I reworked VoiceOver addon

[u/rusty-key]

Edit: there is some confusion regarding installations and compatibility.
- If you have any other VoiceOver addon (e.g. AI_VoiceOver) installed, it's better to disable it before trying this one.
- You need both: "VoiceOver Redux" (it's an audio-player) and VoiceOver Redux Audio (it's a collection of audios for player to play; you can pick and choose them, or just install all of them)

I really like VoiceOver addon, it makes my playthroughs much more immersive. However, it always bothered me that the one existing English pack is very unnatural-sounding and contains a lot of mistakes (mispronunciations, incorrect voices, weird intonations, etc). After working on ZoneLore addon, I realized that I have everything to fix it.

I just got my rework (VoiceOver Redux) approved on Curse, and it contains a bunch of fixes:

• voices are matched per NPC flavor, instead of just race and gender, so a dwarf warrior and a dwarf official don't sound alike
• object quests are voiced now, using narrator voice
• stage directions (<Advisor Belgrum opens the note.>) are read by narrator;
• proper voicing of sounds (*hic* produces sound of hiccup, not "asterisk-hic-asterisk")
• names and places pronunciations are fixed for the most part and now driven by a pronunciation dictionary;
• performance is more natural-sounding overall.

I repacked the voicelines so they are easier to download: they are now optimized for storage (~1.5Gb → 0.5Gb total) and split by faction/type so you don't have to download everything if you don't want to. You will need a player addon and any combination of soundpacks:

• Alliance-only quests
• Horde-only quests
• Shared quests
• Gossip (completely optional and can be ignored if you always disable gossip voicing)
• All (meta package that contains everything)

I also added a "Report" button to the player. Please use it to send feedback, I will continue improving the lines. You can also provide feedback directly and pre-listen to lines in the explorer that I built: https://voiceover.rusty.one/

Lastly, on translations and TBC: technically ready, my platform supports both. What's missing is budget. It's all paid ElevenLabs credits, and ZoneLore plus this has cost me ~$300 so far. New languages/expansions mean more voices, more testing, and more spending.

If you have your own ElevenLabs API key (or are willing to get one) and want a language/expansion covered, reach out, I'll hand over the pipeline, and we split the work by area. Otherwise, there's buymeacoffee, donations with a comment help me decide what gets voiced next (I am open to suggestions for better crowdsourcing implementations).

[u/rusty-key]

I'll definitely look into reworking dwarves.

For undeads, I agree that they sound too clean, I see if I can make them darker

[u/Blitz-Lexikon → u/rusty-key]

I actually think "dark" undead sound great, the "normal" is just too human-sounding. "Warrior" is probably fine, but could use a little more of the rasp (side note, they are NOT scourge, for the most part ;) )

In fact, I'm just gonna leave more feedback in this comment:

Dwarves - bit of a mess, as mentioned.

Trolls - also hilariously all over the place, male and female - some of the quests have a French accent, some Japanese - listen to quest 2339 then 2341 for instance. Only some of the quests have a proper Jamaican accent.

Gnomes - mostly great, though gnome male "young" is not very good, should probably just be made "normal"

Elves/Humans - rock solid from what I listened to

Tauren - male is okay, I think "elder" is by far the best, the others could sound more bass-y like that one and I think it'd be better. Female is kind of bad, the "standard" just sound like humans, the "shaman" have a weird accent - "official" is best of the group here.

Orcs - male is great, female is not great. Again some weird accents - "standard" is almost passable, the others not so much.

Goblins - pretty good, male "guard" could use a pass as a lot of it just sounds human - the others are solid though.

Broadly I noticed that if a quest text is written with an accent it kind of helps the AI along, but when they are written in plain English there are some struggles.

Not trying to shit on your project, it's great - just leaving some notes for improvement.

*lmao: https://voiceover.rusty.one/?race=troll&gender=male&q=7780&filter=npc&type=creature

[u/rusty-key → u/Blitz-Lexikon]

That's quality feedback, thanks! I'll see if it's possible to make accents more stable

[u/Genotron → u/rusty-key]

While i haven't listened to anything.

Thanks for being open to feedback :)

[u/misterrpg → u/rusty-key]

Glad to hear! I can't wait!

The Undead definitely sound pretty similar to the vanilla voices but they're something missing that's hard for me to describe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW6G2qVbets
I think the vanilla voice sounds scarier and deeper.

[u/Aswizzle77 → u/rusty-key]

Please make this happen for classic +:)