FreeOrion

I just moved and have not had internet for about 2 months now.. I just thought I would let you all know that I am still trying to contribute. I almost have a script finished for some of the voice overs that I want to do and I have a list of sound effects that are in the making. I will be posting the scripts once I have internet at my house and once I recieve some input I will bring in some talent to do the VO work.

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º¤o AudioBottle

I will be more than happy to do some contribution toward VO.

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Thank you for the tip, Tzlaine. I will modify.

If you want to help I will explain what I have been doing and you can follow. Take a look at all of the races that people have made on the race posts and start coming up with general concepts for voice types of these races. I have a list but it is on my home computer, I will post all of this in detail later. With this, start coming up with ways that the "ships" or "units" would communicate with a command unit of some sort. For example: The "Standard Human" race would say things like "Roger that", "Okie dokie"... and would kind of sound like they were talking on a radio or something. A race of telepathic insect aliens would say things like: "The queen commands it", "For the hive"... and sound like they were inside of your head (or maybe they would just sound like big bugs). This is all conceptual and can really take any direction. I have 2 professional and top dollar voice actors that have agreed to work for this project in exchange for engineering services on my part. This is something we need to take advantage of... So lets come up with some good content! I'm even thinking that there can be some sort of short intro story or plot that opens the game with a script. We have plenty of time for this so lets try and make the scripts perfect with plenty of details for mood, ambiance and effect.

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º¤o AudioBottle

That sounds like a great idea. I would start doing that, just waiting on the thoughts of the leaders to have their say.

Best of luck with that, I'd avoid English altogether (Humans maybe, but perhaps they'll speek Greek, Chinease or something else). Rather than saying for the hive in English, an insect should say it in its native language.

Also I don't know what races are going to be in the game yet, I don't think any decision has been made, given the art work being done for them the Gayshe are probobly a safe bet, but apart from that I can't give any advice.

However I can give you some hints on the races I wrote , if you disagree with something feel free to propose an alternative, I'm not a sound designer so I'm going by gut instinct

AEIOU: They use telekinesis to "speak", it sounds surprisingly like a grasshopper, or surprisingly like a dolphin, either works.

Etty: They don't speak vocally, either they're communicating by sent or more often, by a direct brain link to a radio.

Abbadonians: [edit], an actual language said in a deep voice is my latest theory, I'm still open to suggestions

The Stonecarvers: They speak in an emotionless monotone, and use few short words. If you imagine trying to give away as little as possible to whoever your speaking to your on the right track. I'm not sure what the words themselves would be though.

The People: They don't speak (sent based language) and they're probably not going to be playable.

All of this is taken into account. The ideas I'm trying to produce have a very general concept behind them and no specifics incorporated. For example, there are a few human-type races that are only defined by the type of response they give and how they sound (Military, Religious, Devious, Philosophic). There is no other background to them and therefore they can be applied to many concepts of humanoid. Alien races are the easy part and require a day of making strange noises in my sound booth and can again be applied to just about anything.
As for staying away from English, I think it would be a great idea to incorporate other languages for human type beings. If there is someone working on this project that could translate some of our scripts once they are done and give me some sort of pronunciation guide for the translation I think I could get our actors to do that as well. On the other hand, I do not think that alien races should overpopulate the human-type races in the game. When I say this, I use the phrase "Human-type races" with the heaviest sci-fi feeling I can get (Think Star-Trek). When I think of an intergalactic race of insects (not saying that you've suggested this) using some of the technology advancements that are an essential and already incorporated part of this game, it starts to lose realism. Yet a Star-trek type humanoid insect creature, that has somehow incorporated themselves into the economic and scientific structure of the games galaxy could work. The languages should reflect this and should not be to far off from the core of the game. Strange and unconventional races can be used as NPC's easily, but including them as playable races would take away from some of the current game play systems that we have already built.

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º¤o AudioBottle

I have no idea what races your talking about, but most of the proposed freeorion races have a lot of background, and a detailed physiology, any race that's so vague as to be describable in two words (Devious Humanoids for example) would probobly get a quick rejection for being underdeveloped.


Hell no You need the right noises for the right bizarre aliens. Something that fits their physiology and culture. Take the AEIOU, the two choices (grasshopper or dolphin) were both chosen because I'm guessing they're realitively easy sounds to create with telekenesis, and they both have a chirpy happy sound that's appropriate for a race that on the whole is happy with their life. The Stonecarvers on the other hand have a voice box so they have a language much more like humans, but are paranoid enough to develop a language explicitly deisnged so you can't read anything about the speaker from the speech patterns. A far cry from random alien noises despite being giant amoebas and cyborg land dwelling nautiluses respectively.



Firstly having a dozen humanoid races with an identical tech tree is hugely unrealistic, so that's not going to make any diffrence. And secondly we're ignoring realism left right and center if it makes a better game. Bizarre non-humanoid aliens are more interesting than a dozen humans with funny foreheads so throw them in

BTW, having lots of humanoid races is immensely unrealistic from an evolution point of view, easily as unrealistic as having dozens of bizarre aliens with identical tech.


Given the significant variation in human languages I'd have no problem accepting massive differences in alien languages.

No. It wont.

Sounds like you've never done voice over work. Audio is easier to fit into an idea than something like a picture. Regardless of the details of the race, there is still a general category of "feeling" that their voice and tone will fit into. This is the BEGINNING stages of developing the voice over.. so yes.. it is by definition underdeveloped. Thats kind of the point. I'm not looking for perfection right now.. Just ideas. It might be a year before these are implemented into the game.



Telekinesis would be a great sound. But I kind of envision it as a sort of ambient chorus of whispers or something of that sort.. again, just an idea.



I think I explained that poorly. Go ahead and make whatever aliens you want, humanoid or not (Humanoid was a bad word to use). I'm just trying to make sure that they fit into the structure of the game that has already been designed. Ignoring realism never makes a better game.. even in fantasy. You can build fantasy from scratch. Thats why I used the star-trek analogy. Sure star-trek is a bunch of fantasy bull, but they made it believable by using things that fit in the structure of the universe that they created.



Thats debatable and for the community to decide.

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º¤o AudioBottle

Very True.


That's true, and it works perfectly with different human cultures, but once your talking about giant worms, living yeast colonies who create temporary bodies out of rocks (I really hope that one makes it in the game) or crystalline amoeba's the size of a country. You can't just ignore their biology to focus on the races feel. Even for a very rough first draft military giant worms will sound very different to military humanoids.


I always thought that Telekinesis would be silent, but you could make sounds with it if you wanted. Just like moving your hands is silent, but you can clap them together. The grasshopper sounds would have been made by creating two telekinetic forcefields like a grasshopper's legs then rubbing them together. Still if you think you can make a chorus of whispers that suits the AEIOU's personality then I'm open minded.


You appear to be confusing two separate concepts, internal consistency and realism. Star Trek was internally constant (well its debatable, but I'm not a fan so I don't know the details, or care) but hugely unrealistic.

As far as this issue goes, both having lots of aliens that look humanoid, and having lots of bizzare aliens with identical technology are unrealistic. But except for rare cases neither damage internal constancy.


The current alien closet to entry in the game looks like this. So far the community approves