Realistic Population : V - Skyrim

» Wed Jul 20, 2011 6:38 am

Synthesized voice overs? I think you need to lay off the Skooma.

Actually it is possible, but it requires an actor to speak around 200 base words, and then a certain program will create a "voice profile" and will be able to generate a voice and speak any programmed words typed into the database. I saw a tv show about the program a while back. The problem is I'm pretty sure the technology is extremely expensive.

» Wed Jul 20, 2011 10:44 am

Actually it is possible, but it requires an actor to speak around 200 base words, and then a certain program will create a "voice profile" and will be able to generate a voice and speak any programmed words typed into the database. I saw a tv show about the program a while back. The problem is I'm pretty sure the technology is extremely expensive.

Technology like that would be very expensive, and I highly doubt it would still be as flexible as voice acting.

» Wed Jul 20, 2011 4:41 am

Actually it is possible, but it requires an actor to speak around 200 base words, and then a certain program will create a "voice profile" and will be able to generate a voice and speak any programmed words typed into the database. I saw a tv show about the program a while back. The problem is I'm pretty sure the technology is extremely expensive.

It's not expensive as such (there are even free programs for it, like UTAU). It's just not very good yet, and requires way too much manual control by a specialist to even come close to sounding like a real human.

» Wed Jul 20, 2011 4:17 am

It's predicted, if processing power continues to increase the way it has been, that by 2050 a $1000 dollar computer will equal the processing power of every human being on earth (10 Billion Brains or 200000000000000000000000000 calculations a second) . Although an electronic circuit is different than the neuron's processes of the brain (most of our brain's effort goes toward maintaining the body instead of storing and calculating pure information), but it still gives us a good idea by comparing the two. We may not be able to represent the world in it's entire microscopic/atomic detail, but we should be able to create a fairly life like representation of it. Of course, there is a difference between having a computer capable of doing it and actually doing it with the proper software and development team which would probably take years more to do. Not saying that it will happen, but if our species really wanted to do it, it's entirely possible.

Thinking about destroying ourselves, I of course thought about Fallout. I wonder how much money it would cost to create an underground vault that looked like and operated like one from the game?

And that still doesnt come close to a 1:1 reality, but I see what your saying.

You wouldnt want a Vault like Fallout's lol, but they do have multi million, perhaps billion dollar installations in the mountains of the North and Northwest.

» Wed Jul 20, 2011 5:35 am

Are you kidding me? No randomly generated content can be more fitting than purposefully handcrafted content...ever.

"Randomly generated content" needs to have scripts that are NOT randomly made, by a human, in order to work correctly. Your argument's holes come in the form of the human aspect behind random content vs handcrafted content, as well as quantity. If the random content in this vs were made by a fantasy writer, and the "handcrafted" content were made by a 13 year old Halo really devoted fan, which would you choose? You're saying that you would automatically choose the latter simply because its handcrafted. Quantitatively, if it fits the atmosphere to have tons of people walking around, then the randomly generated content is more suitable simply because the game's production costs would be astronomical to handcraft the same amount of people, and all for a very little change.

The word "handcrafted" is thrown around a lot in advertising to make people buy other people's junk more likely.

» Wed Jul 20, 2011 11:32 am

The curse of fully voice acted dialogs has bought us many problems, one of which is what you are pointing at.

It has also quite limited how an AI character can talk to us, and how versatile the quests can ultimately become.

If we had acceptable quality procedurally generated voices for any character, a role in the quests could be filled by any character that would fulfill the role's other perquisites, and the race, age and gender of that character would not matter any more.

You could add lots and lots of different replies for any situation and any character could voice them out and there would be no restriction and time constraints on what could be added to the dialogs and situational remarks, or changed in the last moments.

I hope we soon migrate to the next stage and embrace http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1108155-xzzz.

I've often thought about this, as the tech exists already. I just don't think it exists yet in a way that doesn't seem lifeless. Though with the announced 70 voice actors, each actor would have to do a lot less work (if the amount of characters is the same as Oblivion). This means that either there is a ton more content as far as fleshed out characters go, or that there are only 70 main characters, each with their own unique voice.

» Wed Jul 20, 2011 2:43 am

Actually it is possible, but it requires an actor to speak around 200 base words, and then a certain program will create a "voice profile" and will be able to generate a voice and speak any programmed words typed into the database. I saw a tv show about the program a while back. The problem is I'm pretty sure the technology is extremely expensive.

Like a star trek computer voice?
Well, the technology is there but people like Stephen Hawking still sound rather robotic.
Maybe in a few years technology will have advanced to the point a voice synthesiser sounds natural.
Im sure its theoretically possible, there are a finite number of phonemes in any language, and a finite way in which they can be combined.

On increasing pc power: It is a fallacy to think one can just double the number every few years.
There are limitations to the hardware, and then limitations to the very laws of physics.
Even if one could build some sort of supercomputer that uses holographic models (mathematical meaning, as in mandelbrot, not hollywood meaning) and a quantum processor one still would run into the fact that it will be limited by the speed of light.
There is no such thing as infinitely increasing processing power.

» Wed Jul 20, 2011 9:33 am

Just because it is hand-crafted does mean the production costs would be astronomical.

Just have the AI developers make a system where they just check boxes as to what they want each NPC to do. Categories each list depending on what each task is

Does the NPC work Y [ ] N [ ] If yes, check which kind of work

Dock worker [ ]
Lumberjack [ ]
Armorer [ ]

and so on, favorite meal, Favorite rest area. Heck, even the Dialogue options they say could use this. Then the hardest part would be using the Face morpher and Body Morpher to get them to look unique, place NPC on map. Have 1 to 3 guys on checking boxes and using the Char Creator for 3 months and you have thousands of generic NPCs.

» Wed Jul 20, 2011 12:08 pm

Like a star trek computer voice?
Well, the technology is there but people like Stephen Hawking still sound rather robotic.
Maybe in a few years technology will have advanced to the point a voice synthesiser sounds natural.
Im sure its theoretically possible, there are a finite number of phonemes in any language, and a finite way in which they can be combined.

On increasing pc power: It is a fallacy to think one can just double the number every few years.
There are limitations to the hardware, and then limitations to the very laws of physics.
Even if one could build some sort of supercomputer that uses holographic models (mathematical meaning, as in mandelbrot, not hollywood meaning) and a quantum processor one still would run into the fact that it will be limited by the speed of light.
There is no such thing as infinitely increasing processing power.

They can do a lot better than Stephen Hawking's voice these days.