Dumb Question about voices

[vecki]

I set up a new neighbourhood last night, deleteallcharacters'ed and then set the NPC maker to spawning new townies and downtownies.  One of them, Ash Centowski, has no chemistry with my new sim Eldrene, although she thinks he's HOT.  That doesn't stop him from calling 3-4 times a day though!  7am, 12pm, 4pm and 8pm!

He's a worse stalker than Marsha could ever manage.

[baratron]

I have another voice question. Can an adult be given a YA voice and still remain an adult? I feel the same way someone mentioned earlier, where the adult voice is too drastic a change from what I'm used to for certain sims. I've been able to keep sims at the YA stage while living in the regular neighborhood, but there are a lot of problems with it.

I want to know this as well. I have a sim who is based on a real-life person, and for some reason the game has assigned him a deep, booming voice. The real-life person has a fairly high-pitched, quiet voice (when he sings, it sounds like he's whispering). I want to change it!

Loaded every house that contains an adult male to listen to their voices and made a list of sims with vaguely appropriate voices - but looking in SimPE, every single adult male sim has a different Voice Type. I have 19 sims here with 19 different numbers. I can't see any pattern in the (hexadecimal) numbers - it's not something simple like high number = high pitch and low number = low pitch. Has anyone looked into this?

[Brynne]

I'm hoping someone will be able to explain this soon. The voice-types baffle me.
For now, my adult female has the adult squeaky voice, which I can't stand on her. The husky one won't work with her personality, either. I so strongly identify her with the YA voice, but I can't seem to make her stick at the YA age group. Before NL, you could cheat and set the age to YA even in the home neighborhood. I think NL changed this, because she keeps transitioning back to adult, now.

[Zeljka]

I've messed with the voices quite a bit in PE but it never really occurred to me that different voices said different things.
I just assumed that Outgoing Sims were the ones that said something each time they passed someone and so on...(seems true in my game) As far as singing in the energizer, don't they all? I guess I never paid attention, but again, I was under the assumption that voices were either random or related to personality. I will have to check this out now.

I've had my fair share of glitches (I'll admit, I deserved many of them) and done a lot of voice replacing where data went missing after a crash. I just scanned through age groups and genders and listed what number meant what. (age/gender)

There was a bigger variety than I'd thought; at least a dozen for each and that was just copying from one neighbourhood, but I wasn't able to establish a pattern that clearly distinguished gender or even age. I did realize that I could get rid of the voices I really hated though. I had one really masculin Sim that had that really stupid high pitched laugh so I just replaced it with a the voice of a Sim I didn't mind listening to. I haven't noticed any fiery balls resulting. (could notice be the key word? nah, I don't have any voice or sound issues)

As for the age change thing... heh heh, due to yet another glitch, I had an adult that had recently transitioned up. When I re-entered the lot, she still looked elder, but was an adult. It was wonderful.
Ok, so she was saggy (easy to fix, find or create clothes based on adult meshes, then give them the elder code in PE property setting) but she was active and peppy and cute as a button.
I married her off to a funny looking repairman (the Remington Harris face with the sad eyes and big ears) and had her produce several babies, just so I could watch an 'elder' give birth.
I liked it so much that I changed a handful of nannies to adult in SimPE, while leaving them elder 'looking'. They seem better that way.

Brynne - could you not try just replacing her adult voice with the the YA voice you like in PE? I've had 'child' robots with adult voices, though again, this was through one of my 'transition' glitches, but maybe voice and age are not so important?

Hmm, considering voice testing... again, anything to continue procrastinating cleaning neighbourhoods so I can install the EPs.

[Brynne]

I tried replacing her voice with a YA voice, but she still sounded like an adult. This was a while ago. I wonder if giving her a teen voice would work?
Your comment about the masculine sim with the "stupid high-pitched laugh" cracked me up. I know exactly the one you're talking about!

[Bangelnuts]

Hmmm... I didn't see
"Nargfood"
when an adult female sim answers the phone
means "You again?  Quit calling me, Marsha!"

I didnt see martha kay lene used by Elder females either- some sort of frustration phrase.I hear the nannies use it the most or ochi Kwa zeeo  used by nannies when they greet the family or toddlers.Flateemee blah blah blah wasnt there either (used by adult males at the table during meal times) MokaTeal . used by nannies. none of those were listed

[ZephyrZodiac]

Wish Maxis would include the option "Blow whistle down phone" when Marsha calls!

[baratron]

I'm totally failing to see a pattern, too - and I'm passably familiar with hexadecimal numbers. My male Adult sims have voices in the range 0x18C9 to 0xF564 - and my female sims similarly. My Young Adult males generally have higher numbered voices, from 0x9423 to 0xC2F1, but that could be coincidence as I have fewer of them to look at. Without writing down every number (I'm not THAT sad), I can't be sure whether the numbers are even exclusive.

A theory I have is that the number corresponds to the pitch of the voice within a certain range, and the range is set in different places for the different ages and genders. So a male Adult sim and a female Child sim could both have Voice Type 0xC106 (say), but for the male Adult the pitch would be at position C106 on the Male Adult scale, whereas the female Child would have pitch at position C106 on the Female Child scale. Does that make sense to anyone else?(C106 is just a number, we could call it 49414 if you prefer). And then the idea is that between these pitch changes and the different things that different personality type & age sims say, our brains fill in the rest of the detail so the sims' voices sound different - in the same way that with TS1, we used to see facial expressions change even though they didn't.

My overly low-pitched male had Voice Type 0x5229. I swapped it for 0xC2F1, which is the voice my Young Adult Ripp Grunt has - fairly high pitched for a man but not actively girly - and it didn't come out the same as Ripp. But it's stil appropriate for the real-life person the sim is based on, so it'll have to do. 'Tis weird.

[ZephyrZodiac]

But they still haven't done anything about the kid who calls on the phone sounding exactly the same as the adults!

[Bangelnuts]

But they still haven't done anything about the kid who calls on the phone sounding exactly the same as the adults!

what I hate is the Nannies voices  they are so whiny

[Brynne]

Well, replacing the adult female's voice with a teen one didn't work. She still had an adult voice.
Interesting observations, baratron. Thanks for the information!

[ZephyrZodiac]

Did you try changing her to a teen in SimPE?  I've done similar with elders, (changing them to adults) and they retain their appearance (minus the stoop) but they gain the adult voice.

[Bangelnuts]

Wish Maxis would include the option "Blow whistle down phone" when Marsha calls!

my thoughts exactly

[Brynne]

Did you try changing her to a teen in SimPE?  I've done similar with elders, (changing them to adults) and they retain their appearance (minus the stoop) but they gain the adult voice.

No, I didn't even think of that!

[ZephyrZodiac]

Can't see why it wouldn't work - only problem would be, I don't think she'd be able to woohoo or get married etc.  But she'd have the voice.

[Syera]

Whoa... am I dreaming that I'm reading this topic?  Because voice variation in a Sims game was something I'd fantasized about, and as far as I know, all my Sims sound the same.  So, a stupid question: is there a setting you have to activate to get variated voices?  Does this only appear on higher-end machines?

[ZephyrZodiac]

There are two or three noticeably different adult male voices, and either two or three adult female, but the variations beyond that are not really noticeable, I think it may be that they make slightly different combinations of expressions, and different pitches.  I don't think it matters whether your machine is high or low end, but it may make a difference if you raise the sound quality bar.

[Bangelnuts]

There are two or three noticeably different adult male voices, and either two or three adult female, but the variations beyond that are not really noticeable, I think it may be that they make slightly different combinations of expressions, and different pitches.  I don't think it matters whether your machine is high or low end, but it may make a difference if you raise the sound quality bar.

the one group that seems to all have the same voice is the elder females

[Brynne]

Okay. This is the thread I was trying to post in when the forum decided to have issue. I couldn't remember where I was, but I knew I was in the middle of posting something.

The personalities of the sims will affect what phrases the sims will use, too. For example, a male teen with 4 or more nice points will try to get your attention with a calm "rahchee nikoh...", but take away one nice point and he does this hilarious "Kom fraga!" thing. Even the grouchy children have their own sayings.

[Baddmark]

Every conversation my "me" Sim has, involves him sticking a finger in the air and announcing "Hamm Lataplatti". I think it's something to do with a Scandinavian Rally driver...

Sid Meier's latest Pirates! game (I think the aptly named Hook has been playing this, too) has some great Simlish dialogue. Obviously an early dialect, and you can tell the differences between the Dutch, French, English and Spanish.

[Bangelnuts]

Okay. This is the thread I was trying to post in when the forum decided to have issue. I couldn't remember where I was, but I knew I was in the middle of posting something.

The personalities of the sims will affect what phrases the sims will use, too. For example, a male teen with 4 or more nice points will try to get your attention with a calm "rahchee nikoh...", but take away one nice point and he does this hilarious "Kom fraga!" thing. Even the grouchy children have their own sayings.

that is true  the onlygroup that has the same Identical voice is the nannies regardless of nice points

[Baa]

Uhg. I wish there was a way to replace the female teen voice entirely. It is so whiny, the most earsplitting thing I have ever been exposed to. I hate it with a passion. It's high pitched, whiny, and outrageous.

[Bangelnuts]

Uhg. I wish there was a way to replace the female teen voice entirely. It is so whiny, the most earsplitting thing I have ever been exposed to. I hate it with a passion. It's high pitched, whiny, and outrageous.

my teenfemales all have different pitches based on personality

[Brynne]

Uhg. I wish there was a way to replace the female teen voice entirely. It is so whiny, the most earsplitting thing I have ever been exposed to. I hate it with a passion. It's high pitched, whiny, and outrageous.

I agree with that, for the most part. I can't stand the way they sound when they're cuddling in the hot tub.
If I make them a little less nice, they're more tolerable in other situations.

[Brynne]

Hey Bangelnuts, which voice does your Justin have? Does he say "weh WHOO" or does he say "Eeklobe...!" when he has to pee? LOL