Interactive Fiction Text-To-Speech ::

TTS additions to WinFrotz

What is it?

The idea of this project was to add Text-To-Speech capabilities to the already popular WinFrotz 2002 written by David Kinder which is an amazing Inform interpreter for the Windows platorm. I did this mainly because I love interactive fiction, and I wanted to test the text-to-speech library used in the plugin I was working on for the Trillian chat client, called TalkBack. The results were amazing and added an extra dimension to gameplay. Just for the heck of it I posted it on my web site, and got a great response. I started to receive emails from visually impaired users who found that screen readers in Windows were not adequate for interacting with Inform interpreters. I then added text-to-speech support for navigating the menu system and managing games, whith the idea that you could use the entire application without seeing the screen.

Here is an example of what you hear as you play Zork:II Listen Here
Of course this is using the AT&T Natural voices, so your voice will probably be different. I have posted the application here, the source code, and some of the supporting applications I have written.

Here is an example of the interpreter running Zork Zero

download WinFrotz TTS 2002 1.5   [~1.5mb]
downloadWinFrotz TTS 2002 source code   [~9mb]
downloadEnglish TTS package I put together from the Speech SDK.[~6.5mb]
Some people have asked for the tools I use to manage the WinFrotzTTS games fingerprints. These tools are really only usefull for managing large sets of games. The WinFrotzTTS application already has the ability to add single games to the supported games list.
downloadWinFrotz Toolz   [~500kb]
A few people have reported problems with WinFrotzTTS especially with Windows 98 and Windows ME systems. This application tests some of the core application functionality. I plan to use this application as a framework for testing functionality on a number of platforms. At this time only speech and saving are tested. This is a barebones application but will grow to test many functions. Just download, unzip in a directory, and run the included exe file. Then use the ''test speech'' and ''test save'' buttons.
downloadTest App   [~500kb]
Games in Infocom Z-Machine format, NOT games published by the company Infocom.

What follows is the license statemet from ifarchive.org;

IF Archive License

The Archive is a repository of freely-downloadable games and files pertaining to interactive fiction (IF). The games and files are made available for download from the Archive and its official mirrors. You may download these games and files for your own use.

The Archive makes no blanket claim about the copyright status of individual archived files. Each file has its own license. If the file, its included license, or its description does not explicitly state that it has been released into the public domain, then the file''s copyright remains with its author.

This means that the Archive or any subset of its files may not be compiled for commercial distribution without permission from each and every author whose files you would like to include. The Archive maintainers are not able to give that permission. Note that "commercial distribution" includes selling games or game compilations on online auction sites.

See editorial link for full game list.

Index: if-archive/games/zcode
downloadInteractive Fiction Archive   [~22mb]
WinFrotzTTS2002_151_setup.exe  MD5: 50265156d176abe85ad2f4faa0ba90a7
winfrotztts_151_src.zip  MD5: d4f491f7afb4ff76fad128bbb78092e0
CoreTTS.zip  MD5: 16ebde7b20b4549b1953794793a29484
FrotzTools.zip  MD5: 7d4a90a8cbd8ade92bf4ed6cda2616d9
ifTTSTest.zip  MD5: 14f44df882cadf220bf8e1f51175071a
ifarchive_setup.zip  MD5: 2a19c96346765f4720f0bbbaeddca180