[Release] Audible docking clearance oxp 1.3.1

[spara]

Hello.

I got bored of monitoring the comms log while waiting for a docking clearance so I wrote this simple oxp. When you are put into docking queue, this oxp starts monitoring your docking clearance status. When you get a docking clearance, you are notified with a sound.

Now you can go to a fridge while waiting in a queue and you won't miss the approach window. Assuming you can hear your computer from your fridge.

Download from the expansion manager.

[superbatprime]

Excellent!

I miss clearance after a long wait a lot and often end up just throwing the ship in and suffering the fine because I get sent to the back of the line.
This is a seriously useful tool, thank you kindly.

[spara]

New version (1.1) is up.

Now it's a whole lot better. I created synthesized female voices for different clearance situations with Festival and did some processing with Audacity. Voice quality is far from BGS, but I'm happy anyway .

If someone gets interested and wants to create better voices I would not mind.

Enjoy.

[superbatprime]

Ok, I always liked the idea of a room full of traffic control guys pushing banks of buttons and wearing headsets talking to all the incoming ships.
So in light of that I made a voice pack for this OXP.

See what you think, inspired by that Imperial traffic controller guy that lets a shuttle full of rebels dock.
https://www.box.com/s/0xweutzp849tx30i5mur

What might be interesting (and less work than system specific which would take years and a cast of hundreds) is government specific if it is possible to make specific sound files play for specific governments, way beyond me.

So you could have a voice pack for corporate systems that is going to sound very different from the anarchy system traffic control and so on.
Feudal would be tricky... could end up being a bit monty python.

"Request denied, now go away..." /frenchaccent

[Tricky]

What might be interesting (and less work than system specific which would take years and a cast of hundreds) is government specific if it is possible to make specific sound files play for specific governments, way beyond me.

So you could have a voice pack for corporate systems that is going to sound very different from the anarchy system traffic control and so on.
Feudal would be tricky... could end up being a bit monty python.

"Request denied, now go away..." /frenchaccent

Make subdirectories within the Sounds directory. Then in the script that plays the sound pick the correct subdirectory for the corresponding government type.

Using subdirectories makes it a bit simpler to update the sound files. Rather than having "anarchy_clearance_cancelled.ogg" or "corporate_clearance_cancelled.ogg" you would have "Anarchy/clearance_cancelled.ogg" and "Corporate/clearance_cancelled.ogg". Same filename, different sound and different directory.

For instance in customsounds.plist you would have...

Code: Select all

{
    "[anarchy_clearance_cancelled]" = "Anarchy/clearance_cancelled.ogg";
    "[anarchy_clearance_denied]" = "Anarchy/clearance_denied.ogg";
    "[anarchy_clearance_extended]" = "Anarchy/clearance_extended.ogg";
    "[anarchy_docking_authorized]" = "Anarchy/docking_authorized.ogg";
    "[anarchy_hold_for_clearance]" = "Anarchy/hold_for_clearance.ogg";
    "[feudal_clearance_cancelled]" = "Feudal/clearance_cancelled.ogg";
    "[feudal_clearance_denied]" = "Feudal/clearance_denied.ogg";
    "[feudal_clearance_extended]" = "Feudal/clearance_extended.ogg";
    "[feudal_docking_authorized]" = "Feudal/docking_authorized.ogg";
    "[feudal_hold_for_clearance]" = "Feudal/hold_for_clearance.ogg";
// ... and so on...
}

Then the script would tack on the correct name for the corresponding government as in...

Code: Select all

switch (system.government) {
case 0:
  gov_name = "anarchy";
  break;
case 1:
  gov_name = "feudal";
  break;
/* And so on */
}

Then modify the notifySound.sound lines to...

Code: Select all

notifySound.sound = "[" + gov_name + "_clearance_cancelled]";

...and so on.

I'm assuming subdirectories work with sounds, they do with music.

[spara]

@superbatprime: Those sounds are really cool. And your idea of different sounds for different govs is a good one. If you or someone else is able to provide sounds needed the scripting part is a piece of cake.

What I would really like is good quality neutral HAL-like voices. So that it's the ships computer speaking, not traffic control. That way it would not be weird to hear the same voice from station to station. I'm afraid that my skills in this area are limited to what I have achieved already.

New version (1.2) is up. Two new voice-events and the voice set is complete. I hope.

[another_commander]

What I would really like is good quality neutral HAL-like voices. So that it's the ships computer speaking, not traffic control. That way it would not be weird to hear the same voice from station to station. I'm afraid that my skills in this area are limited to what I have achieved already.

Have you tried switching the built-in spoken messages on and setting the voice to female? Should be pretty close to what you are asking.

[spara]

What I would really like is good quality neutral HAL-like voices. So that it's the ships computer speaking, not traffic control. That way it would not be weird to hear the same voice from station to station. I'm afraid that my skills in this area are limited to what I have achieved already.

Have you tried switching the built-in spoken messages on and setting the voice to female? Should be pretty close to what you are asking.

Do you mean I could use built-in synthesis to produce speech to a file so that I can use that in this oxp? Is that possible? Overall I don't like all messages to be spoken out loud. I only want to be vocally informed about traffic control.

[another_commander]

Do you mean I could use built-in synthesis to produce speech to a file so that I can use that in this oxp? Is that possible? Overall I don't like all messages to be spoken out loud. I only want to be vocally informed about traffic control.

I mean that by switching the docking clearance protocol and the built-in speech on, you can hear the ship's computer voice announcing the station messages. For example, the station sends the transmission "We have incoming traffic, commander. Please stand by." The moment the communication appears on the screen, your ship's computer says: "Incoming message: <Station name>: We have incoming traffic, commander. Please stand by." When the time for clearance comes, the computer voice will repeat the transmission from the station along the lines of: "Incoming message: <Station name>: You have clearance. Your slot expires on XXXXXXXX:XX:XX:XX". So you can have a beverage in the kitchen while waiting for clearance and can return to the computer once you hear the announcement. This is with just the standard game functionality, no OXPs involved.

But yes, this approach has the slight disadvantage that you will be hearing also any other message that happen to be sent, even outside of the context of traffic control.

In theory, you could use the game's speech synthesis to record the output of fixed messages from the soundcard to a file and use it after converting to .ogg in your OXP, but I am not up to speed on what software might be able to do it. It should be possible though.

[spara]

You are right of course. I could use the built in text 2 speech. As a personal preference I don't want everything spoken out so I prefer to keep that feature off. If there was a way to turn the speech synthesis on and off from an oxp then that would be nice. Then I would defidenately use it.

[superbatprime]

@superbatprime: Those sounds are really cool. And your idea of different sounds for different govs is a good one. If you or someone else is able to provide sounds needed the scripting part is a piece of cake.

It was a spur of the moment thing, I had a mate around and I roped him into doing the voice just to see how it would work (hearing myself giving me docking clearance would be just cringeworthy).
It's interesting and novel but ultimately limited for this purpose, as you said hearing the same voice all the time at every station gets old quick.

I do actually think there's potential using voice acting for spoken mission dialogue, npc characters, ship to ship comms and things like that.
But for standard docking messages we're going to hear all the time over and over, the computer voice is the way to go.
As I recall there's an oxp that does it for crew, but I digress.

I confess I've already switched back to the original version (and now 1.2), hearing Dave grant me clearance in every system I went to was starting to affect my docking skills.

If you're cool with it though, I may still try a government specific pack (just one, a full set would ideally need 8 different people), I get dibs on Commies!

[Diziet Sma]

You are right of course. I could use the built in text 2 speech. As a personal preference I don't want everything spoken out so I prefer to keep that feature off. If there was a way to turn the speech synthesis on and off from an oxp then that would be nice. Then I would defidenately use it.

Well, as a_c said:

In theory, you could use the game's speech synthesis to record the output of fixed messages from the soundcard to a file and use it after converting to .ogg in your OXP, but I am not up to speed on what software might be able to do it. It should be possible though.

Which software you use to record the messages you want depends on what platform you're running Oolite on. There's no shortage of programs that could do it.. I could suggest some, but first need to know what you run.. Mac, Linux or Windows?

[spara]

If you're cool with it though, I may still try a government specific pack (just one, a full set would ideally need 8 different people), I get dibs on Commies!

Speech in russian would complement the Commies oxp nicely .

You are right of course. I could use the built in text 2 speech. As a personal preference I don't want everything spoken out so I prefer to keep that feature off. If there was a way to turn the speech synthesis on and off from an oxp then that would be nice. Then I would defidenately use it.

Well, as a_c said:

In theory, you could use the game's speech synthesis to record the output of fixed messages from the soundcard to a file and use it after converting to .ogg in your OXP, but I am not up to speed on what software might be able to do it. It should be possible though.

Probably not worth the effort. I meant that if I could limit native text to speech to certain situations, then I would certainly use it.

Which software you use to record the messages you want depends on what platform you're running Oolite on. There's no shortage of programs that could do it.. I could suggest some, but first need to know what you run.. Mac, Linux or Windows?

I'm using Linux and it has been interesting to dig into current speech synthesis softwares (The last time I've looked into this was with Amiga 500 about 20 years ago). So I went through all software that I could find from Debians repositories and in the end Festival sounds best to my ears.These voices are created with Festival and amplified & bassboosted a little with Audacity.

[Svengali]

So I went through all software that I could find from Debians repositories and in the end Festival sounds best to my ears.These voices are created with Festival and amplified & bassboosted a little with Audacity.

Mary has some nice voices. It was a tip from PhantorGorth.

btw: better do not bassboost them. In most cases it starts to create a pumping effect which reduces the quality.

[spara]

Mary has some nice voices. It was a tip from PhantorGorth.

This is a good tip. Especially the male voices are very good.

btw: better do not bassboost them. In most cases it starts to create a pumping effect which reduces the quality.

Thanks for the tip. After fiddling a day with synthetic voices and audacious and its filters I have to admit, I'm not for the job . It's been an interesting voyage , but in the end I have gone back to the default beeps, boops and warnings. If you want to have speech I recommend the inbuilt synthesis.

The final version (1.3) I have but up is stripped free of spoken messages and uses built-in sounds. I like it that way. I simply get notified, and thats it.

If anyone wants to make their own sounds to this oxp, it relatively easy. Just create Sounds subdir into oxp dir, put your sounds there and edit customsounds.plist accordingly.

And if anyone wants to start creating previously mentioned government based station sounds based on this oxp, I'm happy to help with scripting.