Babbler

Babbler

What is it?

This mod aims to make Shadows of Doubt more immersive by having NPCs you encounter speak and emote audibly, whether you are talking to them directly, over the phone, or just hearing them nearby. There are three modes of speech: Synthesis where they speak understandably using text to speech, Phonetic, where they speak in phonetic gibberish similar to the game "Animal Crossing", and Droning where they speak in repetitive gibberish similar to the game "Undertale". The default is Synthesis, because I believe it sounds better, but all three modes work, are set up with decent defaults so they are easy to activate, and are highly configurable. There are also "templates" that allow you to easily configure Babbler to sound like many games. I will outline how to activate and configure them in sections below.

A Note On Gender Identity

In my effort to create an inclusive and immersive experience, I've implemented comprehensive gender identity options in this mod. While the default settings align with the unmodified settings of Shadows of Doubt, extensive configurability is provided, allowing players to tailor these aspects to their preferences. My goal is to represent everyone respectfully, ensuring a diverse and authentic experience for all. As always I welcome any player feedback.

Installation

r2modman or Thunderstore Mod Manager installation

If you are using r2modman or Thunderstore Mod Manager for installation, simply download the mod from the Online tab.

Manual installation

Follow these steps:

1. Download BepInEx from the official repository.
2. Extract the downloaded files into the same folder as the "Shadows of Doubt.exe" executable.
3. Launch the game, load the main menu, and then exit the game.
4. Download the latest version of the mod from the Releases page on either Thunderstore or Github. Unzip the files and place them in corresponding directories within "Shadows of Doubt\BepInEx...". Also, download the SOD.Common dependency.
5. Start the game.

Usage and features

Features

• NPCs will have voices now, when they speak (either near you or to you), that speech will be something you can hear audibly, as either intelligible speech or unintelligible gibberish depending on what your settings are.
• All NPCs are given deterministic voices, in all three modes. This means their voices are persistent and you can recognize NPCs by their distinctive sound.
• NPCs talking to you on the phone will be given a band pass filter so they sound tinny, like they are talking over a phone!
• The mod detects when NPCs are "shouting" in all caps and raises the volume of their voices.
• The mod can recognize "emote speech" like "[Sneeze]" and play sound effects associated with those emotes. Right now 12 emotes are recognized.
• The mod also comes with many "incidental" sound effects not tied to dialog, like NPCs burping while eating, or laughing while watching TV.

Configuration (Basic)

If you read anything in this document, read this section.

In r2modman you should see "Config editor" on the left, in the "Other" section. If you click on that and then open up BepInEx\config\AAAA_Babbler.cfg and click "Edit config", you will have many options available to you to configure Babbler to your liking. Just click "Save" when you are done.

If you do not see AAAA_Babbler.cfg in your options, click "Start modded" to launch the game, then close both the game and r2modman. When you launch r2modman again, the config file will be there.

Note that the mod caches a lot of things when it starts, so it's a good idea to modify these settings before you launch the game, not while the game is running.

Also note that the config starts with "AAAA". The reason for this is that it forces Babbler to initialize before other mods, which it needs to do.

Babbler has a setting that exists to simplify configuration - by modifying one setting you can have Babbler mimic a wide range of games and multimedia speech patterns. You do this by assigning Template in the General section. When it is assigned, the next time Babbler launches it will discard any other existing settings and configure many settings in Babbler for you. Template must be assigned to one of the following values to do this for you:

• TextToSpeech: This is the default Babbler ships with. NPCs will speak with text to speech engines you have installed.
• AnimalCrossing: This configures Babbler to have gibberish speech formed out of phonemes, like Animal Crossing.
• Undertale: This configures Babbler to have gibberish speech formed out of repetitive phonemes, like Undertale.
• Minions: This is phonemes like Animal Crossing, but they have wider tonal shifts, making them sound more "musical", like Minions from Despicable Me.
• BanjoKazooie: This is droning like Undertale, but they have wider tonal shifts, making them sound more "musical", like in Banjo Kazooie.

In case you missed it, assigning Template will DISCARD ANY OTHER CONFIGURATION OPTIONS the next time you launch the game. It's like loading a profile. After it loads that profile, it will reset back to "None", allowing you to further configure Babbler if you want to dive into the advanced settings below.

When you are done modifying the Template value remember to save by clicking "Save" on the top right. You'll also need to do this if you modify any other settings (which are listed below).

Configuration (Advanced)

You will find a ton of other settings in the configuration panel to tweak how NPCs sound to your liking, they are categorized very well. We will go through each category below, and what the options in them do.

If you find the amount of option