Better text to speech in XB?

[pmk222]

Hello all!

 

I know this has likely been asked or discussed in many places and many times, however I must not be hitting the correct keywords as I'm not finding exactly what in looking for so apologies in advance.

 

I recently decided to push my limits with my programming ability and create a scavenger hunt for someone. Starting with the TI99/4A I want to use text to speech for more impact. Unfortunately, some of the words I want to use aren't available without something like the TE2 cartridge.

 

Has there been any work on creating something similar to the TE2 text to speech functionality to be used with extended basic?

 

I don't have a finalgrom or anything like that, nor do I have a computer to make up 5.25 floppies with.

 

I do have 3 floppy drives, RS232, TE2, E/A, and the minimemory cartridge. Assuming any of that would actually be useful. I also have the text to speech disk but it does take a long time to load.

 

Any advice or information on this would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance. 

[pixelpedant]

You have two main options these days, for including speech synth which falls outside the ROM vocabulary, in an XB game:

 

1) Use BlueWizard to encode LPC you can use directly from XB's CALL SAY: https://github.com/patrick99e99/BlueWizard

 

2) Use TI's Text to Speech Disk and its text to speech libraries. 

 

You can find an example of the Text to Speech disk which includes the require libraries here on the provided disk.  Sorry, I don't have a copy of the original disk handy at the moment, but everything from that disk is on the one in that thread, so nothing will be lost, there. 

 

The Text to Speech Disk manual may be found here.

 

It is worth noting that the Text to Speech Disk libraries require disk and 32K, take a long time to load, and will not be usable during gameplay (XB will halt while they generate speech).  Also, they will not be usable in combination with most other assembly routines or libraries.  They're only really useful as a standalone solution for text-to-speech for its own sake, in XB. 

 

For these reasons, BlueWizard will usually be a more practical solution, for those who don't want to mess with TI text-to-speech for its own sake.  Particularly when integrating speech synth into a game, where it is desired that speech not disrupt gameplay.  Which is achievable with CALL SAY, but not with the Text-to-Speech routines. 

 

Here is an example of trying to interleave Text-to-Speech in XB with doing other things.  As you can see, the results aren't optimal, since you just can't do anything, while speech is being processed:

 

 

 

[+Vorticon]

Have you looked at Speecoder (https://www.ninerpedia.org/wiki/Speecoder)?

Also this video from Pixel Pedant might provide some insight.

 

[HOME AUTOMATION]

 

4 hours ago, pmk222 said:

Has there been any work on creating something similar to the TE2 text to speech functionality to be used with extended basic?

I believe the "text to speech" disk that you refer to, provides the same functionality.

 

4 hours ago, pmk222 said:

I don't have a finalgrom or anything like that, nor do I have a computer to make up 5.25 floppies with.

I'm not clear on how these apply? By computer, I'm assuming you mean, PC?

 

4 hours ago, pmk222 said:

I do have 3 floppy drives, RS232, TE2, E/A, and the minimemory cartridge. Assuming any of that would actually be useful.

I'm assuming that you do also have an XB, cart?

 

4 hours ago, pmk222 said:

I also have the text to speech disk but it does take a long time to load.

Perhaps, time(not functionality/memory?) is the real issue here?

 

4 hours ago, pmk222 said:

Unfortunately, some of the words I want to use aren't available without something like the TE2 cartridge.

Sounds to me like you want to expand on the VOCABULARY LIST from ROM. This is also more responsive, as there is a processing delay when using text to speech.

 

I had found a need for such a technique myself, sometime before EMUs, had any speech at all!

 

I revised this somewhat here:

 

@OLD CS1 ...When do I get My Game?

 

 

This is a fun thread, for me/:

 

        P.S. Hope this helps some.

Edited December 3, 2021 by HOME AUTOMATION

[pmk222]

I want to thank you all for the input, it's very appreciated. I also want to apologize for not getting back sooner, work has been rather crazy.

 

With that, I would like to say that I've read through the responses and I'm not entirely sure which path to take. I'm going to do research on each one and see what I can come up with.

 

If things get less crazy at work soon, I'll write a little more of a detailed response.

 

Thank you all for taking the time to respond to this and giving me some ideas to ponder.