Question by Bocaj · Apr 18, 2012 at 12:23 AM · audio voice

Voice Overs with Dynamic Content? ("You have _X_ items")

My Goal: Voice Overs that can naturally say dynamic numbers in text. For example, when you sign on your character, GOD says "Welcome. You have x sheep left." The key is to have it play naturally without that auto-dialer sound: "Hello... player, you haveFive .... hundred .. gold left in your account."

I've done a system that technically works, but it sounds clunky (more like the latter example). I want to avoid recording each number for each inflection situation (excited, bored, end of sentance, compound numbers like one versus oneHundred...).

Has anyone figured this out? Has anyone simply seen games that have done this well?

Alternatively, has anyone had text-to-speech that doesn't totally suck? I guess it would be pretty cool to not have to re-record each time I change the text... and it would save space too... i digress

Thanks Community!

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mweldon · Apr 18, 2012 at 03:59 AM 0

Have you asked this question elsewhere? Because it is not exactly limited to Unity game developers. It is a pretty complex and difficult problem to solve, or else there wouldn't be so many bad text-to-speech programs out there.

IgnoranceIsBliss · Apr 18, 2012 at 04:27 AM 1

Yeah - this isn't Unity specific and you'd be better off asking in other forums.

But the basic answer is 'No'.

Synthesised voices are poor as it is (with the exception of AT&T Natural Voices - which are FAR too large and too expensive to license) and lifelike emotion is currently just not a design goal.

I'm afraid you'll have to record-and-mix if you really want it to say the numbers. And if you get it working and a nice voice, you could probably re-sell it on the Unity Asset Store and make some money.