Voice Acting... Help?

LRH · Wed 07/10/2009 01:59:57

Hiya all!
I know it has been forever since I've posted... (early summer was my last post :x) And you may or may not be wondering about that game I was working on. I'm still truckin' along on it, but a job in the summer immediately followed by some hard-core college classes this year have held me back like you couldn't believe!

In any event:

I want voice acting to be in the game, however, I'm having issues:

1.) I can't seem to get the script-making function to work, it always comes out as a blank document.
2.) What's the best format to use? Mp3 is my guess, but I'm no expert. I want to use the smallest, as the game itself already pushes 40 megs WITHOUT voice acting (yuck, I know, and I am sorry for that size...)

Also, since I decided I want voice acting, is anyone willing to give it a go? I'll be the voice of the main character, but I need some other voices.
2-3 Female Voices, 4 or so Male Voices.

The game's production thread is currently on page 5 (I think) of the WIP section. Thank you for any and all help!

Calin Leafshade · Wed 07/10/2009 13:58:25

1) You have to number the lines first, Or use the Auto-Numbering thingy
2) I would say OGG, simply because its an open format. There doesnt seem to be a great difference in the size of the files and the quality is pretty much the same.. OGG might even be a little better.
Make sure you bounce them down as Mono though.. no point in stereo information in a voice really.. unless you have quite complex reverbs involved.

m0ds · Wed 07/10/2009 14:25:53

Agreed - mono in any format will help reduce the filesize.

You could be ultra-retro and record in WAV and convert them to Telephone quality

LRH · Wed 07/10/2009 16:37:36

@Calin - Ah okay. Mono it is. I didn't realize stereo wasn't necessary. Also thanks for the numbering tip!

@Mods- Hah, that sounds awesome, I might try that on the next game I work on, which I plan on making much, much more retro than the one I'm working on now. The only problem there is other than recording wav's, I have no idea how to convert to telephone.

FSi++ · Thu 08/10/2009 07:39:55

Quote from: Domithan on Wed 07/10/2009 16:37:36
The only problem there is other than recording wav's, I have no idea how to convert to telephone.

If you know how to filter, just filter out everything not in 300Hz to 3400kHz range, that's public phone line frequency band according to google.

Calin Leafshade · Thu 08/10/2009 10:17:42

I dont think he was referencing telephone style speech.

Wav files have several settings from yeeeears ago and the lowest one is 'telephone'

For the interested the reason the lower bitrates give you a lower frequency range is due to the sampling rate.
To store a wave of a specific frequency you need a sampling rate of at least double that frequency, Since digital sound is just a series of samples.. you can't have a wave inside of a single sample, you need at the very least 2.

So the telephone setting has about an 8khz sample rate so therefore it can only reproduce frequencies up to 4khz.. so it sounds like a telephone.

Thats why the magic number for cds is 44.1khz.. Humans can hear up to about 20khz.. and then they added a bit for ultrasonic info.

LRH · Thu 08/10/2009 19:21:06

Quote from: Calin Leafshade on Thu 08/10/2009 10:17:42
I dont think he was referencing telephone style speech.

Wav files have several settings from yeeeears ago and the lowest one is 'telephone'

For the interested the reason the lower bitrates give you a lower frequency range is due to the sampling rate.
To store a wave of a specific frequency you need a sampling rate of at least double that frequency, Since digital sound is just a series of samples.. you can have a wave inside of a single sample, you need at the very least 2.

So the telephone setting has about an 8khz sample rate so therefore it can only reproduce frequencies up to 4khz.. so it sounds like a telephone.

Thats why the magic number for cds is 44.1khz.. Humans can hear up to about 20khz.. and then they added a bit for ultrasonic info.

That's really pretty interesting... but yeah I'll have to keep this in mind for my next lil project!

Phemar · Wed 14/10/2009 06:00:34

I haven't used AGS in ages (forgive me), but I was just wondering if the editor has a 'pan' setting for voice acting. This could probably be pretty useful if there isn't one

LRH · Wed 14/10/2009 06:10:55

Quote from: Phemar on Wed 14/10/2009 06:00:34
I haven't used AGS in ages (forgive me), but I was just wondering if the editor has a 'pan' setting for voice acting. This could probably be pretty useful if there isn't one

Don't believe it does, but it might do it automatically, like a lot of game engines do these days. (3D sound and whatnot...) I haven't actually put the minimal voice-work that has been done in the game yet, but I'll be sure to update.

Voice Acting... Help?

m0ds