On mods and character quotes

[Terra B Welch]

Something I've been curious about, what are your thoughts on quotes in mods?

Do you like it when mods use unique quotes for all vanilla characters? Do you prefer mods with unique quotes? Or do you just not care at all about quotes and will play a mod regardless?  Myself personally, I prefer when a mod includes character quotes, and have gone out of my way on some occasions to give quotes(even though I'm not good at it).

This is obviously a question for those who play mods, so it doesn't affect those who don't.

[Charlie Dark]

Oh yes! I love custom quotes! I've also been working on the quotes of my favorite character mod lately

[ImDaMisterL]

I might be a bit biased, since writing strings for mods is my sole job in the modding community, but yes, I love it when mods do that lol.

[ADM]

Quotes are important, when you do something new for the game like an item : you have to tell what it is about just from the crafting description if it have one and what characters have to say about it, but at the same time respect their personality. The best example is Wilson and his puns, it really catch the item role and you get something funny in addition, you can use Willow to tell if it's burnable or not... and repeat for most characters.

On my concern, I only do mods that add more world content so quotes are requested, I wish I could do a better job on it but as I'm having difficulties with English it's always a bit complicated to make sure they're okay.

The next level is when you do a character, I want characters to have everything unique, I often do the script and voice in a day when I have the idea but I always need a full week for the speech. I'm curious how long it takes to Klei for character dialogues and for my fellow modders.

[Terra B Welch]

Heres Wortox when he's absolutely sick of a food item in the Bland Flavors mod(Mod that gives everyone warly's food memory), I think the mod creator got this one right quotewise! Can't help but laugh seeing Wortox so fed up with meatballs that he'd rather eat his own tail. >.<

If anyone else has seen some funny mod quotes, feel free to share them!

[JaccK1618]

Quotes make characters have more personality. Mods with custom quotes are epic.

[GetNerfedOn]

As someone who's just started out writing mod character quotes, I can attest to just what a herculean task awaits any writer daring to attempt to write character quotes.

It is no simple task to bundle an entire character's personality, wrap it tight, and display it ever-so-concisely as you envision the character reacting to a wide range of examinables, whether they be everyday objects or towering monstrosities or adorable critters or eldtritch horrors.

Therefore I say that I do greatly appreciate mod character quotes, especially if the mod author has really taken their time to emulate what their characters should say.

[fimmatek]

Character quotes are one of the best features of the game: they can tell about the use of an item; the survivor's background, feelings, relation to that item; or just funny or nice things (Wilson's puns, yeah, or little references to real life things, like Wendy's "Kill the pig, spill his blood!" quote about the pig head). This was one of the main reasons I sticked to DST and still enjoy it after several years.

So yeah, I'm kinda annoyed when a mod doesn't have character quotes or just ones that feel really unnatural. Some examples from a world with the tropical experience mod I played today:

Spoiler

 

"It's a... thing." can drive me insane.

You don't say.

So, where's the vote option "I don't play mods because they lack proper quotes and feel out of place"?

 

1 hour ago, Terra M Welch said:

If anyone else has seen some funny mod quotes, feel free to share them!

Might be trivial, but I really love the character specific texts of the status announcer mod. Those fit each survivor's style so well. A few examples:

Spoiler

Wilson, bit of wetness: "Oh, H2O."
"Wolfgang need food! NOW!" (Guess who ;) )
WX, max sanity: "CPU STATUS: FULLY OPERATIONAL"
Wickerbottom, max health: "I'm as fit as can be expected for my age!"
Woodie, low health: "Put me to rest... in the woods..."
Woodie, max sanity: "All good on the Northern front!"
Wes, full hunger: "*pats stomach*"
Maxwell, mid wetness: "This water will ruin my suit."
Wigfrid, full health: "My skin is impenetrable!"
Winona, mid hunger: "Can I take my lunch break yet?"

 

[Blueleaf12]

I love mods with custom dialogue! The dialogue is already really good in DST, so adding more just makes it even better. 

I've mentioned this before, but one of my favourite mods added more dialogue for Lucy. It gives her more depth, especially with her quotes for some of the other survivors. The only complaint I have with the mod (and her in general) is that Woodie has a lot of quotes were he mentions her, or asks her a question, and I'd love to see her respond to some of them. 

I write in my spare time and have considered writing dialogue for mod characters, but I agree, adding thousands of new dialogue options for a character is difficult and time consuming! So people who make mods and do this kind of stuff have my respect. I have two unfinished (and will probably remain unfinished) character mod ideas I've started. 

[Well-met]

Going through the entire speech list seriously taxes a good amount of hours. Easily a dozen hours if you stop and think for each line.

Plus when you go ingame and have a few games with your character, you quickly realize how bad some of the lines are so you feel compelled to get back in the file and do it all over again.

Plus when klei adds new strings it's one big mess and youve got to figure out how many and where did they put the new content.

It's no easy work.

[Charlie Dark]

2 hours ago, GetNerfedOn said:

As someone who's just started out writing mod character quotes, I can attest to just what a herculean task awaits any writer daring to attempt to write character quotes.

It is no simple task to bundle an entire character's personality, wrap it tight, and display it ever-so-concisely as you envision the character reacting to a wide range of examinables, whether they be everyday objects or towering monstrosities or adorable critters or eldtritch horrors.

Therefore I say that I do greatly appreciate mod character quotes, especially if the mod author has really taken their time to emulate what their characters should say.

Oh yes.. having to mimic a custom character's personality is difficult.. unless you've played as that same character for over 150 real life hours..

[Toroic]

I honestly think that a lot of mod characters are abandoned once you realize how many speech lines need to be written for them.

Some rough estimating is that there's about 1800 lines that need to be written for a character as of the current amount of content.  Even if you only spend 30 seconds per line that is 15 hours of writing quotes.

[Canis]

22 minutes ago, Toros said:

I honestly think that a lot of mod characters are abandoned once you realize how many speech lines need to be written for them.

Some rough estimating is that there's about 1800 lines that need to be written for a character as of the current amount of content.  Even if you only spend 30 seconds per line that is 15 hours of writing quotes.

That number is cut down a considerable amount if you ignore forge and gorge quotes, but it's still a LOT of time. It usually takes me ~5 days to finishing an entire speech file because im lazy.

Regarding the OP, I prefer if quotes are in place. Seeing the "It's a thing" or a generic line for all characters makes me feel like the mod isn't as polished as it can be, and my feelings towards it lower a bit. This is why I always go out of my way to make sure there are custom quotes for the vanilla characters in mods I make.

[minespatch]

26 minutes ago, Toros said:

I honestly think that a lot of mod characters are abandoned once you realize how many speech lines need to be written for them.

If I ever get to finish that Skeledork mod, I intend to finish every line and constantly update if that ever happens.

[Scrumch]

I'd like to hope people enjoy it when mod's have custom speech files, or else all those days of writing would have gone to waste...

It's boring at times, but it's a good opportunity to work on a character's personality and story. Though I worry that lines I write for the vanilla characters could sound out-of-character.

Some of my favourites I've made have to be:

My character:

Spoiler

SURFNTURF = "This is the tastiest-looking turf I've ever seen!",

MINOTAURHORN = "What if my horns are edible? I hope not.",

CRUMBS = "You know, this'd be a lot more macabre if it wasn't made out of biscuits.", 

TAFFY = "How do I chew this without molars?",

WORMHOLE =
 {
    GENERIC = "By the Gods, I hope that's a mouth!",

        SPIDER =
        {
            DEAD = "I almost feel bad for the poor thing, almost.",
            GENERIC = "It'd be a lot cuter if it wasn't trying to eat me.",
            SLEEPING = "See? It's so much cuter.",
        },

        SPIDER_MOON = 
        {
            GENERIC = "It would be a lot cuter if... Nah, it's hideous.",
            SLEEPING = "See? It's - Nope, it's still ugly.",
            DEAD = "I almost feel bad... Eh, not really.",
        },

Lines I added to the Vanilla characters:

Spoiler

WORTOX.DESCRIBE.WAKES_EGGS = "Hyuhyu! It's times like these where I'm glad I eat souls!"

WOODIE.DESCRIBE.WAKES_FEATHER = "Bird or not; I hate all feathers equally."

.GENERIC.DESCRIBE.WAKES_FEATHER = "She made it with her face!"

STRINGS.CHARACTERS.WX78.DESCRIBE.WAKES = 
{
            GENERIC = "DETECTING... %s!",
            ATTACKER = "YOU CANNOT LOCKPICK MY ANTIVIRUS, %s",
            MURDERER = "YOUR PRIMATIVE REPTILE BRAIN IS NO MATCH FOR ME, %s",
            REVIVER = "THE SCALED FLESHLING %s CAN BE USEFUL, I GUESS",
            GHOST = "YOUR SCALEY HIDE COULD NOT SHIELD YOUR FLESH MEAT, %s",
            FIRESTARTER = "%s CAUSES DESTRUCTION WELL ENOUGH, FOR AN ORGANIC",
}

Can you tell I had a field day writing WX's lines? XD

[Harrowick]

Mods with custom quotes really make them feel right at home, the only exception is if a good chunk of quotes are misspelled/have weird capitalization, but that's absolutely forgivable considering the amount of lines there are. 

[Terra B Welch]

8 hours ago, fimmatek said:

Character quotes are one of the best features of the game: they can tell about the use of an item; the survivor's background, feelings, relation to that item; or just funny or nice things (Wilson's puns, yeah, or little references to real life things, like Wendy's "Kill the pig, spill his blood!" quote about the pig head). This was one of the main reasons I sticked to DST and still enjoy it after several years.

So yeah, I'm kinda annoyed when a mod doesn't have character quotes or just ones that feel really unnatural. Some examples from a world with the tropical experience mod I played today:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

"It's a... thing." can drive me insane.

You don't say.

So, where's the vote option "I don't play mods because they lack proper quotes and feel out of place"?

 

Might be trivial, but I really love the character specific texts of the status announcer mod. Those fit each survivor's style so well. A few examples:

  Reveal hidden contents

Wilson, bit of wetness: "Oh, H2O."
"Wolfgang need food! NOW!" (Guess who )
WX, max sanity: "CPU STATUS: FULLY OPERATIONAL"
Wickerbottom, max health: "I'm as fit as can be expected for my age!"
Woodie, low health: "Put me to rest... in the woods..."
Woodie, max sanity: "All good on the Northern front!"
Wes, full hunger: "*pats stomach*"
Maxwell, mid wetness: "This water will ruin my suit."
Wigfrid, full health: "My skin is impenetrable!"
Winona, mid hunger: "Can I take my lunch break yet?"

 

Added a second poll, though idk if anyone can vote if they've already voted.

[GetNerfedOn]

46 minutes ago, Terra M Welch said:

Added a second poll, though idk if anyone can vote if they've already voted.

sadly, people who've voted cannot vote on additions to existing polls...

6 hours ago, Canis said:

That number is cut down a considerable amount if you ignore forge and gorge quotes, but it's still a LOT of time. It usually takes me ~5 days to finishing an entire speech file because im lazy.

Regarding the OP, I prefer if quotes are in place. Seeing the "It's a thing" or a generic line for all characters makes me feel like the mod isn't as polished as it can be, and my feelings towards it lower a bit. This is why I always go out of my way to make sure there are custom quotes for the vanilla characters in mods I make.

I find Forge is actually okay because it's just 46 lines. Gorge is the real hecc here. so many i haven't even counted

[Terra B Welch]

Idk how good I am at quotes, but for one of my mods, handicaper, I like this particular quote from maxwell I made, I find it funny seeing maxwell get punished for killing a rabbit and then apologizing profusely to charlie.

[Charlie Dark]

3 hours ago, Terra M Welch said:

Idk how good I am at quotes, but for one of my mods, handicaper, I like this particular quote from maxwell I made, I find it funny seeing maxwell get punished for killing a rabbit and then apologizing profusely to charlie.

that's right! he shouldn't kill the little fluffy assistants!