Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

[kehlis]

Re: Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

nice, ok. Nice to know Dev's pop on here too and not just Russell.

Users who have a purple name denote devs just as an FYI.

[Bobhead]

Re: Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

Wait... what? I thought it was because he is still developing into a man.

[A_Quiet_Pro]

Re: Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

Users who have a purple name denote devs just as an FYI.

AHH, very good info. much appreciated.

[JoeCoolMan24]

Re: Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

What companies or systems use this type of technology? I've never heard of it and wondering what types of examples there are to be able to recognize if it's a realistic sounding application or not.

If we just wait a few years, we can steal the technology used in the OS1 software from the movie, "Her". I'd love ScarJo to talk sabermetrics to me.

[Yeats]

Re: Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

I agree that 2k's commentary seems better than other sports games, but only by a little bit. NBA 2k's commentary is great but it also gets stale because there's only so many lines you can put in. Plus when they include personal stories like how Kevin Durant grew up a Raptors fan, it gets more annoying (for me) than generic lines.

That is my biggest issue with the commentary in some of these games (FIFA as well). Personally, The Show with just Vasgersian on his own describing the PBP, and without any player-specific stories and asides, is all the game needs. The synthesizer idea is interesting but unnecessary -- could see it working for Robo Baseball 3000 maybe.

[NEOPARADIGM]

Re: Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

Look, this is not complicated, and I don't understand why devs haven't picked up on it yet. The way to "fix" commentary is to focus the dialog on in-franchise, in-game content. So long as the commentary is rooted in pointing out things that are currently happening, it can pretty much do no wrong.

I'll use 2K basketball as the example, as it's the standard in commentary right now: it's friggin' INCREDIBLE how the announcers will talk about the last 10 games, talk about current statistical rankings (for both team and individual), and talk about injured players effecting the team, if an injured player is making a return, and so on. 2K's commentary drops the ball when it wants to talk about last season and when it goes into its canned "so-and-so is a lights-out shooter" when in actual fact maybe that player is 0 for his last 20. It would be infinitely better if they just tailored commentary to be performance- and statistics-based

Basically anything that is truly CURRENT and truly ON TOPIC relative to your season/franchise is what works and will never get old. Where devs drop the ball is when they add these mountains of text that refer to the prior season. Devote that same mountain of text to contextual, in-game, in-franchise circumstances and the problem of repetitiveness more or less goes away. It will never get old hearing about current standings, current stats, current streaks and the like. What gets old is hearing about how Justin Verlander made the All-Star game in 2008.

[Heroesandvillains]

Re: Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

Voice synthesis and stitching has a ways to go before being able to replace live voice actors/commentators. But, there are limited applications.

Just curious Wood, is your avatar title "developer" because you are a dev on TS?

The interesting thing is, Woodweaver knows quite a bit about this topic because he - in real life - is actually a robot!

Programmed to kill it at developing The Show!

Good to see you on the boards again, Woodweaver.

[MrOldboy]

Re: Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

Synth voices and voice fonts, even the best, still have not overcome the uncanny valley. You will always know its not an actual person.

Its been proposed before by fans to add into games so that the player's name could be spoken (like an RPG). That could work for maybe having the stadium announcer say the player's actual name if its not in already. Just nothing that is being heard loud and direct, like Matt V or whover is commentating.

[seanjeezy]

Re: Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

The weak link in The Show's commentary is the flow and synergy between broadcasters, the content itself is actually pretty good. The Show and 2K actually share a lot of the same audio "tricks". NEO mentioned it in his post, but if you haven't played 2K here's an example:

Kevin Harlan: And now we take a look at the 2K leaderboard for "insert stat here" *cue overlay*. In first is "insert name here".

Clark Kellog: He's been a beast at/on the "insert basketball term" this "insert time frame". He's "insert basketball cliche".

Steve Kerr: I agree.

The line is so generic, it doesn't even mention the actual stat total. But it works, and its used in a variety of ways to make it sound fresh and original. The funny thing is The Show does the exact same thing but the delivery just kills it, it sounds so disjointed (and that's because it is, lines are recorded separately IIRC). Fix that and the commentary would be right up there with NBA 2K IMO.

[lhslancers]

Re: Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

The weak link in The Show's commentary is the flow and synergy between broadcasters, the content itself is actually pretty good. The Show and 2K actually share a lot of the same audio "tricks". NEO mentioned it in his post, but if you haven't played 2K here's an example:

Kevin Harlan: And now we take a look at the 2K leaderboard for "insert stat here" *cue overlay*. In first is "insert name here".

Clark Kellog: He's been a beast at/on the "insert basketball term" this "insert time frame". He's "insert basketball cliche".

Steve Kerr: I agree.

The line is so generic, it doesn't even mention the actual stat total. But it works, and its used in a variety of ways to make it sound fresh and original. The funny thing is The Show does the exact same thing but the delivery just kills it, it sounds so disjointed (and that's because it is, lines are recorded separately IIRC). Fix that and the commentary would be right up there with NBA 2K IMO.

Harlan and Thorne are great. Never got sick of Thorne all these years on NHL and he's great on 2k Baseball. I like Vasgersian on the MLB Network but I don't think he's a proper play by play guy.

[WickedFastball]

Re: Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

What if for the devs, instead of bringing in the commentators they want and having them spend mucho hours recording lines that eventually become stale; why dont they just bring in the guys they want, have them say a couple random lines just to capture their voiceprint, then using a synthesizer, and an internet connection, the dev's can keep commentary up to the day current with latest headlines and intricacies of a given season or rivalry.

Like how they did with the original Siri?
That might take one wicked program, I have thought the same thing, but it might be a pretty tall order.

[dsk]

Re: Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

I really liked what fifa did 2-3 years ago by having 2 commentray teams. You could select which team you wanted to use in the options.

[A_Quiet_Pro]

Re: Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

I really liked what fifa did 2-3 years ago by having 2 commentray teams. You could select which team you wanted to use in the options.

I could be wrong because I've never tried it with FIFA.. but wasn't that an English team and a Spanish team saying the same lines in their respective languages? Not two different teams per se?

[Bobhead]

Re: Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

Siri requires an internet connection just to even use, because somewhere in the world there is an enormous computing system with an enormous database, supporting the entire operation.

[Scooter3]

Re: Just had an awesome idea that'll change ALL sports gaming commentary forever!

What if for the devs, instead of bringing in the commentators they want and having them spend mucho hours recording lines that eventually become stale; why dont they just bring in the guys they want, have them say a couple random lines just to capture their voiceprint, then using a synthesizer, and an internet connection, the dev's can keep commentary up to the day current with latest headlines and intricacies of a given season or rivalry.

Good idea! I would like to add that maybe this synthesizer could be built into the game and the dialog would be set-up for any voice print. You might have a choice of announcers who's voices have been "voice-printed into the system. All-time announcers like Vin Scully, Mel Allen, Harry Caray, Bob Uecker,Russ Hodges and Joe Garagiola.

Plus this built-in synthesizer could be put to use for all the names that don't make the audio list.

Keep thinking outside the box! Things we thought impossible yesterday are within reach today.

scooter...BigKlu...