Archive 17/01/2023.

Female and male voices for game radio communications

zedraken

Hello,

I am currently developing a small space game in which the player has control over a space ship in a space environment. This is an amateur project and it will be available under the GPL.
I would like to add more realism and for that, I started to add simulation of radio communications from a control centre to enrich the sound environment. Such messages are broadcast in English at some key point during the game session depending on the situation and for the moment, I recorded my own voice for a small set of messages.
Since my native language is french, I have an awful french accent which scares me when I hear my own voice during a game session :frowning_face:

The topic that introduces the game is here:
https://discourse.urho3d.io/t/space-simulation-preview/3620

I am looking for people who can record their own voice by reading a list of defined messages that I will provide (female and male English voices). I will process those messages using Audacity to make them sound like if they were transmitted through a radio (for improved realism) and then integrate them in the game.

Are some people interested ? There is nothing more to earn except the fact that your voice will be embedded into a free game and that your name will be displayed in the list of contributors (if you agree of course). I won’t make money with that as I have already said, it is an amateur project, no payment is foreseen.

I am currently preparing the list of messages to be recorded and I will attached it to that post once it is finalized.

By the way, for other translations, I can be interested by other languages: spanish, german, french, and why not in your native language ?

Thanks a lot in advance for your help ! If you are interested, just post here and I will contact you with a private message.

Cheers !

ext1

I’d gladly help but unfortunately I’m not fluent in english.

But, since your game has a futuristic theme, have you consider using a speech synthesis software? They are not ideal for human voices, but are pretty decent for robotic voices, specially if you’re going to filter it to look like radio.

If you’d like to explore that alternative, take a look at Espeak-NG (which is GPLv3 licensed), which have a lot of voice files options. Or Gnuspeech (which is also GPL licensed).

zedraken

Hi,
thanks for the tips. I gave a try to Espeak-NG and it seems to work quite well. I played with several voices that are provided.
However, voices are too much “metallic” and I am really looking for “natural” voices, otherwise said human voices.

Here is an example of auto-generated voice that I transform slightly:

http://ingels.me/~charles/sounds/hello_guys.wav

From the original voice, that one seems coming through a radiocom. It is not so natural as I expected.

zedraken

The same sample but with stronger transformation…

ingels.me/~charles/sounds/hello_guys2.wav

ext1

Yeah, definitely more suitable for robotic voices.

Maybe you could try finding some one here: https://www.reddit.com/r/RecordThisForFree/
Or maybe here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VoiceActing/ (this one doesn’t allow free requests tho)

DrAlta

If you consider American English. I’m willing to record my voice for you.

zedraken

Hi DrAlta,

thanks for your help. If you can record the messages in American English, it will be fine !

I have gathered a list of messages to record in the following text file:

http://ingels.me/~charles/spacegates/radio_messages.txt

There are 79 words or short messages to record.

Do not bother with recording every message separately. You can record all the messages into one single WAV file with some silent between them.

And for other people who see that post, if your native language is different and if you accept to help, you can record messages in your native language, that would be nice ! And if there are women to have female voices recording, I would have a complete set of voices. I hope that I do not forget any words or sentences in the file.

Thanks again for your help !

Charles

zedraken

Hi ext1,

I did not know about that forum, thanks for the tip. I am going to have a closer look to check if I can get some help there.

Thanks !

DrAlta

Ok I did two quick passes at the list.

Let me know if you need more of a pause between the words or anything.

zedraken

Hi DrAlta,

thanks for recording the messages, it is fine, and the messages are easily understandable (I am not english native). I am going to add special fx to transform your voice as if the messages come from a radio box. I will post a sample here to show you how it looks like at the end.
I hope that I have enough materials to have complete sets of voice messages. If some are missing, I might ask for new recording…

Thanks !

artgolf1000

I record voices on voicebunny.com, just paste the text, it will report the price.

DrAlta

Ok. :smile: You can credit me as Hsingai Altaica.