Talky Morrowind

[silentthief]

This is kinda a shoutout to what looks like a cool mod, talky morrowind. There are a few vids on youtube for this, and I included these three:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD_wm2VFIBg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMkwMlQcHOQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHRdlIMjojM

Just sharing becuz it is cool. Maybe will add this to the mod list and see if I can get workin'

Just thinkin and sharing something that looks cool

ST

[raevol]

On the one hand, the generated voices are a little hard to listen to.

On the other hand, they're not much worse than the run-of-the-mill voice acting we usually get in games. And if the game were generating the voices on the fly, that'd save a ton of resources on recorded audio files.

And I'm sure the technology is improving. If games could "script" in emphasis, emotion, and personality to the dialog using this kind of thing, I can see it breathing a lot of life into games.

And all of that makes me think of Half-Life 2's facial animation. They were able to really sync the mouth to the pronunciation, and then script in facial expressions to go along with the dialog. If you could get generated voices + scripted speech intonation and facial expressions, seems like you'd be going somewhere...

[Atahualpa]

Well, it could be worse. I like the second video best.

While the voices certainly sound very robotic, there's a lot of potential: The worst thing with some Oblivion mods was that they had no voice-acting, so you had a fully-voiced game and suddenly a dialogue without any sound. In my opinion, if all voice sound is generated on the fly this makes the player's experience much more immersive. - Assuming a certain quality, of course.

If you could get generated voices + scripted speech intonation and facial expressions, seems like you'd be going somewhere...

This! Maybe we'll see some progress in this regard, and until then, OpenMW will be mostly de-hardcoded. Two birds killed with one stone.

[DestinedToDie]

The one problem with voices is that while the programs that enable you to read text are free, the voices themselves are almost all copyrighted, save for a few horrendous sounding ones. You can download a free voice reading program and a few voices, but have to keep in mind that someone else owns the voices and it´s not like you can do anything with them, especially use them in a commercial product. I believe they wouldn´t fit the Example Suite copyright either.

It´s also a mine field. The reason I know is that I looked into using computer generated voices myself at one point. Websites will say it´s completely free, and then you google about the specific voice only to find out that the voice is tied to a license and not actually free, it is only the program reading it that is free. Lack of clarity. Here´s a glimpse of what I´m talking about:

http://www.fromtexttospeech.com/

Website says it´s free. Is it the service that is free or is the voice free or both? And just what kind of free is it? CC0? CC BY? CC BY NC, or owned by Microsoft and thus licensed so that you are free to use it within the bounds of your Windows OS? At least there´s a way to contact them, right? I email and ask them, I get no response. As far as I can tell, it is free to download generated audio files from there. But use them in anything commercial and you risk getting contacted by the owner of the voice. I´m pretty sure there is an actual website that sells licenses to these voices and you risk legal action if you use them in a product. Youtube video? You´re probably safe. Even if you monetize it, you´re too small fish to notice and sue. Morrowind mod? Still safe, no one cares. Including in a separate IP that you can sell? Prepare to lawyer up.

[TechNoirMK]

Meh, I'd prefer reading.

[Biboran]

Program from first post first video in Russian, and this so bed and funny at the same time, so this become a meme.
I like idea of voiced dialog in TESIII, but not with this.
OpenMW can support feature stop time in the world, but not stop NPC who talk with you, like in TESIV?

[Sslaxx]

OpenMW can support feature stop time in the world, but not stop NPC who talk with you, like in TESIV?

Post-1.0 perhaps.

If this could be tied in with something like the voice acting being made for Skywind, it could make for an interesting experience.

[johndh]

I think natural-sounding text-to-speech synthesis is still at least a few years off. The technology is getting better all the time, but you humans have a lot of experience listening to each other's meat noises.

[MikeMXellers]

The voice quality gives it this really nice low tech charm, if Morrowind had this on release it would have been another strong talking point for the original game. I think this would fit well within Sotha sil Expanded where it would match up with the cybernetic locals.

Are the voices generated on the fly or are they generated converted into a sound file and loaded into the game that way, if it's the latter this is not at all interesting.

[silentthief]

Are the voices generated on the fly or are they generated converted into a sound file and loaded into the game that way, if it's the latter this is not at all interesting.

I have not tried this mod yet, but I am almost guaranteeing that this is playing pre-recorded sound files instead of generating the speech off of the text of the dialog

ST