[Game Design] Synthetic voices part. 1

I consider that topic realization as far future, but would share my idea with the industry - maybe someone already started that and would like some bright review on the topic :)

Currently we have two realizations of voice acting in games - there are no voices in games (cheap productions) or voices are recorder from (professional) actors. While for simpler games it's possible to do that easily (not so much text to record) it's getting harder for adventure or RPG games - there is so much text that voiced is only part of it, or eventually dialogs are very limited and considerably short (see Oblivion or Fallout 3).

Anyway it's still A LOT to record - not even mentioning mastering that to have normalized volume output - from many actors, record same sentences from different actors, or record several similar sentences from one actor for different situations or even mix of two. The serious drawback is that therefore some dynamic texts that could be visible in dialogs (for example changing rank of the hero when he is being addressed to) are or skipped at all or only written in captions. This also makes writing dialogs and texts at all harder - designers have to consider all those limitations.

Another limitation is localization and internationalization support - while English without conjugation, declination and sex independent sentences is quite charming for that - localizing dialogs that do not consider differences is pain in the ass. Some dialogs that might appear in game are prepared dependently of the sex of hero - but not all, and this leads into even more voices to record. And only consider that sex of both sides of one dialog can vary...

This limits also creation of "generic" or "dynamic" quests. The first category could be incorporated into advanced roguelike games - where same quest line could be modified only with different locations, items or people names to get new quests of similar type. The second one could be used to increase playability factor by assigning limited quests to different people, places or items for each new game (or when key person or item is no longer available - this could help the game to fight so unnatural existence of immortal people in Fallout 3 or Oblivion, without ruining quest plot). Again - in English this is very easy. Consider some classical dialog line like:

I think that for more information about that Ring of Destruction you might ask John Bussack up there in Rovannon.

Fine, let us imagine that considerable dialog script looks like:

I think that for more information about that [Item(CurrentQuestItem(3)).Name] you might ask [Person(CurrentQuestPerson(1)).Name] up there in [Location(CurrentQuestLocation(2)).Name].

Complicated? Not so. But there is no information about sex of person that says that what would led into more complicated script.

Let us consider now translating this into Polish (language that uses postfixes to determine exact language forms). And consider that we have already implemented library that will do all conjugations and declinations automatically (or basing on dictionary - it doesn't matter now).

Wydaje mi się, że aby uzyskać informacje o tym [Decline(Item(CurrentQuestItem(3)).Name, Declinator.Locative, NounNumber.Singular] [ConjugateForSex("powinien", PlayerSex(), VerbNumber.Singular, VerbPerson.Second, VerbMode.Supposition, VerbTime.Past)] [Conjugate("pytać", VerbMode.Fulfillment, VerbPerson.Infinitive)] [Decline(Person(CurrentQuestPerson(1)).Name, Declinator.Accusative, NounNumber.Singular] w [Decline(Location(CurrentQuestLocation(2)).Name, Declinator.Locative, NounNumber.Singular].

Uhh... hard one, isn't it? I would therefore reconsider all conjugation grammar and just write the sentence splitter - or in the code or directly storing 2-4 versions of the sentence for each combination of interlocutors' sex. In first example it could look something like (sentence is constructed so sex of person that talks doesn't matter so we care only of the sex of addressed person):

Wydaje mi się, że aby uzyskać informacje o tym [Decline(Item(CurrentQuestItem(3)).Name, Declinator.Locative, NounNumber.Singular] [IF(PlayerSex(), Sex.Male)]powinieneś[ELSE]powinnaś[ENDIF] spytać[Decline(Person(CurrentQuestPerson(1)).Name, Declinator.Accusative, NounNumber.Singular] w [Decline(Location(CurrentQuestLocation(2)).Name, Declinator.Locative, NounNumber.Singular].

Or even such IF could be made for whole sentence for better readability. Expected result might be something like (for first example it of course depends on gramatization engine) - if player character is male:

Wydaje mi się, że aby uzyskać informacje o tym Pierścieiu Zagłady powinieneś spytać Johna Bussacka w Rovannon.

This of course do not takes information that form of "o tym" is dependent of the "sex"of the ring (both in English and in Polish - this is masculine) that would considerably complicate the script. Therefore I suppose that creation of such dynamic sentences is a far future (until very good translation supporting tools - here this would be great if script is being generated from EXAMPLE translation and supported by handy list of usable items obtained form original sentence). So I think this is still a far future, not even mentioning recording dynamic voices for all this things, or even mastering them so such dynamic sentences built from different sound parts sound correctly. Some resolution may be such construction of translations that are independent of all this changing forms and only switch the dependently of the sex. But suspected results most of the time will not sound very natural.

What about when voice of the person just not "fits" to how this person looks like? The exact timbre of the person depends on many different elements, but construction of the skull bays is one of the most important - this is resonance box of human being. Therefore we subliminally expect person of given features or body build to sound in some way or another. And when he or she sounds different - we are surprised. How therefore align same sentence to different people? They shall not sound the same!

In the next part of this article I will share with you some concept I have to deal with that voice recording problem.