Has a FFVII Voice-Over Project ever been attempted?

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Running out of process would be my preference - mainly so if the code does crash, it doesn't affect FF7 at all, you just lose the voicing. Obviously there'd be a small code stub in-process transmitting the relevant messages out to the main program (that's how my test app worked...) although I didn't use OutputDebugString because I've sort of gone off that as a way for IPC.

For playing sounds then to be honest for anything beyond the capabilities PlaySound gives you, I'd be tempted to use an external library just for ease of use. With that said PlaySound might actually just work, it's pretty primitive but it's not like this project needs anything too advanced...

Ficedula : Wouldn't the text match way create a lot of overhead if the program has to look into a big heavy text file to match the clip before sending the sound out ?  Wouldn't the ID way be more responsive ?
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Not particularly, to be honest. If you're in location NIV_W, say, then the first thing the program needs to look up is all the dialogue for that location - and any one location isn't going to have that much dialogue. It won't have to even consider dialogue for other locations, if we don't want it to.

As a further optimisation, in most cases we'd also know who was speaking (Aeris, Cloud, etc.) and we'd only have to look at dialogue for that character, too.

If you wanted to go on and search some 'general' bank of dialogue that might be applicable to all locations that might be slightly slower, but again you'd only search dialogue relevant to that specific character.

Running out of process also has the advantage that this is all happening in the background without affecting the main game too much.
 
PlaySound probably won't play MP3s, it's just there to give an impression on how it could work :) I see no problem with using a library for playing MP3s, as long as it's not an external library.

I'm looking for a compact project like:
1. Download
2. Unpack
3. Play

Not:
1. Download
2. Download xxx from www.xyz.com, move xxx.dll to the folder with exe
3. Download yyy from www.zyx.com, move yyy.dll to the folder with exe
4. etc.
X. Play

It would be a single library, but still :)
 
PlaySound can play MP3s provided they're stored in a WAV container. It'll basically play any WAV file - assuming the right codec has been installed. MP3 is of course a pretty safe codec to rely on, it's been shipping with Windows & Media Player for years...

If we needed to use a more unusual codec, then yes - ideally you wouldn't want the user to have to download anything themselves, if it could just be a DLL that sits alongside the other files we can redistribute that would be best.
 
So, here, have another proof of concept;

http://www.sylphds.net/f2k3/voices.rar

How to use;

Download, decompress into your FF7 folder. Run FF7. Alt-tab out (it seems to work OK with the windowed mode patch too) and run Voices. Click the 'start' button. If you don't see any errors messages then (hopefully) that means everything is working.

The window will display any dialogue it intercepts; there's some sample dialogue for the Highwind bridge I recorded in there as well (WARNING: rubbish recordings!). Easiest way to hear that would be to download this savegame:

http://www.sylphds.net/f2k3/save03.ff7

...and load the Highwind save, go to the bridge, then talk to Barret/Cid/one of the engineers.

Feedback welcomed. Preferably of the sort 'it works 100%!' but other feedback would be OK too, I guess... ;)
 
Just to clear this up, I realize it's hard to fit a british accent into the Game, but Reeve would be a good choice for a british accent. If you want to voice one of the main characters, you would have to learn more of a north american dialect :P
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Oh, I don't know about that. I don't think having an accent should deter people, let's see what they've got and then we'll decide if it fits or not. They can try both! Besides, the only reason that the characters have North American accents is because the dubbing was done in the United States. If Square had their main English division in Europe, we'd be hearing something much different. Foreign accents make Gaia really seem like a different world. And who says the characters are like us? =) After all, they're originally Japanese. If those voice actors started speaking English, hehehe...

As for Aeris/Aerith, wasn't there a point in the US game when you learned that Aeris' true name was Aerith, similar to learning Red XIII was Nanaki? Their working names stayed the same, as far as I remember. Either way, both Aeris and Aerith are romanized as "e-a-ri-su," pronounced "eh-ah-ree-soo." There's no way to convey a difference between "-s" and "-th" using the Japanese alphabet, so it's mainly a stylization, whatever you choose. Something akin to writing "Katamari Damashii" as "Katamari Damacy." You could even write her name as Earth, as that's what it's supposed to represent.

Personally, I prefer the name Aeris as it rolls off the tongue better and that's how I remember it being in the original game. I realize Square changed it in all media after Final Fantasy VII, but if Square Japan had a problem with how the name was anglicized originally, you'd think they would have said something. I've heard they're quite involved in the translation progress, at least with the later games.
 
I'm sure I remember reading somewhere, that Aeris' name in the European/American release was to be Aerith, but apparantly, as you say, Aries "rolled of the tongue" better.  I personally prefer Aerith, I have no idea why, but anytime I play it, I change her name to Aerith.  I just think it's because it's closer to Earth, which was her name originally, or at least, supposed to be. 

However, I'm sure people don't want to hear my half drunk ramblings on Aeris vs Aerith, so I'll leave it at that. :-)
 
So, here, have another proof of concept;

http://www.sylphds.net/f2k3/voices.rar

How to use;

Download, decompress into your FF7 folder. Run FF7. Alt-tab out (it seems to work OK with the windowed mode patch too) and run Voices. Click the 'start' button. If you don't see any errors messages then (hopefully) that means everything is working.

The window will display any dialogue it intercepts; there's some sample dialogue for the Highwind bridge I recorded in there as well (WARNING: rubbish recordings!). Easiest way to hear that would be to download this savegame:

http://www.sylphds.net/f2k3/save03.ff7

...and load the Highwind save, go to the bridge, then talk to Barret/Cid/one of the engineers.

Feedback welcomed. Preferably of the sort 'it works 100%!' but other feedback would be OK too, I guess... ;)
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It does work a 100%.  And I do see what you mean by "English Accent". ;)

Quick question though.  There is perhaps a 1 second delay before the voice starts which I don't recall from dziugo's app, although that might be from a small delay in your wav files recording.  I'll switch the file to one I know has no startup delay and post back.
 edit : ignore this part, it was indeed the delay in the sound file.

Also, when used in conjunction with ff7music, the file doesn't play and I get an access violation at address 0000000 when it should play a file (busy soundsystem because of ff7music ?)

edit : the access violation didn't happen with the test wav I put in there (changed all dialog to it to test).  I reverted back to your original files afterwards and they don't play now if ff7music is playing but they don't give errors either anymore ...
 
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I'm sure I remember reading somewhere, that Aeris' name in the European/American release was to be Aerith, but apparantly, as you say, Aries "rolled of the tongue" better.  I personally prefer Aerith, I have no idea why, but anytime I play it, I change her name to Aerith.  I just think it's because it's closer to Earth, which was her name originally, or at least, supposed to be. 

However, I'm sure people don't want to hear my half drunk ramblings on Aeris vs Aerith, so I'll leave it at that. :-)
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Well, I've played and completed the USA release of Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII and all the way through they call her Aerith not Aeris and also it's easier to start the next word of a sentence in my opinion.
I don't know how good i'd be as a voice actor, i'll have a look round but my friend is interested in this project and has done voice acting before, I think she'd make a good Aerith but I don't know what she wants to do. She's quite flexible with her voice so just say the word!
 
Even if you're not a voice actor Jordie, you can still come to show your support, as the attendance we receive will determine whether or not this project moves forward. (Same statement goes for your friend too)

If you don't want to be a voice-actor, everyone will be filling out comment cards as each person auditions to help determine the cast of voice-actors.
 
I've been doing further testing with fice's proof of concept.  Mostly with catching dialog since I have no mic that can make me audible for now.

It works mostly well.  It actually catches dialog great although in area zz4, when vincent meets Lucrecia for the first time, it somehow didn't pick up the text but picked up the area loading.  I unfortunately didn't notice it quick enough and saved over my game file afterwards so I couldn't go back to test it a second time to see if it was a fluke or a bug with the area.

Also, I've set up a test scene during the zack flashback with a test wav and I get a weird issue.

I've created a ztruck folder (name of the field file) and copied the dialogue.txt which I then modified.

However voices picks up the field file as ztruck but then changes straight away to ACKç (always the same thing) :

Changed location: ztruck
Changed location: :ACKç

The dialogue from ztruck then goes on as if nothing happened.

I'm thinking that's a game issue though as it's been perfect for every other area so far (its allowed me to identify which area is which and to start putting together a US PC game script for recording purposes).

I've also set up a test in convil_1 and that one worked great.

Great job!

PS : You can also disregard my last post regarding the "files stopped playing".  I'm using my hdtv as my monitor and sometimes text can appear small.  I had made a copy of the dialogue.txt file to modify it and didn't restore the name properly because I saw a "y" as an "e" from my couch!  I can however say that the incompatibility between ff7music and this software is due to your wav files since my wavs works fine - I'm thinking your wavs are mp3 encoded as wavs as you mentioned earlier and since my ff7music mostly plays mp3's, I'm guessing its having an issue with playing 2 mp3 at the same time ?
 
Marcis, if you're interested in compiling a game script drop me a line. I've been working on that and am about at the Chocobo Farm right now. It's a lot of work, so if it's something you want to do, team work is going to save you many, many hours.

GlitterBerri/jack.o.lantern has also been doing some work on the finer points of it.
 
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As I've mentioned, I've actually started my own while testing this one.

It starts when at the first Huge Materia quest and will go until the end of disc 3 (I'm currently at the end of the huge materia quest).  I've also done the Gelnika, Cloud/Zack's flashback and Lucrecia's waterfall dialogue.

I'd be glad to send you what I've got so far if you pm me your e-mail address.

How are you guys doing this ?  Are you using Cosmo or playing it ?  If you're playing it I'd suggest you try Ficedula's voices as its going to both beta test it and catch all text you see on screen!
 
I'm playing through in windowed mode and simultaneously using Loveless. Loveless is great for catching the text, and it's got notes on what locations are what. Play through is just to confirm what's dummied out, order of certain things, etc. The big pain in the ass is finding what's unused, along with sorting out dialog that relies on certain events and certain people in your party. There are so many "branches", and that's what makes it poke along. For me at least, maybe you've found a faster solution.

P.S. my email is in my profile. I use IM if you want to go that route as well, and we can work out how to combine what we've got so far and how to proceed. Fortunately, Midgar might have been the slowest portion there was, and it's finished now.
 
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Unfortunately, your e-mail is hidden in your profile (as in mine)!

As for loveless, I've never used it.  I use ficedula's proof of concept which catches all text that gets displayed.  Works pretty well too and this way I'm somewhat beta testing the software.  My testing so far tells me the software works well and could even be used in its current state if needed.

As for catching text, I don't use windowed mode though.  Up until this point, I've also ignored most branches and just focused on the main text.  I've done a *small* portion of branching text using Cosmo but at this point I'm focusing on catching the main story and figuring out which area is which (by playing) and I plan to revisit the side-text using Cosmo.

One thing to look out for though which I've only just realized, is that Ficedula's software uses the names of the characters to sort lines.  That means that some lines spoken by a character (ex: Cloud) where his name might not be used to identify the text would be listed as "none" instead of as "cloud" (name of the speaking character not written 100% of the time).  The most prevalent place of this is in Cloud's mind on disc 2.  If you notice it happen, we need to have the real character name beside it for voicing purposes but for technical set-up reasons, we should make a special note when that happens so we know to set it up as "none" in the program set-up.
 
Dont worry- I've been coming here every single day to see how things are going :D I just couldn't believe the overwhelming response! Its fantastic what everyone is doing :]
Unfortunately I dont think my voice would quite suit any of the characters-- I have an English accent, and a common one, at that xD Oh, and my North American accent is awful xDD
But I'll definitely be in Vent, filling out the comment cards and such!
 
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Ficedula, how will voice-overs be programmed into some of the battle sequences? Be it at the beginning or during the victory fanfare. Some of the battles will need to have voice-overs, and if we're throwing voice-overs into the battle, I'm thinking we could implement voice-overs at the beginning of specific battles, or when a Boss begins to cast a specifc, powerful spell, or randomly in occasional battles during specific victory fanfares.
 
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Ficedula, how will voice-overs be programmed into some of the battle sequences? Be it at the beginning or during the victory fanfare. Some of the battles will need to have voice-overs, and if we're throwing voice-overs into the battle, I'm thinking we could implement voice-overs at the beginning of specific battles, or when a Boss begins to cast a specifc, powerful spell, or randomly in occasional battles during specific victory fanfares.
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Unsure. All of those things are probably possible to some extent, given enough time to hook the right parts of the engine.

Best way to proceed is probably simply to deal with each particular requirement as it occurs ... when you find a battle that needs voicing, get a savegame as close to the battle as possible, let me know what you'd like to happen (ideally) and what you could use (in the worst case) and I'll investigate what can be done next time I get a moment...
 
The good news is, there's dialog in the very first boss battle with the guard scorpion, so getting a save should be quick and easy.
 
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