Soundblock Text to Speech (TTS)
Assuming sound blocks return in SE2, one of their biggest limitations in SE1 was that every sound had to be predetermined by the developers or modders. If you wanted a specific line or message, someone had to think of it first and include it in the game. If you didn’t like the voice or tone, there was no way to change it.
A good solution would be to add text-to-speech support. Players could enter a sentence and select a voice to read it aloud. As a fun touch, Marek’s voice could even be included as an Easter egg. This would make sound blocks far more flexible and useful for many different situations.
This idea is not unprecedented. Text panels and antenna broadcasts already allow players to send custom messages, and whatever systems servers use to moderate those could easily be extended to text-to-speech as well.
With this feature, any status update that would normally appear on an LCD could instead be spoken to the player. Ships and stations could feel more alive, and the scripting possibilities would be endless.
I like this feedback
I can just image the soundblock saying "Intruder in Engineering", "Reactor Critical", "six seven", "Autopilot Engaged", "Oxygen Leak on deck 4", "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that", "Ship pressurized", "Warheads armed", "Uranium detected", "Low fuel", and so much more 😃
I can just image the soundblock saying "Intruder in Engineering", "Reactor Critical", "six seven", "Autopilot Engaged", "Oxygen Leak on deck 4", "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that", "Ship pressurized", "Warheads armed", "Uranium detected", "Low fuel", and so much more 😃
Moderation? “Easily extended”? Yeah, okay. That’s… optimistic. Text filers are one thing, but real-time TTS is way harder to control. Servers already strugle with chat, now you want them policing voice output too?
Also, not gonna lie, sound blocks are already kinda ignored as-is. Slapping TTS on them isn’t magically gonna make people use them more, it’ll probly just give the few who do another way to be annoying.
Moderation? “Easily extended”? Yeah, okay. That’s… optimistic. Text filers are one thing, but real-time TTS is way harder to control. Servers already strugle with chat, now you want them policing voice output too?
Also, not gonna lie, sound blocks are already kinda ignored as-is. Slapping TTS on them isn’t magically gonna make people use them more, it’ll probly just give the few who do another way to be annoying.
A way to override standard "inventory full" message :)
A way to override standard "inventory full" message :)
I like this. I think I read or saw an interview where Marek mentioned wanting the game to feel like a “living universe” or something like that and having sound blocks be more responsive to the environment through scripted TTS would certainly do that.
I like this. I think I read or saw an interview where Marek mentioned wanting the game to feel like a “living universe” or something like that and having sound blocks be more responsive to the environment through scripted TTS would certainly do that.
Thank you for your feedback. It has been collected and passed on to the developers for discussion.
Cheers,
Arron CM
Thank you for your feedback. It has been collected and passed on to the developers for discussion.
Cheers,
Arron CM
I couldn't agree more!
Adding a lightweight simple text-to-speech (maybe allowing the user to choose the model quality potentially?) with maybe a few voices and pitch/speed sliders shouldn't be too hard in 2026 :D
Imagine the possibilities with this, you could fully customize the warnings and info voicelines in your grids! Anything that is available in an event controller and other logic blocks could be hooked up to this to create custom warnings and error messages, the possibilities would be limiless, some random examples (achievable using event controllers mainly):
- custom % storage/energy/hydrogen level info/warning voiceline
- custom out of ammo voiceline
- custom hull integrity % levels voicelines
- custom specific grid component not functional anymore warning
- custom docker/undocked voicelines
- custom base running low on specific resource announcements
- custom gravity entered/exited voicelines
- custom specific weapon selected voicelines
- [... and other infinite more combinations...]
The creativity and fun/utility factor this would bring to the base vanilla game (especially for consoles) would be limitless almost, and would definitely be worth the additional storage space to store the additional software to do this.
A basic censorship system could also be added to this funcitonality using a list of disallowed words.
Something similar to this already exists in Elite Dangerous using a third party tool called "VoiceAttack" (+ other optional tools), and it's A-W-E-S-O-M-E, a crazy gameplay experience enhancer!
I personally feel like his could be one of the best and most interesting features of Space Engineers 2!
I couldn't agree more!
Adding a lightweight simple text-to-speech (maybe allowing the user to choose the model quality potentially?) with maybe a few voices and pitch/speed sliders shouldn't be too hard in 2026 :D
Imagine the possibilities with this, you could fully customize the warnings and info voicelines in your grids! Anything that is available in an event controller and other logic blocks could be hooked up to this to create custom warnings and error messages, the possibilities would be limiless, some random examples (achievable using event controllers mainly):
- custom % storage/energy/hydrogen level info/warning voiceline
- custom out of ammo voiceline
- custom hull integrity % levels voicelines
- custom specific grid component not functional anymore warning
- custom docker/undocked voicelines
- custom base running low on specific resource announcements
- custom gravity entered/exited voicelines
- custom specific weapon selected voicelines
- [... and other infinite more combinations...]
The creativity and fun/utility factor this would bring to the base vanilla game (especially for consoles) would be limitless almost, and would definitely be worth the additional storage space to store the additional software to do this.
A basic censorship system could also be added to this funcitonality using a list of disallowed words.
Something similar to this already exists in Elite Dangerous using a third party tool called "VoiceAttack" (+ other optional tools), and it's A-W-E-S-O-M-E, a crazy gameplay experience enhancer!
I personally feel like his could be one of the best and most interesting features of Space Engineers 2!
On the implementation side of this feature request it could also make sense to implement a sort of "local caching" or even a "local pre baking" of these custom voicelines so that they can simply be played without even having to be regenerated by the text-to-speech if the textfield is not touched.
On the implementation side of this feature request it could also make sense to implement a sort of "local caching" or even a "local pre baking" of these custom voicelines so that they can simply be played without even having to be regenerated by the text-to-speech if the textfield is not touched.
Another extra thing that would be really good with this is a speed and a pitch "variance" slider that dictate how much the speed and the pitch of the voice should ranly deviate from the configured value, this deviation would of course be small but the effect this would make often repeating voicelines a lot easier on the ears in theory (apperantely lots of games do this with the sfx).
Another extra thing that would be really good with this is a speed and a pitch "variance" slider that dictate how much the speed and the pitch of the voice should ranly deviate from the configured value, this deviation would of course be small but the effect this would make often repeating voicelines a lot easier on the ears in theory (apperantely lots of games do this with the sfx).
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