Voicing

[SGK7019]

Browsing the comments on the trailer of the newest Alpha release, I came across a comment from "Pyke" saying that the quality of the voices when selecting a unit is not good. I explained that there are other priorities to Pyke, but I'm also posting it here to see what the rest of the community thinks and most importantly, the moderators. The comment is on the top comments of the video, so it should not be hard to find. Here is a link for quicker access: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0EJRimOuVE

 

[sphyrth]

1. Muffled Voice - I'm not sure if that meant that unit voices can't be heard clearly or that they aren't just understandable because of the language.
2. Units Can't be Distinguished - This maybe true for the military units, and has room for improvement. For now, I can see the effort since there are distinct man, woman, elephant, and siege engine response sounds.
3. You Don't Know What You Commanded Based on the Response - Well, this is the language barrier. Even I have to search what "Ti esti" and "Pros polemon" mean. I guess you can't please everybody with this feature.

I took for granted the lack of people working on voicing and scripting, but I have to admit that the commenter is on to something. But I disagree with him if he wants the default voicing should be in English only (which is the only way he can know what kind of unit he selected, and what he commanded it to do). I would like to hear people spouting out more than just Roman and Greek phrases.

[Lion.Kanzen]

 

8 minutes ago, sphyrth said:

1. But I disagree with him if he wants the default voicing should be in English only (which is the only way he can know what kind of unit he selected, and what he commanded it to do). I would like to hear people spouting out more than just Roman and Greek phrases.

@sphyrth in Spanish may be?

[sphyrth]

Haha. I guess they can be good placeholders for the Carthaginians. Though I'm curious how the ancient Mauryans and the Celtics actually sounded like.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Carthaginians will speak Hebrew or if is possibly Aramean. Celtic like Gaelic. ( Wales). 

[Palaiogos]

But...but, it is going to break the precedent that every historical RTS had. Look at Age of Empires II, they had the voices is their native language, same is said in Age of Empires III and the original. Look at the newer Total Wars: in Napoleon they have it in French, Dutch, and whatever language.  In Shogun 2, they even had people speak Japanese! 

Maybe we should get people who actually speak the languages to record. Maybe ask Evan der Millner if he could record for Latin, or French for Millenium AD. One could also ask a Greek speaker (make sure they know Ancient Greek too). That would solve the problem that voices are muddled. 

Edited November 27, 2016 by Palaiogos
Added some things.

[Lion.Kanzen]

With Latin the team based in 

 

to the pronunciation.

[Lion.Kanzen]

This nice video, shame found later.

 

[SGK7019]

I wish I could help with voicing, which I can't. What I can do is provide with ancient Greek phrases for someone else to read and record. I assume that's of some help to, isn't it?

[Lion.Kanzen]

@Itms you can do that? to me greek is complex to pronounce.

[SGK7019]

43 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

@Itms you can do that? to me greek is complex to pronounce.

Yeah, Greek is pretty hard for those whose native language is not Greek, let alone ancient Greek. Twice as hard. But once you get the hang of it, it gets much easier.

Edited November 27, 2016 by SGK7019

[Itms]

The sentences are already ready for Greek, they're the ones we use in game, although the pronunciation tends to be too modern.

See here for a suggestion:

And see here for recordings, that were never merged because I didn't have access to material anymore when people gave feedback, and then I didn't have much time :