Voice Acting Majorly Increase Map Size?

[Joshman_09]

Okay, so a few buddys of mine and me are planning an orpg out on paper and what not(ex:drawing up diff maps,listin skills,names?..etc ect) And one of us thought up "hey! why dont we add custom voice acting? Thats something u never see in custom rpgs.." So my question is would adding about 30-50 sounds effect map size so much it couldnt be played on b.net? or should we be ok? Mind you each sound effect will only be about 5-10 seconds long.

Thanks ahead of time.

++rep

 

[Nenad]

I'm going to point you to this link.

Perhaps you already know how to import sounds, but in that case check out the file sizes. The .wav files are only about 1-8kb's long, now considering that some of those are just 2-3 seconds i would say that you're average may be about 10 or even 15kb per sound file.

50*15kb=750kb. Even if the average sound was 3 times as much you would still be able to easily play it on battle.net, seeing as how it has a limit of 8mb per map.

Other things to consider are of course custom models, map size in general and alternatives, but if you want a custom voice set it will most likely be less than 1 mb, which is good enough ^^

 

[FhelZone]

As you have said 5-10 second long audios would be used. A 10 second audio is approx. 400kb so having 30 (12MB) as for 50 (20MB). WAV files tend to be so big because of the header and footer it uses. So if you say you have 5 second audios lets half the size then; 30 (6MB) as for 50 (10MB).

You could have the 30 5 second audios. Though it would not be recommendable to use most of your maps file size to audio. I would suggest that you use the file size to some custom models and texture.

If you ever want midget sized custom sounds, you could use MP3 format, though disguising it into a WAV is a fail (from my experience), and if you ever did manage to do so you would still add that WAV header to the MP3 file making it inflate its size.

BTW WE uses MP3 files as music and not sound

 

[DioD]

your voice acting will bore 99% players after first game, also large file size will stop anyone from playing it bnet due long loading time.

 

[Ayanami]

your voice acting will bore 99% players after first game.

Really? How are you so sure? That's just plain criticism.

Unless you know how to make your WAV files considerably small in size, then it'll be quite difficult importing that many sounds.

 

[DioD]

Glenphir

just imagine map voiced by someone who dont ever know how sounds are stored on PC.

 

[Ayanami]

Glenphir

just imagine map voiced by someone who dont ever know how sounds are stored on PC.

Their voice acting might be good, nonetheless. So you can't really judge them until you hear it yourself.

 

[DioD]

its possible to store sounds in mp3 format with really low bitrate (like 96 or 64 kbps or ever less) it will limit ability to play such files as 3d sounds and some other, but it still can be used for dialogs.

 

[Nenad]

As you have said 5-10 second long audios would be used. A 10 second audio is approx. 400kb so having 30 (12MB) as for 50 (20MB). WAV files tend to be so big because of the header and footer it uses. So if you say you have 5 second audios lets half the size then; 30 (6MB) as for 50 (10MB).

You could have the 30 5 second audios. Though it would not be recommendable to use most of your maps file size to audio. I would suggest that you use the file size to some custom models and texture.

If you ever want midget sized custom sounds, you could use MP3 format, though disguising it into a WAV is a fail (from my experience), and if you ever did manage to do so you would still add that WAV header to the MP3 file making it inflate its size.

BTW WE uses MP3 files as music and not sound

I beg to differ, depends on what kind of bitrate you use and how you compress it. Using 8,000 Hz DSP Group Truespeech you can get as little as 66kb/minute with a decent audio quality.

Comparisons

Of course it's nowhere near as clear as it would be, but it can hold most of the data in under 1mb (50 sounds * 10 seconds each is 500 seconds, that's 8 minutes and 20 seconds which means around 500kb of data).

 

[DioD]

Nenad
you cant use any format, you must use format that warcraft able to play, its 441hz mp3s and pcm waves.

 

[NeuroToxin]

As you have said 5-10 second long audios would be used. A 10 second audio is approx. 400kb so having 30 (12MB) as for 50 (20MB). WAV files tend to be so big because of the header and footer it uses. So if you say you have 5 second audios lets half the size then; 30 (6MB) as for 50 (10MB).

You could have the 30 5 second audios. Though it would not be recommendable to use most of your maps file size to audio. I would suggest that you use the file size to some custom models and texture.

If you ever want midget sized custom sounds, you could use MP3 format, though disguising it into a WAV is a fail (from my experience), and if you ever did manage to do so you would still add that WAV header to the MP3 file making it inflate its size.

BTW WE uses MP3 files as music and not sound

Drugs? Thats not 400kb not even close... And World Editor converts MP3 into WAV, so you can use either.

 

[Nenad]

Nenad
you cant use any format, you must use format that warcraft able to play, its 441hz mp3s and pcm waves.

Did not know that wc3 editor was limited to different .wav types. Still, i believe that it can be compressed quite a bit without losing too much quality. Best thing to do is try it and test it.

 

[FhelZone]

@NeuroToxin
It's the approach used by many anime map makers since they add battle chants for the spells. Using variables, MP3s are useable as sounds rather than music. It takes a trigger to play the sound. But one problem you would encounter is how to limit the players that would hear the sound. The answer is using GetLocalPlayer.

[Anime maps tend to irritate me with its noisy chanting which could be heard by EVERYONE.]

400 KB is somewhere more than 9 seconds for the default WAV compression Blizzard has used. MP3s lasting for 5-10 seconds would probably be somewhere 20-40KB.

____________

As a conclusion, you should use MP3 format and go with the GetLocalPlayer approach to play sounds for an individual player.

 

[Renendaru]

Another option is .midi files, although that requires some file editing to get to work, and even then your players would need to edit their own files just to hear the sounds.

 

[Sim]

I don't recommend using voice acting.

Once you have started adding voice, you'll want all your NPCs with voice, and that will most probably involve more than 30-50 sounds.

Also, increasing your map filesize that much will surely not help the spreading of your map.

 

[Squeekems]

It stinks you really can't add valuable sound to maps. :/

I tried making a map called Knights of Cydonia. The objective was going to be, kill the alien boss before the song, Knights of Cydonia - Muse finished playing. At the same time, they would have to keep the gigantic army of aliens from flooding into their barracks and destroying it completely. In the barracks, there was going to be armor pieces to purchase and all that "jazz."

Would have been the funnest map I ever made. I tried cutting the song into just a few sections, and then make the music play in the right order on the map, but no matter how much I tried, I couldn't make it small enough. :/