Hard Light Productions Forums

Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The Modding Workshop => Topic started by: RandomTiger on June 10, 2003, 03:06:33 am

Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: RandomTiger on June 10, 2003, 03:06:33 am: For reading briefings, ingame text, whatever when theres no voice acting for a piece of text.

I've been looking at SAPI 5.1 and I think I could easily incorperate a speach system, not the most human sounding stuff though.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: RangerKarl on June 10, 2003, 04:10:57 am: It could be useful for some missions where you may be stranded far away from any concievable transmitter, or can't recieve briefings. Maybe if you made it sound a little like something from a futuristic Mission: Impossible.......
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: kasperl on June 10, 2003, 04:27:54 am: this soudns fantastic, since it would be lot's easier for campaigns to have at least partial voice.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: KARMA on June 10, 2003, 04:36:34 am: really excellent idea
i want HAL 9000 on my fighter! ;7
i think that to avoid non-human distorsions you should give it a "electric" voice, that will sound like a computerized voice that will hide those distorsions, like if you receive debriefing and maybe in game orders from an ai system
for example, in the SW conversion it will be like if you are talking with a droid
maybe -i don't know if it is possible- it could be nice to have three kind of selectable voices: male, female, droid, with the droid covering most of the messages and the other two just the few messages with other pilots or similar, messages that will usually be short and therefore not so heavily affected by non-human distorsions.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Rictor on June 10, 2003, 04:45:01 am: I think there was a thread about this in HLP General

http://www.rhetorical.com/cgi-bin/demo.cgi
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on June 10, 2003, 05:19:21 am: It'd also be useful for the Vasudan translator, don't you think?
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: kasperl on June 10, 2003, 05:48:16 am: this would be nice for *****in' Betty in the cockpit.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on June 10, 2003, 05:49:28 am: Now THERE'S an idea!:yes:
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: RandomTiger on June 10, 2003, 06:42:01 am: OK, thats a good response.
I have the code, it turns out its damn simple.

I've tryed it in the freespace option screens and it works OK (speach doesnt argue with Dsound or anything). Just need to try it in game.

As I said the voice is not of the best simulated quality and can sometimes be tricky to understand but in general it seems like it would be better to have it than not.

I'm considering a compatibility test for my current work at some point. I could make sure the speach stuff is in there to give the people who test it a treat.

A good way to make sure you get to checkout this first would be to join the tester list.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: RandomTiger on June 10, 2003, 06:46:44 am: Quote
Originally posted by Rictor
I think there was a thread about this in HLP General

http://www.rhetorical.com/cgi-bin/demo.cgi

Im sure its very good but I gather it will cost money.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: miniDwarf on June 10, 2003, 09:54:57 am: two suggestions,

1) maybe you could use it for the red alert, seems the best possible place to use it

2) or maybe in TBP as some generic messages that any fighter/species could use
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on June 10, 2003, 10:01:56 am: Would this voice thing be like the program, Speakonia?
If you're not sure what it is, I suggest you download it, as it's not very big.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Tiara on June 10, 2003, 10:08:08 am: http://www.scansoft.com/naturallyspeaking/

Dragon Naturally Speaking!

DNS, friggin' awesome (though expensive [$199]:p). I got this thing, it rocks!
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Petrarch of the VBB on June 10, 2003, 10:10:00 am: Ahh, but that's the wrong way round, surely? That's the one where you speak and it types.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Tiara on June 10, 2003, 10:44:26 am: Quote
Originally posted by Petrarch of the VBB
Ahh, but that's the wrong way round, surely? That's the one where you speak and it types.

:lol:

You're right, lol! It was voice recognition this one... My bad :D Its still a great program :D
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: IceFire on June 10, 2003, 04:50:16 pm: Quote
Originally posted by miniDwarf
2) or maybe in TBP as some generic messages that any fighter/species could use

We're going to be doing our own. Simulated speech isn't up to what we want it to sound like.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Bobboau on June 10, 2003, 05:49:15 pm: though it would be a better option than none at all, how about if you add an option to synthisise text that has no wav file
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: vyper on June 10, 2003, 06:02:13 pm: This is a dangerous path to go down. We cannot say for sure how good any voice synth will be, especially with the wonderful grammer some fredders use (myself included). :nervous: Besides which, voice acting is better...
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Rictor on June 10, 2003, 06:04:18 pm: You can use the software (rhetorical I think its called) on their site as many times as you like. You just type the stuff in, select the option to save to harddrive and voila. Its not perfect but I think it (no offence) better than anything anyone here could come up with. The intonation is a really hard thing to do right.

I'll check out the Speakonia thing later.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: mikhael on June 10, 2003, 11:15:08 pm: Quote
Originally posted by vyper
This is a dangerous path to go down. We cannot say for sure how good any voice synth will be, especially with the wonderful grammer some fredders use (myself included). :nervous: Besides which, voice acting is better...

Use it or don't. Just make sure that the option exists to turn it the hell off. :D

RandomTiger: *****ing Betty voice is BEST IDEA EVAR. :D
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: RandomTiger on June 11, 2003, 03:12:00 am: I have decided to do it like this:

The user has overall control split into the following areas:

Speech in techroom
Speech in briefings
Speech in game

User will be able to toggle as they want using the launcher.

However speech simulation will only be used if a wave file doesnt exist for the text.

User who have no interest in it at all dont need to install the SAPI runtime and can just live without it.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Tiara on June 11, 2003, 04:01:53 am: :):yes:
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: WMCoolmon on June 11, 2003, 04:24:38 am: Quote
Originally posted by Tiara
:):yes:

Definitely a good idea, if for nothing else, simulated speech should be available to read in-game comm messages to you.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Tiara on June 11, 2003, 04:30:57 am: Or you could just use the rVoice demo to output .wav files :doubt: Though its limited to 50 words and/or 255 characters its more then enough for ingame messages or small briefings :)

Click here for audio message (http://swooh.com/peon/Tiara/Random%20stuff/hellyeah.wav)
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: phreak on June 12, 2003, 12:00:44 pm: do that multiple times and splice them together in goldwave
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: RandomTiger on June 20, 2003, 07:26:20 am: OK, I've implemented the speech system for the techroom and briefings but not ingame yet.

For a sample of the kind of quality of speech (not exactly the best* ) download the new launcher:

http://mysite.freeserve.com/thomaswhittaker/c_code/freespace/Launcher.rar

This is not a fs2_open launcher so dont use it for anything else just incase.

If it doesnt work then the chances are your system doesnt support this. Would be good if people with 95,98 and 2000 confirm it works on theirs.

Ultimately voice acting will always be king but this might still be useful.

* There is interesting room for improvement of the speech system, ie putting HTML type tags in the text to change the way it reads a sentence. We can look into that if it looks like people are going to use it.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: TopAce on June 20, 2003, 08:12:33 am: Who voted 'No'?
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Bobboau on June 20, 2003, 04:07:47 pm: some tard
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: karajorma on June 20, 2003, 04:37:22 pm: or someone who pressed the wrong button :)
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Bobboau on June 20, 2003, 05:58:29 pm: what would you call someone who presses the wrong button?
;)
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: karajorma on June 21, 2003, 02:03:37 am: Quote
Originally posted by Bobboau
what would you call someone who presses the wrong button?
;)

Clumsy! :D
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: J.F.K. on June 21, 2003, 03:58:26 am: Hey, this is sweet. Gradually getting the quality of the campaigns out there better and better. :nod:
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: RandomTiger on June 21, 2003, 07:33:05 am: How about checking out the launcher guys and giving me some feedback.

Also anyone who voted no, feel free to say why, could be useful to know.

Finally, I was going to keep this just in my code project for now but since I a long way from getting that released perhaps one of you nice fs2_open coders could offer to transfer the code over. On the whole its damn simple stuff, shouldnt need to do any restructuring. E-mail me for the code.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: RandomTiger on June 21, 2003, 08:31:15 am: System Requirements

Operating Systems

Windows XP Professional or Home editions; all language versions.
Windows.NET Server editions; all language versions.
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Workstation or Server; all language versions.
Microsoft Windows Millennium edition.
Microsoft Windows 98 all editions.
Microsoft Windows ® NT Workstation or Server 4.0, service pack 6a, English, Japanese, or Simplified Chinese edition.
Windows 95 or earlier is not supported.

Software Requirements

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or later version. Users of Windows NT 4 with any version of the service packs require Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or later.

Hardware Requirements

A PentiumII\PentiumII-equivalent or later processor at 233 MHz with 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM is recommended.

SAPI 5 can now take advantage of a computer and operating system that supports multiple processors, including all those mentioned above. Additionally, you can use SAPI 5 in a distributed application environment.

Not all sound cards or sound devices are supported by SAPI 5, even if the operating system supports them otherwise.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Ryx on June 23, 2003, 08:04:23 am: Is there anything else I need to d/l, 'cause I'm not getting any speech with the launcher.

I'm using WinXP SP1.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: RandomTiger on June 23, 2003, 01:40:24 pm: What does the speech section look like?
Does it have any options?
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Ryx on June 23, 2003, 02:37:03 pm: The checkboxes in the launcher are there, and can be checked/unchecked, but when I start FS there's no speech.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Flaser on June 23, 2003, 04:24:04 pm: I doesn't work for me.
I have a Hungarien Windows 2000 Server (my bad by the time it was supposed to run as a server, I simply haven't had the time to archieve everything ever since.)
I don't have the API - I look for it though.
BTW this whole idea is awsome!:D I know many people who don't play user-made campaigns because they don't have a voice-over, and they can't/aren't willing to follow the plot through text.:
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: karajorma on June 23, 2003, 04:30:58 pm: Ryx. You won't get any speech in FS2 itself :) You'll only get speech in the launcher if you press the play button!
The code for the speech in game is only in RT's exe (which hasn't been released!)
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: RandomTiger on June 24, 2003, 03:04:25 am: You guys probably wouldnt be happy with my FS2 exe as it is, its half way through being turned into HT&L.

I released the launcher to get an idea of compatibility and to give you guys an idea of the kind of quality of speech.

Sorry for the confusion. As soon as a coder steps up who capable of copy and pasting and compiling you can have it in fs2_open, though I havent done any ingame code yet, just breifings and techroom.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: karajorma on June 24, 2003, 04:47:40 am: RT's right. It.. um ....needs some work still :)

How hard is it going to be to get the in mission speech working?
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: RandomTiger on June 24, 2003, 07:18:07 am: Quote
Originally posted by karajorma
How hard is it going to be to get the in mission speech working?

Dont know, havent looked, depends on how many different code paths and stuff. Some advanced Fred'er thoughts on this might speed this up.

ie, what are the different ingame message types and what are the differences?
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: karajorma on June 24, 2003, 09:01:10 am: Well that depends on if you want to touch the persona speech or not.

At the moment everyone tends to use the default personas and their associated speech files cause it's too much hassle to change it.
When campaigns like TBP did change the personas they alway got new voice acting to go with it.
With voice synth you might get people making new ones.

Apart from that the send-message and send-training-messages might use different code since they display the messages in different places.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: RandomTiger on June 25, 2003, 06:57:29 am: I'll try and find some time to look at it.
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: RandomTiger on June 26, 2003, 06:35:21 am: Quote
Originally posted by karajorma
Well that depends on if you want to touch the persona speech or not.

Is that set in Fred or somewhere else?
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: karajorma on June 26, 2003, 09:13:35 am: It's set in the messages.tbl but I don't know what would happen if one of the entries doesn't include a link to the appropriate wav (I've not played around with this table).
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: RandomTiger on June 26, 2003, 04:53:41 pm: OK, ingame done. To get access to this feature, keep this thread alive:

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,15850.0.html
Title: Would simulated speach be a useful feature in fs2_open
Post by: Nuke on July 01, 2003, 12:39:05 am: ive been playing around with those advanced text services, they are kinda fun. could you use them to accept voice commands as well?

anyway i like the idea, keeps youyr eyes on the dogfight no more getting killed trying to read whats going on. this also has potential in multiplayer, you can insult people and they wont miss it. :devil: