Voice acting for each character

[Andreson]

Originally Posted by C_Gibby

I'm a realist, not a pessimist.

Read my post again. If they make nearly 30 new voice sets that ramp up the RAM requirements even higher, people are gonna be PISSED.

Zeds and weapons take up RAM, too. I'd prefer to see more of those things that are actually important to the gameplay rather than something merely cosmetic.

Indeed I understand your concern though. But that's the beauty of democracy

[Olivier]

Originally Posted by Andreson

Well, let's just say that RAM is quite cheap in comparison to other components.

Sure thing, but the Unreal engine is limited to a certain amount of RAM and changing that value is out of the question. TWI keeps adding stuff so their cashcow doesn't die, but they pretty much reached the limit.

[Gartley]

So you are saying that everyone that can quite happily play this game has to just suck it up and go spend money on an upgrade just so you can have a few extra voices? Considerate much?

And lets break it down, for say one character voice. You will need:
Voice actor
Studio time (both production and post)
Programmer's time
QA Time

For a FREE update?

And on technical overheads... Voice one is currently 18MB, Voice Two 16MB. So we add a voice for each char thats what... 30ish? So a conservative guess that's going to be 450MB of voices loaded into active memory. That's an ENTIRE 1/8th of Unreal2.5 memory cap (4GB iirc) . Or more realistically 1/4 of most players RAM as most still run with 2GB

[BenioX]

Originally Posted by Gartley

And on technical overheads... Voice one is currently 18MB, Voice Two 16MB. So we add a voice for each char thats what... 30ish? So a conservative guess that's going to be 450MB of voices loaded into active memory. That's an ENTIRE 1/8th of Unreal2.5 memory cap (4GB iirc) . Or more realistically 1/4 of most players RAM as most still run with 2GB

Exactly what I said just more specifics. Well done my friend.

[Andreson]

Originally Posted by Gartley

So you are saying that everyone that can quite happily play this game has to just suck it up and go spend money on an upgrade just so you can have a few extra voices? Considerate much?

And lets break it down, for say one character voice. You will need:
Voice actor
Studio time (both production and post)
Programmer's time
QA Time

For a FREE update?

And on technical overheads... Voice one is currently 18MB, Voice Two 16MB. So we add a voice for each char thats what... 30ish? So a conservative guess that's going to be 450MB of voices loaded into active memory. That's an ENTIRE 1/8th of Unreal2.5 memory cap (4GB iirc) . Or more realistically 1/4 of most players RAM as most still run with 2GB

I suck at math. But I'll consider that as an option.

Maybe it's just because i'm running with 4 GB, that made me make the suggestion.

By the way, how does voice acting affect RAM anyway?

[BenioX]

Originally Posted by Andreson

By the way, how does voice acting affect RAM anyway?

Recorded voices are .ogg files of what I know. .ogg files as any other files take some space and they will have to be loaded by game. That affects RAM.

[Andreson]

Originally Posted by BenioX

Recorded voices are .ogg files of what I know. .ogg files as any other files take some space and they will have to be loaded by game. That affects RAM.

Why do you think it will take that much RAM if other games that are storyline based can pull out tons of voice acting without any problem whatsoever?

[BenioX]

Originally Posted by Andreson

Why do you think it will take that much RAM if other games that are storyline based can pull out tons of voice acting without any problem whatsoever?

Many of those games use other engine which allows more giga to be used. Many of those games use .wav or .mp3 format which weighs less than .ogg files KF uses. I modded l4d2 and I'd say it has not that many voice clips because it has just 4 characters plus the rest, and characters take most clips, and together they weigh around 4 giga just for characters so 1 character takes 1 giga. Now, when I checked musics, which weigh alot less than characters, whole music folder has 1.38 giga in l4d2.
The point is KF has it's limits, and it's very affected by any small extra content. Different engine, file formats and of course the fact it'd weigh much makes all this impossible. Even adding just 1 more character, females, is being concidered but still a no so far.

[Andreson]

Originally Posted by BenioX

Many of those games use other engine which allows more giga to be used. Many of those games use .wav or .mp3 format which weighs less than .ogg files KF uses. I modded l4d2 and I'd say it has not that many voice clips because it has just 4 characters plus the rest, and characters take most clips, and together they weigh around 4 giga just for characters so 1 character takes 1 giga. Now, when I checked musics, which weigh alot less than characters, whole music folder has 1.38 giga in l4d2.
The point is KF has it's limits, and it's very affected by any small extra content. Different engine, file formats and of course the fact it'd weigh much makes all this impossible. Even adding just 1 more character, females, is being concidered but still a no so far.

Well, they wouldn't add this much content if it would be that bad.

[Gartley]

Unreal 2.5 has to load all assets into active memory. That way it can be accessed when it's needed without the overhead of attempting to pull the info off the HDD. You can't 'read' direct from the HDD so to speak, it has to go into the RAM first. This is what causes the 'hitching' some people experience. The game almost stops to catch up with itself. And no amount of RAM or CPU power can stop that.

There are different methods, for example keeping with Unreal, Unreal3 uses a procedural loading method in that lines of dialogue (in cut scenes for example) are preloaded as they come up. This creates a smaller overhead as you have less data in active memory. It's also optimised to be able to use more RAM then it's preprocessors.

.ogg is only for music in KF, everything else is PCM, that is wave forms or .wav which is un compressed. For the human voice to retain any level of detail without noticeable degradation you ideally at absolute minimum of 16bit 24kHz Sample rates. Depending on pitch and detail though, the safe spot would 16bit 44.1kHz. The higher the sample rate, the greater the volume of data.

[BenioX]

Originally Posted by Gartley

.ogg is only for music in KF, everything else is PCM, that is wave forms or .wav which is un compressed. For the human voice to retain any level of detail without noticeable degradation you ideally at absolute minimum of 16bit 24kHz Sample rates. Depending on pitch and detail though, the safe spot would 16bit 44.1kHz. The higher the sample rate, the greater the volume of data.

Oh really? Hmm I see. I was pretty sure all sounds r in .ogg files. In most games sound files are kept in same format, like l4d2 = wav. file. Hmm of what you say, so to speak, the voices would have to take lotsa good quality which means more RAM to take on it. It's even worse than I thought.

[Andreson]

Either way, I suggest that the most reliable source on this matter would be a developer.

No offense.

[Gartley]

It's a trade off, think of it in the terms of colour, this pic should help expand on that:

Spoiler!

For greater detail/resolution you need greater memory. Or a highly efficiant compression algorithms.

For a new char skin (male) it's a case of a new mesh and texture. Jobs done. All the animations and sounds are there. So TWI shout across the office to "I want a SteamPunk Foster!" It'd take what? 3 guys at a push? Artist for concept and textures, 3D artist for model and a developer for implementation.

New weapons are signifactly cheaper to produce in both terms of manpower and overhead than a whole new char with animations and voices. To create more assets involves more team, animators, voice artists, studio engineers as well as more memory for all the items. etc etc,

NB: I double checked and nearly all voices were 16bit 22.5kHz so that's not even CD quality. And I want to state I'm not against new content such as voices and female skins etc. Just pointing out why it maybe problematic to do so.

[Gartley]

Originally Posted by Andreson

Either way, I suggest that the most reliable source on this matter would be a developer.

No offense.

None taken, but I'm confident my take on the matter is on the money.

[BenioX]

so as I thought, if anything new then guns.

[zYnthetic]

Originally Posted by Andreson

Either way, I suggest that the most reliable source on this matter would be a developer.

No offense.

Sounds are wav. The only audio streamed from disc is music, everything else is cached. It has nothing to do with being expensive or time consuming to create assets (neither of these are even true).

[Major Liability]

I think custom voices for EVERY character would be a bit expensive unless you got people to do it well for free. I'd pay for a tiny DLC that adds several voice tracks you can choose in multiplayer options.

[Andreson]

Originally Posted by zYnthetic

Sounds are wav. The only audio streamed from disc is music, everything else is cached. It has nothing to do with being expensive or time consuming to create assets (neither of these are even true).

So is it possible?

[Gartley]

Originally Posted by zYnthetic

Sounds are wav. The only audio streamed from disc is music, everything else is cached. It has nothing to do with being expensive or time consuming to create assets (neither of these are even true).

So I'm on the money, still takes time and isn't free though. I suppose it depends on them deciding if the return is worth it.

[zYnthetic]

Time and money to create assets are both trivial, of course your mileage may vary depending on your outlook. The association with this being expensive is not in terms of money but rather memory. The cost/benefit analysis has more to do with issues that would arise by raising the minimum and recommended requirements and alienate players that may no longer be able to play the game 3 years after it has been out.