Voicing

[chillout20]

Hey!

 

Ok, so I'm new and don't have much knowledge about mods, so feel free to link me a thread if this question has already been answered.

 

I've been playing a few mods and I noticed that a bunch don't get voiced over. I read in some of the comments that this has to do with lack of volunteers for the voicing. Is that why there isn't very much voicing going on? Or is it really hard to sync up mouth movements and the voice? Or programing it? Or whatever.

 

I guess I'm asking cus it seems kind of interesting and fun for someone to do, so I have a hard time imagining it being difficult to find people! And voicing makes a hell of a difference!

 

Thanks a bunch!

[ub3rman123]

It's not making the voices that's difficult; it's implementing them. Making the .lip files in a broken CS, then having to manually rename each file to the proper name is a pain.

[Deleted1848331User]

.LIP Files can only be made in the old version CS; The one that works has the broken .LIP generator. You can add voices, but their lips won't be moving.

[shaddow153]

Are there any programs out that fix this or is there any way to do it with the new CS?

[SandsOfTime404]

Could do a bunch of nice voice acting, except it'd only look like bad ventriloquism seeing as they wouldn't be moving their mouths. I know what you mean though. Sometimes the lack of speech detracts from something. Gotta take what you can get though.

[NellSpeed]

Creative questions aside, the technicalities are... time and space consuming.

 

The way the CS handles dialogue, each and every single line needs to have MP3s and lipfiles done separately, and unless you edit the CS .ini file, there's a limit of 150 characters per line of dialogue.

 

Vilja's creator Emma assigned her files-- something like 5000 lines!-- manually, and IIRC, she had to use a user-made utility AND an old version of the CS!

 

I went the easy route & used TES4Gecko to generate silent MP3s and lipfiles for my companion mod. I only did about 650 out of 800 lines to save space, and STILL ended up with a 40MB optional file. However, I also had concerns about finding a VA who fits the idea of the character, who had time to work on the project, AND who would suit the audience; as we've seen on these forums over and over, even professional actors often don't "fit" people's expectations.

[SavageArtistry]

I used to think that lack of voicing in mods was distracting, but after trying a couple with some very bad (and occasionally weird and creepy) voice acting, I think I prefer silent mods.

[ub3rman123]

It's also a bit of a burden to double the file size of your mod just so you can have voices in it. I try my best to keep my mods to a downloadable size, and hundreds of sound files don't fit.

[majikmonkee]

When done well, voices can really add to a mod, but bad voices can severely detract from a mod for me. Lost Spires and Battle for Castle Ravenpride had many good elements, but some of the voices in them really ruined things for me with either bad accents, yelling, or what I'm assuming were meant to be funny immersion breaking voices.