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Can every NPC in a game speak their lines?
Author
Ok I''m new to game design. I have no formal training and have hardly popped open a book on the subject, but I do love well made games and hope to at least make a game or two that can be considered fun.
Ok on to my idea on sound.
I''ve always wanted an RPG where every speaking NPC in the game actually speaks their lines. I figured with the current storage capacity of today''s CD''s that much information couldn''t fit. So here''s my idea. Why can''t there be an artificial voice generator included with the game. Each character would have their own identifier that the artificial voice generator would see and then the generator would adjust it''s volume, pitch, accent, even it''s gender to fit the voice of the character that would be speaking. I know the technology for this type of generator exists, I just don''t know how much storage space a generator like that would take up. I also don''t know if there would be noticable lag between the time a question or statement were said to the NPC and its audio response.
My question is: Is the theory sound? (no pun intended) If the storage space and the lag issues were not problems would somehing like this be feasable?
Your thoughts?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
It could be done, but all of your spoken dialog will sound like its coming from robots. The more you want your sound to feel realistic, the more space you''re going to have to use.
- master_ball
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We R 138
- master_ball
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We R 138
quote: Original post by Wayneburg
I figured with the current storage capacity of today''s CD''s that much information couldn''t fit.
Untrue imo - many games take the advantage of being distributed on multiple CD-s (Phantasmagoria - 7 CDs if I remember correctly).
quote:
If the storage space and the lag issues were not problems...
But they''re not! Just distribute your voice files in some compressed format - MP3, OGG, whatever. It''s perfectly legal and your problems are solved. Let''s see: encoded at 64 kbps, or 96 if you cant to get good sound (for a dialog!! let''s take 64), and reserving, say, 400 megs of storage space for sound, you''ll be able to fit Crispy looks for Calculator 64000 / 8 = 8000 Bps -> ~400.000.000 Bytes / 8000 Bytes = ~50.000 seconds = ~830 minutes = ~13.8 hours of sound. A very rough estimate. Or are you planning on creating some RPG with so much talking that even the greatest of RPG fans won''t play it?
imo, this is a theory a lot more sound.
Hope this helps,
Crispy
PS - my math sucks - just point it out if sth''s wrong
Text to speech has come a long way in the last decade, but unfortunately isn''t even close to being good enough for NPC speech. In order to keep from breaking game immersion (which a synthetic voice or even a bad voice-actor will do), I still consider it very necessary to use real voice acting and compressed audio files.
I''m in no mood to crunch Crispy''s numbers from the previous reply, but 400mb for 14 hours of sound should be fine for anything you need, assuming you have the resources to find people for the voices.
I think the main reason for lack of NPC dialog is preference (as opposed to technology). If Morrowind, for example, used dialog for every single NPC I''d find myself escaping almost every conversation. But that''s not what you were asking; as far as complete npc-speech, I think it''s absolutely possible.
I''m in no mood to crunch Crispy''s numbers from the previous reply, but 400mb for 14 hours of sound should be fine for anything you need, assuming you have the resources to find people for the voices.
I think the main reason for lack of NPC dialog is preference (as opposed to technology). If Morrowind, for example, used dialog for every single NPC I''d find myself escaping almost every conversation. But that''s not what you were asking; as far as complete npc-speech, I think it''s absolutely possible.
quote: Original post by CrispyOriginal post by Wayneburg
I figured with the current storage capacity of today's CD's that much information couldn't fit.
Untrue imo - many games take the advantage of being distributed on multiple CD-s (Phantasmagoria - 7 CDs if I remember correctly).
quote:
If the storage space and the lag issues were not problems…
But they're not! Just distribute your voice files in some compressed format - MP3, OGG, whatever. It's perfectly legal and your problems are solved. Let's see: encoded at 64 kbps, or 96 if you cant to get good sound (for a dialog !! let's take 64), and reserving, say, 400 megs of storage space for sound, you'll be able to fit Crispy looks for Calculator 64000 / 8 = 8000 Bps -> ~400.000.000 Bytes / 8000 Bytes = ~50.000 seconds = ~830 minutes = ~13.8 hours of sound. A very rough estimate. Or are you planning on creating some RPG with so much talking that even the greatest of RPG fans won't play it?
imo, this is a theory a lot more sound.
Hope this helps,
Crispy
PS - my math sucks - just point it out if sth's wrong
I agree and if you still think that space would be an issue look at all the new games that are being made on DVDs the hold about 4.5(and more)gigabytes worth of data and that's uncompressed!!!
hmm. sorry the quote didn't work right?
The only thing that seperates man from animal is the fact that we can computer program.
[edited by - Cobra9 on June 13, 2002 10:04:09 PM]
Even if you could reserve 400 megabytes on your cd, dvd, or whatever for just speech, thats a lot of voice talent to hire. And supposing you went with the least expensive option, that being Ocean Group, you''d have about the equivalent of the complete run of dragonballz on your CD and many players would take to hate and other negative emotions.
You probably do better off with a square wave blip.
-> Will Bubel
-> Machine wash cold, tumble dry.
You probably do better off with a square wave blip.
-> Will Bubel
-> Machine wash cold, tumble dry.
It is possible to use a synthesizer without it sounding (completely) like a robot. There are markup lanuages derived from (everyone''s buddy), SGML, that would do the trick with many of the better speech synthesizers out there.
The problem is, if you have 14 hours of speech, ou have to consider this: If you were to talk continuously for 14 hours, think of how much you would say. You would then have to pour over each and every word of every sentence and apply the markup to get the proper inflection.
If you could write a text to speech converter that was sensitive to inflection and could apply the appropriate markup for pitch, speed, accent, and volume adjustments you might be onto something remarkable.
Looking for an honest video game publisher? Visit www.gamethoughts.com
The problem is, if you have 14 hours of speech, ou have to consider this: If you were to talk continuously for 14 hours, think of how much you would say. You would then have to pour over each and every word of every sentence and apply the markup to get the proper inflection.
If you could write a text to speech converter that was sensitive to inflection and could apply the appropriate markup for pitch, speed, accent, and volume adjustments you might be onto something remarkable.
Looking for an honest video game publisher? Visit www.gamethoughts.com
The biggest problem is text-to-speech voice generators sound like poopie 
Regardless of how new they are, they still sound prettty awful. The technology hasnt changed that much since the 80s even, and sure, while your idea is certainly DOable, i wouldnt call it sound. Your game would get some pretty harsh criticism based on that, guaranteed. That is, unless your game was about robots ;P
Regardless of how new they are, they still sound prettty awful. The technology hasnt changed that much since the 80s even, and sure, while your idea is certainly DOable, i wouldnt call it sound. Your game would get some pretty harsh criticism based on that, guaranteed. That is, unless your game was about robots ;P
I know an amateur voicing group, which''d do it at ''budget'' prices, if you really want. Drop me a line at sa-magic@joymail.com for more info.
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