(Insert stupid Blog name here)

Sounds like an interesting idea.

 

If I had an AtariVox or it would be emulated correctly by now, I would volunteer to help.

Nathan, I can send you a USB interface, it works with PhraseALator and will make your task a LOT easier / quicker.

 

BTW when I'm making new words, I start with the standard dictionary and tweak / copy until I have something which sounds right. It's pretty easy, and once you have your custom library it's then just a case of inserting the codes into your program.

That would be cool. But from the info I've been able to find, PhraseALator only runs on Windows. I use a Mac.

 

 

(Note: I should point out that the is because PhraseALator only runs on Windows, not because I use a Mac. )

I can whip something up for you, but using PhraseALator, as Richard said, is much much easier.

Anyone care to write a Mac (or cross-platform) version of it?

Anyone care to write a Mac (or cross-platform) version of it?

It's written in Visual Basic. However, I wouldn't know how to port a VB app to the Mac ?

 

The good news is the USB interface has a Mac driver and will work (like the PC) by creating a virtual comport for a Mac PhraseALator to use.

I'm writing a very simple ROM right now.

I wrote a program a while back that tries to use the PhraseAlator dictionary first and a text-to-speech algorithm if the word is not in the dictionary.

 

 

 

It is command-line only, but there is a Mac binary too.

Interesting!

 

It claims to not be able to open the dictionary, but yet it spits out results.

 

...Documents/Downloads/Avox_text2speech/talk2me; exit
Welcome to Darwin!
fv-22-0-189: ...Documents/Downloads/Avox_text2speech/talk2me; exit
Cannot open Phrasealator.Dic for reading
chunky
182 134 144 195 128 6 
chocolate
182 136 195 136 145 130 191 6 
chicken
182 129 195 131 142 6 
fingers
186 129 144 179 151 167 6

Okay, it's done. I'll PM it to you, Nathan, let me know if it works.

Interesting!

 

It claims to not be able to open the dictionary, but yet it spits out results.

 

...Documents/Downloads/Avox_text2speech/talk2me; exit
Welcome to Darwin!
fv-22-0-189: ...Documents/Downloads/Avox_text2speech/talk2me; exit
Cannot open Phrasealator.Dic for reading
chunky
182 134 144 195 128 6 
chocolate
182 136 195 136 145 130 191 6 
chicken
182 129 195 131 142 6 
fingers
186 129 144 179 151 167 6

Yes, it will work without Phrasealator.Dic, but since the words in the dictionary file are hand-optimized and presumably sound better, it would probably be worthwhile to try and get it working right.

 

Are you running it from the terminal app?

Yes, it will work without Phrasealator.Dic, but since the words in the dictionary file are hand-optimized and presumably sound better, it would probably be worthwhile to try and get it working right.

 

Are you running it from the terminal app?

Yep, and the .dic file is in the same directory as talk2me.

Okay, it's done. I'll PM it to you, Nathan, let me know if it works.

Thanks! I'll check it out tonight.

Yes, it will work without Phrasealator.Dic, but since the words in the dictionary file are hand-optimized and presumably sound better, it would probably be worthwhile to try and get it working right.

 

Are you running it from the terminal app?

Yep, and the .dic file is in the same directory as talk2me.

Try copying Phrasealator.Dic to your home directory.

That did the trick. "Chicken" came out differently. (That was the only word from my earlier example in the PhraseALator file.)

Okay, it's done. I'll PM it to you, Nathan, let me know if it works.

Does it use Thomas's latest drivers? If so can you post it?

Okay, it's done. I'll PM it to you, Nathan, let me know if it works.

Hi Bob, thanks!

 

It does indeed work.

 

I can see why, if people don't have PhraseALator and a USB interface, they'd be reluctant to add any significant voice support to a game. The trial-and-error required is extremely time-consuming (and admittedly, a little addictive).

 

I probably went through a dozen iterations of a very simple phrase, and it still sounds more like "I Bob, things" than what it should sound like.

 

Of course, I'm coming at this from a non-programmer standpoint, so maybe this is actually the easiest part of 2600 programming.

 

Anyway... I can see how this is probably the most difficult route to go. Usable, and interesting, but difficult. (At least I was able to figure out how to build a binary using DASM again.) So I guess the next thing for me to do is investigate what it takes to port a Visual Basic app to OS X (I suspect it will involve begging and/or bribing). To be even remotely productive with this, it's going to require a different path. But thanks for the code! That's exactly what I was looking for. I'm sure I'll continue to play around with it, if for no other reason, than to get my 2600 to say some really stupid things.

It does indeed work.

Good!

I can see why, if people don't have PhraseALator and a USB interface, they'd be reluctant to add any significant voice support to a game. The trial-and-error required is extremely time-consuming (and admittedly, a little addictive).

 

I probably went through a dozen iterations of a very simple phrase, and it still sounds more like "I Bob, things" than what it should sound like.

 

Of course, I'm coming at this from a non-programmer standpoint, so maybe this is actually the easiest part of 2600 programming.

 

Anyway... I can see how this is probably the most difficult route to go. Usable, and interesting, but difficult. (At least I was able to figure out how to build a binary using DASM again.) So I guess the next thing for me to do is investigate what it takes to port a Visual Basic app to OS X (I suspect it will involve begging and/or bribing). To be even remotely productive with this, it's going to require a different path. But thanks for the code! That's exactly what I was looking for. I'm sure I'll continue to play around with it, if for no other reason, than to get my 2600 to say some really stupid things.

For these reasons, I've always been impressed by the amount of speech in Man Goes Down.

Okay, it's done. I'll PM it to you, Nathan, let me know if it works.

Does it use Thomas's latest drivers? If so can you post it?

I will post it in my blog soon, I wanted to wait until I was sure it would work before I made it public.

 

And it doesn't use Thomas' updated drivers, I think those are only for the EEPROM access?

Hey Fred,

 

Ran into something odd with text2speech. It doesn't like the words "be" or "bet":

 

be
Invalid code: ast
logout
[Process completed]

 

bet
Invalid code: a
logout
[Process completed]

 

Edit: or "pickle":

 

pickle
Invalid code: d
logout
[Process completed]

 

But... it does like "pickles".

Hey Fred,

 

Ran into something odd with text2speech. It doesn't like the words "be" or "bet":

Found the bug. I posted a fixed version here.

Cool, thanks!

And it doesn't use Thomas' updated drivers, I think those are only for the EEPROM access?

Dunno. I only optimized the i2c.inc file. If that's one of the drivers you need for AtariVox, then the optimized version should work too.

Hmmm... I found a page on Porting Visual Basic Apps to OS X.

 

It involves converting them to REALbasic. But, it offers a conversion tool to get the project started, and there's a free demo of REALbasic available for a 15 day trial period.

 

Of course, I don't know anything about either Visual Basic or REALbasic. Does this sound like something plausible for PhraseALator?

I had started doing that a year ago, but wasn't that impressed with REALbasic. I did, however, use RB to create the fireball direction/speed tables for MM.

 

I'm getting back into hacking Cannonfire after some real-life. If you'd like, I could look into a GUI app for the AtariVox next instead of GUIfying KrokCom. Probably as a Cocoa app as I need to learn that for some stuff coming up next year.