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This tech could have revolutionized the voice-over industry (feat. Al Lowe)

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Recording and editing voice-overs for games is a lot of work. But back in the 90s, Sierra had a magical tool that sped up the process quite significantly. Here's Al Lowe, creator of Leisure Suit Larry, telling me about the details... and, as a bonus, he sent me the scraps of documentation for the program, which I will also show you in full.
Automatic voice line cutter: voicelinecutte...
Chapters:
00:00 Intro / The Lost Interview
02:49 Recording Voiceovers is Hard Work
05:33 Al Lowe Talks About the Magic Software
16:25 Outro
18:12 Bonus: Documentation for Message Compiler
19:24 Bonus: Documentation for Message Editor
23:31 Bonus: Internal appraisal/suggestion box document
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Опубликовано:

14 авг 2024

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Комментарии : 35

@lightbearer972 2 месяца назад

For the record, 36² = 1296. But in all seriousness, Troels, wow! This is positively fascinating. What a unique and revolutionary toolset! A crying shame that the original software itself was lost to time, but I can't say I expected anything else from CUC in the process of gutting Sierra's offices of all art and software assets. Awesome bit of history documentation on your part! Well done!

@dannastic7160 2 месяца назад

I love Al Lowe! ❤ I always get so happy whenever he pops up somewhere and starts telling us a story..! Thanks SQH for this video, a piece of video game history revealed!

@MonochromeWench 2 месяца назад

In modern times this is the sort of thing that would be presented at GDC for the good of all game developers.

@spacequesthistorian 2 месяца назад

Indeed. Someone needs to remake this system. Adventure Game Studio hobbyists would lose their minds.

@synchronos1 2 месяца назад

At some point in the future we can't be sure if the voiceover was produced by AI Lowe or Al Lowe.

@beavinator 2 месяца назад

I had to copy and paste that into notepad to be certain you were making the joke I thought you were making. Why have we still never updated Arial/Roboto to make uppercase i visually distinct from lowercase l after so many years...? 😆

@wisacks 2 месяца назад

Using NAB timecodes to store voice line metadata... that is freaking genius.

@BrandonBlume 2 месяца назад

Torin's Passage had Mike Shapiro who went on to voice the Gman in Half-Life! (and Barney the security guard....and Otis the overweight security guard in the Opposing Force expansion).

@KM-hv1jg 2 месяца назад

And McZee in 3D Movie Maker!

@beavinator 2 месяца назад

So, thanks to your videos I learned about the script for the CD version of Loom being drastically cut down from the original. I'm just now learning this was also the case for Freddy Pharkas. This kind of knowledge is like poison for a rampant completionist like me. Any other classic games I love that I thought I'd played the best version of but actually only got around half the dialogue, that I should be aware of?

@Psy500 2 месяца назад

I don't think even Pixar had anything that advanced for voice lines at the time.

@joshm7769 2 месяца назад

Very interesting!

@revelationnow 2 месяца назад

Fuck yeah! Donald Duck's playground was one of the first games I ever played on the commodore 64... after counting cars. The second thing I said is irrelevant. After revisiting the Commodore 64... I own more of them than I like to admit, Donald Duck's Playground was an incredibly advanced game for the platform

@spacequesthistorian 2 месяца назад

Donald Duck's Playground was my favorite game as a child. I used to play that for hours on my family's Commodore 64. I had no idea it was a Sierra game or that Al Lowe made it until I was well into adulthood. So now, every time I meet Al, I always say thank you for Donald Duck's Playground. (And that's the reason why that joke is in this video. ☺️)

@RikardPeterson 2 месяца назад

Seems like a good setup! One thing I'd wished you'd asked about though is how they handled multiple takes. Did the system simply overwrite any previous takes in the assumption that the last take is the one you'd want to use, or did it store multiple takes and have a feature for "blessing" one version during editing? And how did that work? When I made the one adventure game that I've made (so far?) I did automate trimming and normalising of the clips, but a tool like this could probably still have saved me hours of work.

@hamishfox 2 месяца назад

Those were the days of recording to tape. There wasn't nearly enough disk space to record to the computer and no one wants to scrub through hours of audio looking for the perfect take, and if you wanted to edit it it meant pulling out a razorblade and physically cutting the tape, so if you didn't like a take you just recorded over it. I mean technically pro tools existed in 1994 but it wasn't exactly commonplace.

@MR-vj8dn 2 месяца назад

Appreciate your videos. Also: Al, hi! 👋🏻

@spacequesthistorian 2 месяца назад

Thank you! ☺️

@deckarep 2 месяца назад

@spacequesthistorian - are you really gonna make us tediously screen shot the doc? It’s almost like a meta thing. Check out this awesome tech that Sierra automated! It was brilliant. Oh yeah here’s the docs just screenshot and scrub the video. Plz provide a link good sir and you are brilliant for bringing Al Lowe on and talking about this. Some things about Sierra’s game making process was pure gold!

@spacequesthistorian 2 месяца назад

I wasn't really sure how much I could get away with. Remember, Al himself got sued for trying to sell his own copies of Larry's dev disks because they MIGHT contain stuff Activision owned. If I put the docs in a video, I can always take it down. If I put it up on Pastebin or something, then I _might_ get in trouble. I probably wouldn't; just playing it safe.

@deckarep 2 месяца назад

@@spacequesthistorian I completely get it…also it ended up being a quick internet hop skip jump away. Definitely stay legit.

@spacequesthistorian 2 месяца назад

@@deckarep Thanks. Oh, I should probably clarify. Al didn't actually get sued; he was just told to take down the auction OR ELSE. I got that part wrong.

@deckarep 2 месяца назад

@@spacequesthistorian it’s a shame that Activision at that time was still worried about some intellectual property from 30-40 year old games getting into the hands of the general populace. Hopefully Microsoft will be different about it all.

@spacequesthistorian 2 месяца назад

@@deckarep It's a lawyer thing. If they don't safeguard against every single potential loophole, it could set a precedent for yadda yadda yadda, you get it. It's never gonna happen but that's lawyer-think. Also, the AGI source code is already readily available because of a screw-up with the Space Quest II master disk: lanceewing.github.io/blog/sierra/agi/sq2/2024/05/22/do-you-own-this-space-quest-2-disk.html 😝

@hamishfox 2 месяца назад

It blows my mind to think that sierra invented automatic trim and normalise programs and then just shelved the tech. That's like inventing magnetic tape for recording fart noises and then just throwing the prototype in the bin.

@McGinty84 2 месяца назад

Now you just need to recover Daniel Stacey's SQ2 novel lol!

@spacequesthistorian 2 месяца назад

Ooh shit, there's an uncomfortable blast from the past... 😅 Sorry, that shit's not gonna write itself.

@McGinty84 2 месяца назад

@spacequesthistorian all we need is a time machine and a floppy disk! It's simple really.

@slimepsychic 2 месяца назад

1296

@TwinOpinion 2 месяца назад

This is AMAZING! 😍 Incredible workflow and tech. Of course it was yet, another piece of gold that CUC had no idea what to do with. If only they had run a company instead of a scam, they would have made far more money. 🤣

@spacequesthistorian 2 месяца назад

Yeah, CUC weren't really interested in the art of making games. They were just a bunch of suits with dollar bills in their eyes. It's a damn shame. So much legacy, all gone.

@TwinOpinion 2 месяца назад

@@spacequesthistorian I remember being worried for SIERRA as Adventure game sales dwindled. When they published Half-Life I thought they were safe! No one saw CUC coming. CUC really cooked and ate the golden goose, so to speak. One of the biggest blunders in video game history...

@FASTFASTmusic 2 месяца назад

That was fascinating. So much talent wasted all round. I could have used that for QFI and SQ2 but then I would not have got to work with them ...

@hamishfox 2 месяца назад

It wouldn't have just been revolutionary for the voice over industry. It would have been revolutionary for the whole audio industry. Back in those days DAWs were basically potatoes and the ability to automate that stuff would have been completely mind blowing to an audio engineer. Most of them would have been used to doing that stuff by hand with a razorblade at worst or with overdubbing (which massively reduces quality) at best.

@hamishfox 2 месяца назад

Something something buy a DX7 for your music something something