Speaking units, recommended

Post by **Aleksi** » February 1st, 2006, 8:57 am

TimothyP wrote:Well, I'm 100% composer so I'm not sure how useful I would be on effects. I'm no sound expert. Good luck to everyone who knows what they're doing with this stuff!

--Timothy

Well, i tried to do an orc speech a bit less than two years ago and it took me two hour to record a couple words (and have the correct intonation) and then working on mixing, addind a bit of reverb, repitching, etc... So, if you need sounds for each character... hum, good luck!

hunterkillr · Post by **hunterkillr** » February 1st, 2006, 10:14 am

everybody heard of tts(text to speech)?

theres a free engine out there (as in gpl), i guess its called mbrola.

Post by **zookeeper** » February 1st, 2006, 10:54 am

hunterkillr wrote:everybody heard of tts(text to speech)?

Yes, but while they can speak the words, they can't sound like a real person or do voice acting.

JW · Post by JW » February 1st, 2006, 11:05 am

I'm not sure I like the whole Latin thing. It seems to me that the majority of people playing Wesnoth know English, so I don't know why using English would be a problem - at least as an option. I'd offer to help with the voice acting, but I don't have a way to record my voice digitally and I don't think a cheap mic would be very good for the job. Any suggestions?

Post by **Leonhard** » February 1st, 2006, 11:24 am

I think old english or something like that would be really cool

! (Right, I did not consider any argument of faisability before posting my idea) Anyway, I'm french and I know that when you hear old french, you don't really understand but it gives a real ambiance. I think latin may be too related to the Romans. I also think like JW that english is not a problem for the sounds (it would be even less a problem if it was old english).

Post by **Aleksi** » February 1st, 2006, 12:26 pm

Leonhard wrote:I think old english or something like that would be really cool ! (Right, I did not consider any argument of faisability before posting my idea) Anyway, I'm french and I know that when you hear old french, you don't really understand but it gives a real ambiance. I think latin may be too related to the Romans. I also think like JW that english is not a problem for the sounds (it would be even less a problem if it was old english).

Vive le Roy!

lpassos · Post by **lpassos** » February 1st, 2006, 12:30 pm

I think the problem with english is that, although a lot, if not most, of the wesnoth players understand english, finding enough people to speak english with no local accent, if there is such a thing, is very difficult.

A year ago, I tried to record some narrator voices and even play them on top of the music at the intro of Heir to the Throne, and I must say it sounded awful.

I'm a fairly fluent english speaker, and a narrator doesn't need a lot of voice acting. Just a neutral, deep voice, usually sounds good. But it's the accent I hated.

I never managed to get it to sound right. And I practiced the text a LOT! I'm sure there are others with less accent than me. I just don't know if they will be enoug to record everything.

Latin, on the other hand, noone really knows what it sounded like in the ancient times, so there will be no "this doesn't sound right".

Still, it is a great idea, and would actually complement the graphics and music improvements of the game.

Post by **Dave** » February 1st, 2006, 1:27 pm

IMO if we use real languages, then humans should speak a Romantic language -- either Latin itself, or perhaps (old?) French. Italian or Spanish would also be possible.

Elves and Dwarves could each speak different Scandinavian languages. Orcs could speak a Germanic language.

Though it might be better to just use Tolkien's languages such as Quenya...

David

Post by **Jetrel** » February 1st, 2006, 1:42 pm

Dave wrote: Actually there is one I know of: Civilization 4. They actually did something very cool: units of the Civilization you've chosen speak in their native language. If you're the English, your units speak in English. If you're Chinese, they speak in Chinese, and yes, if you're the Romans, they speak in Latin. It's very very cool.

That does sound cool!

Dave wrote:Now we just need the right combination of talented voice actors and linguistics.

The latter - easy. The former?

Post by **TimothyP** » February 1st, 2006, 4:09 pm

I'll just chime in here with a couple opinions.

If ever there is the possibility to do so, I prefer coming up with all original material. Just like the world of Wesnoth is original, so should our languages. I won't be much help recording the voices, but I am willing to write words in imaginary languages. I have practiced this before and would have no problem doing it for Wesnoth.

You see, we don't need a full blown language. The game has a little bit of dialogue and when we need another language, we could just make one up for those lines, as was apparently done in Warcraft III. Every once in a while, the orcs will say something in their tongue - probably a made up language. So, I agree with your original idea, Dave. Both for clicking on units (as in WCIII) and for cutscenes.

If no one else wants to invent words for different races, I would be willing to write lines to that effect.

The next key would be to get good voice actors. All we can do is wait to see if anyone here is good at it, just as has been done for every other position on this dev team. If someone knows they are good at voice acting, speak up and let us know.

Finally, we need a way to get those voices recorded. I'm not sure the best way to go about this since obviously not everyone has an audio recording studio. Any ideas, Aleksi?

--Timothy

Post by **turin** » February 1st, 2006, 11:44 pm

It makes the most sense to me to have the humans speak a tongue similar to English. I fail to see why they would speak a romantic language... it seems to me that that should be reserved for the elves.

Post by **TimothyP** » February 1st, 2006, 11:55 pm

I agree. Humans - English language.

--Timothy

Lugo Moll · Post by **Lugo Moll** » February 5th, 2006, 1:27 pm

Hmm... Here's my wiew on things:
Even if most of the Wesnoth players understand English, I think it would be a bit annoying having all the text in your own language but with voices in english.

I don't like the idea of using real world languages. I, as a swede, would indeed finnd it very silly with swedish-talking dwarves. Or even worse, norwegian or danish. (Icelandish could work though).

So my vote is for using phrases in either original made up languages, and/or Tolkien languages. Even for the humans. Making up some occational phrases shoudn't be too hard.

If latin would be used, it shoud be recorded by italans. Latin with english accent really sound bad in my opinion.

Post by **Viliam** » February 5th, 2006, 11:11 pm

If there will be some voting, I vote for Latin (humans) / "Tolkienish" (elves, etc).

Website · Post by **Sapient** » February 5th, 2006, 11:55 pm

To me the idea of Delfador speaking in Latin would be very cool! However, I also think English would work fine.