Hmm, Dan and Tom, this may be a great idea!

ID:154347
 
Dec 18 2001, 2:10 pm
I was staring aimlessly at the byond interface, boared, and i was wondering, do you guys think it would be possible in the near future, if you could put a bonzi buddy-type program into the code, so maybe instead of using a chat similation, we could use voice similation for say commands and such.
Dec 18 2001, 2:56 pm
SonVegitto wrote:
I was staring aimlessly at the byond interface, boared, and i was wondering, do you guys think it would be possible in the near future, if you could put a bonzi buddy-type program into the code, so maybe instead of using a chat similation, we could use voice similation for say commands and such.

I don't think that'd even be possible in the distant future. Besides, Bonzi Buddy uses kind of an antiquated text-to-speech engine and this sort of feature probably wouldn't be useful in many games anyway.

Much more useful would be expanded sound support including MP3 and MOD/XM formats.

Lummox JR
Dec 18 2001, 3:11 pm
In response to Lummox JR
Lummox JR wrote:
Much more useful would be expanded sound support including MP3 and MOD/XM formats.

Lummox JR


What exactly are those?
Dec 18 2001, 3:16 pm
In response to Sariat
Sariat wrote:
Lummox JR wrote:
Much more useful would be expanded sound support including MP3 and MOD/XM formats.

Lummox JR


What exactly are those?

Digital Music format. A step above midi, yet below MP3. I believe they are very old formats and nobody uses them anymore, but I love them. Unreal Tournament-engined games (Deus Ex and UT) use a compressed form of them and I think they sound great. Winamp plays them, as well as IT. (Impulse Tracker)
Dec 18 2001, 5:07 pm
In response to Sariat
Sariat wrote:
Much more useful would be expanded sound support including MP3 and MOD/XM formats.

What exactly are those?

MOD, XM, S3M, IT, GDM, and several other similar formats are basically a lot like "advanced MIDI"; they include sound samples with the instruments they use, which provides for a much broader range of sounds (including limited vocals). This isn't quite as good as an MP3 in terms of what you can do with them, but they have several advantages:

  • They can be looped, fully or partially, and sequences can be used more than once.
  • Samples use up most of the space in the file, so tracks (the notes themselves) add very little to its size; thus even a non-looped piece could be made very long and still have a small file size.
  • The average decent MOD/XM has a file size from about 300K to upwards of a megabyte, much smaller than a 3-minute MP3 encoded at 128kpbs.

    There are of course disadvantages:
  • The more samples, the bigger the file; I don't think any of these formats use compression. Thus, an incredibly complex song with many instruments might be bigger than a corresponding MP3; however, this would be extremely rare.
  • Full vocals are impossible. Including single phrases or words is easy enough, but full-blown lyrics are just plain out of the question.

    Lummox JR
Dec 19 2001, 7:20 am
Son--

It already is possible to read speech into your BYOND applications! Do it through the Browse() function... I have experimented with this before. I eventually got the program to the point where any word that you said in the program's four word vocabulary (greetings, farewell, yes, no) would appear in BYOND's text window -- very cool effect!

If I can get the files all together from my old computer without crashing it (stupid old computer!!) I will send you a copy of the program.

-Lord of Water the web wizard