30 réponses à ce sujet

[Huntress]

You want like voice command?Skyrim has voice command, exemple I said: (Fus)-(Ro)-(Dah) and the character in the game shouts: Unrelenting Force. I think is kinda cool but it get old very fast lol, not one call my skyrim character by name same as DAO or DA2, only when she recives notes and letters I see the name, same way you see it in DA2, but not in DAO. DAO everyone calls you Warden.

[Huntress]

Well i think it make sense they don't call main hero by name.. why? is going to be difficult to make a list of all possible names someone like me can come up.. some players like to add numbers to them: Inb4tis8 = in before is to late, or whatever silly or inapropiate some think up, I don't think any voice actor is going to pronounce every single insult some people might want to see in a name..
$-lu-t69 comes to mind. Companion using the hero last name or rank ( warden) make total sense.

[thats1evildude]

There's a guy in my D&D group who named his Skyrim character C***puncher.

Trista Faux Hawke wrote...

I understand that. Though people may be more likely to use a real name if they knew this option existed.

No, he probably wouldn't.

Modifié par thats1evildude, 26 avril 2012 - 04:50 .

[Sacred_Fantasy]

Trista Faux Hawke wrote...

Or rather, is this possible for any future video games?

I'm sure by now people know of that app for cell phones called "Smart Greeting." You call the phone, it goes to voice mail, and the automated greeting says your name. Like, "Hi Trista, Erik is not available. Please leave a message."

How could this technology be applied to video games? (I have zero clue about gaming development. Forgive me.) What's the point of naming your character when absolutely none of the NPC's call you by that name? 

I admit - it'd just be fluff. But it'd be pretty fascinating. 

edit: I'm not referring to voice command. I'm referring to the system being able to recognize your name and then give the NPC's the ability to say it. The NPC's know your name based on what you typed in at the start of the game, and they verbally address you as "Joe" or "Lord Stupidhead" or whatever...

helpful link: http://support.youma...on-and-requests

We already have the technology for voice synthesizer which could read any text you input. In fact, some of the DAO modders use voice synthesizer from toolset to emulate voice acting for custom companions. Therefore it's possible to ready your name provided you don't create funny names with number, spaces and special characters.

To understand how it works:
http://en.wikipedia....peech_synthesis

Modifié par Sacred_Fantasy, 26 avril 2012 - 04:59 .

[Pasquale1234]

Most TTS (text-to-speech) engines sound robotic and have difficulty pronouncing some words or phrases.

If they attempted to use TTS technology for NPCs to address a player (or PC) by name, it would sound really unnatural unless they went through the process of having each VA record every consonant, vowel, diphthong, triphthong, etc. with rising, level, and falling inflection and then used a dynamic concatenation process to put them together and insert them into the normal dialog sound files.  Even then, there would be some mispronounciations, and some names would not sound quite right.  Players may need to spell out their names phonetically, instead of using natural or correct spelling.  And frankly, recording all of those individual sounds with the right inflections is a very unique skill.

Major TTS engines will often record whole words, such as more common names and words, along with all of the individual sounds as described above.  They'll use the whole word when they have it, or create it using dynamic concatenation when they don't.

You would likely end up with different NPCs pronouncing your name in ways that sound very different, and the overall result may not be very satisfying.

Huge, expensive undertaking for very little benefit, imho.

Besides, I'm generally content to have my PC called by a title (Warden) or last name (Hawke).

[David Gaider]

TTS has become much better, and we use it in the initial stages of development so we can hear the lines being spoken out loud prior to recording them. The result is less robotic than it used to be... but it is still fairly monotone. Thus trying to insert TTS into a regular VO'd line is difficult unless the VO was recorded in the same monotone... and even then you'd have difficulty with the overall timing of the line, depending on how long the character's name was.

But could it be used in the future? Maybe. I've no crystal ball, but it seems like it might be feasible at some point. Hard to imagine it replacing real acting, though.

Modifié par David Gaider, 26 avril 2012 - 05:32 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Getting it to work without having the voice actor themselves say the name is where things are going to start falling down, because simulating a specific voice actor is where you're going to start hearing the irregularities and it will end up becoming jarring.

It is nice when games respond to your name, but the only ones I've seen it in are sports games, where it's the announcer recorded saying all sorts of different names (or if I share the same name with a different player). Trying to get the plethora of different voices in DA2 to properly say your name in the correct voice (and all that encompasses) isn't really all that possible yet, from what I can tell.

Modifié par Allan Schumacher, 26 avril 2012 - 07:05 .

[WhiteKnyght]

Unless they can actually advance the system enough to recognize and replicate the voice of an actor, it would sound stupid for a computerized monotone voice to say your name where the people should. And if that were to happen, a lot of people would be out of work.

Might be more plausible to just have the voice actors pre-record a list of names(Like John, Mike, David, etc) and design a system that selects the name for the character in-game to use if it matches your character's name entry. Otherwise they just refer to you by the character's surname or a nickname.

[Allan Schumacher]

Might be more plausible to just have the voice actors pre-record a list of names(Like John, Mike, David, etc) and design a system that selects the name for the character in-game to use if it matches your character's name entry. Otherwise they just refer to you by the character's surname or a nickname.

This works really well with the sports games because those names are common. Heck, NBA 2k12 knows "Schumacher" because it's part of their valid names of German origin, which was pretty cool. (Schumacher for three.... drains it! \\m/)

Fantasy names allow people to have a ton of creative freedom with their name, which is going to trip up speech generators and we couldn't possible account for the infinite possibilities that players would create, so recording the individual names is inevitably provide limited coverage.

If/when we get to a point where TTS could be properly used to simulate an actor's voice, we'll probably be at a point where we're just using TTS for all the lines anyway haha.

[Dakota Strider]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Might be more plausible to just have the voice actors pre-record a list of names(Like John, Mike, David, etc) and design a system that selects the name for the character in-game to use if it matches your character's name entry. Otherwise they just refer to you by the character's surname or a nickname.

This works really well with the sports games because those names are common. Heck, NBA 2k12 knows "Schumacher" because it's part of their valid names of German origin, which was pretty cool. (Schumacher for three.... drains it! m/)

Fantasy names allow people to have a ton of creative freedom with their name, which is going to trip up speech generators and we couldn't possible account for the infinite possibilities that players would create, so recording the individual names is inevitably provide limited coverage.

If/when we get to a point where TTS could be properly used to simulate an actor's voice, we'll probably be at a point where we're just using TTS for all the lines anyway haha.

How about, the DA dev team comes up with a large list of names that the voice actors will pre-record.  This will be released far in advance of the release of the hypothetical DA3.  If a players do not find the name on the list, that they desire, they can send a fee (perhaps $25?  Not sure how much it costs for a voice actor to say one name, a couple times).  The fee should be enough that Bioware breaks even, or makes a small profit for going through the effort. 

People cannot submit vulgar or offensive names.  They cannot submit names that are unpronounceable, perhaps a limit of three or four sylables, and they should provide a pronunciation guide, if there is any doubt.    If there is enough interest in this, the people that are paying for customized names, may be able to pay for the whole project of having having the names voiced.

[nightscrawl]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Fantasy names allow people to have a ton of creative freedom with their name, which is going to trip up speech generators and we couldn't possible account for the infinite possibilities that players would create, so recording the individual names is inevitably provide limited coverage.

This is the main problem with a series like Dragon Age. In my current list of saves I have two unusual: a female named Eleni (as in Eleni Zinovia, the Tevinter statue in DAO mage origin), and a male named Ithamar (an old Hebrew name); and two somewhat common, females named Ivy and Aster (for flowers, which is my second most common theme along with biblical names).

I would never use my real name: Kira, because 1) that would be odd, 2) it's pretty uncommon, and 3) I've had people pronounce it various ways.

Modifié par nightscrawl, 27 avril 2012 - 08:50 .

[5trangeCase]

If there's a problem with it fitting with the line at hand, why not just put it in it's own clause.

"Name. Come on." or "Name! Over here!"

[Pasquale1234]

Trista Faux Hawke wrote...

I mean, come on guys. James Cameron is preparing to mine asteroids in space. (Space!)  And some of you think this verbal-name feature in the world of gaming is unlikely? Oh gamers... so afraid of change. Yet so ready fork over money when change comes. You just leave it to the developers. Just wait and see.

I don't think anyone is saying it won't ever happen, and your accusation that gamers are "afraid of change" does not help your case.

The technical implications of implementing your suggestions are not so easily dismissed by those who actually understand their meaning.  Game developers are constantly dealing with the hard limitations of the platforms on which their games run.  Each console platform has a very specific OS and hardware limitations that they cannot go beyond, and the same is true of the myriad of PC rig configurations they are expected to support.

That "Smart Greeting" app undoubtedly runs on a set of servers that was configured specifically for the operating needs of that app.  It has all of the system resources and network traffic handling capacity it needs to provide the service it was engineered to provide.  It was built for that very purpose.

When you are building a "Smart Greeting" application, the ability to pronounce a caller's name would be viewed as a very desirable feature and worth the resources to implement.  Whether such a feature would be especially desirable in a game is debatable at best.

All of the resources needed to develop and deploy a game to millions of individual machines are finite, and tradeoffs are necessary.  When the resource cost of deploying a trivial feature becomes trivial, that is when you are more likely to see it become a reality.  Until then, I would expect most game developers are going to invest their finite resources where they will provide a greater return.