Off Topic Productions

Thanks. I've already fixed it, it's on the SVN.

Added the Endar lines! Update your TNMConvos2 Audio folder to receive their awesomeness

Do you have any say in which lines are processed first? Because I'd really like to hear Alpha's lines implemented. It would also be pretty cool if we could get some of the generic characters done so the city will start to come alive

Not really, I just let them do what they like. I think the BoardGuestB charact should be done fairly soon.

Alpha won't be done anytime soon because I still have to go through him and name/cut up his lines, which is going to take forever.

Oh Trest, forgot to mention this - I generated the Black ICE lines with 2nd Speech Center (I have a less-than-legal registered copy with several different voices in case we need it again - it can record straight to .wav or .mp3) and uploaded them to the SVN. I've tested them in-game and they work fine, but we'll need the Brand X guys to increase the volume and I'd like some sort of cool AI-sounding filter on them to make them more interesting.

I'm thinking we'll use 2nd Speech Center for the Debugger Cube too, the program has the Microsoft Sam voice built in which sounds deliciously disinterested. We should use human voice actors for ShadowCode and Narcissus though, don't know if we're still planning to use Andreus and That Guy for that.

Which reminds me we need to come up with some random insults and taunts for ShadowCode to sneer at you while he's in your head.

Oh, yay \o/ I attempted to generate those lines myself but couldn't get it done to my satisfaction. Do you have them in .wav format? Those would be the best for Brand X to work with.

No rush on those Shadowcode insults, I think. We can have a meeting and make a list, or something.

I don't have them in .wav format. I could've generated them in .wav format and in any quality you like, but I didn't know what was needed, so I went with .mp3 since I could get those directly into the game.

We'll talk before I do the Debugger ones so I get it right then

Should be okay, it's not like they'll be any background noise or anything of that nature.

Yeah exactly. I do think I generated them in 22KHz though, which may be a problem, but it won't take more than 2 hours to re-do them if necessary, so I'm up for that when this paper is done. The most time-consuming part is tweaking the lines to make the program pronounce certain words correctly. For example "Deus Diablo" has to be spelled "Day us deeahblo", otherwise it'll say "dees daiablow", and you gotta spell out "two thousand and two" or it'll say "twenty oh two"

Debugger lines? I thought we were going to try to voice them and post process? I have go through the conversation again anyways, I need to tweak the choice dialogue and probably a few typos... not that I'll be getting much time before New Years

I'm concerned that copying the Portal method might be conceived as a rip-off. Even just the purely computer-generated Black ICE lines made Shane think of Portal (he described them as "very Portal", IIRC). But we could still try it out and see if we like the result of course.

bear in mind I had just finished portal that morning . Having said that I think given that tnm is set in a world of digital avatars its fair to say that an ai would be perfectly capable of voice synthesis.

Well yeah but the debugger isn't part of the TNM universe so we can really do it however we please. ShadowCode and Narcissus are advanced AI's with natural-sounding voices, Black ICE is just an exaggerated firewall, so it gets much worse voice routines. But the Debugger isn't really an AI, it's outside of our setting, it's ostensibly a tool we used in the construction of the game which has since come alive and gained consciousness. However we do its voice is completely up to us.

If push came to shove we could always do what War Games did. They actually used a human voice for WOPR (the guy who played Dr. Falken), they just chopped up the words in the sentences and then randomly arranged them for him to speak in a monotone. Then they strung them together in the right order and added a filter to get the final WOPR voice.

-Gelo

I figured we'd play with different methods for voicing it; some of the Debugger convo was assuredly inspired by Portal but it's really not a GLaDOS clone at all and our users will already be acquainted with the AI stuff from DX which I think is more likely to draw association in the long run, I don't think the way our VA is made will really make people think rip-off.