WoW VoiceBox Beta 0.4 Now released

[Anozireth]

Edit 4: Beta 0.4 is now released. Please see post #56 for details!

Edit 3: Alpha 3 is released, which should fix the crash on loading for those using non-US versions of Vista. Download link is on page 2.

Edit 2: I've released Alpha 2. Please see post #31 for details!

Edit 1: I've got it up as a test version on Sourceforge now. Here is the link: [s]http://sourceforge.net/projects/wowvoicebox/ [/s]http://wowvoicebox.codeplex.com Included in the download are three files: the program, the command configuration XML file and a small HTML user guide. I would suggest having a look at the user guide before you start. For those interested in the source, it's available in the project's SVN repository.

Please download it and let me know how it goes! If you run in to trouble, the more information you can provide, the better. Try to tell me details about your system, what you were trying to do and what didn't work, as well as any information about other third party software you're using such as Keyclone. If you have ideas on how to improve it, I'm definitely interested. For feedback, you can either drop me a PM, post in this thread or email anozireth AT yahoo DOT com (please put "voicebox" somewhere in the subject line). My goal is to make this as useful as possible, so all the feedback I get is important!


Original post follows (some information may be out of date):

Hi everyone. I've almost gotten my voice recognition program to the point that I'm ready to send it out to a few people for a small alpha test. It allows for key presses and macros to be mapped to voice commands. It also allows voice control of in-game chat channels, so you can chat directly without having to pause what you're doing. All commands can be either broadcast to all copies of WoW (via your normal software key broadcaster) or sent only to the focused window.

Here's what I'm looking for in a tester:

• Multiboxing
• Running Vista 32 or 64 with SP1 (XP support may come later)
• Running a software key broadcaster (ones other than keyclone would be nice to see how it works with those)

Currently all the commands are manually set up in XML, so it would probably be helpful for testers to be familiar with XML. Not a requirement though as I'm writing a manual that hopes to explain how to set it up. Eventually I want to have a nice user interface for editing the commands.

Some things I would like to get tested:

• Does it run on your system?
• Does it affect your system performance?
• Does it play nice with Ventrilo?
• Does the user interface get in your way?
• Does the broadcast feature work properly with your key broadcaster?
• Testing with another game would be cool too

I'm hoping to have it ready tonight or tomorrow. I haven't yet set up a website for it (sourceforge takes a few days to activate), so I would have to email it to those interested at this point. Source code included upon request (it's a mess at this point ). I'm only looking for about half a dozen testers at this point, so please note that I may not be able to let everyone in on it if demand is higher.

Post here with any questions, or send me a PM with an email address if you'd like to help test it.

[The_Whack]

I think I would like to give this a go. I spent most of this morning trying to set up MS Vista Voice Recognition for playing WoW.

I'm not too familiar with XML but learning has never been a problem.

I'm Multiboxing 5
Vista 32 w/SP1
Keyclone

I think testing this might be fun.

[Fleecy]

I'm currently using Dragon Naturally Speaking but I'm always keen to try an alternative.

Check, check & check to all tester "requirements".

[Knapenburger]

Will it "train" to my voice? I mean..I have an accent and I have used voice recognition software before and most are a peice of shit, this is what I am fearing:

Heal
*character dances*
Healing Wave
*character waves*
FUCKING HEALLLLLLLLLLLL
*hearthstone*

[Anozireth]

Well the voice recognition in Vista is pretty good in my experience, but it depends greatly on your voice. I have a pretty strong voice so it works well for me. On the other hand I've watched a quadriplegic woman with a very soft voice try to use it and it just failed miserably, which is sad because she could really use it.

I think you will find that when it's listening for specific commands, it's almost 100% accurate unless you have two very similar commands, something like "Send" and "Sand". The dictation is hit and miss still on mine. I think the more you train it outside of my program, the better it will get.

As far as how an accent affects it, well your profile says you're from the UK and I see an option in the voice recognition settings for UK English instead of US English. If you have an accent because English is a second language, I'm not sure how well it would handle that.

[Anozireth]

Just noticed that my Sourceforge page for this got approved, so I'll get it up on there today so people can play around with it. I've got it working to the point that it's ready, I just need to write a help file and package it up.

[Fleecy]

A quick search of SourceForge.org does not show "VoiceBox" yet

I assume you're using the SAPI SDK? What version 5.X? Personally I'm hoping its 5.3, but that would limit it to Vista only. I've tested a few apps using earlier version than 5.3 and all had/have some minor/major issues with Vista. I was reading the MSDN on SAPI 5.3 last night and I'm toying with the idea of pulling out VS and having a play with it again - its been "a few years" since I did anything serious with VS.

[Anozireth]

Well I'm using VS 2008, which is .NET 3.5, so it should be the newest version of the SAPI. I think it defaults to whatever's installed? I tried it once on an XP machine with some SAPI 5.x version a while back and it seemed to work. I don't have XP installed at home here anymore so it's not easy to test.

I'm working on getting it up on sourceforge. First I had to wait for the project to be approved, then had to wait for the repository to be set up. This is more work than I expected!

[Anozireth]

Released Alpha version. See first post.

[blast3r]

I don't have Vista but if you need another tester let me know. I use voice commander right now.