U7 voiced NPC dialog?

DarkAvatar · Post by **DarkAvatar** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 12:20 pm

Ok I know I'm going out on a limb here but I was wondering would it "ever" be possible to put voiced dialog for when you talk to NPC's it would be fricking amazing if it was possible.......

Post by **Dominus** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 12:24 pm

sure, you *only* need good voice actors and I'm sure it could be implemented.

DarkAvatar · Post by **DarkAvatar** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 12:37 pm

sweet if I was to record some ppl's voices for it what format would I have to save it as?

Post by **Dominus** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 1:42 pm

since it isn't implemented, save it as big and as lossless as possible

As I wrote "it could" be implemented

Post by **artaxerxes** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 4:52 am

or use Festival or MBROLA.

Artaxerxes

DarkAvatar · Post by **DarkAvatar** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 8:21 am

so it doesn't have to be in a certain format? so WAV format is alright? if it is I'll see who I can get to do the voices for this.....

Sissy Knox- not logged in :( · Tue Jul 19, 2005 9:14 am

Me! Me! No...the urge to make it...over the top...too strong...must not...do...Tegan Jovanka impression...

On second thought, you probably won't want me to do it. However, I do play the autoharp, so um...wait, I don't think those were around in Britannia, either...

DarkAvatar · Post by **DarkAvatar** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 9:40 am

I think I'll start with the minor NPCs first but I don't know if I should start SI first or BG......
and any help would be greatly appreiciated!!!!

Post by **Dominus** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 12:33 pm

so it doesn't have to be in a certain format? so WAV format is alright?

Yup, as long as there is no support for additional voices just save what you make lossless, as it can be easily converted to whatever format someone decides it should be.
Just be aware that none of the actual devs have commented on it, so wether it will ever be supported is something I can't say

Tristan de Inés · Post by **Tristan de Inés** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 1:33 pm

I think it would be feasable to implement, but it would also require rewriting all of the dialog in usecode (the spoken text would have to be replaced with a "playSound" function and the path to the sound file or something).

And considering the HUGE amount of dialog involved, this would make quite a download...

yhevhe · Post by **yhevhe** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 2:52 pm

And sometimes the dialog is cut in the half for it's to long. And getting the voice to finish without you having read it would not be ok. So the best would be the dialog follow the speed of the voice.

Post by **drcode** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 2:54 pm

I think we could come up with a way to make this work without changing any usecode. Every string has a unique offset in the strings table within the function that it's in, so we could identify speech sections that way.

But we're talking about an awfully large amount of speech here.

Post by **marzo** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 5:55 pm

Every string has a unique offset in the strings table within the function that it's in, so we could identify speech sections that way.

That would, of course, cause troubles with mods which have to reimplement dialogs to fix usecode bugs (such as SI Fixes) -- it is likely that the new usecode will not have the exact same offsets as the original usecode.

Post by **Colourless** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 6:29 am

The way Ultima 8 (and Pentagram) implements speech is whenever anything says anything we do a check to see if that object has a speech flex and if it does we do string compares between what is being said and the list of speech files in the flex. If a match is found the speech is played.

This could work in U7 as well. You would use something like the number of the face being shown and if that matches a speech flex file, do a string match with the text being displayed and the contents of the flex.

Post by **drcode** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 7:06 am

Marzo: You're right; that would be a problem.
Colourless: That would be the way to go.

Still, I wonder how we'd handle text that's built up from pieces, like when Iolo tells you how much money you have.

DarkAvatar · Post by **DarkAvatar** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 5:36 am

Ok i haven't been able to get anything done I was on vacation all week so I'll start working on it this week.... U know one Thing I realized that would be hard is when The NPC's say your name....so that would also complicate things....or maybe I could have them say "Avatar" instead of like "Bill" or "Ted"......

Natreg · Post by **Natreg** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 11:39 am

Anyone have played Ultima VI for the FM towns? they try to maintain a neutral gender, and don´t call you by the name. Maybe that would make the speech a bit less interesting, but imho, Ultima VI for the FMtowns is done really great.

there is a page somewhere where there are some extracts of dialog (chuckles and someone else I think), but I don´t remember the site

SB-X · Post by **SB-X** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 11:50 am

http://originmuseum.solsector.net/beuche/

Whil · Post by **Whil** » Mon Jul 25, 2005 9:55 pm

Sounds like a fun idea

Perhaps you shouldn't all think in those really LARGE dimensions. Think more like Planescape:Torment or Baldur's Gate. Start with the really important sequences. And sentences you hear really often, general npc chat.

Also I would vote for SI

Post by **nadir** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 12:44 am

You can use flac to conserve space.

DarkAvatar · Post by **DarkAvatar** » Tue Jul 26, 2005 6:06 am

thanks so much for all of the suggestions and comments so far I was thinking that maybe it could be released as an additional file? so who ever doesn't want it doesn't have to have it so that would take care of a large release file..... another problem is I can't remember half of the dialog in BG or SI lol......

DarkAvatar · Post by **DarkAvatar** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 6:55 pm

omg...I went through the forum and found this...I totally forgot about this and please forgive me...my computer has been through A LOT of crap...so I lost all that I have been working on... and then I forgot about it over time...but I'm willing to start this back up...so don't kill me because I forgot lol....

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 12:05 pm

On a technical side, I don't think that UCC currently has a provision for playing back voices.

---------
Peter M Dodge aka Wizardry Dragon
Lead Designer
Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands

pak150 · Post by **pak150** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 1:00 pm

I think it would be hilarious to solicit random exult users to do the voices. I don't think we need "high quality" voice actors here just look at Richard Garriott's oscar winning lines of "put it on the table" and "stand back!" in the SI intro (I'm glad he kept his day job!)...

DarkAvatar · Post by **DarkAvatar** » Tue Mar 14, 2006 6:48 pm

ok I have a week off...so I'm going to start to organize a couple of my buds to help me out for the voices for the first part of SI...(I like SI better....lol) then I'll work on it from there....

WWWWolf · Post by **WWWWolf** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 10:24 am

And as for "keeping neutral" suggestions, one recent example would be Neverwinter Nights and the official campaigns/mods (and a couple of fan mods, like Elegia Eternum series). They do a good job dodging the player's name, gender, and other dialogue tokens in the speech.

Of course, the dialogue writers in those games *knew* the characters in question had full speech, so they could write accordingly. Might be a big problem in games like U7 that constantly refers to player's name and gender.

And yes, there's massive amounts of spoken lines, but this could be incremental. Or partial. Having dialogue for Companions, LB, Alagner, Time Lord, Caine (?), Horance (? I'm going deep into the fan-wish-priority territory here) and Frank the Fox (Okay, I'd better quit while I'm still coherent) would be a good start.

As for technical suggestions, I suggest devs to consider Speex, which seems interesting. Not tried it too much yet, but it's probably crunching speech smaller than Vorbis.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Wed Mar 15, 2006 12:11 pm

Vorbis would be feasible because there is already OGG vorbis support built into Exult. In fact, you could hack the current support to have OGG speech - just record the tracks as trackxx.ogg, put them in the Exult data directory, and then call play_music(xx) where the dialog is supposed to be.

----------
Peter M Dodge aka Wizardry Dragon
Lead Designer
Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands

Post by **artaxerxes** » Thu Mar 16, 2006 7:33 am

how about not voicing the Avatar at all? After all, since each and everyone of us IS the avatar when we play, anything other than our OWN voice would break the spell of role-playing.

Thus, all you would do is to voice the NPCs, as we don't identify with them.

Artaxerxes

exolon · Post by **exolon** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 3:11 am

Agreed, Artaxerxes - an example of this working out badly (along with the fact that all of the voice acting was terrible and everyone sounded clearly and strongly American) is the pitied Ultima IX!

I enjoyed jumping around the mountains and going walkabout, but combat was completely unbelievable (and unbelievably inconsistent) and the voice acting was cringeworthy.

If it's going to be done, it should be done really well - if it's going to be done badly it's better left undone...

DarkAvatar · Post by **DarkAvatar** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 8:06 am

those are some good points....yeah I might get a mob after me if I have the avatar voiced wrong...so yeah I'll probably leave it alone...for BG...I can have the people doing the voices imatate a british accent..so it would sound unique and not with that american accent that every one seems to loathe.... but for SI... I don't know.. because they clearly aren't british.. so I might not do the accent for them.... and I can riddle out one voice already...the Guardian has already been done so I don't have to worry about him...but what brings a thought in my head is what about good ol' Lord British? I don't know if I can get some one to imatate his voice the same as the opening on SI... but I'll figure it out...

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 1:42 pm

You could always ask Garriot himself.

--------
Peter M Dodge aka Wizardry Dragon
Lead Designer
Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands

TdI · Post by **TdI** » Sat Mar 18, 2006 10:34 am

I can provide South African British-English with German/Spanish accent 8-|

DarkAvatar · Post by **DarkAvatar** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 5:48 pm

yeah that would be awesome...but he probably doesn't have time to do everything us fans ask him to do.... but there is no harm trying...If I can get in touch with him that is...

Post by **Dominus** » Sun Mar 19, 2006 9:44 pm

you probably just have to track him down on Lineag or whatever that thing is called.

Post by **drcode** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 11:22 am

While you could add voices to new Usecode function you write, we'd have to add support for using voices in the original game. I'm going to try installing Festival so I can play around with this a bit in the next week or two.

Wizardry Dragon · Post by **Wizardry Dragon** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 5:00 pm

Just float around at a RPG or gaming convention of any considerable size and Garriot will be around. E3 and GenCon for sure. I myself have met him at GenCon before ^_^

--------
Peter M Dodge aka Wizardry Dragon
Lead Designer,
Ultima VII: The Feudal Lands

DarkAvatar · Post by **DarkAvatar** » Thu Mar 23, 2006 4:28 pm

well maybe E3 in may my friend and I might go to it if he gets the tickets soon....