[OUTDATED] We need voice acting for skywind.

http://morroblivion.com/forums/morroblivion/mods/1648

Yeah, quite a few people tried to sign up for voice acting work already, but nobody is really leading it for Skywind or Morroblivion. From what I can tell, a script is indeed needed, does anyone know a place where Morrowind text dialog is hosted already lol? That would make things a lot easier, because Morrowind has a lot of text dialog, and I mean A LOT.

All we need at this point is an export text file containing all Skywind / Morroblivion dialogue.

Including the following information:

File name / Race / Gender / Character name / Topic / Mood set / Text Dialogue.

Without an export text file there is no point in starting voice acting for Skywind. In order to get the file one must enter all NPC’s and text dialogue into the game, and export the text lines. Exporting the entire dialogue from Morroblivion was never preformed succesfully.


I think most will remember the Computer-Generated-Voice-Dialogue for Morroblivion, and the 3,4 GB of audio files in the base package, multiplied by 15 different races = 51GB. Morroblivion has a total of 28.927 lines of Dialogue. The 51GB was the result of not having a correct dialogue export file.

Download link Computer-Generated-Voice-Dialogue for Morroblivion:
http://morroblivion.com/forums/morroblivion/mods/2322?page=5#comment-20874

One issue with voice acting is that if we want this to actually sound good we need some kind of audition process instead of just letting people voice what they want.  Fact is that not everybody has a voice suited to the specific stuff they want to voice.

Personally, I'm interested in doing VA work however I've not voiced that yet specifically because I'm waiting for it to get organised in some way.

I'd organise it myself but that's not going to work very well sadly for the same reason why I'm not throwing my hat in the ring for any coding this project needs.  Too busy with work.  Really, voice acting seems like the only thing I'd actually have time for.  Really want to contribute in some way to the project.  Well, more than just suggestions and the like.

I would love to be able to help with setting up and/or doing some voice acting. I mean with the scope of Morrowind, compared to skyrim, I'd think the more help with this the better.

Here is all the dialogue in Morrowind_ob.esm (21,335 lines) neatly organized, with:

• NPC Name
• NPC Race
• NPC Gender   
• Dialogue (what the player asks them)   
• Emotion-Type (rarely has been filled in in Morroblivion, ignore it)  
• Emotion-Value (rarely has been filled in in Morroblivion, ignore it)
• Response Line # (since one response often has multiple lines)
• Response from NPC (what the NPC says to the player - this is the 'script' if you will)
• Filename (for MP3 generation)
• File Path (for MP3 generation)
• Quest (associated with the dialogue)
• NPC ID (such as 1MaduraSSeran)
• Dialog ID (hex, such as 00321cf8, for the individual NPC response)

Additionally, there is a separate sheet with the 964 NPCs that would need to be voiced, with their name, race, gender, and number of dialogue lines.

Finally, there is a third sheet with all of the NPCs that are supposed to be in Morrowind/Tribunal/Bloodmoon. 

Note that Morroblivion does NOT have 100% of the dialogue from all three games.  Most of the important stuff is there, but I would wager that there is some stuff missing from Tribunal and Bloodmoon.

Also, putting this together was a HUGE pain in the ass... took about 5 hours to do, altogether.  Had to write some batch scripts in MS-DOS and a lot of custom excel formulas to organize the data.  But it's done.  Hope that helps.

How long do you own that file ?

Most of us know that it is imposible to get a succesfull dialogue export.

I have been trying to get that information for several years now.

Finaly I can start optimizing the Computer-Generated-Voice-Dialogue for Morroblivion

Note:
I do think there are 28.927 - 21.335 = 7.592 voice lines missing in that file.
Unfortuently I can not find my own file with the aditional 7.592 voice lines.

Wow, that'll sure make things a lot easier for people wanting to voice act.

How long do you own that file ?

Most of us know that it is imposible to get a succesfull dialogue export.

I have been trying to get that information for several years now.

Here are the steps I took to make that file.  I just made it last night, so I haven't been holding out on you :-)

1. Using TES4edit, copy all race records from Oblivion.esm to Morrowind_ob.esm (right click the "race" section in Oblivion.esm and choose "hard override" or whatever it says).  I wish I could have figured out a way to copy the gender records, but nothing seemed to work.
2. Export all dialogue from Morrowind_ob.esm (v055) using Egg Translator (that site also has a good downloads page with a lot of other tools).  You just open the esm file and then right-click in the upper right window and choose "export dialogue"
3. Use a custom batch script (.bat file) to add the file name of each text file (the NPC name) to the first line of each exported text file, similar to what is described in the last post here.  So if the file name is "Caius Cosades.txt" then the script adds "Caius Cosades" to the first line of the text file, along with some formatting to make importing the sheets into Excel easier.  The batch code was something like this (just open notepad, copy that in and save it as "something.bat" and then run it in ms-dos by going to its directory and typing "something.bat".  Make sure to change the path of the folder in the first line to where the .txt files from the Egg Translator export are located.  This is the code (not exact; I will get the exact code later and edit this post):
   for /R c:\games\oblivion-dialogue-export\ %%i IN (*.txt) DO (
   ECHO "%%~ni","","","","","","",""> "%%~nxi.tmp"
   type "%%~nxi" >> "%%~nxi.tmp"
   del "%%~nxi"
   ren "%%~nxi.tmp" "%%~nxi"
   )
4. Used the DOS command: copy *.txt all.txt to merge the files, as described in the last post here.
5. Opened up Microsoft Excel.  In Excel 2007/2010 go to Data menu then on the left choose "from text" to bring up the text import wizard.  In older versions of Excel, I think it's under "paste special."  Mess with the formatting to get it to display as best you can - comma separated values (CSV) is how egg translator exports the files.
6. Go through line by line and clean up the output.  This takes a long time, and you have to be careful.  Excel has difficulty dealing with dialogue lines with quotation marks ("") in them, since these are also used as part of the CSV formatting.  So if a line of dialogue mentions a book, like "The Egg of Time" and uses those quotation marks, I had to manually fix that row of the spreadsheet.  It's easy, just time consuming.  Also, the translator tool mistakenly imports some scripts as dialogue so I had to carefully remove those.
7. Then I used a variety of Excel formulas and other formatting tools (row sorting, filter, etc.) to organize the data and remove blank rows, etc.  The second tab in the sheet was created by using a filter for "unique records" on the NPC name, so I could just get a list of NPCs.
8. Then I got on good old UESP and copied in a list of NPCs (third tab in the sheet) so that I could add the gender data.  Once I added that in, I used =vlookup to lookup each NPC's gender for the two other sheets.

Note:
I do think there are 28.927 - 21.335 = 7.592 voice lines missing in that file.
Unfortuently I can not find my own file with the aditional 7.592 voice lines.

Please try to find it, and if you post it here (just attach it to a post like I did) then I can probably work some Excel magic on it and add it to the Excel sheet.

ok so there is a unique npc named "billy" involved in a quest and hes an argonian. Now when you ask billy a question 90% of what he says the other argonians would say when asked that same question, the "bobs". So is there a way to tell what could be recorded as the bulk "bobs" lines, and then do the more unique "billy"lines. So billy would sound moslty like the other bob argonians but with more character on the unique lines 10% of his over all lines so he shares the bulk "bob" lines with them. I hope this makes some sense. Does anyone have any ideas on this? It would make getting voice recording much easier.

I get what you're saying, but it doesn't quite work like you described because of the way Oblivion and Skyrim are designed.   You could probably do what you are describing in Oblivion, but Skyrim uses "voice types" that organize dialogue differently (and more efficiently).

For example, this is how BethSoft does voices in Oblivion.  The main characters get a unique voice that only they have - Uriel Septim is voiced by Patrick Stewart, and that is the only voice Patrick Stewart does.  Likewise for Brother Martin, voiced by Sean Bean. In general, the NPCs that get unique voices - one actor per NPC - are the most crucial to the plot and/or have the most dialog lines.  In Morrowind, that would be Caius Cosades, Vivec, Dagoth Ur, Crassius Curio, Almalexia maybe I dunno.

However, for most of the other NPCs, they don't have unique voices.  One actor might do multiple voices (like voice female orcs AND female nords), and multiple NPCs may have the same voice style from the same actor.  So, all male argonians could be voiced by one actor, for example.  The more you do this, the more it saves time (and money, if you're hiring voice actors) but the less interesting your game is because everyone sounds the same, and the game becomes repetitive.  Oblivion suffered from this quite a bit, but in Skyrim they made up for it by hiring more voice actors this time around. 

In Oblivion, you can assign any voice file to any NPC - as long as the file names match up (the file is in the right folder and named properly), Oblivion will recognize it and play it.  In Skyrim, the system uses "voice types."  Each NPC is assigned a "voice type" in the construction set, and then Skyrim looks for their dialogue in that voice type's folder.  This is a lot more efficient, as you can "automatically" voice any new NPC you add by assigning them a voice type, and then anything they say that has an audio file associated with it will work.

So, a list of voice types for Skyrim might be like this, with each line on the list voiced by one person:

• Caius Cosades - Unique
• Vivec - Unique
• Dagoth Ur - Unique
• Yagrum Bagarn - Unique
• ... etc ...
• Argonian Male 1 - Generic
• Argonian Male 2 - Generic
• Argonian Female 1 - Generic
• Argonian Female 2 - Generic
• Imperial Male 1 - Generic
• Imperial Male 2 - Generic
• Imperial Male 3 - Generic
• ... etc.

And then a voice type is assigned to each NPC in the game.  You can open Skyrim.esm in the creation kit, edit an NPC, and see how this works.

On the second tab of that spreadsheet there is a list of all NPCs that have dialogue and the number of lines they have.  Just go to "Data" -> "Sort" and sort the sheet by number of lines.  The NPCs that have the most dialogue lines are probably the ones that should have a unique voice.  Or maybe you want to do unique voices for all of the 'essential' NPCs.  Or maybe just a list of whatever NPC you think are important enough.  However, you decide, those are the characters that should have unique voices, and everyone else can use one of the generic voices.

For voicing for Oblivion, there is also a lot of information in the first post here to get you started on a voice acting project.  There is also good stuff here and here.  As far as Skyrim.... you're on your own there.

Here is a much-improved spreadsheet.  Added columns for:

• NPC's class (added to all sheets)
• NPC's race (wasn't on "all NPCs list", so I added this info)
• "Essential" status (added to NPC list sheets)
• UESP Links to character's page (added to all sheets)

However, there is still the matter of those lines of missing dialogue.  I can only seem to extract dialogue with Egg Translator - when I try using the tools in the CS, it crashes.  So hopefully Sjors Boomschors can find that file he had.

Also, it's important to note that on the "All NPCs list" I did NOT include the 1,300 some "non-relevant" NPCs, listed here.  Since non-relevant NPCs don't have any unique dialogue (i.e. their dialogue, if any at all, is just 'general conversation' type stuff), I figure it's OK that they aren't on the list.

Here is the file in XLSX (Excel 2007/2010) and XLS (Excel 97/2003) and ODF (open document formats).  Any format should work, although XLSX is the format I work in.

I uploaded some other formats.  Should be fine to use any of them.

Update: I have figured out how to get the missing 8676 lines and their data.  I will post an updated file when I get it done.  There is some labor involved :(

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Voice_Actors

lets call these people and see if they would do the voces again lol

thermador
Update: I have figured out how to get the missing 8676 lines and their data.  I will post an updated file when I get it done.  There is some labor involved :(

I wouldn't mind helping to supply some voices. I was interested in pitching in with the Morroblivion voice project, and the couple of reviews that I got here were very positive, but the characters / races I felt most suited for were already taken.

The audition idea is a good one. I feel kind of guilty saying this but some of the voices I heard for Morroblivion were really kind of bad (and no, I'm not naming anybody lol) so if there were some team leaders here with a critical and objective ear, maybe they could help to maintain quality between the roles.

Of course I don't know how feasible all of that is, nor do I know if it's possible to cover all the dialogue with no more than maybe 5-10 characters for each voice actor (as opposed to one person doing an entire race, which I don't think anyone would prefer). I guess I'm just throwing out my thoughts.

I don't have any fancy equipment or anything- basically just a laptop, a digital recorder and some isolated rooms- but if the project starts taking off and you guys are ready to put out the casting call, I'd be happy to give it a shot.

We have to wait a few days for Thermador to complete the Morroblivion Dialogue Export File. After completion, the dialoge lines will be divided into segments representing the requiered Skyrim-Voice-Types. When te voice types are set we can all start doing the voice work. Offcourse in a organised fasion.

Question:
Are the file names in Skywind going to be the same as used in Morroblivion, or will they be different ?

Oh I just wanted to get the offer out there. No rush.

You know what, I managed to wrangle a week off work.  Once I get caught up on house work and visiting family and friends I'll see about recording my voice.

I'll post it in this thread.  Perhaps people would be able to tell me what race or character would be a good fit for my voice.  Also acceptable is if people are all "You suck, don't bother", that would also be nice as then I wouldn't look the fool with my "horrible" voice being forever linked with this mod.

Lol, I'm mostly being overly critical.  I don't have a crappy voice, least in my opinion.

Better too old than too young.  The last thing we want is a bunch of pre-pubescent kids doing the voices, lol.

Hmmm... that should probably be a requirement for voice acting.  "Must have gone through puberty and voice change."

EDIT: also a pop filter MUST be a requirement.  You can talk into a sock, or make your own with some fabric and a coat hanger.  Here are a couple tutorials on making them:

http://www.jakeludington.com/project_studio/20050321_build_your_own_microphone_pop_screen.html

http://www.deansabatino.com/2005/08/21/67/

ironman12345

Yeah! I know,and I really do have a crappy voice.:) British rural accent,full of slang words,and not young anymore.LOL.

 

Honestly?  For a game like The Elder Scrolls it's WAY better to have an adult voice than a young voice.

I myself am 31 and I really do think that makes my voice more suitable for this kind of game than when I was say 15.

edit:

Bare in mind, some 15 year olds actually have awesome voices.  I'm just saying I most certainly did not.

I have been with one to two mod projects that are still being created or have fell through. I want to possibly do voice work in real life and thougth mods were a good start.  Other then that I started doing a youtube channel as a way to put my voice out there and to reboot it. Here is a little on my new work, I just started a lets play for morrowind to get the story before dragonborn comes out.  Want to know what my voice soudns like to a forein ear, as the responses I have had are generally possivitive, jsut want a outside opinion.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olxCJCgZ-aY&list=UUEi4urdgdH_9hFiCeqHIi7Q&index=3&feature=plcp

Check this guy out, he is pretty good

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=464D4MtxjCc

I would be down for voice acting, though I am not good at impressions or anything, if given a general idea I am pretty good at rolling with it.

The main person in charge of the voice project should get in touch via facebook because I will probably hardly be on here except to check for updates on the project, or if I am able to get in on the work for it.

Examples of my "normal" voice. (old thing I used to do on the net, but it never took off and I was not that good at video editing)
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheRantingsofaMadman/videos?flow=grid&view=0

And my facebook "email"
GavinKing666@facebook.com

Haha I can't wait to hear the person voice this guy when he tells his nice story =p

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Larrius_Varro_Tells_a_Little_Story

ironman12345

I have quoted a Pm that was sent to me by Khar`lor regarding voice acting,and think that we should be considering getting some voices done for Skywind like suggested.?

quote:

Hi,
I know your a diff department but you seem connected to who may know where or what's going on with the voices. These need to be done. I just don't have the tech side of this down. I'm willing to work hard on the voices and get them done. I have the actors and the equipment. I need a tech guy to get me the scripts. Then take the recordings and make them work with the actual game. With all the bad ass stuff going down for skywind it needs voices too or its going to fall short even with its sweet graphics and everything. Spread the wordd around see if you can figure out what's going on, what's been done. Idk I've tried but can't get anywhere. If you could help or get in touch with some one who can that would be great. I have myself, my friend, and if it goes good I could recruit many others if need be. This is what I'm offering but I can't get there alone. I'm not a tech guy. If you can get a tech guy to help me out I can facilitate the rest of the voices.

............................................

Can anyone involved in the voice acting for morroblivion and/or skywind help with this please.?

 

Ya I volunteered to do voice-overs for morroblivion but I was told to get into the construction kit files, find the dialogue, and all sorts of complicated stuff that I don't know how to do.  I AM however a pretty decent actor with some experience on stage and film.  If someone came up with a text file and what they want the dialogue named as, I would be able to do some voice acting here at home.  I have recording equipment and professional audio editing software, too.

Well when they finish getting the last of the dialog ready, it'll be much easier for voice actors to well, voice act.

It won't be smooth as long as there is no one who oversee the voice acting better as I said in the other thread where it was mostly "hallo, I want to do voice acting" and someone said "eh, cool story bro" (at most) and then nothing happened, mostly.

I uploaded two new lines so people can comment on them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kj0iadzdmifvk72/prophecies.wav

https://www.dropbox.com/s/npki3cg5hyidfvh/1goof.wav

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2n9iypd4lf6y1gg/wakeup.wav

@Cor Angars:

Those sound files sound just like the real thing. You did a very good job on those, the result is very impressive.

In response to the comments on missing leader ship. Why does one need it, if the job is open for the taking. If you want to do voice acting, then just do it. And when your finished just upload the files and those that want to use them can use them.

For example:

My version of Morroblivion has full Computer-Generated-Voice-Dialogue. Its not the best sollution but it will do for the time. Atlease no more reading dialogue on my side, now I can listen to it.

EnvyDeveloperOnce all missing dialogue is reconstructed (I don't have an ETA on it unfortunately) then the voice acting would be a smoother process.

I finished about half of it last night.  I should be able to put together a complete spreadsheet this weekend.

I will try to build in some features to make it easier to sort and filter dialogue by characters, etc.  I will probably convert the spreadsheet to google docs (read only) so people don't have to have Excel or Open Office on their computer.

hi evryone im the new moderator of the voice acting department becose the old moderator hasnt been online for over a year so if you want to help just send me a message here's the link to see how it works and who is still available please dont send a message to ''sot'' but to me or just leave the message on the forum http://morroblivion.com/forums/morroblivion/mods/1648

^ Goodluck, I wish I could help, but I sadly lack the voice for it.

Here is an updated sheet.   No new dialogue is in there yet, but I have built a "Filter" page / tab in the spreadsheet that lets you filter the dialogue in various ways.  Just use the drop-down boxes in the green cells on this spreadsheet to set up filters.

You need MS Excel 2007 or 2010 to use this feature though.  If this is a problem for anyone let me know.  I would rather not try to support the MS Excel 97/2003 format (it is hugely inefficient by comparison) or the Open Document format (it lacks a lot of features). 

EDIT: OK well here is the same thing in 2003 format.  Not as pretty, but it works the same.  Notice how much bigger the file size is too.

I am still a user or the old school Microsoft EXCEL file format.

The filter in this new format does not work on my side.

If it’s possible and not to much work.

Edit:
Thank's

OK I edited the post and added a 97/2003 file format.

File size difference made me chuckle a bit.

Can anyone successfully export dialogue from these quests?  If you can, please upload the text files.  My construction set crashes when trying to export these quests' dialogue.

• fbmwBMCursedCaptain
• fbmwBMMeadHall
• fbmwBMSkaalAttack
• fbmwBMSmugglers
• fbmwBMWildHunt
• fbmwFGAdvancement
• fbmwMQ07
• fbmwMSGreetings
• fbmwTR09
• MorroDefaultQuest

To export dialogue, open the Oblivion construction set.  Load Morrowind_ob.esm.  Click the "Q" button in the top center to open the quest panel.  Navigate to the appropriate quest name on the left pane.  Click the button that says "Export Quest Dialogue" on the right. 

The CS will let you know when it's done in the lower left status bar with a message like "Exporting dialogue... done!".  The text files are generated in your main \Oblivion\ folder.

Hey guys. I can do a good Dunmer impresion (the old Morrowind dunmer) but I have no experiance what so ever with puting those files into the game and makin .lip files.