by Tom Chick
You might have some reservations about how well voice commands will work in a game like EndWar, Ubisoft's upcoming real time strategy game that you play through the microphone. Who can blame you? Voice recognition is notoriously hit-or-miss. In a real time strategy game, virtual lives are on the line. You don't want any misses.
So here's an in-depth tutorial for the voice command in EndWar. Ready? Pay close attention. Here's how you talk like a general:
The same way you'd talk as a normal person.
And that's it. The beauty of EndWar is that it uses a natural parser system, which is a fancy way of saying that you don't have to learn any complicated commands. You simply state 1) the name of the unit you want to command, 2) the command, and 3) the target. Or, in grammatical terms, it's simply subject, verb, object. A third-grader could do it.
Although you can run a routine that initializes the voice recognition, this is more for your sake than EndWar's. The commands are carefully created to avoid any confusion. Your units are simply called "unit one", "unit two", "unit three", and so on, each always indicated as "cards" at the bottom of the screen. Enemy units are simply called "hostile one", "hostile two", "hostile three", and so on, each clearly indicated when you're looking at them.
At first, you might be unsure about the specific commands, or the "verbs". Don't sweat it. As you talk, EndWar displays on screen a drop-down list of each of the possibilities for the next part of the command. So if you say "unit one", the word "unit one" pops up on a screen and immediately next to it is a list of all the possible commands for unit one. For this reason, there's no need to memorize the phonetic alphabet. Before you tell a unit to move to one of the points on the map indicated by a letter of the alphabet, a drop down list of all the locations will appear. Speaking commands is as easy as reading them.
Finally, there's also no danger of accidentally ordering your forces to retreat when you sneeze. Voice commands aren't issued unless you're holding down the right trigger on the controller. So as long as you can control your trigger finger, and as long as you can read from the drop down lists, you'll be giving orders like a general in no time.
Posted: 28 Oct 2008
