I was bored..

so i started thinking about a clock. Not any Clock a talking clock. But before i try to figure out how and waste my time, one question would it be even possible to make a talking clock without causing impossible ammount of lag in the Sim it sits in?

Thank for your wise answers in advance

Allan

I don't see any reason you couldn't accomplish your goal and it still be sim friendly. Actually it could be much better then SOME of the clocks with hands.

Clocks hmm, well that's my biz for sure since about 90 percent of what I offer is a clock in some form or another. I've actually thought about a talking clock, and sure, it's totally possible, but it would involve uploading quite a few sound files. Someone saying "It's", "o'clock" 0-19, twenty, thirty, etc., then simply put the uuid keys of all the phrases into lists, and perform lookups. Parse the hour and minutes out of the time, convert to integer, and use that to do your lookups, then just play the uuid's at those locations and it would work, and could be very low lag. It'll just be playing 2 or 3 sound files when queried for the time.

You should make it clear to whom the clock should talk and how far away it should be heard. Does it have to use the public channel or would llOwnerSay or an instant message be better? and of course it should be silenced when there are nobody to talk to That latter applies as well if you want to let it use audible sounds

Can be a lot easier.

Let the clock say "i'm a talking clock" then you need only one sound file.

Well, it's a matter of how many files you want to upload at 10L a pop. One could record 720 separate distinct sound files that say "It's 12:01... It's 12:02", etc... but you're looking at nearly 30 dollars US to upload that many files. You can break it down similar to what the phone company does by recording someone saying the numbers 1-19,It's, o'clock, oh-1 through oh-9 (for when saying for example 8:05 you'd hear It's eight oh-five, and twenty, thirty, forty, and fifty. for a total of uploading (by my calcs), only 35 sound files at 10L a pop, you'd only have to (both record) and upload only $350L or about $1.35 USD. There's definitely more than one way to skin a cat, and in this case, differing upload costs to make the project happen. It's up to one how they'd want to do it, the 'long way' would have smoother operation since it's playing one sound file that is an exact recording of the entire line to be spoken, whereas my method could be a bit more choppy, like calling time/temp. My take is that a good scripter would be able to work out delay values so that the sounds would play smoothly, and the script overall would be less resource intensive on the asset server as well as the sim since it wouldn't have to call up 685 more sound files.

Thanks for the many responses so far, the soundfiles where that was concerned me the most about hte whole idea. I was going for the approach with less recordings.
I don't know if i can ever follow through with it, but i'll keep you definetaly posted about the progress.

Thanks again

$350L for 35 sound files is the minimal amount of sounds you'd need to get it done unless you wanted to exclude "It's", in which case it would be 34 sound files. 36 or 37 sound files if you want to include "am" and "pm". You could also exclude the "oh" files and record just one "oh" and use with "one" through "nine", but that would be more work to cut out 8 sound files, bringing the minimum down to 26, or $260L. I'd probably part with the extra 80L and upload the "oh" files. Here's the list I've come up with... each recording as written:

It's
o'clock
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
sixteen
seventeen
eighteen
nineteen
twenty
thirty
forty
fifty
oh-one
oh-two
oh-three
oh-four
oh-five
oh-six
oh-seven
oh-eight
oh-nine
A.M.
P.M.

Oh-one through oh-nine would be used to say the minutes from x:01 though x:09. 0 minutes would trigger "o'clock", and "It's" would preface all announcements. I remember years ago Radio Shack sold a talking clock cube, about 4" square with wood grain sides and a silver speaker grill on top with a single button to make it announce. It also chimed once at the top of the hour and announced the time.

Since I've taken it this far, I'll probably wind up making this clock and adding it to my line of clocks at my store.

Edit:
YAIS!!!!!!!!! After a bit of searching I found the sound files for the old school radio shack talking clock! Not only that, quite a few more as well. I see a whole line of talking clocks in my future!

what about only announcing every quarter hour? 19 sounds.

It's
o'clock
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
fifteen
thirty
forty-five
A.M.
P.M.

or just the hour you could cut that down to 14 sounds. just record each sound "It's # o'clock" for each hour and then record am and pm separately.

I guess it's a matter of how cheap you want to go, for me, $1.35 USD is nothing to upload so any time can be announced. I'd never write a clock that didn't have the capacity to announce or display current time on demand.

Yeah I see i kinda kicked a avalanche lose, which is good. However I don't think i have the time to devote to that project right now hence I am already playing catch up with custom orders. However if anybody completes it, kudos to you.

I'm actually working on it right now. I managed to find the wav files online that are recordings from the old school Radio Shack talking clock cube. Scripting it is proving to be a bit of a challenge as there's quite a few special cases to test for, but I'll have it done fairly soon, and for sale in my store at ClockWerks in Formal Affair East.

Update:

I've finished the talking clock, I finally got all the different cases worked out (there's six in total), and I've been testing it. I need to add a few menu choices, and texture it and it'll be done. I'm shooting for making it look like the old Vox I talking clock that Radio Shack sold back in the early 80's. Also, I found a whole bunch of different voice themes for talking clocks, and I'll be likely releasing a whole line with different themes. It actually turned out to be a tougher nut to crack than I had initially thought, but I started from scratch for the third time last night and I guess the 3rd time was the charm because aside from one or two mistakes in my code it works great in all cases.

I want a grandfather clock that sounds like a kindly old man.