How to use AGS Part 16 (Voices) Video Lecture | Learn and Master: Adventure Game Studio (AGS) - Game Development

welcome back to the AG s tutorial if you
watched the last video you saw that
Sammy somehow he took control of my
computer and he loaded up King's Quest 4
and police quest - and I don't I don't
really know what he was doing but but he
learned his lesson and he's back safely
again and he might he may come back
again later but we'll we'll try to
hopefully hopefully that last video
caused him to think twice before he pops
out again so we'll see but actually that
did that last video did let me introduce
a couple of things actually our next
couple of topics that video in the
previous the previous video a chess
tutorial number 15 was actually created
entirely using a GS what I did is I
actually created a a game George and I
the George's the other guy that worked
when Sammy's quest with me and he and I
both created a game so to speak within a
GS and all that game was was basically a
10-minute cutscene and that 10-minute
cutscene was exactly what you saw in the
video now I used Camtasia Studio to do
the zooming and panning effects so that
it would show up better on YouTube but
everything else was was done using using
a GS so that's really what I wanted to
devote the next I guess probably end up
several videos is is really cutscenes
this particular video is going to deal
with character speech which doesn't
necessarily have to do with cutscenes
but it does it is relevant to cutscenes
and also just to regular games in
general if you want your characters to
talk in the game if you want to have
actual voice actors you know talk talk
and represent your characters in the
games you can do that very very easily
with adventure game studio and that's
what I'm going to talk about in this
video so let's just say for example that
in the video that we in the game that we
have right now we have Sammy and he he
has a couple of lines I'm gonna go into
the main hall here exercise glow into
the room script he has a couple of
things that he's saying
one of the things that he says is there
appears to be a lantern in the closet
that's one of the things he's saying we
had him originally scrolling down we had
him originally say this this line which
I commented out in one of the videos but
basically he said it looks like there's
a book on recipes here or there so we
I'm gonna comment that back in we had
changed it in that video we had changed
it so that so that the unseen narrator
sort of popped up a message box and said
there's a book on rat recipes here I'm
gonna comment out that message and I'm
just gonna have comment back in the
messages that we coded up several videos
ago where Sammy walks over to the to the
books when you look at the book and he
says looks like there's a book on rat
recipes here and I'm gonna in this video
I'm gonna just have Sammy say these two
things I'm just to show you how that
works the first thing that you need to
do is find the voice actor to do this
and I'm not a you know I'm no actor by
any means the voice of Sammy in the
previous video was my voice and it was
actually augmented a little bit and I
did that using a program called audacity
and it's a freeware open-source program
that's actually a screen sorry a
recording program you can by the way you
can get audacity from
audacity.sourceforge.net it's let me
bring up notepad and I'll just type it
out so you can read it here it would be
audacity.sourceforge.net if you go there
and in your web browser and you it'll
have a download link and it'll have
information about audacity you can get
it from there and it's like I say it's
free software so I'm gonna load that up
now and this is the this is the software
that I actually used to record the audio
in the last video that you saw I'm not
gonna get too too much into audacity
because this isn't a tutorial about
opacity it's a tutorial about 80s so I'm
just going to very quickly go through
here but but let's just say for example
I'm gonna move this out of the way first
thing Sammy says is it looks like
there's a book on rat recipes there so
I'm going to record that line of
audio and then I'll go back and make it
sound like the Sami that you heard in
the previous video so let's do that now
it looks like there's a book on rat
recipes there okay so you can see here
this is the the audio that I recorded
I'm gonna take off the leading and
trailing silence here and just play that
back let's make sure that sounds okay it
looks like there's a book on rat recipes
there okay that sounds really good now
what I did in the previous video to make
it sound like Sami as I selected
everything I go up here to effect I can
change the pitch that you can see that
there's tons of effects and it Scrolls
off the screen you can't see all of them
but change pitch is what I did for Sami
I took my voice and I changed it from a
sharp to d these aren't actual notes
notes that I'm changing to but basically
I'm trying to change it for half steps
or four semitones upward so I select
that I click OK
that actually modified the sound and now
if I play it back it looks like there's
a book on rat recipes there so now that
sounds like the Sami that you heard in
the previous video so I'm gonna say this
as a WAV file because I'm a gs1 of the
forum audio formats that a just supports
is wave WAV so I'm gonna click on the
file menu and say export as WAV now it
asks where do I want to export the video
I'm sorry the sound - I'm gonna find the
Sammy's quest sound that I have which I
have in Sammy's quest folder under
speech by default all the sounds are
gonna be on there under the speech
folder if you put them there that's
exactly where they need to be for
everything to work now I've already got
several files in here this is the these
are the files which I haven't gone over
in the video yet I just basically copied
Sammy's quest into this folder but these
are the sounds that were in the original
Sammy's quest that George and I were
talking during the intro in the in the
outro after you completed the game but
I'm just gonna save it to this folder
again you need a speech folder under
your regular main folder for your for
your game now the file name that you use
needs to be the first four characters of
the
of the the characters the first four
letters of the character's name in this
case it's Sammy so his real name was
Sammy in the game so we could we call it
si mm we don't use the Y because again
you only use four characters so si mm
and then a number you start at one and
you go forward from there and I haven't
created a Sammy sound yet so I'm gonna
start at one so I kill it Sam one dot
wav that's what I want to save the file
as so I'm gonna click Save I'm gonna get
rid of audacity because we don't need
that and that's really all we need to do
now we need to go into to Sammy's quest
and we need to tell AG s to use Sammy
sound number one to play during while
Sammy is saying this line of dialogue so
what you do for that is you say see
Sammy say and now I'm going to use a
special syntax that's the AG s uses and
it uses an ampersand and the number of
the file we called it Sammy one or Sam
one dot wave so the number that it would
want here is ampersand one if we had
called it Sam - we would say ampersand -
if we had called it Santa
Sam 28 then we say ampersand 28 and then
a space after the number you say there's
a space and then whatever the text is
that you want to display over the
characters head while they're saying
that now typically this will be the same
text that that the voice actor recorded
but it doesn't have to be in the video
that you saw earlier I didn't put any
text I just closed the quotes here just
like this I just had this for example in
there so there was no text displayed I
didn't want any text displayed while the
carrot while the character was talking
so that's what I did but in this case I
do want text to be displayed that way
it's sort of a you see the text and you
hear the sound at the same time so let's
let's do that ampersand one and then and
then put the text and let's just run
that game and see how that works I run
the game now that particular action
occurred when you looked at the book so
let's look at the books and see what
happens
it looks like there's a book on rat
recipes there okay and that's exactly
what we want so that's just a really
quick easy
a - to record sound along with support
character speech along with with the
characters text that they're using by
the way if you do this and the can the
person that's playing your game does not
have a sound card then there there's no
problem it just won't display it won't
play the sound you'll still see the text
above the character's head you just
won't hear the sound additionally
there's a there's a file that's created
by AES when you have sounds and it's
called speech vo X or speech dot Vox
that file has to be distributed with
your game in order for the speeches to
speech to work that file is put into
your compiled directory when you compile
your game if for some reason a person
gets your game and gets the executable
for your game but does not get the
speech dot vo X file then they won't
have the sound files that are required
that contain all the speech and sound
information so they won't hear the
sounds either if you don't have that
speech box file so that's just a couple
of things to keep in mind so that's what
I wanted to go over in this video is
just how to how to use the the speech
function and how to you know bring your
characters to life with with speech in
the next video we'll get a little bit
more into two cutscenes how to create
cutscenes how to choreograph them script
them so that things happen sort of
automatically if you have certain scenes
in the beginning or during your game or
at the end for example that you want the
character to go through or the game to
go through so until then I hope to join
you join me in the next video see you
then guys