[Skullar]

There are many campaigns for many mods, all trying to recruit voiceactors....

How about organizing voiceacting GLOBALLY instead of letting each campaign team do it ?

I make the follwing suggestion, lets make up a new project with own website, dedicated to FS2 voiceacting exclusively.
let it be the

FS2 : Voiceacting Department

or something like that. Every campaign team that joins gets help in getting its lines recorded and offers to help the others out as well. Be a voiceactor and get voiceactors for your own stuff. In addition to this our specialists can give precise outlines and explain everything about FS2 voiceacting, recording and processing.

How about that , folks ?

[Fury]

Its a very good idea. Every project would benefit from it when a single team organizes it and provides voice actors.

Actually I've been also thinking about this but you got here first.

[Gloriano]

Great idea

[karajorma]

Sounds good to me.

[Fury]

As an example to lay some ground on this project, in TBP we have used following formats in filenames:

\missions\b5-fu-sp-01.fs2
\voice\briefing\b5-fu-sp-01_b_01.wav
\voice\special\b5-fu-sp-01-15_wingman.wav

Explanation:
b5 = TBP
fu= Fury, initials of mission author
sp/mp = single player / multiplayer
01 = number of mission, in this case my first TBP mission.

Then the number of line in question and the last is persona if its in "special" folder.

[Black Sheep]

Yeah, the idea is nice, but who is willing to do that? And for what?

I've done over 45 minutes of dialogue for IFH. That doesn't mean, just recording the line and save them. The process consists of:

-casting
-script sending
-getting samples
-cleaning samples
-cutting samples
-processing samples
-master samples

And if you want to have a more or less professional level, the processing part can be long and painful. To be honest, so far I haven't seen a single FS2 project with really good voice acting...well, maybe the acting was good, but the postproduction of the samples was not.

"In addition to this our specialists can give precise outlines and explain everything about FS2 voiceacting, recording and processing..."

Skullar, the specialists you mention there...well, that's probably me...righto?

You SHOULD definately get rid of the idea, that Darkblade or me will do anything for other mods here. That's not because we are arrogant assholes, but because of the pure lack of time to do that. As listed above, the signal restauration, processing and mastering can take years. Skullar, you've been there, we both organized the TBP R1 acting...and although we've become better, it still takes long...

So I rather suggest another thing...hear this:

The voice department should have a masterlist of the persons who'd be willing to voice act...along with a sample of the voice and some infos. Maybe experience, nickname, age, sex, etc.
...that's one part...

...now for the other part. The thing, that Skullar suggests above is purely bull**** if look at the amount of work, that's necessary. I suggest this...the so called voice specialists of the TBP team (which would be Darkblade and me)...well, we can be A-Trainers ...and we can show how to do the stuff to a certain number of persons, who will form the FS2 voice department...these guys would be B-Trainers. And they may teach C-Trainers, which would be the voice responsible persons in the mod-teams.

If you look at the size of some campaigns, a full (and free!) voice acting is simply impossible for a single external team. Even if you just record in-flight messages. And there won't be a single order only, right?

That would be my suggestion...

[vyper]

The more I look at this, the easier I think it is to just stick with our current setup.

Campaign leaders decide the file-name format, and they also decide if they want the actor to send high quality source files or cleaned up compressed fs2 native ones.

Has worked for a long time, don't see it going wrong now.

[vyper]

Now here's some irony, I just found out my headset is snapped.

[Skullar]

I'll try to figure the details out, I asked Blacksheep to teach me some things.

Some details first :

So far, the Voiceacting department is not meant to do all the work on their own.

The Voiceacting department is meant to support the campaign teams in the points
- casting ( FINDING voiceactors )
- script sending ( scripts are available at the website if a team decides to address itself to the department )

It is just meant to bring the people together who are willing to do some voiceacting and the ones who need voiceacting.

The department is shall also give advise on the other points below. This does not mean our poor Blacksheep here has to do the other campaign team's work, perhaps this only means we are giving outlines, naming conventiones and advises on processing that have proved efficient in the past ?

Voiceacting department is just a try to come from a "we do it all on our own" to a "we do it all together so we can benefit from each other"

Yeah, we have organized Voiceacting for Release 1 together, thats exactly WHY this thing here could be helpful.

I think I will make a website that should give you an impression of what exactly I have in mind.

[Fury]

You really are into websites now, arent you Skullar?
In any case, looking good so far.  I am sure in due time the ideas will mature and so will the goals of this new attempt of a project.

[stithe2000]

I'm in... Sounds like a good idea!

[Black Sheep]

Well, that sounds ok then...give me a run with the vacuum cleaner, then we'll chat about that...

[Goober5000]

I've been thinking over a FRED2 feature for FSO that would auto-generate scripts based on a list of missions.  It would number the messages according to their order in the mission, and it would copy the message text, along with the sending ship, to a text file.  It could probably also sort the messages by sender.

Would people be interested in this?  I haven't done work on it yet because I'm waiting for RT to finish FRED, but I can hash out the design.

[Skullar]

Well, If you are doing a campaign you need voiceacting for and it is already done in FRED, you don't have to copy/paste every single line in a txt file.

[Black Sheep]

Which saves an awful amount of time...

[karajorma]

If you can import the file back into FRED somehow it would mean the end of spelling errors in campaigns

But just being able to export would be pretty useful

[Black Wolf]

It's not really so hard to spell check just the relevant parts of a mission file in Word you know - I do it for most of my missioons (I forget sometimes, I admit). You just copy and paste the command brief, briefing, debrief and messages into word and run a standard spell checker over it, and make the suggested changes directly into FRED.

[Goober5000]

Originally posted by Black Wolf
I do it for most of my missioons

Missioons?  Like the one with the Bastioon?

[karajorma]

I know. I actually just load the entire mission into Open Office and look for red wavy lines

But I get the feeling that other FREDders are lazier than me

[Black Wolf]

Originally posted by Goober5000
Missioons?  Like the one with the Bastioon?

Hey - I never said I spell checked my poosts.