Highborn ship-to-ship speech

For collaboration between the different artists creating music and sound for vegastrike.
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Turbo
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Highborn ship-to-ship speech

Post by Turbo »

Team, here is the highborn speech pack. This one took a few takes to get right, I hope you like it.
http://www.willadsenfamily.org/us/don/t ... speech.zip
This is a human faction, so there is no translators and no "all-purpose untranslated fixer" sound. This was the first faction we have encountered with a line that ends in "[garbled]" when the speaker's ship gets destroyed, but there are others. So my solution was to put in 1/2 second of white noise, 70% volume, at the end of the voice line.

I will work on the Rlaan next, depending on feedback in that thread.
Turbo

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CLoneWolf
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Re: Highborn ship-to-ship speech

Post by CLoneWolf »

Great job! They really sound so... highborn! :)
And Audacity's white noise generator is so appropriate that I had already trashed my initial idea of experiments with progressive sound degradation ending in white noise, well done!
rivalin
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Re: Highborn ship-to-ship speech

Post by rivalin »

Please no, it's like Mary Poppins all over again. I don't mean to be harsh but it sounds like what it is; a good American voice actor putting on a ridiculous pompous faux English accent. I know I should leave this alone because you've undoubtedly put work into it, but I'm motivated enough by this to, as I said in the other thread, do the voices myself. Can I just do some samples and you can give it a listen and see what you thinK? As you said, we should try to make sure we use as many voice actors as possible, and from the wiki, the highborn seem to be capable and honourable warriors, not grandiloquent buffoons (although the text seems to suggest that's exactly what they are), but maybe I'm wrong, in which case the tone is perfect and you can just ignore the above :)
Turbo
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Re: Highborn ship-to-ship speech

Post by Turbo »

rivalin, you are correct, I am an American doing a pompous British accent. I was intentionally pompous since that is the tone that the text suggested (text, after all, cannot impart tone by itself). Living where I do, I hear Australians talking a lot more than British, so if it sounds wrong to you that's because it probably is.

I was not offended by your opinion or how you stated it, because clearly you feel strongly about it and I agree that while we need the voices to add to game immersion, we must avoid a preponderance of stereotypes. Plus, I'm glad that voice acting is starting to gather more input and actors. I did 3 takes, not a lot of effort, but put a lot of work into the editing. That does not necessarily pass the "so what" test, because it forced me to devleop a new skill -- staring at wave forms to figure out which one is making the "pop" sound that Audicity couldn't find -- and is therefore to my and the project's benefit even if we don't use the voice set I did.

I did the highborn because I thought it would be fun to do, not because I feel strongly about doing it. I have no objection to someone else doing the highborn accent. For that matter, it doesn't have to be British, that is just what my brain imagined in when I read the text. So please, record your own version of the highborn and we can use it instead. I'd rather have more actors and happy players than the opposite.

CLoneWolf, I am glad you like the white noise. I experimented with fading it out in different ways and decided that did not sound as good as keeping the entire white-noise burst at the same volume during its short duration. Your idea with rapid degradation would be cool, but I cannot imagine how to do it without splicing together a lot of 1/10 second clips at progressively lower sample rates while fading in the white noise, which seems like a lot of work that would have to be redone for every separate line.
Turbo

There are two speeds in combat: stopped, and as fast as you can go. Unless you run into something, going fast keeps you alive more often than stopping.
loki1950
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Re: Highborn ship-to-ship speech

Post by loki1950 »

As opposed the supercilious British accent how about a supercilious French accent "a les Normand" :wink:
not inspector Clouseau mind :lol:

Enjoy the Choice :)
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pyramid
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Re: Highborn ship-to-ship speech

Post by pyramid »

Actually I find the highborn speech quite funny. It might appear that there is a contradiction between the description of the faction and the intentionally snobby comm text lines. But is it impossible to encounter such individuals (in real life and in space)? I guess not. But still, if this voice really sounds annoying, I'd suggest to put the exiting voices temporarily ingame and later update them with rivalin's redo.
CLoneWolf
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Re: Highborn ship-to-ship speech

Post by CLoneWolf »

Turbo wrote:I did the highborn because I thought it would be fun to do, not because I feel strongly about doing it. I have no objection to someone else doing the highborn accent. For that matter, it doesn't have to be British, that is just what my brain imagined in when I read the text. So please, record your own version of the highborn and we can use it instead. I'd rather have more actors and happy players than the opposite.
pyramid wrote:Actually I find the highborn speech quite funny. It might appear that there is a contradiction between the description of the faction and the intentionally snobby comm text lines. But is it impossible to encounter such individuals (in real life and in space)?
rivalin, with me it makes 3 ;) I also had thought of trying the Highborn because the whole set of lines leaves room for excess of drama, as opposed to the emotionless synth voice I was doing for the Andolians. Being pompous doesn't mean you're a lousy fighter, rather, if you're good for real, that's one more reason to feel superior, don't you think? :)
I'd humbly suggest you recording the lines with different levels of drama, without reaching Privateer's Retro (now THAT might be too much! ;) ) and see what sounds more appropriate for you
Turbo wrote:CLoneWolf, I am glad you like the white noise. I experimented with fading it out in different ways and decided that did not sound as good as keeping the entire white-noise burst at the same volume during its short duration. Your idea with rapid degradation would be cool, but I cannot imagine how to do it without splicing together a lot of 1/10 second clips at progressively lower sample rates while fading in the white noise, which seems like a lot of work that would have to be redone for every separate line.
Yes, it would have been a lot of work for less than 1 second of transition, I had initially thought of a chorus/flanger progressive kick-in, with some intermittent silence, and the final white noise, but the "Son of a [garbled]" sentence was too short for such an effort and I'm very lazy ;)
Turbo
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Re: Highborn ship-to-ship speech

Post by Turbo »

CLoneWolf wrote: without reaching Privateer's Retro (now THAT might be too much! ;)
I am glad you brought up the Privateer Retro faction because I was thinking about that today. The original Privateer (and the VS mods based on it, who had little choice) made the Retro faction sound like angry televangelists from Oklahoma. I recommend that whoever decides to voice the Luddittes avoid that stereotype. Some of the insults they hurl would sound good with an angry tone, but other things they say are statements of their beliefs that would sound just as religious and definitely more fanatical if the actor sings them like a chant.

Edit: For the non-English speakers, a televangelist is a preacher who performs religious services on television. They tend to be flambouyant since it is as much about putting on a show as it is about the religious message.
Turbo

There are two speeds in combat: stopped, and as fast as you can go. Unless you run into something, going fast keeps you alive more often than stopping.
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