[mainline] Voice acting ?

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kokta
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[mainline] Voice acting ?

Post by kokta »

Hello,
It could be nice if we could add some voice acting in the campagn, in the dialogue or even when you recruit people !
This idea came to my mind when i was playing to hearthstone, it will demand a lot of work but i could and i would love to give my voice to my childhood game (yes it is),
I'm a big fan of blizzard voice acting, precisely Warcraft 3, i love these hilarious lines ( especially the headhunter), and dota voices too. I do voices pretty often, training at least, i can give it a try on my free time ! The only thing i should do is to buy a microphone ! Mine's horrible for now.
I will post some audio files on this topic if you agree.
Thank you.


PS: I'm sorry, english is not my native language.
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Sudipta
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Re: [mainline] Voice acting ?

Post by Sudipta »

It's a great idea but it is a lot of work...

Really cool to be honest
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zookeeper
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Re: [mainline] Voice acting ?

Post by zookeeper »

You can search for some of the many many previous threads on the subject. People suggest it all the time, and it never works out.
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ForestDragon
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Re: [mainline] Voice acting ?

Post by ForestDragon »

it's already possible to do it, just use:

Code: Select all

		[message]
			speaker=<fill it in with whatever you want>
			message= _ "<fill it in with whatever you want>"
                        sound=<fill it in with whatever you want>
		[/message]
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Heindal
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Re: [mainline] Voice acting ?

Post by Heindal »

As I've already made a radio show and voiceacted I can tell you making voice acting is a lot of work (especially recording). Even so you are good, you need time to get a perfect line and not every voice is good for every campaign. It can be that you "waste" an hour on 5 minutes of recording. I always wanted to make more voice acting for five fates and strange legacy, but lost interest in that. It eats way to much time (beside coding).

However I love blizzards voice art. Prototypes can be a strong motivation, hope you keep it up kokta.
One thing that I can really recomment is Audacity. Its an editor for audiofiles and its free!

There are several cool tutorials for this software on youtube. I highly recomment "Noise Removal Tutorials", so you can erase background noises produces by your microphone.
There are also tutorials to increase the effect and quality of your voice by audio manipulation.
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Re: [mainline] Voice acting ?

Post by Tad_Carlucci »

Sound effects are one thing.

But notice in the example above you're using a translatable string for the [message] message attribute.

If the sound is a spoken voice reading the line, do you really want the Danish voice-over with a Swahili message on screen simply because the actor chose to do the line in Danish?
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WhiteWolf
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Re: [mainline] Voice acting ?

Post by WhiteWolf »

Umm...I'm quite sure there are lots of games with English voicing and with subtitles in various languages... :lol:

I think narrating is a great idea, all we really lack are the actual narrating sounds. :) Note the size however. The game is currently ~400Mib unless I'm mistaken, so including 100Mib sounds is out of aspect. Maybe better leave it as a downloadable add-on. :)
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Wender_BR
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Re: [mainline] Voice acting ?

Post by Wender_BR »

up up! it would be awesome!

how many work with sound here in the foruns?

is there any way for me to contribute to see this happen?
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Heindal
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Re: [mainline] Voice acting ?

Post by Heindal »

Could do this if I had time and motivation. I don't know if everybody would like my voice and my 'american' accent ;).
What text should it be?
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Bob_The_Mighty
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Re: [mainline] Voice acting ?

Post by Bob_The_Mighty »

We had some voice-over narration for the cut scenes in The Altaz Mariners. It's currently only available on 1.10, but there will be another version for 1.13.

The fact it couldn't be translated wasn't such a big problem as add-ons rarely, if ever, get translated. But yeah, the issue still stands. It also meant that we couldn't go back and change the dialogue once the recording was done.
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Heindal
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Re: [mainline] Voice acting ?

Post by Heindal »

Yeah and imagine changing it for every translated language. So it just could be done for mainline, which already have fixed texts.
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The_Gnat
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Re: [mainline] Voice acting ?

Post by The_Gnat »

I think that if enough support can be gathered this would be a great idea!!! :D If we record voices of the messages that the characters say then the sound files could be played when the messages appear!!

I suggest a Tale of Two Brothers because it is the shortest mainline campaign. If enough people (of different languages, i don't know how many languages actually exist, but it would be good to get at least the main languages) help contribute to voice acting we could get the 1st scenario for a Tale of Two Brothers voice acted! This would be a big project and i don't know if I, or anyone else has the time to record dialog of a entire scenario but for whoever is interested --> if we are going to attempt to do this then we should definitely coordinate, so post your comments here! :D
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Heindal
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Re: [mainline] Voice acting ?

Post by Heindal »

Hi, I made a small test how much time it will take to make a quick record of the story "A tale of two brothers".
The result is ok I think, but the chapter 1-2 - 1-6 still have a sough (white noise) in the background.

This small part took me around an hour of work, but still a lot of time for such a small part.
The record is in english - here it shows another problem with this project - how are the names pronounced?
There is also a small introduction in german.
Attachments
story_chapter1_english.zip
First tests for voice acting
(3.49 MiB) Downloaded 825 times
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The_Gnat
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Re: [mainline] Voice acting ?

Post by The_Gnat »

I have listened to what you have created and it seems good! :D Have you tried adding the sound files into the campaign yet? EDIT: You should be able to test the sounds by adding sound="YOUR_SOUND_FILE" into the [story] tags in the scenario. I was also wondering if we could do the messages that the characters speak? That might pose a more difficult challenge because each character needs to be voiced by the same person the entire campaign (and also more than one character with the same voice would sound silly :mrgreen: )
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Heindal
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Re: [mainline] Voice acting ?

Post by Heindal »

Already did the voice over for "Strange Legacy", but need to record it again because of changes made to the test ^^. So I know about the "sound" option. These files are good, but far away from perfect. If you compare english and german you will realize that the german is way more fluent than the english version where I talk word by word. Of cause you can use macros to get rid of these pauses, but I don't know which grade of perfection is wanted.

Without the support of the main crew, its no point in working on this any more, imho. Because you see that this small text has taken me 1 hour and I'm fast having experience with records so far. For the entire addon I think I will need 8 hours at least. Would be a waste of time, if it is never used.
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