Voice overs

[Daravel]

I was wondering what the current position on producing a wide range of voice overs, specifically for campaigns was. I've done a quick search and this topic has been discussed before but 3-4 years ago and from what I understand is that it would be a lot of work (and I presume, make the game download huge?).

My thoughts would be to produce it as an add on, and use community members for the voices.

Would that be too unproffesional, meaning no one would want to listen to them? Is there a reason why this kind of thing is not particuarly viable?

[zookeeper]

Would that be too unproffesional, meaning no one would want to listen to them?

Very, very, very likely yes. That's the main reason why it's not viable, and also because the text is often changed, which means that either 1) the voiceovers would quickly become outdated or 2) we couldn't do any major dialogue changes anymore or 3) the voice actors would have to always be available to update their lines, which just isn't going to happen.

[ancestral]

I think a narration could work fine for a user-made campaign, for things like the introduction. And if the text got translated, I think having the audio only in one language wouldn't be too bad.

[artisticdude]

The Altaz Mariners uses a voiceover for the intro dialogue (provided by jb, IIRC), and it works rather nicely. But I definitely agree with zookeeper that having voiceovers for mainline campaigns just isn't feasible. Aside from the evolving writing and dialog, and the translations, voiceovers would increase the overall package size of Wesnoth by quite a bit for a feature that isn't even necessarily an improvement over the current system.

[Tyler Johnson]

I don't know about everyone else, but I've always disliked voice over in games. As soon as they added it in FF games, I stopped playing them. I had it turned down in the DQ games. It just ruins the aspect of imagination for me, as did fancy graphics as well. Part of the stimulation of playing a game is your brain works to create a unique world set for you, not you and 4 million other people playing it. LONG LIVE SNES!

[Daravel]

The more I think about, the more I agree. Voice overs would sound tacky, and probably seem 'tacked on' rather than an integral part of the game.

However, the idea of having a Wesnoth Narrator does appeal; someone to voice all the prologues. It might actually add something, due to their static nature (and many not having a picture/the same picture).