The terrain editor/generator analogy is a pretty good one. Shaders is another. Some need it, some don't. Large amounts of speech are basically the norm in commercial games these days, but if you don't use very much speech then it probably wouldn't be a priority.

I'm creating a traditional, adventure game with a 129-page script (just for the dialogue and narration for the story portion...this doesn't include descriptions of objects, idle chatter when talking to someone during interactive portions, etc), and it would be commercial suicide to not add speech to the game. Back in the old days, you could d/l optional speech packs but this isn't the old days. I'm hoping Speex will pop up on the beta page sometime in the next weeks/months (hey, my behind the view negative numbers idea is in beta now so anything is possible ), so I'll just hold my breath, pass out, and check when I come to. Given the amount of speech I'll require, you can see why I have an interest in something like this.

If it never makes it in, there's always a 3rd party approach, and perhaps A.Russell will add it to his AL Plugin as he said he may someday. He's been gone for a while, so I hope he sees my post in his thread whenever he makes it back. I'll take either way...Conitec,, A.Russell, or someone else if I have to fork over a bit of green to make it happen.