Voice instructions for front ends

[JoyMonkey]

I just bought one of the LCD displays that Maraxle brought to everyones attention in this thread. Basically, after you select a game in your front end, it will display tiny text files for each game explaining what each button does.
While I was thinking this thing out, a thought hit me; couldn't the same thing be done using a command line voice synthesizer? So when you pick the game, the synthesizer reads you the instructions while the emulator runs your game.

Anyone know of a suitable command line voice utility for Windows?

[screaming]

I just bought one of the LCD displays that Maraxle brought to everyones attention in this thread. Basically, after you select a game in your front end, it will display tiny text files for each game explaining what each button does.
While I was thinking this thing out, a thought hit me; couldn't the same thing be done using a command line voice synthesizer? So when you pick the game, the synthesizer reads you the instructions while the emulator runs your game.

Anyone know of a suitable command line voice utility for Windows?

  Windows XP has a function to do this, but you need to download Microsoft's Speech Agent, or something like that.  I know it will read things on the screen, but IIRC, you can also speak commands to it too.

  Other than that, there's DragonSpeak and IBM's ViaVoice, but they are generally on the expensive side.

/steve

[Aceldamor]

I know 3d arcade uses the voice speech agent in XP....but it only reads what cab your in front of....mabye peter could mod it to explain instructions since it only reades info collected from the dat file to begin with (I think). Mabye it can be pointed to read from the .txt files that the LCD app creates?

Even better, having it explain instructions on a keypress..PM )P( and see if it's a possibility

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah 3d arcade does it... the lost build of lazarus did it too.  The problem I had with it (and why i removed it prior to dk) is that the voices sound horrible.... the speach engine mis-pronounces a lot of words.  Not only that but it tends to speak slower than a normal person would. You can adjust the speed, but then it sounds like someone is "fast forwarding" the message.  

Long story short, for short phrases like 3d arcade does, it's decent, but that voice will drive you mad speaking any longer than that.  

[Lilwolf]

I personally like the idea of a middle where peice which gets data from controls.dat (and I would personally like a new version allcontrols.dat which contains basic info, unchecked info... to fill in the gaps of controls.dat),

then it would popup a picture of your controls... and label them.

So everone would use a little graphic tool to configure your layout (graphically) and specify which control is what key (or button # in mame).  Then it would popup a picture.... you hit a key, and it launches mame (or whatever)

[maraxle]

Here's a link to Microsoft's SDK for text-to-speech functionality.  It works in Windows 98/98SE/ME/2000/XP and possibly NT.  You can use it in VB and Visual C++, plus the .NET tools.  Probably others too, but I haven't tried it.  I used it in VB to have it read names and sentences that were generated by a little program I wrote (name generator for D&D).  It's really easy to use and some of the voices sound halfway decent.  Making a command line utility that takes a text file as input and reads it with the default voice would require about 5 lines of code in VB.

It could easily read from the LCD files if you tell it to ignore the control codes that are in them.

[Minwah]

Interesting idea

Thanks for the link maraxle, I might have a play around with that if I get bored...

[Howard_Casto]

Actually minwah.... I might have the code lying around somewhere.. If you want it let me know.  

Might save a few minutes

[nipsmg]

I know in VB6 it's extremely easy.  If you have the SDK's installed, you just add an activeX object.  I think it's the speech object. (looks like lips when you draw it on the form).

Then it's <SpeechControl>.speak() I think.  Something really dumb like that.

I agree with Howard though, the voices SUCK.  Something utilizing AT&T Natural Voices would be GREAT, but the SDK and licensing is prohibitively expensive.

--NipsMG

[Howard_Casto]

I agree with Howard though, the voices SUCK.  Something utilizing AT&T Natural Voices would be GREAT, but the SDK and licensing is prohibitively expensive.

EXACTLY!

I looked into that originally.... the sdk was free, but end users (as well as the developers) have to pay 50 bucks for each voice set.  And that's with the special liscense for free software ect... (insert hoop to jump through here)

Not worth 50 bucks imo.  

[)p(]

In 3darcade you can setup the voice in emulator cfgs to create a line with anything from what is in the gamelist. So for fun I let it say something about the controls...sounded horrible...hc is right more then one line is not very useful...mayble only on a Robot themed cab...as that is what is sounds like ;-)

[maraxle]

If you spend some time and spell things out phoenetically, it can actually sound pretty decent.

[Howard_Casto]

If you spend some time and spell things out phoenetically, it can actually sound pretty decent.

And who exactly is going to take the maminfo.dat the history.dat, listinfo.dat and the controls.ini and rewrite them phonetically?  

Yes you can type phonetic messages for the skin, but you'd only wanna hear them once....(repeating sounds are extremely annoying)  and for that you could simply record an event sound.