Hard Light Productions Forums

Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: Red Infyrno on September 01, 2023, 10:33:49 am

Title: Two questions
Post by: Red Infyrno on September 01, 2023, 10:33:49 am
Long-time lurker. Like, since the very beginning of HL. Love Blue Planet -- as so many have said before, it is a masterpiece of storytelling.

Questions -- perhaps answered before, but didn't find anything, and they linger in my mind nevertheless:

1. Modern generative AI for the remaining voice acting. It wouldn't be human-level, but would get close. Has anyone looked at this? Compute costs would be nontrivial but less than voice actors. Hence:

2. Kickstarter or other crowdfunding for actual paid development. Then the BP team can justify the time. I'm sure there are legal considerations, but I do believe there are options. You've already got such a loyal, dedicated, long-term fan community -- the prime ingredient which most projects like this lack. Any thoughts?

Apologies if this was covered before. Like I said, been lurking here on-and-off almost since the Sathanas first blew up the Colossus.  :lol:
Title: Re: Two questions
Post by: The E on September 01, 2023, 11:11:53 am
Modern text-to-speech engines are indeed a viable option for voicing things, as Darius has shown in Solaris. We have not discussed using it for BP internally, but it is a realistic option.

Kickstarter and crowdfunding absolutely isn't. Put frankly, there is no way for a kickstarter campaign to raise enough funds to cover our salaries; this community, as awesome as it is and as much as we love you, isn't big enough, and that's leaving aside issues and potential drama we would like to avoid. It's a topic we have discussed at length internally, and for now, that's our stance on the matter.

As much as we hate leaving things in an unfinished state, the simple fact of the matter is that by now most of us have moved on. BP isn't dead, but it is in deep hibernation. It may rise again, it may not; in the meantime, several amazing people are working on new mods that take what we did further.
Title: Re: Two questions
Post by: Colonol Dekker on September 01, 2023, 03:57:38 pm
Following on, as a community we encourage everybody, especially "long-time lurkers".  Please throw their hat in the ring and show their personal head-canon or where they'd like the story to go. 

It could be a fan story, a mini campaign or even a single mission.   Every spark keeps the fire going.
Title: Re: Two questions
Post by: ryanchealth on September 02, 2023, 12:07:34 pm
Blue Planet was great and would love to know how it would finish.  Not really sure if it would offend anyone but could others put together an ending?  I get no one wants to step on anyone's toes.  Probably have to be a bit simpler as I can't imagine putting together something as big as the original Blue Planet.  I have played around with Murf.ai and so far it has been okay.  Unfortunately every "Voice Actor" sounds like a salesmen on a commercial.
Title: Re: Two questions
Post by: Colonol Dekker on September 02, 2023, 03:42:34 pm
BP is a fan ending to Freeapce, I see no-reason why anyone would be offended at a fan making their own BP ending so long as they don't claim it to be the one true ending;)
Title: Re: Two questions
Post by: Darius on September 03, 2023, 11:59:11 pm
There's only been very limited discussion about me going and using elevenlabs (the software used for Solaris's VA) to voice the unvoiced Tenebra. It's definitely possible if I put a bit of time to it. It's on the backburner if an opportunity comes up and I finish my current project (Solaris act 3).
Title: Re: Two questions
Post by: Renegade Paladin on September 04, 2023, 03:03:04 am
I am 100% down to voice parts in Blue Planet and related projects at any time. 
Title: Re: Two questions
Post by: Darius on September 04, 2023, 05:02:53 am
I'm pretty sure there'll be a callout for volunteers before resorting to AI :yes: It would be cruel to deny the community the chance to contribute to something like this.
Title: Re: Two questions
Post by: Azrael15 on September 04, 2023, 08:54:45 am
There's a part of me that'd really just like to know the story and the answers. The Morrigan short stories are fantastic and do provide a lot of info, but I do fear the day the story just kind of... vanishes.
Title: Re: Two questions
Post by: Colonol Dekker on September 04, 2023, 08:55:49 am
I am 100% down to voice parts in Blue Planet and related projects at any time. 

I'm beginning to wonder if there are any mods i've not voiced
Title: Re: Two questions
Post by: ryanchealth on September 04, 2023, 12:29:26 pm
If I was going to do an ending it would be all out war from the Earth side (instead of holding back like the were throughout most of the game).  Earth becomes as ruthless as the Shivans but that is my take.  Then do a reversal where the GTVA have to become the good guys before the Shivans come back.
Title: Re: Two questions
Post by: + Rennie Ash + on September 16, 2023, 06:54:05 am
I'm pretty sure some of the voice for a certain character in the command briefings was done via text-to-speech. I recognized certain inflections that sounded odd from my use of a very similar voice in something I did years ago.

But, that would not be suitable for emotional voicings. I missed the voices for WiH2, though there is also so much dialogue in that section.