Oh I tend to agree, but I guess it depends on how much extra you're willing
to do. And seeing as how this wasn't even Thomas' project to begin with and
the amount of trouble it's brought down on him in the four years he's been
working on it it's definitely understandable why he just wants to get it out
the door. But now that I think of it I don't think Thomas ever intended to
use real human speech beyond what was necessary for Angela herself. I tend
to agree that real human speech is more pleasing to hear, but I can't
honestly say that I'll be able to do that when I start working on games.
Sometimes it's not even a matter of being willing or unwilling but what you
can and can't actually afford. Like I said, professional voice talent is
hardly inexpensive so sometimes some people literally can't afford the extra
money, even if they would prefer to use human speech. Thomas does after all
have a wife and son to support.
Homer: Hey, uh, could you go across the street and get me a slice of pizza?
Vender: No pizza. Only Khlav Kalash.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Philip Bennefall" <phi...@blastbay.com>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Friday, March 19, 2010 4:02 AM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Mota and tts
Hi Bryan,
A valid point indeed, and one which I certainly considered before I
decided to hire voice actors for all of my games; except for the parts I
can do here in my own studio. I feel, however, that the chances of a
purchase increase with every little detail of quality featured in the
game - especially that of the main output voice, as that is what the user
will hear possibly for hours on end. My filosophy is this, rather spend a
little extra and get everything as good as it can possibly be as you then
stand out above the rest, and are thus likely to get more sales in the
end.
Kind regards,
Philip Bennefall
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bryan Peterson" <bpeterson2...@cableone.net>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Friday, March 19, 2010 10:56 AM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Mota and tts
I tend to agree with you Philip, but the problem is that professional
voice talent is hardly inexpensive. The lady who does the actual Angela
sound clips charged a considerable amount just for doing those clips. It
would cost even more for actual speech of the sort you're thinking of. I
agree it would sound more esthetically pleasing but it may not be
financially feasible unless it could be absolutely guaranteed that Thomas
would get his money's worth. And in our market that's not a guarantee.
Homer: Hey, uh, could you go across the street and get me a slice of
pizza?
Vender: No pizza. Only Khlav Kalash.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Philip Bennefall" <phi...@blastbay.com>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Friday, March 19, 2010 12:21 AM
Subject: [Audyssey] Mota and tts
Hi Thomas,
I would like to make a small suggestion for Mota, if I may. I appreciate
the convenience of using synthetic speech while the game is in intensive
development (e.g. when you have a million things changing from day to
day), but in my mind you make a much more professional impression on
your end users if you use an actual voice talent in the final product.
Since you are using concatenated audio files anyway, this would not be a
difficult thing to do as it would just be a matter of replacing the tts
version of each file with the real woman's voice. To me, this gives the
game a much nicer atmosphere and an over-all nicer feel, as I personally
tend to get rather irritated with the little glitches that are
inevitably going to be present in every concatenated tts voice. When I
say concatenated in this case I do not mean your game sound files but
rather the way that the actual voice is constructed, there are hundreds
of little chunks that they try to fit together to form the particular
phrase in question and these engines are far from perfect. A real lady
would be able to emphasise her words so that you really feel for what
she is saying and can put it in teh context of the game so to speak,
rather than the dry and unemotional tts voice equivalent. I guess what
I'm trying to say is, in a game where the text is so dynamic so that a
real human voice would be impossible such as Entombed I can put up with
tts, but in a game like Mota I think it would be highly benefitial for
the end product to use an actual voiceover artist. Again, you would only
do these recordings when you feel that it's not very likely that the
general set of words and phrases will change much. As an example,
imagine Q9 with NeoSpeech Paul?
Kind regards,
Philip Bennefall
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