Help trying to dub voices into other languages in Discword 1

[softwaregnu]

Hello everyone,

I frequently replay some games that I played during my childhood, one of them being Discoword 1, among other games, which I can enjoy again thanks to projects like ScummVM and other console emulators.

I recently saw that James Woodcock had remastered songs from the game and it turned out fantastic (https://www.pixelrefresh.com/my-discwor ... r-scummvm/).

Then I started looking through the game files and I saw that it was very easy to translate the text of the subtitles into other languages simply by taking one of the TXT of the official languages and modifying them (something that made me wonder why there weren't people translating it into other languages non-official languages).

I also wondered if it was possible to dub the original English voices into other languages and I found out that it was possible. The ENGLISH.SMP file, which is an audio file that contains all the dialogue, voices and some sounds of the game in English and that can be imported into programs like GoldWave or Audacity easily as raw, PCM 8-bit mono (non-endian) and 22050khz and be rerecorded in other languages. You simply have to record the same dialogues in the same milliseconds as the original file, since there must be a list that indicates to the engine the fragment of each specific sound or dialogue within the raw audio file ENGLISH.SMP.

What has been the problem I have encountered? Well, no current audio editing program can save the result of voices re-recorded in other languages in SMP PCM 8-bit mono (non-endian) and 22050khz format. If anyone can help me in this regard I would appreciate it.

When analyzing the songs remastered by James Woodcock I realized that they had a current format and characteristics (sound in Vorbis Audio codec, stereo, 32 bits and 44100hz), and I asked myself how is this possible? Could I re-record the entire ENGLISH.SMP audio file in other languages and current format like these songs and make it work in the game like James had done with the songs? I think it can be done, it's a matter of the game engine in Scummvm allowing it, so if someone could tell me how it is possible to do it and start testing the re-recordings in other languages that I have done, or the community will do in the future, I would appreciate it.

Finally, and this is a comment that I wanted to leave in view of the future of retro games, I believe that artificial intelligence can play a very important role in remastering or reimaginings of the images rendered by old retro games without having to modify the existing code and going directly to the post-processing options. I don't know if you know the MAGNIFIC.AI tool, of which I recommend visiting its Twitter/X profile (https://twitter.com/magnific_ai). Specifically, this tool has managed to hit the right button and achieve a reliable reimagination of the images, achieving a brutal enhanced and beyond all expectations that it is not a remake and I believe that when the computing capacity is sufficient to analyze and reimagine each rendered frame The game will provide a second life to retro games thanks to tools like SCUMMVM + AI and bring them to a new young audience to whom 1990's graphics do not invite them to immerse themselves in these great games. Soon other open source tools (like Stable Difussion) will find this same key and it can be integrated into post-processing tools, at least that's what I think.

For now, nothing more, if anyone can help me in any of the two ways to dub the voices of the dialogues in other languages, please participate in this publication and let's find a way for whoever is interested to have the necessary knowledge to carry out the project to be able to integrate voices in other languages into the game.

Greetings and thanks to the ScummVM community for so many years of work that have given me so many hours of fun and entertainment.

[rzil]

Hi, I have a very old script I wrote for dubbing discworld and recently uploaded the script here:
https://github.com/adventurebrew/kolmin ... /discworld
(see split-voice.py and merge-voice.py)
with it you won't need to worry about the milliseconds anymore.
I think the script was made for python2.7, but could probably run on python3 with minor modification (or none - I haven't checked)

I, myself, still trying to figure out how to edit the font

[invwar]

The problem with AI Upscaling is that the games are made in most cases for a VGA resolution of 200p. So if you update the graphics to 4K, would mean scaling the graphics up by 10x. First of all ScummVM would need to be able to handle that, which likely can be done. But then, you would need to adjust the scripts. Which is definitely the harder part. Basically you have to make a complete new game.
I see a chance in using 4K overlays and maybe create an interpreter who can handle that. But this would be not ScummVM, at best a fork specified on that.
Another option could be in 10 years maybe proper AI live upscaling filter who works like the current upscaler, just way better looking. But that is total fortune teller mode. At best you would have in the first implementations a Last Ninja like experience.

I am first of all curious of implementations for Interactive Movies, when AI upscaling is finally good enough to upscale the stamp size videos of the early 90s. GK2 in glorious HD... a man's dream.