AI Voices for all missions and NPCs.

[Herotu]

 

It's fascinating to see how the debate has developed now that more people are better informed.
 

It seems such an incredible leap in technology and difficult change from what we have now - but I believe that will change in time.

 

Meanwhile, I'm still copy-pasting mission walls-of-text into TTS websites.

 

[srmalloy]

3 hours ago, Herotu said:

Meanwhile, I'm still copy-pasting mission walls-of-text into TTS websites.

...where you're not limited by having to wait for the TTS to finish reading the text. How much of that 'time to play the game instead of reading text would you lose if the mission text stayed locked up on the screen while the TTS played out? Or being able to experience the joy of being attacked while the window with the mission text was locked on the screen because the TTS hasn't finished?

[JasperStone]

Yes.

As long as there is a way to skip past it.

 

....

Also a voice actor willing to volunteer services.

[Rudra]

48 minutes ago, srmalloy said:

...where you're not limited by having to wait for the TTS to finish reading the text. How much of that 'time to play the game instead of reading text would you lose if the mission text stayed locked up on the screen while the TTS played out? Or being able to experience the joy of being attacked while the window with the mission text was locked on the screen because the TTS hasn't finished?

We already have that mission in the Kings of Death arcs where if you manage to get ahead of the cutscene trigger point or the Skulls spawn close enough to the trigger point, the Skulls can start attacking your character before the cutscene finishes going away and your power tray is functional. (Fortunately, the delay between their ability to attack and yours is a minor thing. If we had to sit there and wait for the voice overs for the cut scene though? What are the odds we get our game functionality back after we've been defeated?)

[Herotu]

4 hours ago, srmalloy said:

...where you're not limited by having to wait for the TTS to finish reading the text. How much of that 'time to play the game instead of reading text would you lose if the mission text stayed locked up on the screen while the TTS played out? Or being able to experience the joy of being attacked while the window with the mission text was locked on the screen because the TTS hasn't finished?

Nobody said anything about "locks". This seems awfully presumptuous.

[Herotu]

3 hours ago, JasperStone said:

Yes.

As long as there is a way to skip past it.

 

....

Also a voice actor willing to volunteer services.

Oh you haven't heard? No actors are needed anymore. Computers can do it now, and as AI moves on, it is becoming much better at interpreting context and therefore intoning correctly.
 

[Rudra]

34 minutes ago, Herotu said:

4 hours ago, srmalloy said:

...where you're not limited by having to wait for the TTS to finish reading the text. How much of that 'time to play the game instead of reading text would you lose if the mission text stayed locked up on the screen while the TTS played out? Or being able to experience the joy of being attacked while the window with the mission text was locked on the screen because the TTS hasn't finished?

Nobody said anything about "locks". This seems awfully presumptuous.

Doesn't seem all that presumptuous to me. We already have to wait on NPCs to shut up before we can progress missions. And we currently only have to wait on their text comments, let alone any vocals that may be added. Given what we already have to do with the text only comments, it seems logical to expect the lock to remain in place for the vocals too. Case in point: Lady Jane in the Lost Savior arc, Infernia/Glacia/Penelope Yin on their respective TFs, and even Morgana in the Lords of Death arc.

 

(Edit: I can't recall how often I've sat at my computer grumbling "Shut up, Lady Jane. Or at least walk and talk.". At least in the Lady Jane, Infernia, Glacia, and Penelope Yin cases though? They are at least allies. A Skull shows up with obvious intentions of killing the NPC you are trying to protect (and you as well), but I have to sit there and listen to her monologue before I can do anything? You only let the person trying to kill you monologue when you need time to recover, escape, or set up your BIG BOOM attack. (Or you think (s)he/they is enough of an idiot to tell you his/her/their plans so you can figure out how to stop elements of it you haven't figured out yet.) I'd already be shooting, blasting, slicing, smashing, whatever her the moment she revealed herself. Now add vocals to all that. So if others want that option, I'm fine with them having that option. If it is to be implemented as the default that cannot be avoided? Hells to the no. The OP seems to be a request for an option, so I don't really care either way since I can choose to not opt in and deal with it.)

Edited November 9, 2023 by Rudra

[Clave Dark 5]

23 hours ago, biostem said:

Frankly, I'd rather have some of the generic NPC "call-outs" when they've aggro'd on you get a bit of speech added.  These would have to be used sparingly, though, as on a x8 instance it'd quickly turn into a cacophony.

Go fight some Romans and tell me that you never get tired of hearing their constant "Eeeeuuuuraaaugh!"  And then make me believe you.  😃  I've been considering getting enough into modding to get rid of those sounds...

[Herotu]

15 hours ago, Rudra said:

Doesn't seem all that presumptuous to me. We already have to wait on NPCs to shut up before we can progress missions. And we currently only have to wait on their text comments, let alone any vocals that may be added. Given what we already have to do with the text only comments, it seems logical to expect the lock to remain in place for the vocals too. Case in point: Lady Jane in the Lost Savior arc, Infernia/Glacia/Penelope Yin on their respective TFs, and even Morgana in the Lords of Death arc.

 

(Edit: I can't recall how often I've sat at my computer grumbling "Shut up, Lady Jane. Or at least walk and talk.". At least in the Lady Jane, Infernia, Glacia, and Penelope Yin cases though? They are at least allies. A Skull shows up with obvious intentions of killing the NPC you are trying to protect (and you as well), but I have to sit there and listen to her monologue before I can do anything? You only let the person trying to kill you monologue when you need time to recover, escape, or set up your BIG BOOM attack. (Or you think (s)he/they is enough of an idiot to tell you his/her/their plans so you can figure out how to stop elements of it you haven't figured out yet.) I'd already be shooting, blasting, slicing, smashing, whatever her the moment she revealed herself. Now add vocals to all that. So if others want that option, I'm fine with them having that option. If it is to be implemented as the default that cannot be avoided? Hells to the no. The OP seems to be a request for an option, so I don't really care either way since I can choose to not opt in and deal with it.)

Maybe I'm expecting an implementation that reminds me of more modern games - none of which get any complaints about having voiced audio.

[Herotu]

10 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Go fight some Romans and tell me that you never get tired of hearing their constant "Eeeeuuuuraaaugh!"  And then make me believe you.  😃  I've been considering getting enough into modding to get rid of those sounds...

A lack of variety is often problematic. I hope that's not too philosophical a point.

Edited November 10, 2023 by Herotu

[srmalloy]

On 11/10/2023 at 4:52 AM, Herotu said:

Maybe I'm expecting an implementation that reminds me of more modern games - none of which get any complaints about having voiced audio.

Expecting professional, paid-developer-grade work from the unpaid HC staff working on their own dime on someone else's poorly-documented spaghetti code? They're doing it out of their love for the game, and doing a far better job, with far too little appreciation than they deserve, than we have any right to expect.

Edited November 11, 2023 by srmalloy

[VVonder]

With apologies for raising a long dead thread from its grave; a good percentage of related searches land in this thread.

 

I've got this more or less done; computer generated text-to-speech for all NPCs.  It's all client side as an agent reading the chat log in real time.  It doesn't block (obviously) so game play never waits for it to finish talking.  The current version supports Windows TTS (the not great thing that comes with windows), Google text-to-speech, Amazon Polly and ElevenLabs.  The theory is if you setup a bunch of different services and save the resulting sound files locally then your usage will stay down in/near the free tiers.

 

Curiously enough the timing for cut-scenes works out really well in most cases.  Shockingly better than would be expected.  I also decided to 'speak' player messages in the team channel.  That feels pretty good.  Some in-game events are audibly highlighted -- badge awards, players joining/leaving the team.

 

 

Demo vid so you can hear; it's gotten better since I made this clip a few days ago.  It now does a much better job making voices more distinct.

 

I have made some minimal efforts at a windows installer:  https://github.com/jason-kane/coh_npc_voices/releases/tag/v2.0.0  If it doesn't work for some reason please let me know.  If you have previous installed it you will probably have to delete the "voices.db" file since I haven't bothered to implement a proper migration.