Ryan Bloom
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Very Early Access Version 2.0: The NiGHTS Documentary
🕑 Added 2024-04-07 16:00:12 +0000 UTCSo talking about it with a friend, he mentioned that the screen reader TTS in Microsoft Edge is supposed to be "extremely good." Microsoft is currently burning the candle at both ends trying to establish themselves in the modern AI hellscape, but that does mean that as far as text-to-speech goes, Edge's screen reader is actually probably the single best free option available right now. It not only pronounces 95% of words correctly, it basically sounds like a real actual human. (The worst one being when it attempts to say "CD-ROMs" and it comes out a weird garble that sounds like "seed-aromess")
So here's the entire script to the much-vaunted NiGHTS into Dreams documentary I've talked up for literal years. Compared to Bubsy, this is an extremely polished, near-final script that only needs minor touch-ups. This is more just testing out the Edge TTS. Like the Bubsy MP3, I went through and filled in sound cues where necessary, but I also added a music track under it, too. This is basically a podcast at this point, though it still gets a little weird in a couple of places -- the TTS can say most words correctly, but it still tends to change its voice inflection in weird places (particularly when saying "Playstation" or "console").
Sort of shocked because in putting this together, I had to grab audio from an old GiantBomb Quicklook where they played NiGHTS in order to get a soundbyte. That quicklook is nearly 12 years old, and it was actually the original impetus for me to start writing this script. This video has been a long, long, long time coming.
I think the quality of the script bears that out, too. This is something where I want to like, do it right. See if I can't get stock footage for the parts where I wouldn't necessarily be showing game footage, you know? This could be a legitimate, real documentary -- not just a Youtube essay. Or maybe I'm just hyping myself up too much. But it's neat, at any rate.
One day, folks. I promise.
Featuring music from the "Lucid Dreaming" album on OC Remix
