up to october 20th

• This is too vulnerable, get AA/TMD/SMD (x3)
• Assist me with this (x2)
• Attack here now (x2)
• Fall back, stop (x2)
• Reclaim here (x2)
• You idiot, unwise (x2)
• Attention (x1)
• Defend (water) (x1)
• Don't give up, we can do this (x1)
• Experimental under construction (friendly/hostile) (x1)
• Focus (anti air) (x1)
• Follow my instructions (x1)
• Give me an engineer (x1)
• Give up? Any way we can still win? (x1)
• Great idea (x1)
• I am going to do [strategy] (x1)
• I need AA cover (here) (x1)
• Low HP ACU (friendly warning/hostile warning) (x1)
• No, negative (x1)
• Please take the lead (x1)
• Point defense (friendly instruction/hostile warning) (x1)
• Prepare to attack soon (x1)
• SML here (friendly instruction/hostile warning) (x1)
• TML here (friendly instruction/hostile warning) (x1)
• What should I do with this (x1)
• Yes affirmative (x1)
• You are blocking me here (x1)

#S Specifications

Personally I think we need:

• As few different messages as possible, I think 6 could do.
• Have double meanings, basically one for long term and one for immediate action accompanied by ping
• Include an insult / negative communication, but managed offcourse

#msg Messages

I am prepared to be shot down over this... I play mostly 1v1 ladder, but I did work professionally on control rooms and HMI for proces automation.

1. Prepare to attack soon / [+Ping]: Attack here now
2. Scale up eco and tech / [+Ping]: This is too vulnerable.
3. Please take the lead / [+Ping]: What should I do with this?
4. Follow my instructions / [+Ping]: Do what you can to assist me with this.
5. No, negative / [+Ping]: Stop you idiot
6. Yes, affirmative / [+Ping]: Great idea

We could also introduce new pings (different colors) for various messages.

A few other ideas:
Fall back

Get AA/TMD/smd

Please can I have an engi of faction [x]

reclaim here (ping)
move your units as theyre blocking me (ping/map note)

Im going to: eco/make {experimental}/go air/go navy/rush nuke/rush arti etc

I need aa cover (ping)

Specifications

Dota 2 has one of the best chat wheels I've ever experienced; it made it super easy to get messages across, especially in the European region. When you hold the chat wheel key (default Y) it opens the gui. Moving the mouse in one of the 8 directions then releasing Y sends that message.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIi3hWGVcQo

It also allowed you to customise the 8 messages you could choose from, even in the middle of a match, allowing you to adapt to any situation in a few seconds.

Later in the game's life, they moved a lot of QoL features over from the wheel to the rest of the UI, but a lot of the ideas were very solid, such as pinging health (e.g. Enemy Axe -> 55% HP)

Messages

In my opinion, the less specific a message, the better. For instance, if you integrate pings into the chat wheel:

• Experimental under construction! Can be used to ping your own t4 or a scouted enemy t4.
• Point defense here: Can be used to warn an ally of creeping pd, or tell them they need their own.
• Low HP Commander
• TML here
• SML here

and so on

This is good. Let's get it voiced too, but with a cool down if you spam shit. I don't think it should be broken down to only 6 messages, but perhaps 6 messages in a quick menu. Perhaps a dark souls esque combination wheel, where you can select verb then noun (or suitably translateable variations)
#msg
Assist - Player 1 (auto put player name in there)
Attack - ping or map note
Defend - Water
Focus - anti air
Build - Defense (general) / Eruptor, t1 Point Defense (focused)
Unwise (Or idiot, but I like being polite) - strategy.
Assist me/my - Economics
Don't give up - Skeleton

Obviously more complex, but very importantly it's more memeable:

Unwise - Economics
Reclaim - Player 3 (an Ally, he was just doing awful [just an insult, do not actually reclaim allies])

Chain for lulz:
Unwise - Player 3
Attention - Player 3
Reclaim - Player 3
Give up - Skeleton

I like these ideas - keep them coming. Please note that all these ideas will also require translations into various languages: if you happen to know someone that could help with that (over 9 languages!) then please ask them.

@Valki Can you use your first / second post as an overview of the various ideas?

@KaletheQuick I think voices would not be used a lot in practice - it will def. be an opt in instead of an opt out. People don't even like the sound of the pings, let alone a voice that gets spammed.

People don't even like the sound of the pings, let alone a voice that gets spammed.

/4

no voices pls

Why stop here? Let's integrate a full-on Auto-Translator!

Note: might be overkill

@jip That didn't occur to me, but yes it would need to be able to be turned off. Personally I'd turn it to Russian and keep text on English so I can pretend I'm practicing. I suggested it because people use those text pings and put them all over your base asking for things (or telling you you suck), saying nobody reads chat, so informative audio seemed the next logical step.

Perhaps people do not like voice because the in game voice taunts are taunts and not concise informative messages. Personally I hate when my radio airwaves are filled with bullshit.

Need to include the most important message: "e pls"

@askaholic said in Overcome language barriers with a "chat wheel" with standard messages:

Need to include the most important message: "e pls"

Tbh that could also be accomplished by a request-accept system like Starcraft 2.

Voice could be optional and you could include a cooldown, like only voice things every 15 seconds (or whatever setting the player wants). Me personally, having voice would be useful if I'm getting GOOD advice. So I would prefer the option to turn it on in games.

@arma473 speaking of multipronged attacks on the senses; is there a way to add a visual que for a strategic launch? Sometimes I play without sound.

@kalethequick said in Overcome language barriers with a "chat wheel" with standard messages:

@arma473 speaking of multipronged attacks on the senses; is there a way to add a visual que for a strategic launch? Sometimes I play without sound.

It probably wouldn't be too difficult to mod the game to always send a chat message whenever the "strategic launch detected" sound plays

If you made a mod like that (1) you might want to give a different chat message based on whether it's a teammate or an enemy firing the nuke. I don't think that would be "cheating" because you can already tell this, if you have sound, based on whether there is a "ping" or not. I think it even would be fair to give the name of the teammate who fired the nuke, in the chat message (because it is knowable who issued a ping). But obviously not the name of the enemy.

and (2) you would need to be careful not to give extra info, such as the number of nukes. If 4 missiles launch at the same time, you should only get 1 chat message. If the mod told you the number of missiles that launched, I do think that would be "cheating" because it would give an unfair advantage.

And if there was some custom visualization of a nuke launch, like a picture that shows up on the screen, that would be cool too. But I think the way to go is to start with a pure chat-based mod, and then once people get that working with no bugs, consider moving to a different notification method.

Voiced pings would be an unneeded complication of one's life (scripting it) and totally useless game-wise.
Air player on Seton's Clutch does not need to hear voiced pings addressed to the front player by one of the navy players.

No need to invent a bike, in other games (maybe in not all) the smart pings are just a ping accompanied with specific information that remains on screen for some seconds.

Idea for a ping:

Hide your ACU, snipe possible.

Also, has anyone looked into "VoiceAttack"

For example, here is a mod for the game Bannerlord https://www.nexusmods.com/mountandblade2bannerlord/mods/3?tab=description which lets you shout commands at your computer

I couldn't think of any good use scenarios for it, other than things like "pause all air factories" "unpause all air factories" pause/unpause "all mexes" that sort of thing. pause/unpause ACU.

I don't think there's enough value in being able to issue voice commands to justify it. But part of me thinks it would be cool to be able to yell at the computer while I play.

@arma473 I mean, voice command is the future. But without modding the engine or other wild shenanigans, this game is in the past.

@kalethequick I don't know the details, but I think it would be possible to add support for VoiceAttack. I believe the necessary interface could be written in LUA. I just don't think it's worth the effort.

I don't think voice command is the future for RTS. You can get a lot more precision with mouse and keyboard. There are only a few things I can think of where voice could be more useful than trying to do something with mouse/keyboard, mostly things that would involve trying to select a lot of different units/buildings that are spread out. Even if you can set up keybinds for that, it's not easy to remember 100 keybinds, but it should be easy to remember 100 voice commands when they all follow a pattern, e.g. "Select all land factories" vs. "Select all air factories" rather than trying to remember "select all land facs, I bound that as ctrl-shift-L, and select all air factories is ctrl-shift-p" and then you press ctrl-k by mistake

An RTS that primarily functioned through voice commands would have to have a relatively low level of complexity, so I don't think it would be fun, and if it's that simple, keyboard + mouse would probably just be faster and better for most aspects of it anyway.