Voices

has there ever been a game with full or partial voice acting? is that even possible in Inform 7?

I haven’t played it, but Future Boy! apparently has voice acting. I don’t know how extensive it is.

Six Stories also has voice acting, but if I remember correctly, only in the cutscenes.

I don’t know of any Inform 7 games that have voice acting, but there’s nothing to stop you from doing so. You’d have to compile to Glulx and possibly use an extension that gives you access to Glulx’s more advanced multimedia features.

Chapter 21 of the Documentation includes some information on playback of sound files from within a Glulx game.

Bear in mind, you’re at the mercy of the interpreter software your players are using. Some users definitely won’t hear the sounds, so it would be cruel to embed any vital story-related information in the audio.

–JA

well it´s not like interpreters would cost money or be 10 GB of data… :wink:

No, but not everyone uses Windows. On OS X only Spatterlight plays sound, but I couldn’t get The King of Shreds and Patches to work with it. I’m not sure if interpreters for Linux or handhelds handle sound.

I don’t know about Linux, but I’m betting that IF on handhelds may become significant, for several reasons: (1) They’re now powerful enough to do the job. (2) Millions of people have the hardware. (3) Those people are accustomed to using little teensy keyboards. (4) Handhelds are never going to have big enough screens to run decent graphics-intensive games. (5) You’ve got your phone in your pocket, and you’ve got ten minutes to kill, so why not play IF? It’s an easy impulse.

If we can get audio streaming from the game into the earbud, a dialog or music track would work. Interesting idea, actually … I wonder what the state of the technology is.

–JA

I agree. And I’d say that it will become the future of IF too.

It could work well with iPods. They have the capability to play audio tracks in many audio formats including WAV and MP3.

Gargoyle on Linux plays the sounds in TKoSaP perfectly.

I certainly agree that IF on mobile devices works well, but you’re already seeing pretty cool graphics-intensive games on handhelds. Don’t think just phones (though the iPhone and Android phones of course are not just exceptions to the rule here), but consider all the gaming handhelds which probably will slowly accrue common mobile features, such as telephony.