Speech input for games
Robert Zierer
I just want to start a more philosophical thread here:
Back in the old days of homecomputers (1980's or so; e.g. C64),
adventures were played by writing simple sentences ( e.g. get bag,
open bag, give mushroom to ...). The programms contained parser
to figure out what the player means.
Such was replaced by choosing a word from a displayed wordlist
(e.g. IndianaJones3+4). I think at that time this was a good
decision, overcoming the limitations of algorithms, memory-space
etc.
But today we are able to use another man-machine-interface:
speech! On the M$-Windows OS there is an Speech-API and some
products - alas a bit expensive and for commercial use - support
speech input.
What do you think of a game with speech input?
Another point would be a game which can (more or less)
interact with the player. I think of generated speech
output. But this would be something high AI, I fear.
--
Robert Zierer
Marc Cavazza
> Hello,
>
> Back in the old days of homecomputers (1980's or so; e.g. C64),
> adventures were played by writing simple sentences ( e.g. get bag,
> open bag, give mushroom to ...). The programms contained parser
> to figure out what the player means.
>
> But today we are able to use another man-machine-interface:
> speech! On the M$-Windows OS there is an Speech-API and some
> products - alas a bit expensive and for commercial use - support
> speech input.
>
> What do you think of a game with speech input?
Certainly an exciting prospect ...
However, Natural Language Control of computer games implies more than
speech rec. and/or associated parsing algorithms. The real challenge is
actually the generation of appropriate behaviours from complex NL input.
It also has significant impact on gameplay and might not be adapted to
every single game genre. You can find a discussion of some of these
issues in two papers I wrote for the 1999 AAAI Spring Symposium on AI in
Computer Games
(http://www.aaai.org/Press/Reports/Symposia/Spring/SS-99-02/SS-99-02.html),
and 2000 AI in Computer Entertainment (the latter to appear).
> Another point would be a game which can (more or less)
> interact with the player. I think of generated speech
> output. But this would be something high AI, I fear.
Actually, Natural Language Generation + Text-to-Speech would be somehow
easier to implement, especially in the limited context of a game
scenario
Best,
Marc
Hardburn
> speech! On the M$-Windows OS there is an Speech-API and some
> products - alas a bit expensive and for commercial use - support
> speech input.
>
> What do you think of a game with speech input?
I could be wrong, but I heard in reveiws that Unreal Ternament and some new
flight sim (I can't remember the name of it right now) already uses speech
input for issueing commands and such.
Hardburn
translate speach like "Fire" into the appropreate keyboard command. I saw
it in Computer Gaming World, I think. I'll check around.
John J. Gwynn
Hardburn wrote:
--
-------------------------------
-------------------------------
..Gonna be a lot of roadkill
on the information highway..
-greg brown
Hardburn
B. Witty
You are wrong for Unreal Tournament. It does allow you to issue
commands, but you click on a list and your decision is accompanied by a
generic speech sound. The bot replies in text and with a speech sound.
No speech input is present.
I believe Quake 3 uses text input for bot control and recognises fairly
rigid sentence structures. Well that was in a readme somewhere for it.
I'm unsure if it was implemented in the final game or whether they took
the same approach as UT did.
BrettW
Keith
As i know there is a game called 'Seaman' from japan couple months ago. The
purpose of the game is to raise a fish with human face. The way you play is
to talk to the fish and the fish will response. They include a microphone.
All the speech is in japanese. If i know japanese, i will try.
Keith
Robert Zierer wrote in message <388332F0...@stud.mw.tu-muenchen.de>...
>Hello,
>
>I just want to start a more philosophical thread here:
>
>Back in the old days of homecomputers (1980's or so; e.g. C64),
>adventures were played by writing simple sentences ( e.g. get bag,
>open bag, give mushroom to ...). The programms contained parser
>to figure out what the player means.
>
>Such was replaced by choosing a word from a displayed wordlist
>(e.g. IndianaJones3+4). I think at that time this was a good
>decision, overcoming the limitations of algorithms, memory-space
>etc.
>
>But today we are able to use another man-machine-interface:
>speech! On the M$-Windows OS there is an Speech-API and some
>products - alas a bit expensive and for commercial use - support
>speech input.
>
>What do you think of a game with speech input?
>
>Another point would be a game which can (more or less)
>interact with the player. I think of generated speech
>output. But this would be something high AI, I fear.
>
>--
>Robert Zierer
Kevin Grimm Steffensen
Hardburn <ad...@madtimes.com> wrote in message
news:qsHg4.1193$6f6.3...@ratbert.tds.net...
> Now that I think of it, I do remember seeing an ad for a program that
would
> translate speach like "Fire" into the appropreate keyboard command. I saw
> it in Computer Gaming World, I think. I'll check around.
>
>
So what happens? you sit there going "Firefirefirefirefirefirefirefire"
whan playing Quake 3 ?
Alkis Polyrakis
LOL
--
'I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian'
Polyrakis Alkis
University of Patra, Greece
Electrical engineering department
ICQ #: 10123551
URL: http://i.am/alkis
(Click on the English flag if you're not Greek)
Robert Zierer
Probably my posting was a bit misleading, because I just meant
adventure and role-playing games, not action and "shoot'em up"s.
I know the problem of processing time, especially with speech
recognition and complex graphic operation like in action games.
(But I never thought of Quake etc.).
Outputting sentences/text is today no problem; there should be some
poem generators around. The problem is that they don't consider
semantics. I hoped that this is now solved. Seems that I was wrong.
On the C64 there was a game called 'Wargames', that has text-driven
speech. The results are hardly understandable, but this was
some years ago and the C64 had a 8 Bit microprocessor running at 1 MHz
with 64 KByte of RAM. There is also a TurboPascal6.0 source for simple
text-to-speech dated from Apr1991. Was there really so less effort on
that topic?
When reading the example dialogue in Patrick Doyle: 'Virtual Intelligence
from Artificial Reality: Building Stupid Agents in Smart Environments',
(symposium.pdf somewhere at
http://www.aaai.org/Press/Reports/Symposia/Spring/SS-99-02/SS-99-02.html),
it seems that nothing had changed since the last ten years.
Marc Cavazza <M.Ca...@bradford.ac.uk> wrote:
>However, Natural Language Control of computer games implies more than
>speech rec. and/or associated parsing algorithms. The real challenge is
>actually the generation of appropriate behaviours from complex NL input.
You are right with that. Reacting to 'NL input' means simulating a more
or less complex world with limited physical abilities.
But I thought more of a limited interface with 100 verbs, 50 nouns and
probably 100 different items to handle; that should not be too complicated.
My starting point for my first posting were some articles in german magazines
for computer hobbyists dated from 1985 till Sep1991 referring to design
of a good parser for adventure games.
Couldn't believe that there was no advance at all in the last 15 years!
--
Robert Zierer
Marc Cavazza
> When reading the example dialogue in Patrick Doyle: 'Virtual Intelligence
> from Artificial Reality: Building Stupid Agents in Smart Environments',
> (symposium.pdf somewhere at
> http://www.aaai.org/Press/Reports/Symposia/Spring/SS-99-02/SS-99-02.html),
> it seems that nothing had changed since the last ten years.
Well, actually there has been progress, in the sense that it is now possible to
build small-size (< 500 words) NLU systems. After all, this is what we'll be
reporting at this year's [2000] symposium :-)
Having said that, we are certainly not the only ones having implemented this kind
of prototype (just a lab prototype, _not_ a commercial system).
Marc
John J Cramer
: Hello, again!
: On the C64 there was a game called 'Wargames', that has text-driven
: speech. The results are hardly understandable, but this was
: some years ago and the C64 had a 8 Bit microprocessor running at 1 MHz
: with 64 KByte of RAM. There is also a TurboPascal6.0 source for simple
: text-to-speech dated from Apr1991. Was there really so less effort on
: that topic?
From what I've seen, because there really hasn't been a demand for creating speech
from text, there hasn't been any commercial effort into it. Games have obviously
one of the biggest drivers for pushing technology to the limit. Keyboard input has
virtually been eliminated in favor of the mouse. (Note Sierra's switch from text
to mouse) When the computer DOES need to talk and make noise, the fastest way (as
far as writing a program) is to just record wavs, and play them from a CD.
Something that could drive this aspect of programming, would be the promise of
saving space. I mean think about if you could have a 1Meg interpreter to read a 1k
text file for 5 minutes rather than a 50Meg wav.
As a side note, does anybody know where i could get a hold of a "speak and spell"?
even just the chips form inside of one?
Just wondering
: Marc Cavazza <M.Ca...@bradford.ac.uk> wrote:
: >However, Natural Language Control of computer games implies more than
: >speech rec. and/or associated parsing algorithms. The real challenge is
: >actually the generation of appropriate behaviours from complex NL input.
: You are right with that. Reacting to 'NL input' means simulating a more
: or less complex world with limited physical abilities.
: But I thought more of a limited interface with 100 verbs, 50 nouns and
: probably 100 different items to handle; that should not be too complicated.
: My starting point for my first posting were some articles in german magazines
: for computer hobbyists dated from 1985 till Sep1991 referring to design
: of a good parser for adventure games.
Wouldn't the German language also be MUCH easier? I only took half of one semester
of German, but if I remember right, you ALWAYS pronounce a word exactly how it is
spelled. English on the other hand depends on its context (ie read (rEEd) and
read (red))
: Couldn't believe that there was no advance at all in the last 15 years!
I'm sure there has been, just not anything compared to other topics (such as
graphics!!!)
: --
: Robert Zierer
--
John Cramer
cram...@flyernet.udayton.edu
Computer Engineering
University of Dayton
Lynda Thornton
<r...@stud.mw.tu-muenchen.de> writes
>Hello,
>
>I just want to start a more philosophical thread here:
>
>Back in the old days of homecomputers (1980's or so; e.g. C64),
>adventures were played by writing simple sentences ( e.g. get bag,
>open bag, give mushroom to ...). The programms contained parser
>to figure out what the player means.
>
>Such was replaced by choosing a word from a displayed wordlist
>(e.g. IndianaJones3+4). I think at that time this was a good
>decision, overcoming the limitations of algorithms, memory-space
>etc.
>
>But today we are able to use another man-machine-interface:
>speech! On the M$-Windows OS there is an Speech-API and some
>products - alas a bit expensive and for commercial use - support
>speech input.
>
>What do you think of a game with speech input?
>
This question made me smile - imagining gamers getting infuriated by
impossibly hard puzzles etc and letting rip vocally ("Pick up the
****ing thing", or "Tell me something I DON'T know!")
I wonder if the combined volume of gamers' frustrated rantings would
cause noise nuisance? ;)
Good luck with the project.
--
Lynda Thornton
L. Ross Raszewski
You know, waaay back in my c64 days, I had a speech input device for
the thing, and it came with a copy of Zork 1 (or possibly minizork;
it's been over a decade.), and I recall my mother usign some
unparsable words tryign to get the thing to >TAKE LEAFLET
:-)
--
"The queen has the power to create you from nothing -- And that's what you
are." -- Adam Cadre
Robert Zierer
> saving space. I mean think about if you could have a 1Meg interpreter to read a 1k
> text file for 5 minutes rather than a 50Meg wav.
Not everything in speech can be done in textual form, think of the subtle nuances
in the voice. (Here we use smilies).
> Wouldn't the German language also be MUCH easier? I only took half of one semester
> of German, but if I remember right, you ALWAYS pronounce a word exactly how it is
> spelled. English on the other hand depends on its context (ie read (rEEd) and
> read (red))
There will be no easy way for producing natural-language multilingual applications.
In german, pronouncing words as they are spelled only works for a small base
vocabulary as a rule of thumb, mostly not for foreign words. Emphasis is another
aspect that influences meaning. (e.g. when forming questions)
Furthermore the word order is not as strict as in english. In english always
SPO: subject predicate object.
(e.g. 'Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, dann fliegen Fliegen Fliegen hinterher.';
'if flies fly behind flies then flies fly after flies.')
The semantic problems are basically the same as in english. There are also words
whose meaning depend on context.
--
Robert Zierer
Lynda Thornton
<r...@stud.mw.tu-muenchen.de> writes
>
>> Wouldn't the German language also be MUCH easier? I only took half of one
>semester
>> of German, but if I remember right, you ALWAYS pronounce a word exactly how it
>is
>> spelled. English on the other hand depends on its context (ie read (rEEd)
>and
>> read (red))
>
>There will be no easy way for producing natural-language multilingual
>applications.
>In german, pronouncing words as they are spelled only works for a small base
>vocabulary as a rule of thumb, mostly not for foreign words. Emphasis is
>another
>aspect that influences meaning. (e.g. when forming questions)
>Furthermore the word order is not as strict as in english. In english always
>SPO: subject predicate object.
>(e.g. 'Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, dann fliegen Fliegen Fliegen
>hinterher.';
>'if flies fly behind flies then flies fly after flies.')
>
>The semantic problems are basically the same as in english. There are also words
>whose meaning depend on context.
>
How cultured and knowledgeable we would all sound ...
--
Lynda Thornton
Mike Reddy
>How cultured and knowledgeable we would all sound ...
Or Welsh, which is VERY phonetic! Every letter pronounced!!!
--
Web: http://www.comp.glam.ac.uk/pages/staff/mreddy/
Snail: J228, School of Computing, University of Glamorgan,
Pontypridd, Mid Glamorgan. CF37 1DL Wales, UK.
TEL: +44 (0)1443 482 240 Fax: +44 (0)1443 482 715
=]:) It is I Leclerc
----------> Mike Reddy wrote :
> >If standard pronunciation is required, then surely we should use Latin!!
> >How cultured and knowledgeable we would all sound ...
>
> Or Welsh, which is VERY phonetic! Every letter pronounced!!!
Serbian is 100% phonetic,but I doubt you'll start learning it
just so you could play a game or two,right? :)
Anyway,that's not what I wanted to say....I wonder if anyone of you had
chance to play game called Starship Titanic?
It was an adventure where "talking" to other characters was done by typing
in real-language sentences,and game used really great algo for
recognition.You could type all kinds of sentences(even in my bad English
:) ) and it worked...soooo,hi level of language recognition is not that
far as it seems...
And as for recognition of speech the product I've had chance to see was
Dragon speech,and once it learns the way you speek,it was pretty good in
recognition.Problem is that it seems to take a lot of CPU time,which is
the main problem for implementing any of those things in games,as I see
it..can't have 3D and talking...maybe a game where U'd be talking to blank
screen (it would be good for monitor,no need for screen savers...:)
Angel
within the RPG field, I personally would not take advantage of it. A great
part of the fun for me, of online RPG's is the writing itself. I play AD&D,
and I find the one great advantage that RPing online as opposed to table top is
that I can write things that I would feel foolish saying. Like *Midnyte
saunters casually over to the table, unsheathing her massive sword and weighing
it in her palms before setting it down before her leige* In table top I would
just say 'she walks over and lays the sword in front of her king'. *Shrugs* so
I personally wouldn't use them for RPG....
--
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http://www.niteblade.com
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