[TECHNICAL] FF7Voice Programmer's Discussion Thread

[Marc]

Again, sorry for the big delay!

Err wav? Wow.. you could end up with some MASSIVE sound files if you went with high quality data. Unless you used ADPCM wav data (still would be big just not AS big).  Ogg probably would work too (hey it's Open Source LOL).  Sorry I am a media encoder freak.  I assume the data is likely something like 16bit LPCM 48khz mono then? (DVD default sound quality).

The wav files are just for better sound editing capabilities.  The actual release is going to be MP3.

How do you consider that would be handled? a single Mix of voices or a polyiphony of voices?

A single mix would most likely be simpler.

Fice is still around? Well it is understandable he wants to work. I work too myself and sadly I am putting in 10 or more hours per day (that's just work).  I would rather work on projects those extra couple hours.

Well this actually has changed.

ANNOUNCEMENT : There has been a change in coders for this project.

Unfortunately, we've been without news from Ficedula for a little while and our attempts to contact and locate him have unfortunately not yielded results so Dziugo has kindly accepted to take over this project from Ficedula in regards of the situation.  If Ficedula does come back eventually, his help, I'm sure, would still be welcomed by Dziugo as few people here have the wealth of knowledge Ficedula has.

Dziugo had shown interest in this project from day 1 and is an awesome coder as is showcased by his awesome programs around the board so I'm sure he'll be able to help us deliver a great program in the end.

Welcome aboard Dziugo and thanks for the hand!

[Cyberman]

Again, sorry for the big delay!

Not a big deal I added one this time

The wav files are just for better sound editing capabilities.  The actual release is going to be MP3.

What not OGG Vorbis? (LOL)

A single mix would most likely be simpler.

Best thing to do is make it work first I always say.

Well this actually has changed.

ANNOUNCEMENT : There has been a change in coders for this project.

Unfortunately, we've been without news from Ficedula for a little while and our attempts to contact and locate him have unfortunately not yielded results so Dziugo has kindly accepted to take over this project from Ficedula in regards of the situation.  If Ficedula does come back eventually, his help, I'm sure, would still be welcomed by Dziugo as few people here have the wealth of knowledge Ficedula has.

Dziugo had shown interest in this project from day 1 and is an awesome coder as is showcased by his awesome programs around the board so I'm sure he'll be able to help us deliver a great program in the end.

Welcome aboard Dziugo and thanks for the hand!

I've been working on speech synthisis stuff for a long time.  I may have a crack at something ... completely different but interesting.

Cyb

[Tsetra]

There's been a lot of issues with certain dialogs not showing up, which you'll see when I'm finished with the demo of Scene 1. Typically this occurs after a CGI cutscene takes place, the immediate dialog after does not show.
Also, Meteor is being a sack of shit. When I try to introduce a change, namingly inserting new dialog, I save the file but Meteor DOESNT save it. When I open the file again my changes have been undone entirely. Sometimes I can insert one or two dialogs through the opcodes but after that it won't allow further modification. What gives?

On a positive note, I like the notepad system for using the dialogs. Very simple. I noticed certain dialogs can't be repeated verbally, you only get them once. Others work fine. Not sure what the cause is. Anyhow, once a better compressed format is used, this is going to go very smoothly for whoever takes over for the whole game.

[Marc]

I'm sorry to say your demo doesn't use the right release as Dziugo hasn't sent us a version yet even though there's been good progress.

The setup system for files will also be totally different using an archive system instead of a folder system for a simpler setup as the text file system needs perfect text match-up which is, as you've no doubt found out, very time consuming.

The version you're using was Ficedula's version and is only a proof of concept which had its bugs.

I'm surprised Mesden didn't mention this to you.

I've also sent Mesden the temporary MP3 of Scene 1.  It brings down Scene 1's size from 100+ megs to under 10.

[Tsetra]

I'm sorry to say I don't care? The whole point is to give an idea of how it's going to look, and Ficedula's version does a good job of showing it. I'm not working on the entire game anymore anyways, so it doesn't matter if my work can't be used later. I kinda liked the notepad system, it wasn't time consuming at all for me. But that's someone else's job I guess. In any case, seeing how Dziugo's version isn't ready yet, I can't exactly make a demo out of anything else.
That said, expect the demo next week. Consider it motivational material 

[Marc]

Well what's done is done and I'm sure you've found a way to make it work as well as it could so no need discussing it further.  If its stable enough, it might even turn out to be a good thing to have people's reactions over the actual content even though its not final.  I'd advise we absolutely deny any support request though since our actual software will be totally different.

As for the rest, the main drawback to the text file system to me was that it needed to be the exact correct phrase down to the period so the script needed to be perfect including the name of the speaker (and the game sometimes has an odd way of naming the speaker as there sometimes is no "name" attached to it even when Cloud or a party member speaks).  Other than that I do agree it was a pretty good system.

As for you not working on the entire game that's too bad, the script you made was pretty good.  Had good descriptions and all.

[lil-juice-09]

Hey I think I can audition for Godo if you read my reply under the "I been wondering..." topic.

[Swampthing15]

hey i tracked down the demo from the old thread and ran it, but i got no voices...every time a dialog started it would make an error sound and when i alt-tabbed out of the game had a window claiming:

"Access violation at the address 0045C388 in module 'voices.exe'. Read address 00000000"

the title of the window was "voices"

i know this demo is old and possibly out of date...but i would think it should still work...but if this is expected let me know and ill drop it

EDIT: the voices program did not mention any errors and it had the text dialog of what was being said in it also

[Calavera]

I believe the access violation error occurs when the expected voice file for that field (current location) identifier is not found. If I recall correctly that demo only had a few specific lines that it replaced, so you would need to be at a particular point in the game in order for it to actually work (on the bridge of the Highwind). Did you download and load the saved game?

[Marc]

As well that program is no longer the one we will be using so the bugs are not important at this point.

It was done as a proof of concept to show it was possible and was never improved upon after it was decided to head in a different direction program-wise.

[Swampthing15]

ok thats what i thought...i read almost all of the posts on this today so i had an overload of information 

i did also download the highwind save file and was infact on the bridge...idk what the problem is...but ill be ok as long as the actual release works ill be happy!

[Calavera]

Using the proof of concept (http://www.sylphds.net/f2k3/voices.rar), I was able to hear the dialog ingame, but the supplied sound files had very low volume levels, so I had to decrease my MIDI volume and increase my Wave volume (in volume control) in order to be able to hear them. But since you're getting access violation errors, I'm guessing something is amiss with your flevel.lgp file; though considering that file is what runs the game, I'm not sure how that could be.

But regardless, a new demo will be released in the future, I'm sure.

[Tsetra]

Mesden should have emailed relevant people a link to the demo video going through the first reactor mission by now. Eventually, I guess when you all are done looking at it, it'll probably go up for public access.

[Calavera]

He did, but I think that demo is more of a proof of concept (as Marcis mentioned), since while it does work there are a few bugs in it currently. Not sure if Mesden would want that released until said issues were fixed, which would probably come with the new program.

The video, on the other hand...

[Tsetra]

It is indeed just a proof, it uses Fice's old program. I only went through the trouble of putting it together so you guys could get a vague idea of how everything would come together, and well everything went wrong lol. "Few" is understatement with that thing concerning bugs 
From what I've learned, dziugo's successor is going to be no less than infinitely better.

EDIT 2 - Minor afterthought, if you get really bored sometime dziugo and have absolutely nothing to do, you should take a crack at updating the program to handle music ala FF7Music as well, and ramp the music down when dialog is hooked    Again, a very demanding task, I just think it'd look cool hah. A man can dream...

[Marc]

SwampThing : Yeah this was only a proof of concept.  I also got the access violations in some instances myself.  While I didn't discern a patern at the time, I think when ff7music was running, it always did that as Ficedulla's files were actually MP3 in a wav container and playing ff7music and voices at the same time with the supplied lines had it try to play two mp3's at the same time.

Of course, its been a while so I might be a bit off.

[Cyberman]

From what I understand DirectX should be able to play multiple sources however I suppose in this case the limitation would be how FF7 music functions instead?

Hopefully the technical aspect of the system you folks are using (now) is well documented.  It's important or if the lead programmer expires has problems etc. Someone else can take the baton and run with it if they disappear etc.  For commercial projects this is often part of the specifications.  The same with open source needs to be considered.  People get old change hobbies don't have time etc. with things.  Maintainability is fairly important in any project.

Cyb