radiochatter

RadioChatter is a mod for the flight combat video game Nuclear Option that adds live, spoken radio communication instead of the game's default silence or canned recordings. Tower controllers, AWACS controllers, and ground units all speak to you during a mission, and what they say is generated on the spot from the actual state of the game, so callouts include real bearings, distances, altitudes, runway numbers, and callsigns rather than generic pre-recorded lines.

Under the hood, the mod hooks into the game through BepInEx, a common modding framework, and sends text to a local text-to-speech program running alongside the game to turn it into spoken audio in real time. It is built to work in singleplayer and for the player hosting a multiplayer session. If it detects it is running as a regular multiplayer client rather than the host, it turns itself off automatically, since it cannot safely read the game state it would need.

The README describes a fairly detailed radio workflow. Ground units in trouble call out for support and are grouped by location under consistent callsigns, but those calls wait until the player has actually taken off. Players can accept a ground unit's call for help using natural sounding phrases, decline it, switch which group they are supporting, or ask AWACS for updated directions to a target. Declaring specific mission types, such as close air support or suppression of enemy air defenses, changes which radio chatter is allowed through, and a pilot can also call out that they are out of weapons to quiet unnecessary chatter, or ask for radio silence and later resume it.

Installation and setup details for players are not shown in the excerpt available here, though release downloads and a demo video are linked from the project page. The mod is distributed through GitHub releases with an automated build pipeline, and supports both Windows and Linux. The full README is longer than what was shown.