Oolite Bulletins

One of the things I miss most while using my HyperRadio is the DJs. Since, unfortunately, (amongst other limitations the sound-code in Oolite currently suffers from) there is no way for Oolite to signal when the end of an audio track is reached, it's not possible to play tracks sequentially. Thus, you can't, for instance, play a bit of DJ patter, followed by a song.

So I had an idea, first inspired when I spliced together a couple of pieces of music which had been split into separate tracks by the MP3 conversion process.

Why not record some generic (and even some specific intro's for some tracks) DJ patter, which players themselves could then splice onto the start of tracks, using something like Audacity? That way, it would sound like there really were others out there in the Ooniverse, and contribute to the immersion factor.

The thing is, radio DJ patter is something of an art.. the intonation, the cadence, the tendency towards verbal diarrhoea, all have an instantly recognisable style which is something not everyone can imitate, myself included.


Thus, my call for help. I figure the odds are good we have somebody here who has some ability and/or experience in this area. With luck, more than one somebody. I'm looking for some volunteers who could record some short generic pieces that could be spliced onto HyperRadio tracks.. and perhaps even some introductions to specific popular songs. Maybe even take requests to create intro's for particular tracks. Some brief "In the latest news" type announcements could work also. Lots of the material in Snoopers OXP would be suitable for this treatment. A real bonus would be if you can do it in a language other than English.. after all, there have to be lots of languages spoken out there! All themed to life in the Ooniverse, of course..


By way of example, here's a couple of my all-time favourites, the first from a newscaster in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the second from the pirate radio station in Cody's own Inside Straight.

And we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere. And to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys!

As the two ships moved away from Corke’s Drift, Sahana tuned-in to Radio Sombrero – dramatic,
sonorous chords were dying away, and the jock was back on.

‘You just heard Raiders of the Lost Quark playing Cherenkov Blues. Next, gentlefolk of the galactic gyre, we got a genuine golden oldie... positively antediluvian, in fact. This is for all you hitch-hikers out there... you got your towels, guys? Okay... this here is by some long-forgotten band called Eagles. Hey amigo, gimme that joint! Ahh... that’s one small toke for man... and a giant toke for mankind! What the heck... bugger, I done hit the wrong switch... again! Oh well, who gives a **** anyhow. Turned-on sounds, folks, brought to you by the pirate of the aether, Radio Sombrero. We put other stations in the shade! Oh yeah... a quick word for one of our sponsors, the Grand Vizier of Soteri. Ave Imperator... y’all copacetic? You’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes, amigo... enjoy it while you can! Meanwhile, the inimitable Radio Sombrero plays on. From the top... this will be Journey of the Sorcerer!’

Any takers? You provide the samples, I'll supply detailed instructions for people to add them to their own HyperRadio tracks.

And who knows,, down the track, when we finally bring Oolites sound-handling code into the 21st century, they could possibly be made into just another HyperRadio Pack, that Oolite can automatically insert before/after songs.

I like the sound of this (no pun intended)!

I've done a sample reading from a few Snoopers news items (in .ogg format) as a test.

I looked at this issue with the limitation of the sound system a few years ago for, ironically, exactly the same reason. I was looking at creating random radio stations created by downloading tracks from places such as Jamendo and using the meta-data to create announcements using Festival text-to-speech. You can get round the issue of knowing when the track ends by knowing how long it is and using a timer. As I was looking at random tracks I had to find a solution to knowing how long the track was from within the game so I looked at extending the code in the core game to include the track length and name as properties in the sound object. As you are looking at using Hyperradio and so know the track list in advance you could extend this to include a table of track lengths and use that info to start tracks sequentially.

As to adding preprepared announcements to the front of tracks themselves as the games uses .ogg files you can just concatenate the files together and that will work as the .ogg format (which is the container format and vorbis is the format of the audio data) is designed for doing that.

Phantor Gorth.

@ Ranthe.. thanks! I'll check them out asap.

@ PhantorGorth.. some VERY interesting ideas there.. I hope Svengali sees them, as he may be able to incorporate them into the next version of HyperRadio. In the meantime, I'll see what I can do myself.

Ranthe.. those are excellent.. I like your delivery style, too..

Only thing is, the recording levels are very low.. (and I do mean very!) Not a problem, I can boost them as much as necessary, but if you can up the levels when you record, that would be nice too.

Feel like having a shot at a couple of song intro's as well? Maybe something generic, and also (naturally) one for The Eagles Journey of the Sorcerer..

Here is a wav file with Festival's output for announcing Journey of the Sorcerer.

I used this website to create it.

Phantor

<chortles> I have broadcast live before (long time ago) - they said I had a face ideally suited to radio.
Alas, I have no microphone or any way to record sound, atm - I'll look into that.

Diziet Sma wrote:

One of the things I miss most while using my HyperRadio is the DJs. Since, unfortunately, (amongst other limitations the sound-code in Oolite currently suffers from) there is no way for Oolite to signal when the end of an audio track is reached, it's not possible to play tracks sequentially. Thus, you can't, for instance, play a bit of DJ patter, followed by a song.

So I had an idea, first inspired when I spliced together a couple of pieces of music which had been split into separate tracks by the MP3 conversion process.

Why not record some generic (and even some specific intro's for some tracks) DJ patter, which players themselves could then splice onto the start of tracks, using something like Audacity? That way, it would sound like there really were others out there in the Ooniverse, and contribute to the immersion factor.

The thing is, radio DJ patter is something of an art.. the intonation, the cadence, the tendency towards verbal diarrhoea, all have an instantly recognisable style which is something not everyone can imitate, myself included.


Thus, my call for help. I figure the odds are good we have somebody here who has some ability and/or experience in this area. With luck, more than one somebody. I'm looking for some volunteers who could record some short generic pieces that could be spliced onto HyperRadio tracks.. and perhaps even some introductions to specific popular songs. Maybe even take requests to create intro's for particular tracks. Some brief "In the latest news" type announcements could work also. Lots of the material in Snoopers OXP would be suitable for this treatment. A real bonus would be if you can do it in a language other than English.. after all, there have to be lots of languages spoken out there! All themed to life in the Ooniverse, of course..


By way of example, here's a couple of my all-time favourites, the first from a newscaster in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the second from the pirate radio station in Cody's own Inside Straight.

And we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere. And to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys!

As the two ships moved away from Corke’s Drift, Sahana tuned-in to Radio Sombrero – dramatic,
sonorous chords were dying away, and the jock was back on.

‘You just heard Raiders of the Lost Quark playing Cherenkov Blues. Next, gentlefolk of the galactic gyre, we got a genuine golden oldie... positively antediluvian, in fact. This is for all you hitch-hikers out there... you got your towels, guys? Okay... this here is by some long-forgotten band called Eagles. Hey amigo, gimme that joint! Ahh... that’s one small toke for man... and a giant toke for mankind! What the heck... bugger, I done hit the wrong switch... again! Oh well, who gives a **** anyhow. Turned-on sounds, folks, brought to you by the pirate of the aether, Radio Sombrero. We put other stations in the shade! Oh yeah... a quick word for one of our sponsors, the Grand Vizier of Soteri. Ave Imperator... y’all copacetic? You’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes, amigo... enjoy it while you can! Meanwhile, the inimitable Radio Sombrero plays on. From the top... this will be Journey of the Sorcerer!’

Any takers? You provide the samples, I'll supply detailed instructions for people to add them to their own HyperRadio tracks.

And who knows,, down the track, when we finally bring Oolites sound-handling code into the 21st century, they could possibly be made into just another HyperRadio Pack, that Oolite can automatically insert before/after songs.

I'm no DJ either so sorry I can't help you there but I think it's a great idea. Are all sound files MP3? I've been playing Oolite for a few weeks now so I'm a Noob but was thinking that one day I'd like to add some sound effects of my own (once I've learned how it's all implemented into the program which I know nothing about at the moment) I'm using a DAW (the main function of my PC before discovering Oolite) and can dither down bit rate and compress to MP3. Does Oolite accept WAV files (in standard CD format bit rate so all sound cards can 'read' them)?

Commander Avago-Ero wrote:

Does Oolite accept WAV files (in standard CD format bit rate so all sound cards can 'read' them)?

Oolite uses the .ogg format for music files.

Cody wrote:

I'll look into that.

Cool.. had a feeling you had talent in that direction.. must be that DJs patter in Inside Straight that gave it away.

PhantorGorth wrote:

You can get round the issue of knowing when the track ends by knowing how long it is and using a timer.

An alternative approach, which doesn't rely on knowing how long all the tracks are in advance: monitor SoundSource.isPlaying in a frame callback. That may or may not be easier.

Hmm. I haven't added the new 1.79 properties to the sound documentation yet: SoundSource has new "position", "positional" and "volume" properties, all of which can be written to with the expected effects while the sound is playing.

Diziet Sma wrote:

when we finally bring Oolites sound-handling code into the 21st century

1.79 now at least has a single sound library used on all platforms, which makes it practical to add new features without needing massive coordination between two or three different devs. So if you want any more features, now is a better time to ask than a few months ago was.

cim wrote:

1.79 now at least has a single sound library used on all platforms, which makes it practical to add new features without needing massive coordination between two or three different devs. So if you want any more features, now is a better time to ask than a few months ago was.

You guys are legends.. did you know that? That's great news!

Svengali will be rubbing his hands with glee.. he's waited a long time for this, and I'm sure you'll hear from him soon!

cim wrote:

1.79 now at least has a single sound library used on all platforms, which makes it practical to add new features without needing massive coordination between two or three different devs. So if you want any more features, now is a better time to ask than a few months ago was.

Access to the ogg file meta-data and track length please. (I started adding that a long time ago but the sound code being very platform dependent back then I gave up.)

Phantor

Diziet Sma wrote:

Ranthe.. those are excellent.. I like your delivery style, too..

Only thing is, the recording levels are very low.. (and I do mean very!) Not a problem, I can boost them as much as necessary, but if you can up the levels when you record, that would be nice too.

No problem, this is my first serious playing about with Audacity so I'm still getting to grips with getting the levels right and so forth. This recording stuff is harder than it looks to get right

Diziet Sma wrote:

Feel like having a shot at a couple of song intro's as well? Maybe something generic, and also (naturally) one for The Eagles Journey of the Sorcerer..

Sure! Here's a reading based on the "Inside Straight" patter, as well as a couple of Lave Advisory bulletins from Drew's "Mutabilis" and "Finis" and a totally-made-up GalCop Advisory for Ramaza.

Ranthe wrote:

Sure! Here's a reading based on the "Inside Straight" patter,

<applauds> I've just listened to that, Ranthe... thoroughly excellent! [twangin' guitars]