It Talks! Speech Synthesis for Games.

You would be surprised how much sound affects the perception of  a multimedia.  You can have quite minimalistic graphics, but   with good sound effects, music and voice acting it is hardy noticable. On the other hand, poor sound fx and voice dubbing can ruin the atmosfere of a movie or game.
We will cover the theme of sound processing in later articles, today we will focus on speech synthesis sofware.

Ok. So you need to have voices in your game.
There are several solutions for this problem:

A. Pay real actors (recommended)
B. Outsource recording studio (usually plus A)
C. Use voice synthesis, for a placeholder in game prototype

Ah, and there is some nebulous option to record voiceovers yourself... (not recommended)

There was certain technology leap in voice synthesis in the last 10 years. You can have completely synthesized voice, or sampled voice solution.

SOFTWARE TIPS:

Ivona Text to Speech  Probably the best sound in speech synthesis, M/F English, German, Spanish and Polish voices. Professional, however the most expensive solution. The online recording or the software license could cost you approx. $1k for a project (or $10 - $20 for couple of sentences) ...

Cepstral There are very good sampled voices in their list, somewhat more computer sounding but usable as placeholders or special characters voices. Price is from $7-30 per voice, demo is free.

Voiceforge.com is a Cepstral Project, with better presentation of the same technology.

AT&T Labs Natural Voices® Classic synthesized voices. Many "Voice Synthesis Companies" are just reselling their voices, with a hefty bonus.  Distribution is doing  Wizzardsoftware  , we are supposing the price   $300 - $1,500 , depending on number of Sound Fonts used.

There are many TTS (Text to Speech) Readers, but most are based on (or support) AT&T and Cepstral Voices (Texttospeech , Oddcast , Coolspeech etc.) There are also SDKs available for using TTS Readers directly in your software (for a indie developer, the main issue is license cost).


WARNING Online demos are usually legally restricted, and you will need to buy a license to use the voice (or recording) in your game or movie... 
When on doubt, write the developer and let them specify their license offers. Keep the communication and contracts for (possible) later trial...


TO BE UPDATED.






 

Task Force 341 Review!

Model Pack 53 aka Task Force 341 is newly available in TGC shop. It brings a lot to the lot!
TF341 offers 39 new character models and 10 new weapons. Well, it would be worth the price for those weapons alone!

The characters are fully scripted, and are pretty good just out of the box. The modelling and texturing is brilliant. Only critique would be insuficient idle animations, however you may not notice it at all in the heat of the battle. Actually with default scripts there is not much idlesness even in test game! Also, no character blinks (next update?), but maybe its deliberate because they are so hardboiled...

Weapons mods offer alt fires (check video). Modeling and texturing are professional, animations (putting silencer on the gun, melee attack) are great (walking with knife anim would require more scripting though). There seems to be some problem building the game in beta7 in certain entity constellation, but i hope its more likely engine problem (there were "forgotten" assets in previous beta builds before).

If you are looking for a character pack to use in your prototype game, look no further. Well, it would be great even for the final game actually!

Task Force 341 were developed for 2 years and shows huge amount of effort and talent put into one pack. Go buy it!

Modelling: 4.5 stars
Texturing: 4.5 stars
Animations: 4.5 stars
Value/Price: 5 stars
Overal rating: Pure awesomeness!

TIP: When placing character entities, drop them a little higher above ground level (in corridor segments), or else the entity will stuck in given segment.

Installationl: As standalone pack or for FPSC9/10.
Testing in FPSC 1.18beta7.
(continued?)