The volume of this voicepack seems to be set much lower than the standard voices. I can't hear it over the background sounds at all.

Sorry to hear than Kazymir. When I began making these voice packs I would constantly get "it's too quiet" and "it's too loud" and I could never seem to get it perfect for everyone despite updating the volume on numerous occasions.

Unfortunately it seems to be a case of everyone having different hardware/setups producing different results. The voices in all my mods have been normalised against the voices that shipped with the game, therefore they should be of equal volume to the official voices.

So all I can suggest is to play about with your audio settings and see if that improves it.

This doesn't seem to work for WoTC

Hi Badmanbacon, how is it not working? Does it appear in the voice menu but is silent? Or something else? Unfortunately I haven't yet bought the expansion so I'm not able to test or see this for myself. Thanks

Two voices appear on normal soldiers ("Shodan" and "Shodan (SPARK)"), but no voice is listed for SPARKs (nor the new WotC faction soldiers).

Thanks for the info Animeye. For those two voices that appear on normal soldiers, do the voices work okay in game? I have definitely had the mod work for SPARKs before, so that may be a bug that's come with the introduction of this new expansion.

The new WotC faction soldiers definitely won't work with this pack though, and I'm hesitant about adding that until I can afford to get this expansion, as until then I cannot test the mod fully.

I haven't tried taking a soldier with the voice into combat, but at least in the customization menu the voices seem to work properly. They are noticably quieter than the default voice, though (not sure if the voicepack was always like that or if thats something being caused by WotC changes).

Sorry for the late reply. Yeah the voice just doesn't show up on SPARKS in the voice menu

That's weird. I don't actually own the SPARKs DLC or the WotC expansion so I'm not able to test my mod with either I'm afriad.

Have you tried any of my other voice mods? My Darth Vader, Bob Ross and Arnold Schwarzenegger all should have SPARKs options. If those work perhaps I've done something differently with this Shodan mod and can look into fixing it. If none of them show for SPARKs perhaps it's a bug?

Originally posted by tdc733:

That's weird. I don't actually own the SPARKs DLC or the WotC expansion so I'm not able to test my mod with either I'm afriad.

Have you tried any of my other voice mods? My Darth Vader, Bob Ross and Arnold Schwarzenegger all should have SPARKs options. If those work perhaps I've done something differently with this Shodan mod and can look into fixing it. If none of them show for SPARKs perhaps it's a bug?

I don't think you've done anything different, I mean it's not to blame. Both normal and sparks version is showing up under soldiers, but nothing for sparks. I checked using notepad and the script lines are different.

It's not just your voice pack, any voice pack made for sparks isn't working (they show up in soldiers voice list instead of spark voice list). It's just with yours both normal and spark version is in the soldiers voice list. Regardless the cause seems to be the same either way.

Anyway, I might be able to help. I stumbled across a something yesterday when searching for a way to fix spark voice packs, in theory you should be able to make the simple change in this link and then upload it, that should fix it I think.

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/637647287/350541595119936793/

However, I imagine that will mean those using the base game will no longer be able to use this mod if you did this, because as I said the way it's set up (at least using notepad) has been changed slightly with WotC. You can see it in the link and it's easy to fix, the problem is whether this will break it for vanilla.

Unless there is some other way then I'm assuming that would mean you would need to have 2 versions of this mod, this one and a WotC version.

But I'm no expert with this stuff so I could be wrong, I'm just guessing here based on some experiance editing xml files and stuff with notepad. I'll leave it with you as you probably know more about it than me.

Hopefully it is of some help. Goodluck.

Wow thanks SkyLance! It looks as if Firaxis may have changed the way SPARK voices work then. Looks a much better system too, as previously it was just listed under gender neutral so the voice would also show up for non-SPARK units.

I will try to update the mod ASAP. I do have a busy week ahead of me so it may be the weekend I do the updating. I don't own the SPARKs DLC so I won't be able to test whether the update fixes the issue or not. Would you be kind enough to let me know if it works?

Thanks again for all the information and help, I really appreciate it!

Okay so I can get my mods to be compatible with SPARKs and WotC classes but only as the cost of breaking support for vanilla/base game classes. As far as I can tell you can have one or the other, not both.

I'm currently in contact with Firaxis so hopefully a solution can be found. I will feedback once I have an answer. Thanks again for everyone's help with this.

Can't you release a version for vanilla base classes and SPARKs separately? I'd love to have a SHODAN SPARK when I start my run today.

Hi zez., yeah I have seen several modders are doing what you describe but that means you are doabling hard disk requirements and likely memory usage in-game too. My mods vary in size but some are as large as 150mb, so if you use it alongside other mods it's going to use up a fair chunk of resources.

However the good news is you can make this voice pack compatible with SPARKs yourself with very little effort. You can refer to SkyLance's link above for more detail, but essentially all you need to do is locate the XComContent.ini file for the Shodan mod in \SteamLibrary\steamapps\workshop\content\268500\. Then edit one of the lines beginning with +BodyPartTemplateConfig so it says CharacterTemplate="SparkSoldier" at the end of the line.

The example taken from that link above is this:

+BodyPartTemplateConfig=(PartType="Voice", Language="english", Gender=eGender_None, TemplateName="Portal2GladosVoicePackWTR", ArchetypeName="Portal2GladosVoicePackWTR.Portal2GladosVoice", CharacterTemplate="SparkSoldier")

Save the file, then load up the game and enjoy it on your SPARKs! That's a nice easy temporary fix while I wait to hear back on a more permanent method from Firaxis.

Thank you, it worked great.