The VIC-VODER presentation at yesterday's club meeting was a success! First off, using the sample BASIC program of putting words withing PRINT statements and using a C128 in 40-column mode, I showed off how it could speak, though our treasurer thought the voice could be more natural.
Then our young member, Vincent, tried his hands at it; of course, after awhile he started putting in phrases from cartoon shows and movies and other language that a middle-schooler would use (but no bad language). He amused himself for quite awhile. Our treasurer tried some Spanish on it, even though the VIC-VODER is set for English pronunciation. The VV passably spoke the words (well, it would mispronounce certain English words, too).
The highlight was when we hooked up VV to the VIC-20 and ran Scott Adams' games. First was Adventureland. Very nice! The voice lent more to the atmosphere of the game. Vincent tried going through the game, but we oldsters didn't have the patience to try every command in the parser. Second, we tried The Count. Ah, now we were getting results! We could actually figure out the parser, and it gave us answers that we could use. Again the VV did well. Fun!
In the end, we wondered whether the voice in VIC-VODER could be switched to a different language's pronunciation or even to a feminine voice. Also one member wanted a line-out jack in the unit I had so that the voice could be amplified through bigger speakers (I told him that there are plans to include such a line-out in the next VV run).
Those Scott Adams' games appearing
at CommVEx with VIC-VODER,
Robert Bernardo
Fresno Commodore User Group
http://videocam.net.au/fcug
July 27-28 Commodore Vegas Expo v9 -
http://www.portcommodore.com/commvex