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14 hours ago, Zerg Rush said:

There a very good voice apps on the web, wich may serve you. F.Exmpl. https://www.kukarella.com/text-to-voice-converter

Free Plan

Text to Voice
120+ voices from 55+ languages and accents, plus 2,000 characters per month
Audio to Text
115+ languages, and 5 minutes of audio per month

More for 4.99€/month

 

Or this one, using AI and totally free

https://spik.ai

I don't know about you but I tried tons of TTS programs. All of them seem to be complete shite. I have become physically repulsed by these robot voices. So annoying. YouTube is full of examples. Anything is better than Text to Speech voice.

Edited by Anderson
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"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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22 minutes ago, Anderson said:

I don't know about you but I tried tons of TTS programs. All of them seem to be complete shite. I have become physically repulsed by these robot voices. So annoying. YouTube is full of examples. Anything is better than Text to Speech voice.

I know, this is why I have looked for these two that have quite natural voices, apart from adjustable. The latter even supports adding pauses and emphasis to parts of the text.
The technology in this field has advanced a lot and Loquendo voices like YouTube are only found in very old applications and sites.
Certainly a Voiceactor is always better, but I think that for some voices in between and short texts they can work perfectly, saving work.
In fact some services are already used for dialogs in other games.
Well, it was just an idea

 

 

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3 hours ago, Zerg Rush said:

I know, this is why I have looked for these two that have quite natural voices, apart from adjustable. The latter even supports adding pauses and emphasis to parts of the text.
The technology in this field has advanced a lot and Loquendo voices like YouTube are only found in very old applications and sites.
Certainly a Voiceactor is always better, but I think that for some voices in between and short texts they can work perfectly, saving work.
In fact some services are already used for dialogs in other games.
Well, it was just an idea

 

 

TTS still can't do intonation properly. 😕 They make mistakes too often with disjointed and cut off words, awkward pauses and so on. It's a mess. To me TTS didn't evolve much from 1998 Half-Life grunts:

MY. ASS. IS. HEAVY.

Or like the VOX robot announcement. Most of the time I can't even understand what is being said. Sounds like utter gibberish. Again, most TTS suffer from that with more complicated sentences.

I suppose TTS works with short phrases in certain situation, but overall, might be appropriate more in sci-fi settings and such. I feel bad for being so harsh but TTS makes my life shorter somehow.

Edited by Anderson

"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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13 hours ago, Zerg Rush said:

You do not have to apologize, surely you are much better into the subject than me. It was just a thought of mine when I saw this thread.🍻

On second thought your idea might be valid for some custom robots and steam beasts voiceovers in TDM FM's. I'm just sorry for bringing out the silly parts where TTS is thought to sound well with humans.

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"I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate — the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active — not more happy — nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary — and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain — that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future — that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves — nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass."...

- 2 July 1844 letter to James Russell Lowell from Edgar Allan Poe.

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Of course, for long dialogues they sure are not useful, I was also thinking about the voices of the secondary bots, whose vocabulary in many missions is quite limited and repetitive (I am hungry, I need a good strong ale, good performance this night, etc.since first TDM). These can be expanded and varied a lot with TTS.

But this can surely be used in missions to mix and create ambient sounds loops.

https://www.ambient-mixer.com

 

Edited by Zerg Rush
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21 hours ago, zergrush said:

@Zerg Rush I wish you had picked a more original name...

I have already realized it, but it is a nickname that I have for a long time also on other sites, to make it easier for people to find me on Google 😂

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  • 3 months later...
4 hours ago, Shadow Creepr said:

I'm still around but full on with my other work too. I will redo the original 20+ recordings due to the issues with faulty equipment and record all 80+ lines needed. Do you have a point of contact that has enough free time to work with me? I realise that you've been busy too. @Petike the Taffer

Hello. Thank you for getting in touch ! I was meaning to finally write to you again this week and ask whether you're not too busy, but you beat me to it.

If you'd like to do the recordings, feel free to do it at your own pace. There's no rush. Quality is all that matters, really. Since there have been a few updates to the player vocalisations in the more recent versions of the core game, you could ask some of the dev team members for the new audio files and the titles of those new recordings. Just so you could do all the recordings if you want to, and not have to add new ones later.

All in all, you really don't need to hurry. Put your own needs and your own work first, record in your free time when you really feel like it. If you need to contact me, you can message me here or at TTLG.com (I have the same username on both sites). I think you might still have my e-mail adress too.

If you do any recordings, leave about 2 or 3 seconds of silence at the start. Just so we could potentially reduce any subtler noise and hum in post-production, if we manage to find any (I mean the near-silent ones, any louder hum should obviously be avoided as much as possible).

Edited by Petike the Taffer
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17 hours ago, JackFarmer said:

@Petike the Taffer

...any updates on the subject?

I think what Shadow Creepr would really appreciate would be some voice direction. The female voice set is effectivelly non-spoken, it's all vocals rather than words and sentences, but even that sort of performance requires at least a bit of direction, so it could fit with what we'd want to hear during gameplay (in missions using the female voice set for the player character).

People have commented before that the recording quality wasn't bad, even if some had to be occassionally fixed a bit in post, but that something was lacking on a voice-performance level. It's fair enough to say Shadow Creepr should feel free to do her performance, rather than do a female imitation/impression of the male voice set, I agree with that. However, I think it's unhelpful to say "I didn't find this vocal convincing" without providing more in-depth feedback and some voice direction on what the voice actor should be going for.

If we don't provide any voice direction, we shouldn't be surprised if some recordings might not sound adequate to us, at least in the sense we'd make them a part of the core game.

I don't know what experience you have with providing voice direction for the people doing voice acting for your missions, but if you and at least one dev from the core team would like to provide some feedback to Shadow Creepr - just so we avoid people grumbling "that didn't sound convincing", "that was off in this way..." - I'd welcome that.

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On 12/21/2020 at 12:39 PM, Anderson said:

On second thought your idea might be valid for some custom robots and steam beasts voiceovers in TDM FM's. I'm just sorry for bringing out the silly parts where TTS is thought to sound well with humans.

I've gone over to Lingo Jam and had some sentences rewritten to Elizabethan English. The results:

"Halt, knave ! Throweth down thy arms and surrend'r !"

"Stand ho, foul felon ! Giveth up thy thiev'ry !" (stand ho = stop)

"Thee shalt not evade the law, rotten knave !"

"Assaulting.  I shalt maketh quick worketh of thee, vile burglar !"

"Thee daw ! Thee cannot escape !" (daw = fool)

"I am stout, and thieves like thee gallow easily." (strong, scare easily)

Imagine the robots barking this out, in either Builder voices (as above) or in some commoner and thief cant.

Edited by Petike the Taffer
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Quote

"Thee daw ! Thee cannot escape !" (daw = fool)

 

I wouldn't use any site that gives you the above sentence.  You can't just find/replace "you" with "thee".

And remember, in the TDM setting, steam-beasts would have no connection to Builders, and wouldn't use religious speech anyway.

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Petike the Taffer said:

I don't know what experience you have with providing voice direction for the people doing voice acting for your missions, but if you and at least one dev from the core team would like to provide some feedback to Shadow Creepr - just so we avoid people grumbling "that didn't sound convincing", "that was off in this way..." - I'd welcome that.

I know what you mean but I am afraid I just provide text to the voice actors - sometimes accompanied by generic hints like "make him sound like a fool" or "use your Builder voice" or "please try to imitate vocal set xy" and then the voice actors derive the rest from the text. That worked well till now. So, you see, I do not really have experience with voice direction.

Hm...let me check what has been done so far and I will get back to you...

 

 

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1 hour ago, Springheel said:

 

I wouldn't use any site that gives you the above sentence.  You can't just find/replace "you" with "thee".

And remember, in the TDM setting, steam-beasts would have no connection to Builders, and wouldn't use religious speech anyway.

Don't worry, I meant that as a joke. ;) I don't think robots should speak in exaggerated pseudo-Elizabethan. I meant steam-beasts bought by Builders for guarding (though that depends on whether they'd approve of them at all), but even so, if the steam-beasts should ever be "voiced", they should speak in normal English and the sentences should be bland and short.

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@Petike the Taffer I'm fine going ahead with the lines as written, but if there is a very specific sound that's needed then I would need to know that.

My main thing is being able to get feedback after a set of files so that I know it's sounding the way you want. 🙂

To save future confusion, can you remove the files posted previously so that they won't be used as the base files. The quality of sound with my new mic is such an improvement. I've received good feedback from the files I've recorded recently. 

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I think it'd be good to post some early samples in here, too, as we can probably collectively provide some useful feedback.

Thanks to all involved for making this happen!

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The only thing about posting samples in here is that I'll get too many varied opinions on the work. It's much less complicated for me if I work with one or two people so that I'm not constantly having to change what I record, if you see what I mean. 🙂

If @Petike the Tafferis happy for you to help out then it's fine with me. 

@JackFarmer

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 4/16/2021 at 10:49 PM, Shadow Creepr said:

The only thing about posting samples in here is that I'll get too many varied opinions on the work. It's much less complicated for me if I work with one or two people so that I'm not constantly having to change what I record, if you see what I mean. 🙂

If @Petike the Tafferis happy for you to help out then it's fine with me. 

@JackFarmer

@Petike the Taffer

You have not responded here till now. I will not take over without your permission.

 

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  • 1 month later...

I love to  see a female vocalset for the player.
But it looks like this going to take some time.

How about using the sounds from females that we already have, in the meanwhile?
For example, using the sounds from maiden, lady1, lady2 or wench.

To do this:

  1. Choose a person and her sounds
    (from tdm_sound_vocals04.pk4\sound\voices or tdm_sound_vocals07.pk4\sound\voices.
  2. Make a copy op soundheader file of the player
    (from tdm_sound_vocals_decls01.pk4\sound\tdm_player.sndshd)
  3. Open that file with an editor (with like windows notepad)
  4. change at the textlines of a sound, the filepath of the sound you want to use
  5. And put the edited soundheader file in a mission pk4.

(or use this method with the new female vocal sounds)

Edited by freyk
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  • 4 weeks later...

And that is what i did.
I have chosen the sounds from the maiden, because it matched most with the male player sounds.
I replaced audiofile location references in "tdm_player.sndshd" and attachted the result to this forumpost.

For a example and to get a feel for it for the temporary alternative,
download the attached pk4 and place it inside a missionfolder.

  1. Install a mission (for example: trainings mission)
  2. place this pk4 inside that mission folder (for example fms/training_mission)
  3. play the mission.

Notes:

  • you notice the changes when the player is in pain.
  • most sounds that player makes, are non-gender. so i dont changed that.
  • And because the maiden doesnt have many action sounds, the same sounds are used for other actions.

tdm_sound_vocals_player_female.pk4

Edited by freyk
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While we waiting,
how about converting the vocals from Zaya from T2X to TDM, as mentioned ealier?

(license about zaya: "Distribution of Thief2X: Shadows of the Metal Age is encouraged so long as the mod remains free and intact." and "You may not include any Thief2X resources in any fan mission package")
(file info about zaya: Sound files located in "\t2x\snd\zaya". total 5 mb. wav files needs to be converted to ogg. Maybe change filenames. )

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