Character Voices (Test with Orcs)

Post by **Boucman** » April 23rd, 2004, 8:05 am

I would point that a big talken text at the beginning of the game is very hard to do => very hard to internationalize...

A couple of sentence in English is ok, but a complete text in english really gives a "unfinished" feeling to a game.

Post by **Aleksi** » April 23rd, 2004, 9:10 am

As i said before i have the possibility to do it in several languages if necessary.

Aleksi.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » April 25th, 2004, 3:50 am

Ideas:

Consider the following two games that used voices:
All versions of Warcraft/Starcraft have had voice recordings. Though quite tame in Warcraft I, they made them ridiculous in the later games. The only redeeming value of the voices in Warcraft is that they are funny. That's it. They'll occasionally have serious ones for main characters, but they are ruined by the triggering mechanism (every frikin time you click on them/every time you give them a command). The vocalization does not seem natural.

Compare this to Myth: The Fallen Lords, the best use of in-game voices I've ever seen, imo. Each unit had a quite terse selection of things they would say - not a long-winded "YOUR COMMAND, SIRE!", but rather a simple "sir?." And this would happen less than 1/5 of the time you selected them. Muted, simple, and more than anything else, realistic sounding.

Granted, I hope wesnoth does not go for selection-triggered acknowledgments.

Second, they had vocalizations for attacking, dying, successful kills, and friendly fire - warcraft only had attacking and dying, and only had the attacking one in version 3.

Friendly fire was actually quite funny in certain cases - the scottish flavoured Berserks would yell, though not always, "God damn your eyes!" Others would say "Watch it!"

Anyhow, I think a very important part of such an addition to the game would be the addition of different vocals for an attack and an attack where the attacker is unharmed. Perhaps a flawless kill sound - for the attacker who kills without being hurt:

Consider - an Orc Lord who says "Come to me - come and die!" after disposing of some elf archer or otherwise.

I think also that reserving bellicose vocals for those who deserve them - high level units - would make the flavor of the game better as well.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » April 25th, 2004, 3:52 am

and one other caveat - Having vocals for a main character ties that character to a single human being.

Darth Vader, for example, could be played by any number of similarily built men, but to voice him you would need the one guy who originally did his voice - or a very hard to find impersonator.

Post by **quartex** » April 25th, 2004, 6:01 am

Good voice ideas guest. Oh, and feel free to register so we can refer to you by name.

scottmac · Post by **scottmac** » February 7th, 2005, 6:54 pm

What about using voices while the other sides are moving? It might give the player something
to do while watching the hordes coming towards them.

capitol · Post by **capitol** » February 9th, 2005, 10:31 am

Having voiceover is something that would be extremly cool. Right done it adds depth and character.

I would love to do the swedish translations for that *grin*.

Post by **quartex** » February 9th, 2005, 6:55 pm

Talk about resurrecting ancient topics. I'd forgotten I made these posts a year ago. This actually seems like a good idea in retrospect, but I suppose that we never got the voice support for it. Sound/music has always been Wesnoth's weakpoint. Anyone interested in doing voice recordings a year later?

scottmac · Post by **scottmac** » February 10th, 2005, 1:35 pm

Another choice might be to do "sounds" to start with rather than voices.
For orcs, that might be a combination of whip and drum sounds.

Roel · Post by **Roel** » February 15th, 2005, 4:58 pm

I would like to help with voices (english with a flemish accent anyone?

) I have a digital recorder and some good microphones and can export CD quality sounds

Disto · Post by **Disto** » February 15th, 2005, 5:42 pm

You would need alot of saying to make it not be repetitive.

scottmac · Post by **scottmac** » February 18th, 2005, 5:34 pm

Another choice for voices (at least for the non-human characters) might be to use a
made-up language. For example, something like Tolkien's languages. Then the voices wouldn't
need to be translated.

scott · Post by **scott** » February 18th, 2005, 7:31 pm

scottmac wrote:Another choice for voices (at least for the non-human characters) might be to use a
made-up language. For example, something like Tolkien's languages. Then the voices wouldn't
need to be translated.

Like the Sims?

Post by **Aleksi** » February 18th, 2005, 10:56 pm

Yeah, thats not a bad idea. Maybe Roel should get a try this week-end when he's recording. Please post some ideas in his last thread.

Cheers,

Aleksi.

capitol · Post by **capitol** » February 20th, 2005, 3:00 pm

I was just in the studio with a friend and did some voiceover for the swedish translation. We did the intro to Heir to the throne and rise of wesnoth. Right now everything is in one _large_ wav but I will try to cut it and post encoded sentencies.

So now the race is on, which language will be first to have complete voiceover