Talking to a video game ?

I dont know how true it is, but I am being told by a friend of mine that he had played a game recently that allowed him to LITTERALY to the creature with english language. He had a full conversation with this animal and it responded to him like he was real. He put on his headset w/ mic and he talked to him about what he did at work that day. Is this crap or true. If its true then it opens a whole new window for me. Thanks by the way on your last response on "cant draw" You guys are funny as hell

Nope. We're not there yet.

I have conversations with video games.

puki, you're seriously "out there" but funny. Dont change

I think he's annoying.

Anyway, we're definately not there yet - just look at microsofts speech recognition failure when they were showing it off to the press last week.

The OSX text to speech engine in Leopard was shown of in the WWDC keynotes, and it sounded damn good. Of course, that's only half the part.

In a way we are there, just a limited way. I used speech recognition on my iBook quite a bit a while back. I was using ArtRage and had my Wacom on top of the keyboard and the whole iBook and Wacom in my lap (maybe I should have gotten a TabletPC :) ). Then I used voice commands for everything, saving, changing brushes etc. And the cool thing is you don't need to say the word once to your computer so that it recognizes it, you actually type it in. So for instance you type in "Switch to pencil", and then when you say it the computer will recognize it (most of the time anyway). The speech recognition on the Mac requiers that you either hold down a key while you speak, or say a a keyword. I was a bit blasphemous and used Jesus. So I would be going like, "Jesus Switch to eraser", "Jesus save as", "Jesus switch to ArtRage2" etc. :-)

What it doesn't handle, is actually converting the speech to text. Though there are tools that do this too.

So if the game was based on a limited number of commands, sure this could have been done. And "games" like Eliza, have been around for quite some time, that attempt to keep up some kind of conversation...but with text only. There are some of these on the net too, that are much more advanced than the original Eliza.

I guess, none of this is particularly easy to do, but quite possible within limits.

Ragnar

i would enjoy talking to the characters in a video game... but they'd have to talk back... and react...

for example... if i was playing a fps or first person type game, and was walking down a street in the game and passed by a guy and said to him, "hey punk, nice dress you're wearing"... i'd like him to turn around take a swing at me...

... or at the least, ask me for my number :)

but yeah... i think that's a lil ways off still...

--Mike

Trooper,

This kind of exhibition or conference piece 'game' is generally monitored by a human who role plays with the active audience. I have seen it done with strange medical implements who you wouldn't normally see talking to you.

IPete2.

IPete2,

Well this kid Albert said he played on his playstation or somthing of that sort. And he wasnt online. I'll bet he full of dung and he's pulling my chain.
thanks

Oh, I have conversations with some FPS games, especially SWAT 4, trying to add in some comments to my squadmates from getting into the line of fire with some suspects, it's just too tough to restrain a SWAT officer from getting turned into swiss cheese right in front of your very eyes.

It would be cool in a fps, where you could shout out "Fall back", "Attack" etc. Could actually be done with most of todays games, by just running a command recognition thing in the background that pressed the right keys when a command was given. Of course, the problem with it is that it's generally much quicker for you to hit a key or two on your keyboard, then to speak a command.

Ragnar

I agree. Ive had a few games you say just the command on a list and it has response. I guess games like that will have to be the backbone, till the complete language is somehow programable

Anyone can talk to a video game. I do it all the time when I play Morrowind. The tricky part is getting the video game to talk back to you.

Raven Shield on the Xbox let you tell your squad what to do. Only problem was that for best results you had to shout in english with a german accent. Otherwise half the stuff you said resulted in some lemon throwing a grenade in your midst whilst shouting "Frag" and killing you all.

Was about as intellingent as most MP games against human players, so I suppose thats quite impressive :)

I use voice commands when playing Silent Hunter3 - and it adds to the immersiveness. It's especially satisfying when the sub's in port and it starts to ease out on 'ahead slow'.

The downside is that it occasionally 'mis-hears' what I've said and fires off a torpedo...

imagine what your neighbours would think
if you were playing an fps and
shouting out commands ! .. lol
'fire!'.. 'attack'..

I think there was a game that you could talk
to a parrot or a dolphin ? ... I think it
was for the dreamcast (?) ...

As a side note. You would probably need to use a headset for such a game, unless the game had some clever way to filter out the sound it was making, from the sound you were making. Generally command recognition works horribly if there is lots of background noise, such as music playing in the background.

Ragnar