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Up and Coming
June 12, 2013

Voice Input In Gaming

Vocal Communication
I am a hardcore believer in the need for voice communication in gaming. Voice acting had revolutionized all gaming, and though there were MANY who thought that it's unnecessary, overdone, doesn't add anything, takes away from the story, ect... it's hard to find any new great games that don't have voice acting. Ever since I could first here the characters in the story speak to me I have wanted to speak to them, not just as an observer of their actions, but as a participate in their lives. I wanted to be there fighting with them, getting to know them, joking and laughing with them. Now you're thinking, ok we need to have great advances in AI before you can hope to see that, wait another decade or three. I do hope to get that full realization sooner than 30 years, but it's wait and see. However, there are aspects of this that CAN be implemented. Which can further lead to those advancements. The following are my proposals

What We Can Work On Now

1.) In a conversation you could be given a choice of script and be able to speak the line you so feel inclined when the line is spoken the game would select the line that sounded most like what you said.
2.) In battle have voice activated abilities. Just like it sounds.
3.) Commanding your allies or Creatures. Of course complex commands are out of the question right now, but simple commands like "*insert ally's name here* attack the center goblin" or "Everyone attack" or "Heal me" and have associated actions that line up with those commands.
4.) To Be able to speak a sentence and the NPCs can pick up "Keywords" to respond. This has been done in many games for decades, just not with voice.

What One Hopes To Have In The Future
5.) Recording your name. Often you can create a name for your characters, but in voice acting they can't be spoken. I would propose voice modifications. Where when you record your name it's analyzed and the characters in that game add it to their vocabulary modifying your recording to match their voice.
6.) Having a natural conversation "In character" this would require so much information and "if:then" commands currently that I don't think we actually have a conceivable way of achieving at the moment.

Your Input
If you have any comments or other ways to include voice to add to an immersive VR experience please reply. I look forward to hearing from you all.

    33 replies

    Inspiring
    January 24, 2014
    So, is anyone working on something fun for VR with speech recognition? I think we will need a lot of experimentation and research in this area, because, "it's the future" 8-)
    Up and Coming
    January 25, 2014
    The guys who are making Bot Colony claim to have a Natural Language system.

    http://www.botcolony.com/


    I haven't tried their demo yet to see how close they come to what they're claiming to have achieved. When they tried a Kickstarter it failed miserably, I think because it has "too good to be true" written all over it. It might be worth a look-see, however. I just haven't take the time yet.
    Up and Coming
    February 3, 2014
    Skyrim also has VAI (voice activated input) - I want to say its xbox only :[

    I've pondered the thought of how to implement it in such a way that it would be natural, but only in an MMO environment. Single player, well.. that's easy (comparatively speaking).

    http://www.nuance.com/for-developers/dragon/index.htm
    Current WIPs using Unreal Engine 4: Agrona - Tales of an Era : Medieval Fantasy MORPG
    Up and Coming
    February 12, 2014
    the speech recognition via Kinect is pretty amazing, of course this requires to own a Kinect to access. It deals with Australian quite well when running the ozi localisation pack.
    "I love the French language. I have sampled every language, French is my favourite - fantastic language, especially to curse with. ..... It's like wiping your arse with silk, I love it." - The Merovingian
    Participant
    March 23, 2014
    I've played Flight Simulator X with Multicrew Experience expansion and heavily modded Silent Hunter 5 for years with the ability to give commands with your own voice. Those games are ones that really benefit voice recognition an I cannot imagine playing them otherwise anymore. It is really cool to be able to shout DIVE, DIVE as an u-boat captain when British bomber is sighted in Sh5 or order firing tubes one and three after a long cat and mouse play with a destroyer...
    Up and Coming
    March 24, 2014
    Didn't read most of this, but Unreal Tournament 2003/2004 had voice commands. That's why there were "alpha", "brovo", "charlie", etc over the heads of ai bots. You could command them like "Foxtrot, on me", and they'd follow you. Actually made things pretty cool when it worked right, but it didn't always work right.
    Current Project: Virtual Reality Glove project
    New Participant
    March 24, 2014
    With the few voice input games I have had the pleasure, or displeasure, of playing, I noticed that I had a really hard time. I have a speech impairment, so it makes it hard for people to understand what I say, and with the voice recognition, it's no better really. So, I would need for the game to be able to get use to my way of speaking, like that Dragon thing for the computer.
    Up and Coming
    April 14, 2014
    I'm interested in alternatives 1) and 4). I'm talking about a way to interact with NPC:s. Would be awesome! I'm still waiting for a game where this is done properly. I mean, like really talking to an NPC. There are plenty of ways to issue keyboard commands with voice, but no game where you can be in a "real" conversation with an NPC! Even just selecting pre-scripted replies by speaking them would be awesome!
    DK1 - previously owned DK2 - 2014-08-26 RECEIVED (ordered 2014-04-24) CV1 - 2016-05-25 RECEIVED (ordered on release day) Touch - 2016-12-07 RECEIVED (pre-order with CV1)
    MadarasAuthor
    Up and Coming
    May 15, 2014
    I'm glad to see there's still an interest in this, and wiseman I feel for you my speech slurs often I guess that could be considered an impediment. I've tried dragon and other speech recognition programs and with a lot of training they barely work for me, but I still hold high hopes for seeing this sort of thing added to gaming!

    Edit- Just checked this out and this looks cool http://www.botcolony.com/esl/
    Up and Coming
    May 16, 2014
    good thread.

    while i totally feel that being able to talk to the pc is possible, we're not there yet but i think it can be done. even when it's a reality, i bet there will totally be misunderstandings between the PC and the person when they're having a conversation.

    but, yeah, using commands and keywords and using your voice as an input device is totally cool and works well with the rift because of the fact it's hard to use the keyboard, mouse or a gamepad when you have the device on. or at least i find it kind of hard! ;)
    get your game on ....