Disclaimer: the following might spoil the immersion for some if they learn how the radio chatter effects actually work. If that's you, then move right along, and Santa Claus can still be real for you.
That said, there is no Santa and your parents buy the presents at the store, so here's how it works. There are four types of chatter effect:
1. "I'm hit" type chatter, which is tied into the actual damage effects on each aircraft. Use these only on friendly aircraft so that when they take damage, you hear them report it on the radio. This is the only type of chatter friendly aircraft have associated with them. I also added a special scream effect for when the pilots themselves are hit.
2. "I got him" type chatter, which is also tied in with the damage effects just like the previous type. Use these only on enemy aircraft, so that when they take damage, you hear someone on your side excitedly claiming a kill.
3. "He's on my six" or "Watch out" type chatter, which is tied into the "shells" type effect in the effects section of enemy aircraft. It is triggered when they fire, so you hear warnings and cries for help when a friendly is in trouble. Not much purpose in attaching this to friendly aircraft.
4. Anything else you want to add to liven up the radio during a dogfight is tied to a speed triggered effect in the effects section of enemy aircraft. Use this only on enemy fighters. As they are maneuvering they will cross back and forth over the speed threshold and trigger a random radio call. As long as it is something that might be called out at any moment in a dogfight without a specific event attached to it, it fills in the silence nicely. Not so nice when a formation of bombers crosses the threshold all at once or when a friendly crosses the threshold and there is no enemy in sight, so just use it on enemy fighters for best results. Basically your wingmen have really bad R/T discipline and don't specify who they are talking to, and in a big enough fight, when "one o'clock low" is called, chances are there's a bogey at SOMEONE'S one o'clock low, and it could be you. Similar to number 3, when you hear "watch out" a bad guy is firing at SOMEONE, and it may be you, heed the warning.
In the sounds.xml the lists of .wav files that each chatter effect can draw from have a lot of null values. I didn't like how cluttered it sounded when a radio call was triggered every single time one of the above four things happened, so I added the null values to reduce the frequency with which calls are made. Add more for less frequent chatter, take more out for more chatter.
For setting up the languages, you have two options.
1. Create an AI only friendly and enemy version of each aircraft you want chatter associated with for each language you want chatter in. That doesn't mean you have six ai only versions for three languages, as some of those aren't needed, like a friendly version of a Bf 109 using British or American voices. For example, for the 109 you might have:
Friendly - German Voices
Enemy - American Voices
Enemy - British Voices
2. Create only a single friendly and enemy ai only version of the aircraft. Set up your chatter effects generically, to only use a single language, and swap the wav files out and in manually to change languages.
I hope that helps.
Dan
