Vega Strike Forums

hehe bingo..... yeah right.

well, as for languages, it would be great to use as different languages as possible. maybe reversing adds a little extra-crank to those samples, especially the french announcing voice.

Any language will do; the more un-familiar to most nationalities, the better.
As for reversing, I was planning that for alien bases. Reversed voices would not sound human at all.

Anyone know Esperanto? It worked in the movie "Gattaca" (The general announcements were in Esperanto).

Great idea!

Worked for Red Dwarf, too.

Hey there! A couple of things.

a) I got tired of VS's overly loud (and clipped) music, and so I made a few passes at them. I got what I think is a better sounding set. It's my opinion, though. But, I thought I could share it. Who knows... if it's generally liked, it could take the place of the current set:
they're here

b) I did a quick pass at the recorded backgrounds... take a look, they're here

Note: I'm uploading as I write. If some don't work, try again later.

Oh... and:

fizze wrote:well, as for languages, it would be great to use as different languages as possible. maybe reversing adds a little extra-crank to those samples, especially the french announcing voice.

French? I could have sworn it was german. Oh, well...

Sorry I cannot listen to the samples for now, my amplifier burnt last weekend; I'll try to fix it this weekend, but I'm not sure I got any spare transistors; might have to buy computer speakers for now (I gave away my old Altec Lansings... ^^).

chuck_starchaser wrote:...my amplifier burnt last weekend

Ouch... my condolences.

chuck_starchaser wrote:...might have to buy computer speakers for now (I gave away my old Altec Lansings... ^^).

Agh... get headsets instead, you won't regret it.

Adding another slightly off-topic comment:

klauss wrote:Oh... and:

fizze wrote:well, as for languages, it would be great to use as different languages as possible. maybe reversing adds a little extra-crank to those samples, especially the french announcing voice.

French? I could have sworn it was german. Oh, well...

These space-station background sounds currently in-game with the announcing voices and commercials are neither French nor German. I'm certain about that. It sounds very much like some Asian language (but it's definitely not Japanese either) -- maybe Chinese or Korean.

Oh... I was referring to the background recordings posted here. But yeah... the ones ingame aren't French either. It always sounded to me like Japanese... but I can't tell for sure.

I agree, not French or Japanese (knowing both to some degree). My guess would've been Chinese.

Of course, the language in the "launchjoke" track is neither as well. It sounds vaguely German, but I'm guessing it's a made-up language, because they keep repeating the same darn thing over and over. The music and back-and-forth are still funny, but I've had to start skipping the track because all the "ox-fam" or whatnot was getting to me.

lol, it's a made up language allright. It's me blabbering gibberish.

Hehe... that crossed my mind once... but it was damn close to something that could have been a real language

Kenseguro! There you are! I tried to email you but got an automatic reply saying your in-box was full. I sent you an email while you were in Japan, if you remember, about getting the original, un-compressed music tracks.
Is that still a possibility? If you need a place to upload I can set up an FTP account for you in my server space.

I don't know whether or not these might be of some to you for speech synthesis and synths in general hope it helps.

http://www.research.att.com/projects/tts/demo.html

http://www.nonags.com/nonags/auedit.html

http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/freeware/NT/

Freeware Granular Synthesizer

http://hem.passagen.se/rasmuse/Granny.htm

On the subject of sound effects, I made a sound that might make a good alarm.
http://us.f2.yahoofs.com/bc/40722de8_e2 ... DB7ytR52iC

In case you are wondering, it is from a dubble-stop glisando on a cello's A and D strings, with the speed (and therefore pitch) greatly increced after I recorded it.

In the quite likely event that that link isn't working, see
http://freesound.iua.upf.edu/samplesVie ... hp?id=8890

Hey team! There is lots of great discussion here but has anything "official" been decided for VS non-music sound standards? I was recording Oswald's voice, before I had to go to Japan, and will finish it in early December. Pyramid is gracious enough to take what I have given him thus far, but I'd be more comfortable creating the first in-game voice a new player will hear if there were standards to meet. For example, I am recording as follows:

* 44khz (the best that most microphones under $200 can produce, and more than enough if we use Chuck's concept of "tinny" intership communications)
* mono (we have 2 ears, but only one mouth)
* OGG format (IIRC that's what VS was using for music)

Also, is it an eventual goal for all the intership chatter to be recorded? What about campaign-mission fixers?

Once desired standards are decided and advertised, it will be easier to recruit voice actors. Voice acting is easy; I wrote a tutorial a couple of years ago:
http://www.willadsenfamily.org/us/don/t ... torial.htm

Turbo

You have definitely done a great job so far recording Oswald's voice. And you have traveled where no one has gone before I suggest that the link to your tutorial be added to a Development:Sound wiki page (which probably doesn't exist yet).

Your standards proposal above looks good for the start.
I feel that it would also be important to standardize the ogg encoding as well as eventual voice post-processing to either give it more depth or maybe even add radio static (as a separate layer in the source files).

*EDIT*
Actually, the only existing page about sound i've found is Development:Audio. I have included the standard there.

That works for me. I will update the tutorial a bit over the next couple of nights, and perhaps add some stuff to the wiki. And, we can conduct furhter discussions of voice acting in a new thread in this forum, to separate it from the music and sound effects discussions.

I like the idea of squelch, to help the player understand he is hearing a radio transmission. I actually experimented with it when I started doing Oswald. It is very easy to add radio squelch to the beginning and end of each transmission. All it takes is about 0.3 seconds of white noise, at a low volume. When I get home in early December I will update the audio with that and link updated files to you, so you can rework the timing.

What do you mean by "more depth?" Chuck has proposed that intership voice transmissions sound "tinny" (by reducing the sample rate). That would work fine, though I think that adding the squelch breaks at the beginning and end would achieve the same purpose, to help the player differentiate the radio sounds from other sounds in an intuitive manner.

Turbo

Not sure how to describe what I meant by "more depth". I thought the voice should sound more "dirty", "distorted", and "natural" like it was not recorded in a studio or quiet room. If we imagine that the speaker is sitting in the cockpit of his ship, maybe there is a low noise from engines (though shielded by walls). Maybe "tinny" will just do it in combination with lower sample rate and noise. I trust you'll figure out the best post-processing settings for the sound of voices.

OK. I also just finished updating my tutorial with one or two things I learned since writing it, and added a Voice Acting section to the Wiki. I can't do any serious sound work until I get home in early December.

Turbo

I thought the voice should sound more "dirty", "distorted", and "natural" like it was not recorded in a studio or quiet room. If we imagine that the speaker is sitting in the cockpit of his ship, maybe there is a low noise from engines (though shielded by walls).

For the sound of the voice, it might be possible to slightly alter (resample, add noise) someone's voice while it is playing, and change it each time.

What about having some very low rumbling noises while your engines are on (I know we had something like this many years ago for afterburners but it was loud and obnoxious)... this could be something that varies smoothly from 0 if the engines are unpowered (max speed) to like 1/4 the level of speech/gun sound effects if you are at full acceleration--I'm thinking of the length of the engine cones. (so very quiet but slightly noticable).
There could possibly be noise with different frequencies for each type of ship (just as is the case with cars), so when someone talks to you, that sound plays in the background.

Goodness! I hope I can find the time to read and understand the technical details laid out in this thread.
Chuck, Klauss, you still around? What's the status of the audio improvements, both code and data side?

I'd love to pitch in if time allows.
(Oh and shoot me a PM too, I'll probably forget to check these boards for another couple months. )