Vega Strike Voice Acting

[jackS]

I don't currently have any mp3->ogg converters handy -- does anyone have a recommendation?

[pyramid]

On *nix > audiokonverter; integrates nicely with kde's konqueror
On win* > audacity; audio editor, don't remember any nice free tool.

[bgaskey]

Or vlc? it does everthing

[loki1950]

audacity also in Linux lots of converters out there even some players have the built in codec converters Amarok for sure,and Listen and Banshee for Gnome.

Enjoy the Choice

[bengreenwood]

Do you guys still want those lines recording? Pyramid asked me to get some done in this thread, but I've been really busy with uni work so havn't had a chance to do it. I've got more time now though so if I get people to do some lines, might they be integrated into VS?

Cheers.

[pyramid]

Hey ben, I thought you've given up because we were unable to integrate those previous lines. Sure voice acts will be added to the game if they match the lines. I'd suggest you pick the file "/data/communications/neutral.xml" and start jamming with those lines.

[bengreenwood]

Okay, give me a couple of weeks and I'll see what I can get people to do.

[pyramid]

That is great ben. Thanks.

[bengreenwood]

Just another question. If a voice actor is interested in doing some lines, how many will they have to do? Will actors need to do all the lines in the game, or can each actor just do a selected number of them?

[iaindaddy]

I was going to post a request for "voice" messages when I found this thread.

My idea was a little different to the common "look up a sound file" method of working... Most modern operating systems have a simple "text to voice" system that will read out a text message and I was going to suggest using a method like this (there was a version on the ZX Spectrum ).

The look-up method has low processor overheads but will limit messages to a set list. In a multi player version of the game communication will be important. If a text string can be passed to a "voice" process then the string can come from another player (and be of that players design) as well as the string coming from an internal process.

I hope soon we will have that nice female voice saying "Pull up, pull up" as we smash into a space station.

All the best

Iain

[pyramid]

@ben
the voice acting can be different for each comm line, no need to have the same actors for all messages. an exception would be the quests where actors would need to be the same, but not at this stage. let's get the simple comms with voice for now.

@lain
The voice quality might not be as good as recorded voice and the framework is currently not prepared to support text-to-speech. however it's an idea that might be explored in the future.

[bengreenwood]

I've always found it strange that with all the advances in computing power, no-one's found a way to make more convincing computer-generated speech. Still I suppose it'll happen at some point. That'll be cool when it does.

[Turbo]

Hey folks! At the risk of thread necromancy, Vegastrike voice acting has begun, thanks to great support from Pyramid! We need voice actors, please join the fun.

The incipient guidelines are here: http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/media ... ice_Acting

Ongoing work is being discussed here: http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forum ... m.php?f=29 If you want to join the fun, pick a faction (Oswald and the Aera are done, Rlaan and Andolian are in progress) and start a thread for it. Or just come and offer feedback.

[burkshifter]

Out of curiosity, would this feature at the bar, newsfeed (perhaps a newscaster-ish voice?), and/or in-flight? I think it'd be cool to have in-flight audio communications, but it could get chattery when there are a lot of ships communicating with you (perhaps an option to toggle only selected ship, friendly ships, enemy ships, etc.?). Also, would outgoing messages be text only or would those also have audio?

The last question raises an interesting question about the in-game character--specifically, giving him/her an identity. I guess that's up to the developers as to how far they'd like to go with that, and how far the level of customization could be.

[loki1950]

We can have the bar tenders and fixers speak there lines one of the mods already does it the news feed would be tricky as the text is generated just before it's printed to screen.So most of these are destined for in-flight communications.And the player character already has a name and back story with a campaign in the works.

Enjoy the Choice

[Turbo]

With a a multinational and multi-OS audience to think about, I'm not sure that text-to-speech software (1) is easily understood and (2) can be called by the game software. Until that is solved, if it ever is, it is not possible to voice the in-bar randomly generated fixer missions. For alien fixers, we are doing (untranslated) versions of the alien voices that can be used as "all-purpose" fixer audio for that alien race, but the English (or whatever) translation in that case would be on-screen text only.

Thus we are starting with the in-flight communications, an in the case of alien voices the audio includes the ship's translator voice. The aera, andolians, and Oswald (flight tutorial) are in SVN now. The Rlaan are under discussion and we are finishing up the highborn.

When the dev team asks for it, presumably when there are more campaign missions, we can also voice the in-bar conversations for campaign fixers. I hope that we will reach a point when an author who has written a new mission for VS can come into Sound and Music Collaboration, and say "I am writing a new mission set, I need voice actors," and the voice actors sign up to do the voices. They can then work the details off-line, so that only the author, actors, and beta testers will know the mission's story until the result gets published into SVN and/or the game's next release.

[loki1950]

They can then work the details off-line, so that only the author, actors, and beta testers will know the mission's story until the result gets published into SVN and/or the game's next release.

We already have a hidden forum for Campaign scripting not much traffic lately as we are waiting on the Minister of Information's revision of the universe doc,that he said we be ready at the end of October

Enjoy the Choice

[Turbo]

We already have a hidden forum for Campaign scripting

Well, there you go.

Update: we now have 7 factions done plus 1 draft, 6 of which are in SVN. We can only maintain this momentum if we get more actors. Come join us in Music and Sound Collaboration!

[redisforever]

You could do what Valve did for the original Half-Life, for the PA system they did not make sentences, but seperate words so that they could be combined in a specific way. That could be used for the ships. You can use a text to speech program for that, because it is a computer talking anyways, you can get it to tell you who is contacting you with a message, like a GPS that tells you street names. You should also make the dialog an optional install, or it may take up too much space for some people.

[Shark]

You could reduce the need for voice actors by at least one person if you used a computer generated voice in some instances instead of a human voice (for a particular race or faction, or for news feeds or talking computers and so forth). Most of them are junk, but the RealSpeak voices are really quite nice if you can get them in a high enough bit rate. I use them to title my MP3s.

Of course they cost $$$.

Mike

[edit]
Didn't see this was already suggested in the previous post.