Speaking units, recommended

Create music and sound effects for mainline or user-made content.

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Aleksi
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Post by Aleksi »

If you give me a few phrases i can try to record a bit. :wink:
Steelclad Brian
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Post by Steelclad Brian »

What about recording very short sounds that are shared among similiar units? For example, all humans could respond with a "Hmm?" (rising pitch) when you click on them. All orcs could give a short, feral grunt. Elves could say something unintelligible in Elvish (The equivalent of "yes" or "hello"). The less humanoid races could get even more interesting, with hisses from Saurians, the sound of wing flaps and a growl from Drakes, a dull moan from corporeal Undead, weird ethereal sounds from Ghosts.

The important thing is that the sounds would be basically non-verbal and not in any real language at all. They'd be very short so you don't have to deal with some guy trying to say "YES MY LIEGE" in a faux-english accent every time you click on a spearman. Finally you could record three or four variations for every sound so that it doesn't get monotonous. No translation necessary.

I think it would fit much better than spoken words since that avoids issues of translation entirely, and doesn't run the risk of having your units being defined by poor voice actors.
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JW
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Post by JW »

Lugo Moll wrote: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.
It's quite common for many Americans to watch Japanese animation with English subtitles. The text is in their native language, but the voices are not. I don't think having English being the spoken language for all humans should be a problem. Although, isn't Wesnoth based off of European Midieval times in nature? It might be cool to have some human speak English (say more civilized units), some speak German (more brutish), and some French and Spanish, or even Latin (don't know what types of units).

There wouldn't erally be any more voice acting necessary (unless the plan was to have the same phrases repeated for multiple units), except that a more diverse crew would be required to accurately voice act the multiple languages.

Anyway, just my 3.56 cents.
hunterkillr
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Post by hunterkillr »

I think if we're gonna make up some languages TTS would do just fine since at most times it is accent-neutral and there is not much waste in disk space, and since most TTS engines already do multilingual, it'll be cake, and we may not even need to record any more from actors.

The bad part would be emotional voices, voices that speak something like anger, hatred etc, which is hard to do in TTS, being computer-generated and all, anyway, I suggest to do something like that in Half-Life(grunts talking on radio) with different voice recordings for each word according to different emotions, or just record emotional speech, like Delfador screaming "Si vis pacem para bellum!" in latin when firing his lightning.

For more information about TTS, try these links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TTShttp://research.microsoft.com/research/srg/
http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis/mbrola.html

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Elvish_Pillager
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Post by Elvish_Pillager »

How about:

Orcs - Latin
Dwarves, Trolls, Ogres - German
Humans - Spanish
Elves - French
Drakes - English with a bad accent
Mermen - Chinese
Nagas, Saurians - Japanese
Undead - nngggh

:P
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zookeeper
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Post by zookeeper »

I checked the samples page near the bottom, and it looks like that even of the commercial synthesizers, only a few actually sound good. The Elan Speech Sayso, for example, was quite impressive. Actually, it's also one of the very few on that page which I think would sound real enough enough to use in a game. Others were Loquendo and NeoSpeech male voices and Voiceware's female voice.
Come on, listen to what that sounds like. I would be horrified to hear that in a game.
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Aleksi
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Post by Aleksi »

Steelclad Brian wrote:What about recording very short sounds that are shared among similiar units? For example, all humans could respond with a "Hmm?" (rising pitch) when you click on them. All orcs could give a short, feral grunt. Elves could say something unintelligible in Elvish (The equivalent of "yes" or "hello"). The less humanoid races could get even more interesting, with hisses from Saurians, the sound of wing flaps and a growl from Drakes, a dull moan from corporeal Undead, weird ethereal sounds from Ghosts.

The important thing is that the sounds would be basically non-verbal and not in any real language at all. They'd be very short so you don't have to deal with some guy trying to say "YES MY LIEGE" in a faux-english accent every time you click on a spearman. Finally you could record three or four variations for every sound so that it doesn't get monotonous. No translation necessary.

I think it would fit much better than spoken words since that avoids issues of translation entirely, and doesn't run the risk of having your units being defined by poor voice actors.
I think its a very good idea. Fetching Latin, French, English, etc... is too complicated!
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Tomsik
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Post by Tomsik »

I like Steelclad Brian's idea, it would slove problems with lanuage.
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Post by hunterkillr »

Come on, listen to what that sounds like. I would be horrified to hear that in a game.
You can manipulate them for your wishes too, you know, and at the least manipulation you can just change the voice.

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zookeeper
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Post by zookeeper »

hunterkillr wrote:You can manipulate them for your wishes too, you know, and at the least manipulation you can just change the voice.
I doubt you can manipulate the voice from completely mechanical to human-like. If you could, I bet they'd use that as the default example voice, not the current mechanical horror.
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turin
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Post by turin »

Steelclad Brian wrote:What about recording very short sounds that are shared among similiar units? For example, all humans could respond with a "Hmm?" (rising pitch) when you click on them. All orcs could give a short, feral grunt. Elves could say something unintelligible in Elvish (The equivalent of "yes" or "hello"). The less humanoid races could get even more interesting, with hisses from Saurians, the sound of wing flaps and a growl from Drakes, a dull moan from corporeal Undead, weird ethereal sounds from Ghosts.

The important thing is that the sounds would be basically non-verbal and not in any real language at all. They'd be very short so you don't have to deal with some guy trying to say "YES MY LIEGE" in a faux-english accent every time you click on a spearman. Finally you could record three or four variations for every sound so that it doesn't get monotonous. No translation necessary.

I think it would fit much better than spoken words since that avoids issues of translation entirely, and doesn't run the risk of having your units being defined by poor voice actors.
Best proposal so far. It's actually doable, and wouldn't ruin the game if done badly.

Human loyalists: hmm?
Human outlaws: hmm? **but recorded to sound different and distinct*
Horse units: *neigh*
Elves: Something that sounds Elvish, but not too long - maximum is probably 2 seconds.
Dwarves: *grunt*
Orcs: *growl*
Saurians: *hiss*
Drakes: *wing flap*
Undead: Nothing. Or, a slight rustling of bones.
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arno
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Post by arno »

Elvish Pillager wrote:How about:

Orcs - Latin
Dwarves, Trolls, Ogres - German
Humans - Spanish
Elves - French
Drakes - English with a bad accent
Mermen - Chinese
Nagas, Saurians - Japanese
Undead - nngggh

:P
:lol:
arno
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Post by arno »

Undead - Italian ( Pizzaiolo pitched )
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Post by Darth Fool »

It sounds, from the coding perspective, that what is needed are two new animations. A SELECTED animation which would be used when the unit is selected, and a DESELECT animation which would activate when something else gets selected, or a command is given. This would allow both the audible response when selected, but, for example, would also allow the unit to turn and face you at the same. The DESELECT animation would be needed to get the unit back to his normal stance, although perhaps there should be a distinction between the deselect, which typically would not have any audible cues, and a COMMAND animation which would have the same visual animation of going back to the original stance, but also have an audible response. Maybe they could be combined, just different audible sounds given depending on the type of command given(none, move, attack). Then, if really motivated, one could add a WAITING animation which would trigger if a unit was selected but nothing was done for an extended period of time ~30 seconds. This would allow the "I'm annoyed at you for wasting my time" grunts that one sees in some games, or fun animations like a bored dwarf berserker juggling his axes or a wolf-rider chasing his tail...
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wayfarer
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Post by wayfarer »

Darth Fool wrote:
....

Then, if really motivated, one could add a WAITING animation which would trigger if a unit was selected but nothing was done for an extended period of time ~30 seconds. This would allow the "I'm annoyed at you for wasting my time" grunts that one sees in some games, or fun animations like a bored dwarf berserker juggling his axes or a wolf-rider chasing his tail...
I'm waiting for something like this it should be easier than the sounds.
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