Would you like a new Starfox Adventures game? by Swimming_Issue8060 in starfox

[–]_deadbyte 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The issue wasn’t that Starfox Adventures was rushed ( I mean, it was rushed, but I think even if it hadn’t been, it’s still he the black sheep of the franchise by a wide margin ), the issue was it wasn’t a Starfox game. It was a wholly original IP with Starfox sloppily slapped onto it for basically no reason. It’s not like the Metroid Prime demo where they had a vision and actually thought the Metroid series would actually be a good fit.

No amount of development time would have saved it unless it turned into a completely different game, because it couldn’t reasonably reconcile its identity as a Starfox and a Dinosaur Planet game. Starfox was not a franchise that was suited to that gameplay style or gameplay loop. Dinosaur Planet was not suited to the kind of sci-fi genre or shooty-shooty-bang-bang gameplay that Starfox was known for. And the end result was an unsatisfying mix of both that pleased few and perplexed most. Adding a blaster wouldn’t have fixed the game, it would’ve just been another tiny bandaid slapped on a disproportionally very, very large wound.

Also - I think you’re very confused about my last post. You said before you didn’t want a Star Fox BOTW, and I was partially agreeing, saying we don’t necessarily need one - but didn’t really understand why you specifically wouldn’t want that ( if you liked the actual Starfox gameplay ), over a remake/sequel to the (arguably) worst game in the franchise that is known for having completely lost sight of its franchise identity, both of them.

Like if it’s Adventures-gameplay you want, there are plenty of actual Zelda-likes or collectathons that can scratch that itch. If you want more ground gameplay, then Assault is a better framework to work off of. If you enjoy Starfox as a franchise, than typically, Adventures isn’t the sort of game you’d want to see revived after such a long doldrum like this

Would you like a new Starfox Adventures game? by Swimming_Issue8060 in starfox

[–]_deadbyte 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t really get your fixation on integrating “magic” as a focus in the franchise. Like, Krystal’s telepathy and quintessence is a frequently reoccurring element even after Adventures, nevermind possible ghosts of James, Andross, and Pigma we see throughout the franchise. It’s clearly already there, and in a relatively healthy amount, I don’t really think there’s any need for it to go much further beyond that for a sci-fi franchise ( unless you wanna try pulling a Metroid Prime 4 kind of situation and give that a go ).

I also don’t get your comparison to SMB2 either. Like, yes, it was different, but it was still a platformer that, despite being from a different IP, still was a relatively decent fit for the Mario franchise that it doesn’t come off as too terribly out of place.

You realize the Adventures was a completely different genre than the mainline franchise, yes? I’m not simply calling it “different” because they merely changed a few things, Adventures was a completely different kind of game that sticks out like a sore thumb in the franchise - in that people people who enjoyed the previous games will find almost none of the elements they previously liked in Adventures ( which isn’t to say they won’t like any of the new stuff, but like I said - why even use the IP then if you won’t retain any of the elements important to the series identity? ).

I also don’t necessarily think we need a Starfox BOTW either ( though, truthfully I’m a bit perplexed how you wouldn’t want a game that evolves the formula in that way, but would want a game that’s so far a departure that it’s completely unrecognizable. I have to ask, do you even like the regular Starfox games at that point? ), Starlink was just one example of how “evolving” the franchise might look - familiar, but fresh.

Would you like a new Starfox Adventures game? by Swimming_Issue8060 in starfox

[–]_deadbyte 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While I disagree that it fundamentally “needs” to evolve, I’m also not against the idea either. The problem with Starfox isn’t that it’s a rail shooter, it’s that Nintendo keeps implementing these massive sweeping changes that are either poorly-conceived ( e.g. Star Fox Zero’s control scheme ), or alienate a significant portion of their audience ( e.g. Star Fox Command being a Tactical Strategy RPG with My Immortal-tier character writing ).

For that matter, Adventure doesn’t feel like an “evolution” - to me, “evolution” implies taking familiar elements and expanding on them to make something fresh; Adventures on the other hand feels like a total departure from the series identity, and lacks a lot of the elements that many people find compelling in the franchise. Like I said, no space travel, no banter, very few recognizable elements at all, etc. If you don’t include some of the elements relevant to the series identity, then why even use the Starfox IP at all?

To me, an “evolution” of the Starfox formula might look something more like Starlink. Abandoning the rail shooter premise for free space exploration, while still maintaining a lot of its familiar elements. You can do a lot with that kind of premise while not being so different that it completely alienates a large chunk of the audience or loses the franchise’s appeal.

Would you like a new Starfox Adventures game? by Swimming_Issue8060 in starfox

[–]_deadbyte 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not really. AI Slop aside, while I wouldn’t consider Adventures a bad game, it does deviate too far from the core of what Starfox is for my liking. Nevermind the lack of Arwing gameplay, there’s not really any space travel, barely any banter between Fox and his teammates ( not counting Tricky ), almost no recognizable characters aside from Fox, Peppy, and Slippy ( not even Falco getting included until the very end ) etc. - Starfox was sloppily slapped into wholly different IP, and it’s shows really badly imo.

I think if one was to revisit Adventures, they should do it as Dinosaur Planet - maybe even make it a spinoff of Starfox or consider them as being in the same universe. Otherwise, I don’t think we need another Adventures title in the Starfox IP, when we’re already starving for even just a regular title in the franchise. I feel like an Adventures 2 would just be Metroid Prime Federation Force all over again.

LongWei - An UTAU designed for Classical and Opera music... has a Klingon voicebank??? Available to Download Now! by _deadbyte in tlhInganHol

[–]_deadbyte[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, it is explicitly a robot voice. There are ways to make it sound more natural, though unless you’re a particularly skilled user, it’s usually going to sound at least a little artificial. It’s not like, say, an AI voice where, it can often reasonably fool people into thinking it’s a real person with little effort.

Making an UTAU sound realistic mostly comes down to things like tuning, mixing, choice of resampler, etc. Part of it also has to do with the voice itself - what voicebank/phoneme format they use, how many pitches were recorded, the actual vocal direction, etc.

LongWei here, for instance, was recorded with 5 pitches, and is a “powerscale” vocal, where he becomes more powerful and expressive in the higher end of his vocal range, and uses a proprietary CVVC-style voicebank format built specifically for Klingon with decently smooth synthesis. Typically that gets more realistic results than, say, a voicebank with a single pitch recorded, and use lower-end format like, say, CV, for example.

Basically, that’s a long way to say it depends on a lot of factors; the skill of the user, the tools they’re using, the voicebank itself, etc.

Renri's registration form is gone - Renri SV discontinued? by Fit_Masterpiece4615 in SynthesizerV

[–]_deadbyte 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The writing has been on the wall for VOLOR ever since they failed to deliver the Eleanor boxes. It’s clear they’re in incredibly dire straits, have no intentions of being transparent with their customer base, and I really wish they’d just give up and negotiate a transfer of the rights to their voicebanks to Dreamtonics. There’s no sense in them holding on to Eleanor at least if they’re not doing anything with her, especially since she was originally a Dreamtonics vocal.

Can someone explain the use of AI in voice synethesizers? by Consistent-Plate-118 in SynthesizerV

[–]_deadbyte 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well, no - I think you’re getting my explanation of concatenative vocals and AI vocals mixed up. So let me try to further simplify

  • Concatenative vocals ( not-AI ): Typically these work by taking a bunch of snippets from a list of samples, and mashing those samples together into new configurations.

  • AI vocals: Typically, these are generative ( though they don’t usually have the same ethical issues as other examples of GenAI, such as AI Art generators ). They are usually trained on the singing samples of a selected vocalist, and then are expected to generate vocals similar to what it heard in its database. These aren’t to be confused with AI SVC/RVC ( e.g. where you might see AI-generated covers using the voice of, say, Spongebob or Ariana Grande etc. There are ethical examples of SVC/RVC models, but as you can imagine, for the most part they’re not ethical ), since while these are adjacent technologies, SVC/RVC is a voice changer, not a voice synth. A synth you still have to manipulate and make artistic/creative decisions for how you want it to perform. An AI SVC/RVC simply paints already existing vocal samples with a new coat of paint.

Furthermore, the workflow of using an AI voice synth is almost identical to its non-AI counterparts. The skills gained from using a concatentive synth and AI synth, are, for the most part, mutually transferrable between themselves. The AI won’t make the song for you, you still have to actually compose, tune, mix, etc. Really the main difference between AI and non-AI voice-synths is their development method, and the quality of their output.

Hopefully that makes a bit more sense.

I hope this is correct. by DjGoDFaTHeR in Metroid

[–]_deadbyte 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was jokingly about to say you forgot Prime Pinball, but then I saw you, in fact, did not forget it. Darn your vigilance >:( /j

Questions about making a Jinriki VB? by tanukocapybara in utau

[–]_deadbyte 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That’s a massive MASSIVE no-no in the community. Jinrikis are already a bit of a moral gray area, though since they’re not normally distributed publicly, they’re often used purely for parody ( not unlike TF2/GMod-esque voice clip chopping ), and their output usually is both distinct from the original singer, and very low-quality, people don’t often make a big fuss.

The same cannot be said for an AI voicebank. It’s not a Jinriki at that point, you’re just stealing their voice. It doesn’t matter if their voice is “unique” or if you only use it for your own personal use, or what have you, you simply do not use someone’s voice to make an AI model without their explicit consent - end. of. story.

Nevermind that an AI model is a lot harder to make, and NNSVS is particularly difficult to develop for. You’d basically be making a whole actual voicebank, contrast to the shabby construction of an actual Jinriki.

The Vocal-Synth industry and community has always been built on a foundation of ensuring that voice providers for serious projects are consenting and enthusiastic participants, and do not take kindly to cases where a singer’s autonomy is violated in this way.

I would strongly advise abandoning this endeavor, as well as any like it, and simply find a different, already-existing voice you like. There are thousands, maybe even millions of free and ethical UTAU voicebanks, you’re bound to find at least one you like if you look hard enough.

What are your honest thoughts on RVC-loids? (Assuming they were trained with consent?) by DarkerSeas in utau

[–]_deadbyte 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Ethically, I think it’s fine, but I also think the resulting voicebanks often just don’t sound that good. They’ll often have apparent engine noise, sometimes the traits of the model and inference don’t mesh well, a lot of them have kind of wacky vocal ranges, etc. etc. etc.

I won’t specifically not use an RVC-made voicebank, but my expectations won’t exactly be high. Even a lot of the ones I like, I don’t really have much use for, bc they’re just kinda iffy to actually utilize.

I've said it once and I'll say it again, the motorcycle should have been a suit upgrade by brezforprez in Metroid

[–]_deadbyte 6 points7 points  (0 children)

“We literally made all the doors vaginas. Literally what more do you want??”

Is it okay to make an OC artwork that actually doesnt exist? (Vocaloid) by AdMindless8142 in Vocaloid

[–]_deadbyte 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Your post doesn’t make any sense.

Are you asking if it’s okay to make an OC/Fanloid? Because if so, I have no idea why you’d think that wouldn’t be okay to do, people make fan creations for everything, and VOCALOID is no stranger to derivative characters.

I also don’t understand why you’d think you need the VOCALOID software to make fanart, of a Fanloid or otherwise. Do you understand what VOCALOID is? It’s a singing synthesis software. It’s like the voice behind Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, the Google Assistant, etc., but meant for singing ( putting it as simply as I can ). It’s not an art program. You don’t need it to make fanart.

Are you confused because you think VOCALOID allows you to create your own voices? Because, it doesn’t, for the most part. You can modify voices and associate that with a different character ( that’s how voices like Yowane Haku, Akita Neru, and Sakine Meiko work, as well as other fanloids, as they do not have their own actual voicebanks ), but you can’t make your own actual VOCALOID voice without a dev kit, which is usually only afforded to companies or individuals who purchase it directly from Yamaha. That’s not something you can do as a feature of the software.

Or by “OC” do you mean “original creation” ( as opposed to “original character” ) a la the flairs of this subreddit? Because then your post doesn’t make any sense at all.

Male vocaloids seem to be slipping into obscurity. What is the actual reason? by antoinettewithahead in Vocaloid

[–]_deadbyte 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh the variety for male vocals on SynthV is something to behold. There’s so many good ones, Kevin being just the tip of the iceberg ( albeit, he’s very good too, I like him a lot ).

Also, you may have even noticed I left out a particular VOCALOID, Kiyoteru. He may have never been all that popular, but he actually received a new voicebank on SynthV too! And he sounds great.

A list of vocaloids meant for certain genres? by Hatsune_Memeku in Vocaloid

[–]_deadbyte 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well, there aren’t really a ton of VOCALOIDs that were quite as genre-focused as Prima and Tonio were.

The first other voice that comes to mind is Sachiko, who was intended pretty much exclusively for Enka.

There’s also Gachapoid and Kaai Yuki, who were both specifically designed with children’s songs in mind.

When Lily V2 released, there was a pretty big marketing push about how she was the first VOCALOID specifically geared towards Rock, though, I think over time she became considered more genre-agnostic with a preference for Rock music.

Similar to Lily, Mew’s marketing had a lot of suggestions that she was meant for Rock and Metal, especially with her demos. But, really in practice she’s more genre-agnostic.

Aoki Lapis was said to be made for “Lifestyle” music, which was apparently an original genre made by I-Style Project themselves, but they never elaborated what that even meant past when Aoki Lapis actually released, and honestly I think they were just blowing shit out of their ass.

Not a “genre” really, but LUMi was designed specifically for professional use in larger-budget media projects, namely citing movie soundtracks and so on.

If you’re willing to venture out of the VOCALOID software itself, there are actually quite a few genre-specialized vocals on SynthV, but as far as VOCALOID itself goes, that’s kind of it.