Oolite Bulletins

Yesterday I tried the new PC build of Oolite, v1.76.1 and immediately noticed a very important addition: text-to-speech engine. However, it seems the default built-in voice cannot be changed.

Can I tweak config files to change the default voice to SAPI5, like Microsoft Anna? Also, there's plenty of excellent voices on the net, free for personal use, i.e. made by Cepstral. Btw, there's also Mac and Linux versions of these voices, too.

I already used these voices with Freespace Open (space combat simulation) and I must say that was a great experience.

SubV wrote:

Yesterday I tried the new PC build of Oolite, v1.76.1 and immediately noticed a very important addition: text-to-speech engine. However, it seems the default built-in voice cannot be changed.

Can I tweak config files to change the default voice to SAPI5, like Microsoft Anna? Also, there's plenty of excellent voices on the net, free for personal use, i.e. made by Cepstral. Btw, there's also Mac and Linux versions of these voices, too.

I already used these voices with Freespace Open (space combat simulation) and I must say that was a great experience.

I am sorry but the answer is no. You can change the voice gender in-game, you certainly tweak the config voice files in order to change pitch, breathing etc., but you cannot use the SAPI5 interface.

The eSpeak dll deployed with Oolite is a special build of the library, which enables asynchronous playback on Windows and hardcodes eSpeak's data files default folder to the game's Resources directory. Asynchronous playback on Windows with the official builds of the library is not an option and for using eSpeak in a game, it is absolutely required. Therefore, extensive hacking of the source files had to take place in order to make it work exactly like its Linux equivalent and use it with Oolite. Making it SAPI5 capable would require registering the library during installation of the game, attaching related keys to the registry and various other system touches, which go against the deployment philosophy of Oolite on the Windows platform, which is: the game should be fully contained inside its root folder, should be portable by just copying that folder over to another machine and, in theory, should not know anything about what happens outside said folder.

You can read more about the specifics of the above described hacks and the eSpeak source changes needed to get it built for Oolite in the document titled ExternalLibrariesSourceCodeChanges.txt, found in the Doc folder of Oolite's source distribution.

Thank you for the answer.

Is the game in continuous development?

jacksy wrote:

Is the game in continuous development?

Oolite, yes.
Commit log at berlios here: http://svn.berlios.de/wsvn/oolite-linux

(Don't mind the linux thingy at the end. Same code base is used for all versions)

BTW, I can confirm that Oolite is portable (directory-contained) on Windows 7.