Topic: Voice for the story missions
justus
Topic Opener
Joined:
2014-03-25, 14:36 UTC+1.0
Posts: 7  Pry about Widelands |
Posted at:
2014-03-25, 14:40 UTC+1.0
Hi there, I have been playing Widelands on and off through the past few years, now I thought about ways I could contribute. I do not know if this has been discussed before (my search came up completely empty) but I'd love to actually hear someone talk and tell the storys from the campaigns. Now that's an idea not a contribution, so here's what I could do: I have fairly good audio equipment and can probably get myself and at least one additional female speaker to do the reading. Now what do you think of that and whom should I adress my offer to propperly? Regards, Justus 
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einstein13
Joined:
2013-07-29, 00:01 UTC+2.0
Posts: 1116  One Elder of Players Location: Poland |
Posted at:
2014-03-25, 21:20 UTC+1.0
The idea SOUNDS great But probably it will be a big deal for Widelands. I can see two problems:
For second problem we can have temporary solution: text in any language, the speaker is English. einstein13
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EgyLynx
Joined:
2010-08-22, 08:51 UTC+2.0
Posts: 40 Pry about Widelands |
Posted at:
2014-03-26, 20:16 UTC+1.0
One style solve is : Default english, others can download(?). I somewhat agree that idea.
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SirVer
Joined:
2009-02-19, 15:18 UTC+1.0
Posts: 1442 One Elder of Players Location: Germany - Munich |
Posted at:
2014-03-27, 06:52 UTC+1.0
Hi justus and welcome to the forums. I am not a big fan of this proposal of yours - the main reason is maintainability. For example the first Widelands mission was done ~8 years ago - will you be around in 8 years to do more mission texts (for consistent voices?). Will your female partner? Also translating voiced text into other languages will be a challenge too. However I think there are more useful things you could do with good sound equipment. Namely adding more sound effects - there are none for ships, very few for building animations and only a few for worlds. Having more variety here would add to the game without adding a big maintenance hurdle. Also making new music is always nice. What do you think?
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justus
Topic Opener
Joined:
2014-03-25, 14:36 UTC+1.0
Posts: 7 Pry about Widelands |
Posted at:
2014-03-27, 12:36 UTC+1.0
Well, for myself I can guarantee that I'll be available. I do take commitments very serious, especially concerning OS ;)
Concerning your other requests: There's sound equipment and there's sound equipment.
I have stuff for high quality voice recording, which sadly is stationary. Concerning music: I am front singer in a Band, but our sound will hardly fit the fantasy theme I can certainly look into that, but I can't really promise anything because I'd have to experiment quite a bit at first before anything usable in those departments is achieved. Even that resting on the premise that I can repurpose enough of my recording equipment to make the result useful. The voice recording on the other hand is something I can do straight away which (taking into account the tiny amount of texts available) does not require too much time even taking into account my usual 1min Audio equals 5min in post production rule. I used to do audio book recordings after all ;) The comparably tiny amount of time required is also a good reason why I will stay available, everything from the barbarian campaign first mission is less than 2 pages of actual story telling. That's a job of less than an hour. From a dramaturgical point of view I would probably rework the missions a bit, by altering them from direct telling to telling the story from a 3rd person narrator. It may hurt immersivenes a bit but it will overall help the reception of the story. Then perhaps the other question: Why is campaign development slow? Is it a technical problem (i.e. not enough developers) or a story problem (i.e. "We don't know what story to tell")? The last one would be kind of easy to solve for me, I'd just take a few picks out of my GMing treat box Regards, Justus
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SirVer
Joined:
2009-02-19, 15:18 UTC+1.0
Posts: 1442 One Elder of Players Location: Germany - Munich |
Posted at:
2014-03-28, 19:47 UTC+1.0
That is a bold statement to make. From the many, many contributors to the project, very few stayed for more than a few years. However, I do not think that voice acting really scales nicely - not having it localized for example will kill immersiveness instead of deepening it. And we do not have the man power of voice acting everything in the game. So I am still not convinced that we should invest into this right now.
yes, it is a technical problem - story ideas are aplenty. Making new missions is very time consuming (not only the coding, but also making the maps and most of all play testing and tweaking). And it is also difficult - it is coding work and can not be made with the editor. Everybody that is able to do it right now rather works on the engine to improve things there. More help would be appreciated :).
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fk
Joined:
2013-07-30, 22:58 UTC+2.0
Posts: 150  At home in WL-forums |
Posted at:
2014-03-29, 12:33 UTC+1.0
In my country most movies are english with dutch subtitles, and people are hardly aware of it. In my experience I heared 'the real voice', at least, that is what I remember from childhood when I watched tv.
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wl-zocker
Joined:
2011-12-30, 17:37 UTC+1.0
Posts: 492  Tribe Member Location: Germany |
Posted at:
2014-03-29, 13:09 UTC+1.0
There might be people who like texts being read to them. Concerning myself, I will not use this feature. The reason is simply that reading a text aloud takes more time then reading it silently, and I am a bit an impatient person.
I have heard that this is the case in some countries, but it is hard to imagine. In Germany, all films are dubbed; I guess an English film with German subtitles will hardly be successful. I think we Germans are a bit spoilt in this regard "Only few people know how much one has to know in order to know how little one knows." - Werner Heisenberg
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justus
Topic Opener
Joined:
2014-03-25, 14:36 UTC+1.0
Posts: 7 Pry about Widelands |
Posted at:
2014-03-31, 13:26 UTC+2.0
It is the case in most countries, as far as I know only France and Germany are really syncing movies on any notable scale.
Me being a german in this case at least solves your specific problem. Just for starters is there a documentation of all available commands in the LUA dialect for WL? I was looking into it the other day and I couldn't find anything there. Regards, Justus
Edited:
2014-03-31, 13:27 UTC+2.0
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justus
Topic Opener
Joined:
2014-03-25, 14:36 UTC+1.0
Posts: 7 Pry about Widelands |
Posted at:
2014-03-31, 14:35 UTC+2.0
All right, I just took a closer look at the LUA implementation. I think I can just patch message_box to accept an additional sound file parameter in the options set. If I got this correctly I'd have to patch /src/scripting/lua_game.cc to pass this on to Story_Message_Box, there I'll have to register the file as a sound effect with Sound_Handler. Something like this should do the trick:
Then implement a method stop_fx(const std::string & fx_name) in Sound_Handler that gets called on Story_Message_Box::clicked_ok() Questions that come to mind:
Regards, Justus
Edited:
2014-03-31, 14:36 UTC+2.0
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