How to turn off speech in WC2 in Kilrathi Saga?

F

Folkform

Guest
Hello,

I am playing through the saga and want to turn off the cockpit speech and the opening movie speech in Wing Commander 2. I prefer the subs. Is there a key I need to press or a setting to choose? Or are there files I can delete? Thanks in advance.
 
You can "disable" the inflight voices by deleting the communic.xx files but I don't know how to activate the subtitles.
 
The installer asks if you want digital speech turned on as i recall.

if not, use "loadfix 16" a couple of times to eat up some memory, when it gets too low WC2 will stop trying to play speech (however, it may have other effects :p)
 
If you chose something like adlib in the sound setup it will also get rid of speech IIRC since you needed at least a soundblaster pro for speech.
 
Thanks for the help but unfortunately none of these options are working. I am playing the Kilrathi Saga and there are no install options available, it just has an install button. If I delete the communic or speech files, the game hangs. Also using more memory hasn't worked either. I swore there was a button combo that turned it off. I just can't find the documentation.
 
Go to the directory where you have installed Wing Commander 2, (eg. c:\program files\kilrathi saga\wc2), go inside the gamedat directory, (backup the contents first), delete all the SPEECH.S?? files, delete all the COMMUNIC.S?? files.

Note: Leave the COMMUNIC.T?? files alone! These are the actual text files...

This will permanently remove the speech from the game and it will revert to the printed subtitles.
 
Mincemeat said:
Go to the directory where you have installed Wing Commander 2, (eg. c:\program files\kilrathi saga\wc2), go inside the gamedat directory, (backup the contents first), delete all the SPEECH.S?? files, delete all the COMMUNIC.S?? files.

Note: Leave the COMMUNIC.T?? files alone! These are the actual text files...

This will permanently remove the speech from the game and it will revert to the printed subtitles.
Click to expand...

It worked. Thanks alot!
 
Mincemeat said:
Go to the directory where you have installed Wing Commander 2, (eg. c:\program files\kilrathi saga\wc2), go inside the gamedat directory, (backup the contents first), delete all the SPEECH.S?? files, delete all the COMMUNIC.S?? files.

Note: Leave the COMMUNIC.T?? files alone! These are the actual text files...

This will permanently remove the speech from the game and it will revert to the printed subtitles.
Click to expand...

That's a pretty neat trick actually, since as folkform noted, there are not the installer options to revert to subtitles like in the DOS versions.
 
wc2_speech1.gif


Man, isn't that great? Someone needs to do a roundup of WC installation menus. Underappreciated.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hi all!

First of all, it's great to see that they're still so many WC enthusiasts around. I really loved those games back in the time. :)

But now to my problem: Is there no "hack" available to have the speech + subtitles together in WC2?

I want to replay WC2 soon, and I'd love to hear the full speech for the first time. But I'm not a native English speaker, so I fear I'll miss something of the plot, because the Kilrathi pronunciation isn't really very clear most of the time... ;)

Dammit, it would be so great to have the speech PLUS subtitles...
 
I haven't heard of anyone figuring that out yet.

I suppose it could be as simple as a config file/hex edit type of thing. When you turn speech on, something switches subtitles off. If you compared everything before and after, you might be able to find it.
 
ChrisReid said:
I haven't heard of anyone figuring that out yet.

I suppose it could be as simple as a config file/hex edit type of thing. When you turn speech on, something switches subtitles off. If you compared everything before and after, you might be able to find it.
Click to expand...

Hmm, but when you remove the SPEECH.S?? files, then the subtitles are automatically reactivated. I guess there's just some routine looking for the speech files, and if they are there speech is activated, subtitles turned off, if not vice versa. So the source code probably doesn't even change, and I wouldn't see a difference with a hex editor. But I'm anyway not really used working with a hex editor... ;)

Well, it's a pity, then I guess I'll try it without subtitles. Weird that they didn't add this as an option in the first place. Thanks for your help anyway. :)
 
joker77 said:
Hmm, but when you remove the SPEECH.S?? files, then the subtitles are automatically reactivated. I guess there's just some routine looking for the speech files, and if they are there speech is activated, subtitles turned off, if not vice versa.
Click to expand...

That's true, but you can toggle it in the Installation menu. The speech files don't disappear when you turn speech off in the installer, so I would think something must change.

joker77 said:
Well, it's a pity, then I guess I'll try it without subtitles. Weird that they didn't add this as an option in the first place. Thanks for your help anyway. :)
Click to expand...

Not when you think back to 1991 here. Wing Commander 2 was just about everyone's first game with speech, and no game had ever had a button to enable/disable subtitles before. The game itself didn't even have an option menu to change things, just a few keystroke combinations that adjusted the game's few variables. The fact that someone thought to increase the immersion by hiding subtitles when voices popped on was already pretty well thought out.

Privateer 2 in 1996 didn't even have subtitles as an option. We've come a long long way since the '90s, and our definition of what is expected and what is unusual is vastly different now.
 
ChrisReid said:
That's true, but you can toggle it in the Installation menu. The speech files don't disappear when you turn speech off in the installer, so I would think something must change.
Click to expand...

Yes, but if you disable speech in the installer, then I guess the speech files just won't be installed to the hard disk? So it's just the same as when you delete them manually. The game later just looks "are the files there or not", but the source code itself won't change by that.



ChrisReid said:
Not when you think back to 1991 here. Wing Commander 2 was just about everyone's first game with speech, and no game had ever had a button to enable/disable subtitles before. The game itself didn't even have an option menu to change things, just a few keystroke combinations that adjusted the game's few variables. The fact that someone thought to increase the immersion by hiding subtitles when voices popped on was already pretty well thought out.

Privateer 2 in 1996 didn't even have subtitles as an option. We've come a long long way since the '90s, and our definition of what is expected and what is unusual is vastly different now.
Click to expand...

My first game with speech was "Ghostbusters" on a C64 in the mid-eighties. But that were only like 4 words, and I didn't need subtitles for it... ;)

But yeah, I'm really not blaming them. I know that WC2 made groundbreaking work for speech in games, and back then I was already mighty impressed with the few speech samples that were included in the basic version. The emperor just sounded gorgeous. :)

They might just have thought "If we have speech for what do we need subtitles, they're only distracting?". Unfortunately they forgot a bit about the international customers, for whom subtitles still would have been a great help.

So well, it's just a bit frustrating to know that those subs are existing, no technical reason not to have them, but the game just won't allow it. But I'll just have to live it, it's still a fantastic game. :)
 
Umm, forget what I said about the Installer, that's of course nonsense, because you can call it also after the installation to change parameters.

It's actually quite simple:

There's a WC2.CFG file in the install directory.

With speech enabled the content is: "v a904 c27"
With speech disabled it's only: ""v a904"

But unfortunately that knowledge is also not really helpful for solving my prob... ;)
 
One big reason the text is disabled during speech is because they don't match--the lines were rewritten for the talkie version. In Wing Commander II it's less apparent, with so few lines total... but even in the intro you have it changed so that Thrakhath and the Emperor don't actually say your name. (The differences multiply in the full speech versions of Wing Commander I and Privateer--and even between the two differently-voiced versions of Privateer's introduction.)
 
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