Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
I thought Hal didn't have a Allen voice? I thought it just had Andy, Ben, Dave, Jim, Mark, Mike, Phil, Simon, and Tom? - Original Message - From: Dark [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 3:43 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? Hello Tom. currently, I'm being forced to use Ms sam in games. Even though I use the orphius voice Alan with Hal, for some odd reason I have severe trouble trying to make any alterations to Sapi, - either using the Orphius Sapi runtime libraries, or trying to install the other Ms voices (though I am looking into buying Realspeak Daniel soon, which will hopefully work). The point is that at the moment, I'm not experiencing the best in synth voice quality when it comes to games. I find though, i can generally cope with Ms Sam as long as the information I'm getting is of a fairly general nature, such as reading numbers or other status information. I do find however, that a game (or indeed a text), loses a lot of it's atmospheric content when dialogue or other speeches requiring emotion or characterization are read in an emotionless synthetic voice, and obviously the worse the voice, the worse the problem, though for in game character speech, even something like Realspeak would be inadequate Imho. I know that Phil got Sarah voice acted just for this reason. To give an example, I have no problem with most of the Sapi used in Lone wolf, even with ms Sam, however in the next version it might improve the atmosphere of the game considerably if a few phrases, supposedly spoken by the sub's crew, were actually recorded in Wav. these could include torpedo's away! she's hit! (obviously having the crew speak the names of enemy craft wouldn't be practical), and the various damage reports. I can appreciate the difficulties in recording many wavs, and also that would make things more difficult for people with slower internet connections to download the game, however on the other hand, I do feel that the use of synth voices for characterization in games can be extremely harmful to the game' atmosphere, and (where applicable), how believeable those characters are. so for Monti, I'd personally go for having your health, score, current level and other status info spoken buy Sapi, but if ever panama Jo (or whoever we've got starring in the game at the moment), has to do any talking, have it recorded by a real live voice actor. I will admit, as somebody who does fairly major stuff on stage, I am probably fairly exacting as far as the acting side of gaming goes. Btw, If the character's in the game are robots, as in Galaxy ranger, I think a synth voice can actually fit in rather well. It's actually been done in various films and Tv series I think, Tron, Space above and beyond and war games for example. Well that's my thoughts on the subject, though everyone else's might be different. All the best Dark. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
I would use SAPI for narration purposes but for sound effects or if a specific character says something voice is the way to go. Ken Downey President DreamTechInteractive! And, Coming soon, Blind Comfort! The pleasant way to get a massage--no staring, just caring. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 4:55 PM Subject: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? Hi everyone, I'm more or less throwing this one out here for some end user feedback as I need it at this point. As many of you know STFC 1.0 and Montezuma's Revenge Alpha 4.4 are using prerecorded wav files for speech playback. The problem with this method is generally that It takes me lots of extra time to sample, record, trim, and edit every voice file for the game. In STFC I think there are a total of 400 wav files I had to do which took me something like three weeks to do. With the end result being massive over head. Needless to say using prerecorded speech has added allot of extra time to every production, added CPU over head, and at the end of the day I have to put in lots of special flags to get it to act something like a synth doing key interrupts etc so that the speech wouldn't hold up the application, etc... On the positive side though the voice, speech output, is generally better than most synths. I have the option to correct the way the synth says something which helps. For example Cardassian which might sound like car-dashen can be respelled during recorded to say car-dass-e-an. However, I am not sure the improved speech is all that worth it. What I would like to do is build a speech class into my engine.dll which should support all Sapi 5 synths, and through a good Sapi tts engine you could gain self voicing that way, and not have to wait an extra month or so as I edit voice samples to use for the game. The advantages here is less overhead, more rapid production time for games, smaller downloads, custom speech settings, and allot of other stuff you don't get with prerecorded speech. Since I was working on my screen reading project i realized how much faster it is when you can just do something like synth.Speak(message, SpeechVoiceSpeakFlags.SVSFDefault); and on to the next line of code without having to actually record the message, load and then play back a wave file. Which eats CPU power, not to mention lots more of my time to do the wav self-voicing option. The only thing I need to do with Sapi is construct a string of text, store it in the message string, and pass it to the synth.Speak method, and away I go. Another reason to go Sapi is there are allot of high quality speech engines out there that can be generically ssupported. The scansoft voices which ship with Jaws 8 are simply awesome. Since I have installed them I have no problems with using them with LW and Jim Kitchen's games, and they sound good for synths. The catch 22 is I don't know how many you have purchased the higher quality synths, and how many of you are using the older Microsoft ones Mike, Mary, Microsoft, etc which sound, well, terrible. So what do you as end users think? Should I go ahead and make Sapi a core part of future releases? ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.413 / Virus Database: 268.18.8/714 - Release Date: 3/8/2007 ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
I would be willing to edit your wave files to give you more time on the programming side. Ken Downey President DreamTechInteractive! And, Coming soon, Blind Comfort! The pleasant way to get a massage--no staring, just caring. - Original Message - From: Dark [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 6:43 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? Hello Tom. currently, I'm being forced to use Ms sam in games. Even though I use the orphius voice Alan with Hal, for some odd reason I have severe trouble trying to make any alterations to Sapi, - either using the Orphius Sapi runtime libraries, or trying to install the other Ms voices (though I am looking into buying Realspeak Daniel soon, which will hopefully work). The point is that at the moment, I'm not experiencing the best in synth voice quality when it comes to games. I find though, i can generally cope with Ms Sam as long as the information I'm getting is of a fairly general nature, such as reading numbers or other status information. I do find however, that a game (or indeed a text), loses a lot of it's atmospheric content when dialogue or other speeches requiring emotion or characterization are read in an emotionless synthetic voice, and obviously the worse the voice, the worse the problem, though for in game character speech, even something like Realspeak would be inadequate Imho. I know that Phil got Sarah voice acted just for this reason. To give an example, I have no problem with most of the Sapi used in Lone wolf, even with ms Sam, however in the next version it might improve the atmosphere of the game considerably if a few phrases, supposedly spoken by the sub's crew, were actually recorded in Wav. these could include torpedo's away! she's hit! (obviously having the crew speak the names of enemy craft wouldn't be practical), and the various damage reports. I can appreciate the difficulties in recording many wavs, and also that would make things more difficult for people with slower internet connections to download the game, however on the other hand, I do feel that the use of synth voices for characterization in games can be extremely harmful to the game' atmosphere, and (where applicable), how believeable those characters are. so for Monti, I'd personally go for having your health, score, current level and other status info spoken buy Sapi, but if ever panama Jo (or whoever we've got starring in the game at the moment), has to do any talking, have it recorded by a real live voice actor. I will admit, as somebody who does fairly major stuff on stage, I am probably fairly exacting as far as the acting side of gaming goes. Btw, If the character's in the game are robots, as in Galaxy ranger, I think a synth voice can actually fit in rather well. It's actually been done in various films and Tv series I think, Tron, Space above and beyond and war games for example. Well that's my thoughts on the subject, though everyone else's might be different. All the best Dark. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.413 / Virus Database: 268.18.8/714 - Release Date: 3/8/2007 ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
Hi Shaunm Sapi speech is definitely interruptible. Most of the speech in my sapi games is interruptible. Some is not such as when it says game title By Jim Kitchen. I want you to hear that so I made it not interruptible. But it is seriously much easier to interrupt sapi speech than it is a string of wave files playing to say the same thing. - Original Message - the thing to note is you can't interrupt sapi while its speaking something. Jim Police were called to a daycare where a three-year-old was resisting a rest. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kitchensinc.net (440) 286-6920 Chardon Ohio USA ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
Hi Dennis, The Realspeak voices produced by Scansoft don't come with the Jaws 8 demo or the downloadable upgrade. You can only obtain them via recieving your boxed cd set. Disk one is Jaws 8, and the second is theScansoft voices which are screen reader independant fortunately, and are an optional upgrade. Dennis wrote: I agree on sappy voices do you know where I can get the scan soft voices? I downloaded jaws 8 and didn't get them.s ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
Dear Tomis: so when freedom sends me jaws 8 which I can get cause I have the upgrade I will get the scan soft voices? Dennis -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 8:37 AM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? Hi Dennis, The Realspeak voices produced by Scansoft don't come with the Jaws 8 demo or the downloadable upgrade. You can only obtain them via recieving your boxed cd set. Disk one is Jaws 8, and the second is theScansoft voices which are screen reader independant fortunately, and are an optional upgrade. Dennis wrote: I agree on sappy voices do you know where I can get the scan soft voices? I downloaded jaws 8 and didn't get them.s ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
Hi Dennis, They are not on the same disk as Jaws 8. However, the Scansoft cd is in the same boxed set of disks. Jaws is disk 1 and Scansoft should be disk 2. Dennis wrote: Oh ok so freedom scientific has them on the cd so when I get the cd from freedom they will be on there? ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
Right but it will be in what freedom sends me right? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 8:48 AM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? Hi Dennis, They are not on the same disk as Jaws 8. However, the Scansoft cd is in the same boxed set of disks. Jaws is disk 1 and Scansoft should be disk 2. Dennis wrote: Oh ok so freedom scientific has them on the cd so when I get the cd from freedom they will be on there? ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
Hi Shaun, I'm not sure what box of Cracker Jacks you got that info from, but the information simply is not true. Sapi 5 voices certainly can be interupted, and the speech stopped at any time. Think about it Jaws 8, Window Eyes 6.0, LW 3.5, need I go on with apps that intrupt Sapi when new information is called for? Cheers. shaun everiss wrote: the thing to note is you can't interupt sapi while its speaking something. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
Hi Dennis, yes. As far as I know all boxed copies of Jaws 8.0 and above will come with a Realspeak installation cd along with your Jaws 8.0 install cd. The Australian voices Karen and Lee sound really awesome and so does the UK voice Daniel. Tom makes a good U.S. English voice. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
Check for all info related to this upgrade at www.freedomscientific.com It will tell you what comes with JAWS 8 WHEN YOU RECEIVE IT. - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 8:31 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? Hi Dennis, yes. As far as I know all boxed copies of Jaws 8.0 and above will come with a Realspeak installation cd along with your Jaws 8.0 install cd. The Australian voices Karen and Lee sound really awesome and so does the UK voice Daniel. Tom makes a good U.S. English voice. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
Hi Thom, Here is my suggestions. I don't have all of the voices mentioned so this is where I am coming from. Do what ever is easiest for you while still producing a great quality game that you are willing to put your name on. If this means making the voices with SAPI then so be it. One possibility is to use SAPI for the voices in the first released version at maybe a lower cost to the consumer. Then as bugs and the such come in you could then change the voice to wav file types and release it as an updated version which might cost a few dollars more due to the time in adding the extra features. If you decide to make the voices of a higher quality and it takes longer most consumers would certainly understand. Either way you go I am pretty sure that it will be a great game to play. Rich ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
[Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
Hi everyone, I'm more or less throwing this one out here for some end user feedback as I need it at this point. As many of you know STFC 1.0 and Montezuma's Revenge Alpha 4.4 are using prerecorded wav files for speech playback. The problem with this method is generally that It takes me lots of extra time to sample, record, trim, and edit every voice file for the game. In STFC I think there are a total of 400 wav files I had to do which took me something like three weeks to do. With the end result being massive over head. Needless to say using prerecorded speech has added allot of extra time to every production, added CPU over head, and at the end of the day I have to put in lots of special flags to get it to act something like a synth doing key interrupts etc so that the speech wouldn't hold up the application, etc... On the positive side though the voice, speech output, is generally better than most synths. I have the option to correct the way the synth says something which helps. For example Cardassian which might sound like car-dashen can be respelled during recorded to say car-dass-e-an. However, I am not sure the improved speech is all that worth it. What I would like to do is build a speech class into my engine.dll which should support all Sapi 5 synths, and through a good Sapi tts engine you could gain self voicing that way, and not have to wait an extra month or so as I edit voice samples to use for the game. The advantages here is less overhead, more rapid production time for games, smaller downloads, custom speech settings, and allot of other stuff you don't get with prerecorded speech. Since I was working on my screen reading project i realized how much faster it is when you can just do something like synth.Speak(message, SpeechVoiceSpeakFlags.SVSFDefault); and on to the next line of code without having to actually record the message, load and then play back a wave file. Which eats CPU power, not to mention lots more of my time to do the wav self-voicing option. The only thing I need to do with Sapi is construct a string of text, store it in the message string, and pass it to the synth.Speak method, and away I go. Another reason to go Sapi is there are allot of high quality speech engines out there that can be generically ssupported. The scansoft voices which ship with Jaws 8 are simply awesome. Since I have installed them I have no problems with using them with LW and Jim Kitchen's games, and they sound good for synths. The catch 22 is I don't know how many you have purchased the higher quality synths, and how many of you are using the older Microsoft ones Mike, Mary, Microsoft, etc which sound, well, terrible. So what do you as end users think? Should I go ahead and make Sapi a core part of future releases? ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
Hmm. The sapi tts sounds like a good way to go. Here are the dissadvantages though. 1. if sapi hasn't worked or is mangled somehow, and the user has no use for it otherwise then the user may have to fix it or something. Hmm that may be an issue not an disadvantage. 2. Unless said user has jaws8, zoomtext, or has got legally or otherwise the high quality voices he/she will not have a nice time. The only reason at all for example I got the realspeak solo voice was through a private server. While there are voices like e speak they do not sound like the voices you would run with the games. While they are bulky you can make your wavs sound exactly how you wish them to. You could do more things than a speech synth ever could. I would prefur sapi, but only because I have a highqual synth, those with free synths, ie lhtts5 that comes with office, msmary, sam or michael, espeak or flite probably wouldn't. If you want my honest opinion I think you should stay with the current set up, at least until it can be garanteed that everyone has a synth that is highqual. At 10:55 a.m. 9/03/2007, you wrote: Hi everyone, I'm more or less throwing this one out here for some end user feedback as I need it at this point. As many of you know STFC 1.0 and Montezuma's Revenge Alpha 4.4 are using prerecorded wav files for speech playback. The problem with this method is generally that It takes me lots of extra time to sample, record, trim, and edit every voice file for the game. In STFC I think there are a total of 400 wav files I had to do which took me something like three weeks to do. With the end result being massive over head. Needless to say using prerecorded speech has added allot of extra time to every production, added CPU over head, and at the end of the day I have to put in lots of special flags to get it to act something like a synth doing key interrupts etc so that the speech wouldn't hold up the application, etc... On the positive side though the voice, speech output, is generally better than most synths. I have the option to correct the way the synth says something which helps. For example Cardassian which might sound like car-dashen can be respelled during recorded to say car-dass-e-an. However, I am not sure the improved speech is all that worth it. What I would like to do is build a speech class into my engine.dll which should support all Sapi 5 synths, and through a good Sapi tts engine you could gain self voicing that way, and not have to wait an extra month or so as I edit voice samples to use for the game. The advantages here is less overhead, more rapid production time for games, smaller downloads, custom speech settings, and allot of other stuff you don't get with prerecorded speech. Since I was working on my screen reading project i realized how much faster it is when you can just do something like synth.Speak(message, SpeechVoiceSpeakFlags.SVSFDefault); and on to the next line of code without having to actually record the message, load and then play back a wave file. Which eats CPU power, not to mention lots more of my time to do the wav self-voicing option. The only thing I need to do with Sapi is construct a string of text, store it in the message string, and pass it to the synth.Speak method, and away I go. Another reason to go Sapi is there are allot of high quality speech engines out there that can be generically ssupported. The scansoft voices which ship with Jaws 8 are simply awesome. Since I have installed them I have no problems with using them with LW and Jim Kitchen's games, and they sound good for synths. The catch 22 is I don't know how many you have purchased the higher quality synths, and how many of you are using the older Microsoft ones Mike, Mary, Microsoft, etc which sound, well, terrible. So what do you as end users think? Should I go ahead and make Sapi a core part of future releases? ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
Hello Tom. currently, I'm being forced to use Ms sam in games. Even though I use the orphius voice Alan with Hal, for some odd reason I have severe trouble trying to make any alterations to Sapi, - either using the Orphius Sapi runtime libraries, or trying to install the other Ms voices (though I am looking into buying Realspeak Daniel soon, which will hopefully work). The point is that at the moment, I'm not experiencing the best in synth voice quality when it comes to games. I find though, i can generally cope with Ms Sam as long as the information I'm getting is of a fairly general nature, such as reading numbers or other status information. I do find however, that a game (or indeed a text), loses a lot of it's atmospheric content when dialogue or other speeches requiring emotion or characterization are read in an emotionless synthetic voice, and obviously the worse the voice, the worse the problem, though for in game character speech, even something like Realspeak would be inadequate Imho. I know that Phil got Sarah voice acted just for this reason. To give an example, I have no problem with most of the Sapi used in Lone wolf, even with ms Sam, however in the next version it might improve the atmosphere of the game considerably if a few phrases, supposedly spoken by the sub's crew, were actually recorded in Wav. these could include torpedo's away! she's hit! (obviously having the crew speak the names of enemy craft wouldn't be practical), and the various damage reports. I can appreciate the difficulties in recording many wavs, and also that would make things more difficult for people with slower internet connections to download the game, however on the other hand, I do feel that the use of synth voices for characterization in games can be extremely harmful to the game' atmosphere, and (where applicable), how believeable those characters are. so for Monti, I'd personally go for having your health, score, current level and other status info spoken buy Sapi, but if ever panama Jo (or whoever we've got starring in the game at the moment), has to do any talking, have it recorded by a real live voice actor. I will admit, as somebody who does fairly major stuff on stage, I am probably fairly exacting as far as the acting side of gaming goes. Btw, If the character's in the game are robots, as in Galaxy ranger, I think a synth voice can actually fit in rather well. It's actually been done in various films and Tv series I think, Tron, Space above and beyond and war games for example. Well that's my thoughts on the subject, though everyone else's might be different. All the best Dark. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
I think you should go with the SAPI method. I like the idea of getting the games just a tad earlier. Thanks Casey - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 4:55 PM Subject: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? Hi everyone, I'm more or less throwing this one out here for some end user feedback as I need it at this point. As many of you know STFC 1.0 and Montezuma's Revenge Alpha 4.4 are using prerecorded wav files for speech playback. The problem with this method is generally that It takes me lots of extra time to sample, record, trim, and edit every voice file for the game. In STFC I think there are a total of 400 wav files I had to do which took me something like three weeks to do. With the end result being massive over head. Needless to say using prerecorded speech has added allot of extra time to every production, added CPU over head, and at the end of the day I have to put in lots of special flags to get it to act something like a synth doing key interrupts etc so that the speech wouldn't hold up the application, etc... On the positive side though the voice, speech output, is generally better than most synths. I have the option to correct the way the synth says something which helps. For example Cardassian which might sound like car-dashen can be respelled during recorded to say car-dass-e-an. However, I am not sure the improved speech is all that worth it. What I would like to do is build a speech class into my engine.dll which should support all Sapi 5 synths, and through a good Sapi tts engine you could gain self voicing that way, and not have to wait an extra month or so as I edit voice samples to use for the game. The advantages here is less overhead, more rapid production time for games, smaller downloads, custom speech settings, and allot of other stuff you don't get with prerecorded speech. Since I was working on my screen reading project i realized how much faster it is when you can just do something like synth.Speak(message, SpeechVoiceSpeakFlags.SVSFDefault); and on to the next line of code without having to actually record the message, load and then play back a wave file. Which eats CPU power, not to mention lots more of my time to do the wav self-voicing option. The only thing I need to do with Sapi is construct a string of text, store it in the message string, and pass it to the synth.Speak method, and away I go. Another reason to go Sapi is there are allot of high quality speech engines out there that can be generically ssupported. The scansoft voices which ship with Jaws 8 are simply awesome. Since I have installed them I have no problems with using them with LW and Jim Kitchen's games, and they sound good for synths. The catch 22 is I don't know how many you have purchased the higher quality synths, and how many of you are using the older Microsoft ones Mike, Mary, Microsoft, etc which sound, well, terrible. So what do you as end users think? Should I go ahead and make Sapi a core part of future releases? ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
I agree on sappy voices do you know where I can get the scan soft voices? I downloaded jaws 8 and didn't get them.s -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Casey Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 10:25 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? I think you should go with the SAPI method. I like the idea of getting the games just a tad earlier. Thanks Casey - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 4:55 PM Subject: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? Hi everyone, I'm more or less throwing this one out here for some end user feedback as I need it at this point. As many of you know STFC 1.0 and Montezuma's Revenge Alpha 4.4 are using prerecorded wav files for speech playback. The problem with this method is generally that It takes me lots of extra time to sample, record, trim, and edit every voice file for the game. In STFC I think there are a total of 400 wav files I had to do which took me something like three weeks to do. With the end result being massive over head. Needless to say using prerecorded speech has added allot of extra time to every production, added CPU over head, and at the end of the day I have to put in lots of special flags to get it to act something like a synth doing key interrupts etc so that the speech wouldn't hold up the application, etc... On the positive side though the voice, speech output, is generally better than most synths. I have the option to correct the way the synth says something which helps. For example Cardassian which might sound like car-dashen can be respelled during recorded to say car-dass-e-an. However, I am not sure the improved speech is all that worth it. What I would like to do is build a speech class into my engine.dll which should support all Sapi 5 synths, and through a good Sapi tts engine you could gain self voicing that way, and not have to wait an extra month or so as I edit voice samples to use for the game. The advantages here is less overhead, more rapid production time for games, smaller downloads, custom speech settings, and allot of other stuff you don't get with prerecorded speech. Since I was working on my screen reading project i realized how much faster it is when you can just do something like synth.Speak(message, SpeechVoiceSpeakFlags.SVSFDefault); and on to the next line of code without having to actually record the message, load and then play back a wave file. Which eats CPU power, not to mention lots more of my time to do the wav self-voicing option. The only thing I need to do with Sapi is construct a string of text, store it in the message string, and pass it to the synth.Speak method, and away I go. Another reason to go Sapi is there are allot of high quality speech engines out there that can be generically ssupported. The scansoft voices which ship with Jaws 8 are simply awesome. Since I have installed them I have no problems with using them with LW and Jim Kitchen's games, and they sound good for synths. The catch 22 is I don't know how many you have purchased the higher quality synths, and how many of you are using the older Microsoft ones Mike, Mary, Microsoft, etc which sound, well, terrible. So what do you as end users think? Should I go ahead and make Sapi a core part of future releases? ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
They come with your shipped copy of JAWS 8.0. - Original Message - From: Dennis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Gamers Discussion list' gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 9:54 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? I agree on sappy voices do you know where I can get the scan soft voices? I downloaded jaws 8 and didn't get them.s -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Casey Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 10:25 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? I think you should go with the SAPI method. I like the idea of getting the games just a tad earlier. Thanks Casey - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 4:55 PM Subject: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? Hi everyone, I'm more or less throwing this one out here for some end user feedback as I need it at this point. As many of you know STFC 1.0 and Montezuma's Revenge Alpha 4.4 are using prerecorded wav files for speech playback. The problem with this method is generally that It takes me lots of extra time to sample, record, trim, and edit every voice file for the game. In STFC I think there are a total of 400 wav files I had to do which took me something like three weeks to do. With the end result being massive over head. Needless to say using prerecorded speech has added allot of extra time to every production, added CPU over head, and at the end of the day I have to put in lots of special flags to get it to act something like a synth doing key interrupts etc so that the speech wouldn't hold up the application, etc... On the positive side though the voice, speech output, is generally better than most synths. I have the option to correct the way the synth says something which helps. For example Cardassian which might sound like car-dashen can be respelled during recorded to say car-dass-e-an. However, I am not sure the improved speech is all that worth it. What I would like to do is build a speech class into my engine.dll which should support all Sapi 5 synths, and through a good Sapi tts engine you could gain self voicing that way, and not have to wait an extra month or so as I edit voice samples to use for the game. The advantages here is less overhead, more rapid production time for games, smaller downloads, custom speech settings, and allot of other stuff you don't get with prerecorded speech. Since I was working on my screen reading project i realized how much faster it is when you can just do something like synth.Speak(message, SpeechVoiceSpeakFlags.SVSFDefault); and on to the next line of code without having to actually record the message, load and then play back a wave file. Which eats CPU power, not to mention lots more of my time to do the wav self-voicing option. The only thing I need to do with Sapi is construct a string of text, store it in the message string, and pass it to the synth.Speak method, and away I go. Another reason to go Sapi is there are allot of high quality speech engines out there that can be generically ssupported. The scansoft voices which ship with Jaws 8 are simply awesome. Since I have installed them I have no problems with using them with LW and Jim Kitchen's games, and they sound good for synths. The catch 22 is I don't know how many you have purchased the higher quality synths, and how many of you are using the older Microsoft ones Mike, Mary, Microsoft, etc which sound, well, terrible. So what do you as end users think? Should I go ahead and make Sapi a core part of future releases? ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
Oh ok so freedom scientific has them on the cd so when I get the cd from freedom they will be on there? -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Charles Rivard Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 11:15 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? They come with your shipped copy of JAWS 8.0. - Original Message - From: Dennis [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Gamers Discussion list' gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 9:54 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? I agree on sappy voices do you know where I can get the scan soft voices? I downloaded jaws 8 and didn't get them.s -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Casey Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 10:25 PM To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? I think you should go with the SAPI method. I like the idea of getting the games just a tad earlier. Thanks Casey - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 4:55 PM Subject: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? Hi everyone, I'm more or less throwing this one out here for some end user feedback as I need it at this point. As many of you know STFC 1.0 and Montezuma's Revenge Alpha 4.4 are using prerecorded wav files for speech playback. The problem with this method is generally that It takes me lots of extra time to sample, record, trim, and edit every voice file for the game. In STFC I think there are a total of 400 wav files I had to do which took me something like three weeks to do. With the end result being massive over head. Needless to say using prerecorded speech has added allot of extra time to every production, added CPU over head, and at the end of the day I have to put in lots of special flags to get it to act something like a synth doing key interrupts etc so that the speech wouldn't hold up the application, etc... On the positive side though the voice, speech output, is generally better than most synths. I have the option to correct the way the synth says something which helps. For example Cardassian which might sound like car-dashen can be respelled during recorded to say car-dass-e-an. However, I am not sure the improved speech is all that worth it. What I would like to do is build a speech class into my engine.dll which should support all Sapi 5 synths, and through a good Sapi tts engine you could gain self voicing that way, and not have to wait an extra month or so as I edit voice samples to use for the game. The advantages here is less overhead, more rapid production time for games, smaller downloads, custom speech settings, and allot of other stuff you don't get with prerecorded speech. Since I was working on my screen reading project i realized how much faster it is when you can just do something like synth.Speak(message, SpeechVoiceSpeakFlags.SVSFDefault); and on to the next line of code without having to actually record the message, load and then play back a wave file. Which eats CPU power, not to mention lots more of my time to do the wav self-voicing option. The only thing I need to do with Sapi is construct a string of text, store it in the message string, and pass it to the synth.Speak method, and away I go. Another reason to go Sapi is there are allot of high quality speech engines out there that can be generically ssupported. The scansoft voices which ship with Jaws 8 are simply awesome. Since I have installed them I have no problems with using them with LW and Jim Kitchen's games, and they sound good for synths. The catch 22 is I don't know how many you have purchased the higher quality synths, and how many of you are using the older Microsoft ones Mike, Mary, Microsoft, etc which sound, well, terrible. So what do you as end users think? Should I go ahead and make Sapi a core part of future releases? ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
Hi Shaun, Quote 1. if sapi hasn't worked or is mangled somehow, and the user has no use for it otherwise then the user may have to fix it or something. End quote In my personal case I have rarely seen or heard of Sapi being so damaged it can't be effectively used. However, I would label this one as an issue as this can happen with any dependancy weather it is .NET, DirectX, and the files can be damaged and require reinstallation. Bottom line, this is likely one of those end user issues where the end user installs incompatible software, and something like Sapi then gets broken. Quote 2. Unless said user has jaws8, zoomtext, or has got legally or otherwise the high quality voices he/she will not have a nice time. End quote True. However, generally speaking high quality voices don't cost that much in U.S. and U.K. currency. The Neospeech voices are something like $30 each over on Nextup which isn't too bad. I don't have a current price list for Scansoft, but if you buy the voices individually you can save money that way as well. Another reason to think about technically speaking recording parts of the tts engine and using in a game violates those copyrights again. In this case I can avoid those legal restrictions by asking the end users to purchase a valid license for the voices they want, or I can become a reseller for those voices and have two price skales for the games. A $30 version with no extra voices, and a $60 version with one high quality speech engine of my choosing. Quote You could do more things than a speech synth ever could. End quote No, that is actually the problem. Using wav files is very inflexable. If I want to create games with mission parsers, being scriptable, I'd have to use Sapi. I could not use wav files to handle custom changes in the name of ships, custom mission orders, etc... Using wav files does slow the game down quite a bit just for the fact it is constantly opening and closing wav samples except those that are commonly being used. Those that are commonly used are stored in memory buffers which in turns gets and waistes memory. I'm not a resource fanatic, but I don't like waisting memory and CPU speed either. The way Monty and STFC handles the system it is very waisteful of resources.If it has them it will use them, and waiste them on nothing more than speech where say a better audio environment could have been used instead. One last point is using wav files I have never found a good way to do keyboard interupts etc. Sometimes it works, and some times not. A glaring issue is the STFC full status report. I love getting all that stuff read out, but I can't shut it up It does not work!!! ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
Hi Dark, I'm sorry to here about your Sapi issues. In general I have never seen any personal issues with Sapi. It's it possible you have installed something which has damaged your Sapi installed on your local machine. As for in game things like Torpedoes away I'd have no problem using human speech for that. That would be no big deal. GMA Tank Commander finds a nice balance when it comes to mixing human and tts voices. When an enemy is hit, damaged, and destroyed a character voices the action. That is great. For everything else the prerecorded ATT voices take over. This is largely what I am thinking of in my games. What I hope to do is cut out the majority of the over welming recording of numbers, frazes, menus, status reports, etc. If I can just give sapi a string of text to speak like Storm trooper to the left. Distance 5 meters. That is a heck of allot easier than recording every word in that fraze and then building that string and process each wav file in it's proper order. Which is major major work. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
I myself am using a mix of SAPI and recorded voices for Rail Racer, which works quite nicely. The Sapi is used for feedback from the systems of your racer, such as speed, current gear, fuel etc. I use a third party voice for the synthed stuff myself, as it sounds better, but for a long time I simply used Microsoft Mary, which isn't all that bad, and everyone has access to this voice. As for the inability to interrupt the wavs, not sure what that is about, I have a method for Rail Racer that stops wav playback and I've never had trouble with it. Bottom line for me is that I use what is appropriate, pre recorded stuff for menus and introductions and the like, and Sapi for feedback of dynamic information . Keeps both the CPU and programming overhead to a minimum. Rock. Che - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 10:17 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? Hi Shaun, Quote 1. if sapi hasn't worked or is mangled somehow, and the user has no use for it otherwise then the user may have to fix it or something. End quote In my personal case I have rarely seen or heard of Sapi being so damaged it can't be effectively used. However, I would label this one as an issue as this can happen with any dependancy weather it is .NET, DirectX, and the files can be damaged and require reinstallation. Bottom line, this is likely one of those end user issues where the end user installs incompatible software, and something like Sapi then gets broken. Quote 2. Unless said user has jaws8, zoomtext, or has got legally or otherwise the high quality voices he/she will not have a nice time. End quote True. However, generally speaking high quality voices don't cost that much in U.S. and U.K. currency. The Neospeech voices are something like $30 each over on Nextup which isn't too bad. I don't have a current price list for Scansoft, but if you buy the voices individually you can save money that way as well. Another reason to think about technically speaking recording parts of the tts engine and using in a game violates those copyrights again. In this case I can avoid those legal restrictions by asking the end users to purchase a valid license for the voices they want, or I can become a reseller for those voices and have two price skales for the games. A $30 version with no extra voices, and a $60 version with one high quality speech engine of my choosing. Quote You could do more things than a speech synth ever could. End quote No, that is actually the problem. Using wav files is very inflexable. If I want to create games with mission parsers, being scriptable, I'd have to use Sapi. I could not use wav files to handle custom changes in the name of ships, custom mission orders, etc... Using wav files does slow the game down quite a bit just for the fact it is constantly opening and closing wav samples except those that are commonly being used. Those that are commonly used are stored in memory buffers which in turns gets and waistes memory. I'm not a resource fanatic, but I don't like waisting memory and CPU speed either. The way Monty and STFC handles the system it is very waisteful of resources.If it has them it will use them, and waiste them on nothing more than speech where say a better audio environment could have been used instead. One last point is using wav files I have never found a good way to do keyboard interupts etc. Sometimes it works, and some times not. A glaring issue is the STFC full status report. I love getting all that stuff read out, but I can't shut it up It does not work!!! ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
aah. for some reason if you have the office xp and higher loaded with latest service pack and 2003 maybe higher, there are 2 recognition engines and major issues. To fix this. c: in \program files\ coman files\microsoft shared\speech I think, you will find a file called sapisvr.exe run this once then run the sapi.cpl. ok sapi.cpl, then run sapi.cpl again, you will no longer get the runtime errors. At 12:43 p.m. 9/03/2007, you wrote: Hello Tom. currently, I'm being forced to use Ms sam in games. Even though I use the orphius voice Alan with Hal, for some odd reason I have severe trouble trying to make any alterations to Sapi, - either using the Orphius Sapi runtime libraries, or trying to install the other Ms voices (though I am looking into buying Realspeak Daniel soon, which will hopefully work). The point is that at the moment, I'm not experiencing the best in synth voice quality when it comes to games. I find though, i can generally cope with Ms Sam as long as the information I'm getting is of a fairly general nature, such as reading numbers or other status information. I do find however, that a game (or indeed a text), loses a lot of it's atmospheric content when dialogue or other speeches requiring emotion or characterization are read in an emotionless synthetic voice, and obviously the worse the voice, the worse the problem, though for in game character speech, even something like Realspeak would be inadequate Imho. I know that Phil got Sarah voice acted just for this reason. To give an example, I have no problem with most of the Sapi used in Lone wolf, even with ms Sam, however in the next version it might improve the atmosphere of the game considerably if a few phrases, supposedly spoken by the sub's crew, were actually recorded in Wav. these could include torpedo's away! she's hit! (obviously having the crew speak the names of enemy craft wouldn't be practical), and the various damage reports. I can appreciate the difficulties in recording many wavs, and also that would make things more difficult for people with slower internet connections to download the game, however on the other hand, I do feel that the use of synth voices for characterization in games can be extremely harmful to the game' atmosphere, and (where applicable), how believeable those characters are. so for Monti, I'd personally go for having your health, score, current level and other status info spoken buy Sapi, but if ever panama Jo (or whoever we've got starring in the game at the moment), has to do any talking, have it recorded by a real live voice actor. I will admit, as somebody who does fairly major stuff on stage, I am probably fairly exacting as far as the acting side of gaming goes. Btw, If the character's in the game are robots, as in Galaxy ranger, I think a synth voice can actually fit in rather well. It's actually been done in various films and Tv series I think, Tron, Space above and beyond and war games for example. Well that's my thoughts on the subject, though everyone else's might be different. All the best Dark. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
I see your point, I have a highquality voice. However if you sold a game say with the 3 popular engines and voices, I may just buy the voice packs, neo, kepstral, att, and scansoft, and the game all in one big thing, I have scansoft on lone for now and its real good. I also have espeak which doesn't sound half bad, prety good. At 05:17 p.m. 9/03/2007, you wrote: Hi Shaun, Quote 1. if sapi hasn't worked or is mangled somehow, and the user has no use for it otherwise then the user may have to fix it or something. End quote In my personal case I have rarely seen or heard of Sapi being so damaged it can't be effectively used. However, I would label this one as an issue as this can happen with any dependancy weather it is .NET, DirectX, and the files can be damaged and require reinstallation. Bottom line, this is likely one of those end user issues where the end user installs incompatible software, and something like Sapi then gets broken. Quote 2. Unless said user has jaws8, zoomtext, or has got legally or otherwise the high quality voices he/she will not have a nice time. End quote True. However, generally speaking high quality voices don't cost that much in U.S. and U.K. currency. The Neospeech voices are something like $30 each over on Nextup which isn't too bad. I don't have a current price list for Scansoft, but if you buy the voices individually you can save money that way as well. Another reason to think about technically speaking recording parts of the tts engine and using in a game violates those copyrights again. In this case I can avoid those legal restrictions by asking the end users to purchase a valid license for the voices they want, or I can become a reseller for those voices and have two price skales for the games. A $30 version with no extra voices, and a $60 version with one high quality speech engine of my choosing. Quote You could do more things than a speech synth ever could. End quote No, that is actually the problem. Using wav files is very inflexable. If I want to create games with mission parsers, being scriptable, I'd have to use Sapi. I could not use wav files to handle custom changes in the name of ships, custom mission orders, etc... Using wav files does slow the game down quite a bit just for the fact it is constantly opening and closing wav samples except those that are commonly being used. Those that are commonly used are stored in memory buffers which in turns gets and waistes memory. I'm not a resource fanatic, but I don't like waisting memory and CPU speed either. The way Monty and STFC handles the system it is very waisteful of resources.If it has them it will use them, and waiste them on nothing more than speech where say a better audio environment could have been used instead. One last point is using wav files I have never found a good way to do keyboard interupts etc. Sometimes it works, and some times not. A glaring issue is the STFC full status report. I love getting all that stuff read out, but I can't shut it up It does not work!!! ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support?
the thing to note is you can't interupt sapi while its speaking something. At 06:09 p.m. 9/03/2007, you wrote: I myself am using a mix of SAPI and recorded voices for Rail Racer, which works quite nicely. The Sapi is used for feedback from the systems of your racer, such as speed, current gear, fuel etc. I use a third party voice for the synthed stuff myself, as it sounds better, but for a long time I simply used Microsoft Mary, which isn't all that bad, and everyone has access to this voice. As for the inability to interrupt the wavs, not sure what that is about, I have a method for Rail Racer that stops wav playback and I've never had trouble with it. Bottom line for me is that I use what is appropriate, pre recorded stuff for menus and introductions and the like, and Sapi for feedback of dynamic information . Keeps both the CPU and programming overhead to a minimum. Rock. Che - Original Message - From: Thomas Ward [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2007 10:17 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] USA Games and SAPI support? Hi Shaun, Quote 1. if sapi hasn't worked or is mangled somehow, and the user has no use for it otherwise then the user may have to fix it or something. End quote In my personal case I have rarely seen or heard of Sapi being so damaged it can't be effectively used. However, I would label this one as an issue as this can happen with any dependancy weather it is .NET, DirectX, and the files can be damaged and require reinstallation. Bottom line, this is likely one of those end user issues where the end user installs incompatible software, and something like Sapi then gets broken. Quote 2. Unless said user has jaws8, zoomtext, or has got legally or otherwise the high quality voices he/she will not have a nice time. End quote True. However, generally speaking high quality voices don't cost that much in U.S. and U.K. currency. The Neospeech voices are something like $30 each over on Nextup which isn't too bad. I don't have a current price list for Scansoft, but if you buy the voices individually you can save money that way as well. Another reason to think about technically speaking recording parts of the tts engine and using in a game violates those copyrights again. In this case I can avoid those legal restrictions by asking the end users to purchase a valid license for the voices they want, or I can become a reseller for those voices and have two price skales for the games. A $30 version with no extra voices, and a $60 version with one high quality speech engine of my choosing. Quote You could do more things than a speech synth ever could. End quote No, that is actually the problem. Using wav files is very inflexable. If I want to create games with mission parsers, being scriptable, I'd have to use Sapi. I could not use wav files to handle custom changes in the name of ships, custom mission orders, etc... Using wav files does slow the game down quite a bit just for the fact it is constantly opening and closing wav samples except those that are commonly being used. Those that are commonly used are stored in memory buffers which in turns gets and waistes memory. I'm not a resource fanatic, but I don't like waisting memory and CPU speed either. The way Monty and STFC handles the system it is very waisteful of resources.If it has them it will use them, and waiste them on nothing more than speech where say a better audio environment could have been used instead. One last point is using wav files I have never found a good way to do keyboard interupts etc. Sometimes it works, and some times not. A glaring issue is the STFC full status report. I love getting all that stuff read out, but I can't shut it up It does not work!!! ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web. ___ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
