PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Talad on July 05, 2009, 05:40:07 pm
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(News taken from main site)
We are currently preparing the next release, which will include some exciting new features! And we need your help for one of the exciting additions: NPC voices! The NPCs will greet and converse with you using real voices, and ...[drums roll]... we would like to have your voices to help with the greetings. Make a sample recording of your voice and if the result is good enough, then we will add it in game to one of the current NPCs! If you want to learn how to record your voice to be used in PlaneShift, read this page (http://voice.xordan.com)
\\o//
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awesome
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Oh my lordy.
This could be time and space consuming :o
I'd love to lend my voice, though. I'll see if I can get a decent recording.
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I'm a little confused as to what is meant by "American" accents. I have a Maine accent which is not anything like a Midwestern accent.
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I'm a little confused as to what is meant by "American" accents. I have a Maine accent which is not anything like a Midwestern accent.
Please point out where it says "American accents" because I am not seeing it. I do agree though; "American" accent would refer to Midwestern accent because it's generally considered accent-neutral (although we do have people with rural accents here too).
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Broadcast English
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I just realized that what I was talking about is on a different page. Nevermind. :-[
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This an excellent idea! :thumbup:
If only I had a mike, I'd be uploading samples in two shake's of a Tefu tail ;)
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I wonder if a little foreign accent is possibly even welcome for one or another NPC... as long as people try to pronounce it clearly and rather close to BE.
Ah... :oops: - That was already mentioned. Okay. Which merchant might deserve a saxonian accent? :detective:
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We have an accent to race list, it has to be agreed to by the team first.
Accents will be welcome I mean.
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hello all
I think for be "realy" more realistick perhaps one of the npc can speak and nobody can understand what he said ? :)
(i think about one Kran i know !)
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hmm sounds awesome :)
Now to get my sound working lol ;)
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you may or may not hear a neko kyouran speak. i'm not going to tell!
:devil:
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Not knowing much about sound, and after reading the how-to, I have a few questions. One is:
Isn't the background noise from the PCs themselves a problem ? Shouldn't one use a mike with a long cable to stay away from the roaring fans, in the next room, or something ?
(I don't have a mike yet, so I'd rather take some info before acquiring one, which by default would be the cheapest if it's good enough).
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Are mobs getting voiced?
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You call them "mobs", but "mobs" is a quite generic term. Animals and monsters without ability to speak a language are mobs too. If we talk about NPCs = "Non-Player Characters" here, regarding the contained "character", we mean mobs which provide the ability to speak to via /tellnpc, which will react on sentences with general answers.
Well ... did anyone ever try how a rat or clacker react on /tellnpc Hello ... ?! :D
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Why not!! English language with the "Ch'ti" accent? but i don't know if with this accent the real english speakers will understand anything!
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What about gobbles?
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You call them "mobs", but "mobs" is a quite generic term. Animals and monsters without ability to speak a language are mobs too. If we talk about NPCs = "Non-Player Characters" here, regarding the contained "character", we mean mobs which provide the ability to speak to via /tellnpc, which will react on sentences with general answers.
Well ... did anyone ever try how a rat or clacker react on /tellnpc Hello ... ?! :D
Did you try that to your pet? There is some funny recordings to make there :)
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This is an interesting update that will come! I don't have a mike though so I would've been recording a voice! :(
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You call them "mobs", but "mobs" is a quite generic term. Animals and monsters without ability to speak a language are mobs too. If we talk about NPCs = "Non-Player Characters" here, regarding the contained "character", we mean mobs which provide the ability to speak to via /tellnpc, which will react on sentences with general answers.
Well ... did anyone ever try how a rat or clacker react on /tellnpc Hello ... ?! :D
Great but that isn't an answer. Are mobs getting voiced or not?
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Mobs are the non thinking npcs, if you want some growls and the like we can accommodate you.
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Please please please for the love of all that is good, DON'T make all the dwarves speak with Scottish accents. That's just so cliche it's painful.
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scotish/irish/or germanic...
cliche's are comfortable.
Go kill some rats :)
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What about semi-intellegent races? Do they get voice overs?
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If we are consequent, then you shall expect voiced gobbles "soon (tm)". But personally, I would guess they may not be the first try.
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Oh this is awesome, I'll get to work right away. I have the perfect voice for the death guardian and any other talking monsters, also I can do like an evil british or dexter morgan style neutral voice which I'll try for other death realm npcs :)
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If i can somehow manage to do this ill probly get voiced as the most boring NPC in the game... whoever he is...
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Boring ... boring ... uuhm ... Aldaaren! :D
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Boring ... boring ... uuhm ... Aldaaren! :D
Lol, this may seem stupid, but Aldaaren is very close to Alderaan which is a planet in the Star Wars Universe :whistling:
Too close maybe
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Are there any scripts some where? There are a lot of things non player characters say only once when it comes to quests, and I'm sure you do not want to be patching voice recordings from different people together.
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@ bangladeath:
We are just starting with responses to "Hello" and "Bye". Maybe with automatic passing-by shouts too.
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From Talad's page:
Some NPCs have multiple Hi and goodbye answers, in that case, please record each one separately ...
Not that easy, as their responses are picked randomly. You can tell them "Hello" 20 times in a row and not be certain that you heard all possible responses. And which of them is #1?
BTW: Rabartus Livrandar does not understand "Bye" and replies with typical "not understood" answers (e.g. "Get your words straight, will you? You're speaking gibberish.").
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We may at some later time hold auditions for some npcs to be done completely. When an npc's quests are completed by one voice artist we'll try to get their hi bye and all automated responses recorded also in that voice.
We're early into this so as with all things planeshift, it will take time.
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Hi, Sov here just checking in!
I noticed this news on the frontpage and was rather worried....
Heres how I see it: Currently lots of people play without sound, either due to lack of hardware, poor computers or simply: Planeshift sound is buggy to start with. On high end systems it crackles terribly (new drivers) and is barely usable there.
My second worry is... partly from a host's POV and from a client POV. All this does is add the same content we already have, but in audio, This means that the filesize will increase massively with the V/Os and I honestly don't see much lasting benefit (Inital joy at having voice in game aside)
This seems to me like a space filling waste, sure it would be cool but its a lot of work and hassle for something ultimately... unimportant.
Though its not my place to say, wouldn't it be a better idea to iron out bugs and expand the gameworld/make it more playable as a game rather than add bloating sound content?
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The game isn't developed in one direction. Advances made in one front never limit fixes. We've expressed this a million different ways over and over again, the people who fix bugs are often not the same people who work on features or art or settings. We'll do our best.
Given the clamour for opening up more of the game content and the claims that this would greatly speed up development, I am a bit puzzled that bugs which exist in the code (which is open to all) aren't being leapt upon and fixed by the community at large. Wouldn't it be best for PS if the community focuses on helping us with these since they are a) ALREADY in open content b) the bugs most likely to be show-stoppers and c) the bugs most likely to be stomped out via a large pool of testing data from players?
We aren't moving in a single direction. We are all volunteers. Sure we have development goals and we move toward releasing in a meaningful way, but this critique is singularly unwarranted. The testing team, dev teams, and community have shut down ~200 bugs, and more and more each week.
I wouldn't consider voicing to be bloat, I'd consider it a needed step in the right direction.
All the source code is available, fix it, or have the patience needed for us to do so.
I love the whole community, even the problem people, but sheesh, lay off with the "omgz fix the bugs and do nothing else" thing. It's discouraging for the team members who aren't involved in bug-fixing and frustratng for those who are.
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Eh, the coding for the voicing is probably already dealt with, there probably isn't too much that is needed to do to get voices into the game so the bug fixes probably wouldn't slow down even if it wasn't as Xillix has said. Either way, I think it's a step in the right direction but, not everybody will agree with me, as is true no matter what you implement/fix next :P
Great job, Dev Team.
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Thank you, Waylander. Since I am most decidedly NOT a bug-fixin' guru, I can either help out with voicing/menus/quest edits and grow the game or sit around twiddling my thumbs. I choose to be proactive; an anti-twiddler, if you will.
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And as someone who does look at bugs, I can say that I was impressed by the short time it took to have this implemented in code, the lack of introduced bugs, and the fun it is to hear NPCs speak. To answer some of the other questions:
- of course if you do not want to hear them speak, you can switch it off. The chat will show up as it always did (also if you chose to hear the speech).
- the sound is not included in the install. It is streamed to the client when needed (and cached there).
- since the voices are stored server side, they can just be added when they are available (i.e. someone found the time to do some fun thing as recording). There is no holding back a release, or occupying devs because of a dead-line.
And because it is my place to say: if you think bugs need ironing out, than please help us with the remaining big ones that we have trouble figuring out. See here (http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=35511.0) and there (http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/flyspray/) :).
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This sounds like a cool idea. But I guess it could go either way.
I'd contribute if my voice more matured. :(
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I guess it would be a good idea to organize some stuff.
Are there any pages?
Wich Races / NPCs talk wich accent?
Need female voices?
Where to organize? Wiki? Forum?
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I guess it would be a good idea to organize some stuff.
Are there any pages?
Wich Races / NPCs talk wich accent?
Need female voices?
Where to organize? Wiki? Forum?
It is being organised, just follow the instructions on the howto page, all accents and both sexes are welcome just match your sex to the npc and click record :)
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It is being organised, just follow the instructions on the howto page, all accents and both sexes are welcome just match your sex to the npc and click record :)
Once again:
_WHAT RL ACCENTS ARE NEEDED FOR WHAT RACE OF NPC?_
Nothing about it is written on linked pages just yet.
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Once again:
_WHAT RL ACCENTS ARE NEEDED FOR WHAT RACE OF NPC?_
Nothing about it is written on linked pages just yet.
Once again its not been decided:
Just forget about which accent for which race and send in your voices :)
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Will take a little while, I hope deadline won't be too soon...
There are some with a good voice, and some with a good mic, and some with good english -- just the combo is hard to find.
And IMHO 96 kHz in 32-bit float format is something hardly any soundcard can record anyway. Just placebo resolution, software interpolated.
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Lanarel: streamed to the client.... o.O Ummm from a seperate server?
Xillix: I'm not picking holes/complaining/trying to crush your soul/etc. I also appreciate all the work that everyone puts into Planeshift. I'm sorry you took my comments offensively.
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Lanarel: streamed to the client.... o.O Ummm from a seperate server?
Xillix: I'm not picking holes/complaining/trying to crush your soul/etc. I also appreciate all the work that everyone puts into Planeshift. I'm sorry you took my comments offensively.
no same server but there is a cap of 63kb per file so it's not extreme we use speex for the release file and a way lower frequency. the original version is kept as master for future use
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Will there be a list wich can be used to check wich npc does not have a voiceover already? Sort of to-do list i mean. Just to make sure we are not sending harnquist voiceovers a hundred times. I did some, togheter with my girlfriend and i'm waiting for a confirmation. Really exciting!
greetz
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Just send Harnquist a hundred times. That's called a casting.
Pick a character, record, send files... simple.
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I'd be interested in trying this but how do I know what NPC's aren't taken already? Or are you folks just collecting people with a good enough voice to choose from and then give out "assignments"?
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Just choose one and go for it, you can always go for one of the less well known if you dont want to copy
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I truly hope you'll be able to switch this off!
I have a 2GB monthly cap, and one of the things I liked about PlaneShift was that it seems to not use too much bandwidth. Voice files are massive!
And by switch off, I mean if you switch them off, they won't be downloaded.
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[ there is a cap of 63kb per file so it's not extreme
Not much of an overhead there, still might be nice to cache them locally. Then again for now it is just "hello" and "goodbye" so it appears if you never say those or their equivalents to the npcs you will never trigger the voice files anyway. By the time more gets added your situation may well have changed, Graham.
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they are cached locally and the client must require the file this means you can disable file downloading by disabling voice output
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Is there somewhere i can get a script for one of the characters?
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unfortunately no
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unfortunately no
Can anyone who has the updated version of PS send me a few lines to try?
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How many people have already tried to give some voice files?
Go ahead and post if you already tried this and look forward to potentially being picked for use in the game.
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If I gave my voice to an NPC, I could never bring myself to talk to that NPC ever again. And I pity the fools who, when all NPC lines are implemented, will submit sound bites for Finara Plund, Remant Tovere, Aldaaren Phostle or any of the NPCs who can't stop yacking when you pass by them: they'll have to hide forever from an angry mob of players who just can't bear to hear "Another lovely day in Hydlaa" several times a day anymore.
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I did it once... And I will do it again. I have at least 3 NPCs in planning so far.
But I really doubt that uploading hundreds of MB is necessary and useful, regarding the possible quality one could record at all. Even with an outlook on a distant future, I hope for a sane compromise. 32 bit float PCM is nonsense, I doubt anyone can provide a professional studio (room plus equipment).
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Given the clamour for opening up more of the game content and the claims that this would greatly speed up development, I am a bit puzzled that bugs which exist in the code (which is open to all) aren't being leapt upon and fixed by the community at large. Wouldn't it be best for PS if the community focuses on helping us with these since they are a) ALREADY in open content b) the bugs most likely to be show-stoppers and c) the bugs most likely to be stomped out via a large pool of testing data from players?
I'm a bit puzzled that the educated population of the world isn''t donning lab coats and gloves to work with glassware and microscopes to cure cancer. I personally think it's the coolest thing ever and don't see any reasonable excuse why everyone wouldn't want to do this. the thing is, most people here don't have any idea how the hell to read the code (it's called "code" for a reason) and most people don't have any interest in any sort of coding or bug fixing. Sure, everyone would love for the bugs to be fixed, and for cancer to be cured. But not everyone works in cancer research, or has any interest in doing so. To work in cancer research or to work at coding and bug fixing you need an interest in learning everything about it, and then you need to spend the time to learn everything about it. Only then can you fix a bug. or research cancer, for my analogy. if you think about it, it's not puzzling at all that the bugs aren't being leaped upon. I could spend my life in a labcoat studying cells, but I don't care to know about coding and I wouldn't bother myself with the study or practice of it. don't expect car mechanics to research cancer. don't expect librarians to build bridges. a kindergarden teacher doesn't know how to transplant a lung.
on to my main point;
I'm in a similar boat with Graham, loading an audio file isn't something that I have any ability or interest to do. I'd like to request that this feature have an off switch such that the audio files are not loaded at all.
I admire your lofty goals, but please try to remember that no one with state-of-the-art equipment is going to spend much time on an open beta. Please keep the game playable.
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Hi all,
I discovered PlaneShift just today and as I always wanted to do some voiceovers this announcement made me sign up. So, here's my fully equipped home recording studio waiting to be employed for PlaneShift voice overs. My only problem: I can't get the game to start. It crashes on MacOS X (10.5.1) and on my VMware virtual machine it is not usuable at all due to non-functioning hardware acceleration.
Thus a script would be a great resource, otherwise it will take some time until I have found some other way to get the game to run (which I'll try anyway, but it'll take some time).
As the announcement is already some weeks old, I'm curious how much material you received up to now.
Also, as someone else already noted, a 32 bit sampling rate isn't supported by most hardware and I have even observed setups where it'll produce worse results if the wrong hardware/driver gets its dirty digital hands on the signal, converting it to and fro between 16 and 32 bit. Most of the times, 16 bit (or 24bit, if you have the hardware) is easily enough, the sampling frequency is much more important.
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Hi all,
I discovered PlaneShift just today and as I always wanted to do some voiceovers this announcement made me sign up. So, here's my fully equipped home recording studio waiting to be employed for PlaneShift voice overs. My only problem: I can't get the game to start. It crashes on MacOS X (10.5.1) and on my VMware virtual machine it is not usuable at all due to non-functioning hardware acceleration.
Thus a script would be a great resource, otherwise it will take some time until I have found some other way to get the game to run (which I'll try anyway, but it'll take some time).
As the announcement is already some weeks old, I'm curious how much material you received up to now.
Also, as someone else already noted, a 32 bit sampling rate isn't supported by most hardware and I have even observed setups where it'll produce worse results if the wrong hardware/driver gets its dirty digital hands on the signal, converting it to and fro between 16 and 32 bit. Most of the times, 16 bit (or 24bit, if you have the hardware) is easily enough, the sampling frequency is much more important.
You should report that to the appropriate forum.
And..if you really can't run it, try to use a mac-port of Wine (http://www.winehq.org), it's perfect in Linux and it's making progress in OSX.
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Well - we need more testers, more testers, and especially more Mac testers!
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I look froward to hearing peoples voices
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Unfortunately, since we tried to switch to 7-zip archive format, it appears that uploading does not work anymore, the files appear to arrive with 0 bytes. But I'm poking Xordan each weekend until we make it work again.
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It's good to up this topic once in a while. I did forget all about it. :oops: And I've installed a mike in the mean time. I'll see if I can get decent recordings...
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I'd like to help as well. Since I do not have time for gaming to much, I won't be able to look into the game for some time. You can send me a role (or a handfull of them), though, and I'll record some voiceovers. I can do voices from normal over noiry over sinister to brutish. And I probably have some sort of German accent.
If you are interested, please notify me. Thx!
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I don't have a mic so is it ok if i use a clear computerized voice that almost sounds like a real human voice? I made a few that sound real good. Can I? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ??? ???