What's all this, then?
Now, you might be saying, "Hey, Offy, or whatever your name is, aren't there subtitles in the game already?"
Well, most contractor VO in the game (Bain's and Locke's lines) do have subtitles, but almost all other lines in PAYDAY 2 lack captions, even though they should really have captions. For example: (non-exhaustive list)
* The patient diagnoses in No Mercy, which help you find the right patient
* Heister callouts, voice lines, and responses such as "I've spotted a Taser!", "Grenade Out!" or the Heat Speech from First World Bank
* SFX, which can contain vital information whether in stealth or loud, such as Cloaker charging, alarm box countdown beeping, or flashbang warning beeping.
As a solution, this mod adds closed captions to the game, in a style similar to that of Left 4 Dead 2 or Minecraft. Deaf/hard of hearing/hearing-impaired gamers, and people who don't need closed captions but perhaps just like them, this is for you.
Closed Captions Mod aims to be as comprehensive as possible when it comes to logging lines, with the following exceptions:
* Lines that already have subtitles in the unmodded base game (such as most of Bain's/Locke's heist-specific dialogue) will not be given captions by this mod
* Most "foley" sounds: like weapon reloading noises, bullet impacts, rainfall, footstep sounds, or most sources of gunfire. In my opinion this would be quite tiresome to have constantly on your screen, particularly when you're in the middle of a firefight. I may consider adding captions for gunshots or footsteps in stealth only.
Installation and Requirements
You must have already installed SuperBLT (or any other maintained fork of the original BLT) in order to install this mod.
You must also have BeardLib in order for this mod to work properly.
To install Closed Captions:
- Download the mod from this page by clicking the green "Download" button. Alternatively, you can use the version from GitHub- they should be the same version.
- Unpack the .zip archive with the utility of your choice.
- Move the folder called
Closed Captions(NOT the one called PD2-Closed Captions or any other name) into yourmodsfolder.
If you do not have amodsfolder, do not create one yourself- please follow the instructions in the earlier link to install SuperBLT.
Features (and Limitations)
Spoiler!
* Each caption (with the exception of ambient sounds, or sounds originating at the player) has directional indicators indicating the source of the sound.* In the event that a voice line has variations, may choose to display either a description of the sound (eg. "(Medic spawned)", or a random variation of the sound according to the source of the sound. (eg. "Medic in the house!", "This place looks like a surgery ward, there's blood all over!", "I'm here! ...AND I brought drugs!"). This does not apply to voice lines that have no variation- eg. the heat speech is transcribed exactly as-is for every heister.
* Voicelines are roughly sorted into categories (eg. "Heister Dialogue", "Contractor Voiceover", "Enemy Chatter", etc); you can choose which categories to show, and for most, you may additionally choose under what circumstances the line shows. (eg. stealth-only, loud-only, or always)
* The font size and color of the captions is customizable through the Mod Options menu
* You may choose the maximum number of captions that can appear at once.
Limitations of Closed Captions Mod, or: :(
* Many sounds may show a variant that is not true to the exact sound variant played; this is a limitation due to the fact that (to my knowledge) one cannot use Lua to get the currently playing sound variant from Wwise, which is the sound engine that PAYDAY 2 uses. This is the reason behind choosing a random line: even if you can't see the caption for the current line variation, you may still get a bit of flavor from the variation.
* Since the descriptions for the sounds must be written in manually by hand (read: I add them and write subtitles/captions for them as I find them), this mod may not show all voicelines played.
Known Issues and Known Missing Voicelines
Spoiler!
The following issues are currently known to the developer (that's me!) at this time:* Uhhh... fuck. An issue should go here, I guess. BRB making more bugs for me to fix later
* Oh wait I've got one, captions can overlap with the base-game subtitles. The current workaround is to adjust the captions position in your mod options menu such that they don't overlap.
The following voicelines/sounds are known to have missing caption data, either for variants or for the sound entirely:
* Diamond Heist (Garnet Group) CFO/Ralph dialogue
* Green Bridge prisoner dialogue
* Biker Heist Mechanic dialogue
* Brooklyn 10/10 Charon's dialogue
* Driver/Smuggler dialogue from Goat Simulator (both days)
* Locke's dialogue from Beneath the Mountain
* Vlad's Cousin's dialogue from Stealing Xmas
* Meltdown Geiger Counter SFX
* Aldstone's dialogue in the Safe House
Heister-specific dialogue variants' statuses:
* Dallas: **DONE**
* Chains: Unfinished
* Wolf: Unfinished
* Hoxton: Unfinished
* Houston: Not Done
* John Wick: Not Done
* Clover: Not Done
* Dragan: Not Done
* Jacket: **DONE**
* Bonnie: Not Done
* Sokol: Not Done
* Jiro: Not Done (I also don't know Japanese)
* Bodhi: Not Done
* Jimmy: Not Done
* Sydney: **DONE**
* Rust: Not Done
* Tony: Not Done
* Sangres: Not Done
* Joy: Not Done
* Ethan: Not Done
* Hila: Not Done
* Duke: Not Done
***Compatibility with other Mods***
Spoiler!
This mod should be compatible with any and all HUD mods. There are no known mod incompatibilities with Closed Captions Mod at this time. Please report incompatibilities on this mod page.Known interaction: Lines blocked by Anti-Voice Spam (Updated) (https://modworkshop.net/mod/23361) may not be blocked from displaying their captions.
**FAQ**SOWAAS (Frequently Asked Questions, Some Of Which Are Actually Statements):
Spoiler!
Q: The mod mentions both subtitles, but mostly uses the term "closed captions." What's the difference?A: In some languages, there's no difference between subtitles or closed captions, but in the USA, there's a significant difference: "Subtitles assume the viewer can hear but cannot understand the language or accent, or the speech is not entirely clear, so they transcribe only dialogue and some on-screen text. Captions aim to describe to the deaf and hard of hearing all significant audio content — spoken dialogue and non-speech information such as the identity of speakers and, occasionally, their manner of speaking — along with any significant music or sound effects using words or symbols." (from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_captioning )
Since this mod aims to give deaf or hard of hearing players the ability to perceive information normally only available by sound (including sound effects as well as spoken dialogue), its function is more accurately described as Closed Captioning than simply subtitling. As a side note, Closed Captions Mod also aims to directly translate into English any lines which are spoken in non-English languages; this particular feature has met with limited success owing to the fact that I only know about one and a half of the other languages spoken in this game besides English.
Q: I don't want to see captions for [x] sound.
A: You can customize captions or which captions are displayed, but at the moment, you will need to edit the sound_data file, since there is not yet any in-game/UI option to customize sounds' captions.
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Q: I don't want to see randomized captions, just descriptive captioning.
A: You can disable randomized captions in this mod's options.
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Q: I was playing [x] heist/playing [y] character, and [z] sound didn't show up as a caption!
A: Sorry about that! I enter all the sounds manually, so I've almost certainly forgotten some lines. (In particular, I haven't logged most character-specific dialogue variants yet, because there's just so many of them.) You can report the sound to me if you'd like.
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Q: Isn't it cheating to have a directional indicator on your screen for sounds, like the Alarm Box in Hoxton Revenge?
A: No. This mod only provides captions for sounds that you could already hear with your own ear(s), if you are not hearing-impaired. Furthermore, the captions for these sounds only appear if you are in hearing range in-game for any given sound (ranges determined and assigned manually). Players are ordinarily expected be able to use their directional hearing; I don't believe that adding a visual component counterpart is cheating. So, the information is already in the game- this mod just makes it accessible in a way other than by sound.
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Q: Well, I think it's cheating to have a directional indicator on your screen for sounds, like the Alarm Box in Hoxton Revenge.
A: That's nice, dear.
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Q: Subs or dubs?
A: Subs, obviously.
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Spoiler!
Encountered crashes? Missing lines to report? Saw a typo in one of the captions? Foolhardy enough to attempt translating the captions into a different language?* Just having issues with another mod of mine?You're welcome to submit an issue or pull request to the mod's GitHub page (linked below), or contact me on Discord or here on ModWorkshop (in comments or mail)! I can't fix issues if I don't know about them. If you *only* have an issue to report (Bug, crash, missing caption, typo, similar issues), it would be best to use the ["Issues" form](https://github.com/offyerrocker/PD2-ClosedCaptions/issues) on GitHub.
I usually have notifications suppressed when I'm not available, so don't worry about bothering me- send your report/comment/question, and I'll answer as soon as I can.
This ModWorkshop page will only have the most recent *stable* release- the absolute latest in cutting-edge captioning can be found on the GitHub page, linked above.
\*For translators, please do not use Google Translate to create subtitle translations.
Thanks to Lightbulb/Doctor Dakka for creating the Payday 2 Voiceline IDs spreadsheet, and to everyone who contributed to that: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m0LBg2PKpB-bnWfOFj40AglCI1dLmAHLH3ydi3Y7uz8/
Thanks to Hoxtilicious and all of the translators who contributed to translating the Russian merc lines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxzLuAlWIqI | Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/paydaytheheist/comments/4fer1m/can_someone_who_speaks_russian_translate_all_these/d28jpw7/
Is there a way to make the subtitles from this mod look like the ones from vanilla?
Not at the moment, sorry.
It won't work very well to use the actual subtitle display code that PAYDAY 2 already uses, since subtitles from this mod can appear much more frequently, and also need to display positional data (the < and > arrows), so the only solution to achieve this would be for me to rewrite my mod's subtitle code to mimic that style.
Maybe sometime later, if I have time.
@offyerrocker is there a way to remove the black border surrounding the text instead then? (sorry for the ping)
@galastifox
In the mod's files, in menumanager.lua, line 874, set alpha to
0instead of0.75.Sorry, there's no menu for it right now. I haven't worked on this mod in some time