"Legends from the Booth" Play-By-Play

[DeuceBlades]

HCL and OTB, you guys are doing some mad work over there. I along with the rest of MVPMods members, assure you, that this is an awesome thing you guys are trying to build. I cant wait to hear just a sample. Vin Scully? How sick will that be? :wtg: Just make sure when you guys are done, you post the paypal accounts, guys will be donating. this stuff is just to much work to not get something in return.

[OTBjoel]

Thanks for the nice words. There's a sample of the introduction on the first page of this thread that you can download.

Also, if anybody else wants to help, I am posting more sound files and we could use more help notating them.

[OTBjoel]

I found a bunch of color commentary by Vin Scully in the 5000 range. It looks like he'll be doing some color commentary as well. So... it looks like these will be the roles

1) Mel Allen: Primary PBP

2) Vin Scully: Play-by-Play/Color Commentary

3) Ernie Harwell: Color Commentary, a few PBP calls

[Hory]

Somehow the original game's sound files achieve a level of compression that is not possible with the SX program. The original sound files are at a bitrate of 22050hz and to get Vin to fit, you have to download the original 32000hz file all the way down to 11025hz and sometimes smaller. Every once in a while you can get it to fit at 12000 or 16000hz but not often. However, I've found a pretty cool side benefit to all this. Scully ends up sounding like he's coming out of a radio which adds its own "classic" feel to it. I kinda like it and don't have a problem with it.

Have you tried using this command line with sx.exe ?

sx -ps2stream -.dat *.wav -mt_blk

It's makes much smaller files than

sx.exe -sndstream -.dat *.wav

or the ditty importer.

[OTBjoel]

Thanks Hory. Actually, I haven't tried using the ps2stream. I'm hoping this is the ticket. Luckily, I am not too deep into the importing as I thought we might learn some stuff later. I stopped and got into the indexing a bit more.

[OTBjoel]

This is a lifesaver. It creates a file about 1/2 the size of the -sndstream option. This should make HCL happy.

For those trying this at home, the code should actually be this:

sx -ps2stream *.wav -.dat -mt_blk

I'm sure it was just a typo :-)

[sfochs]

May I ask on how this is going? This really sounds awesome!

[OTBjoel]

Thanks for asking. I am 95% done indexing all the Vin Scully files. Mel Allen will be next. Throughout the process, I have been replacing Krukow with Ernie Harwell or Vin Scully or a blank if I wasn't able to find a suitable replacement call. The project will start to go really quickly once the indexing of the replacement sounds is done. If you guys could hear the replacement audio that has slowly but surely been working it's way into this sound file, you'd be pretty blown away.

[Brush]

How many Mel Allen files are there?

[TrumpeteerNYR]

This is one of the most awesome mods I've read about on here. Thank you so much for taking on this endeavor, it could possibly (probably) be the most game-changing mod here. Keep us updated - I patiently await it's completion!

[JOHN3057]

WOW!!! Words cannot describe fully my feelings about this!!!! This is like sending man to the moon!!! Tackling the impossible!!! And seeing the fruits of your work become a masterpiece!!!

[sfochs]

You know, one of the few reasons I like to play new games on the consoles, like the show, is for updated commentary. I am so excited to hear this when it comes out, nice work!

[OTBjoel]

There's quite a few Mel Allen files. He makes all the basic calls. You just don't have as many variations as Vin Scully has. I will splice Mel and Ernie's name so that it sounds like Vin is exchanging with Mel & Ernie like Kuip and Krukow do. If you look on the first page of this thread, there is a link where you can download the stadium announcements and the team announcements will be done soon. I am still looking for somebody to help with putting player names together if anybody has experience working with the player name files. I will keep posting updates on the first page of the thread so you don't have to go to the last page of this thread to see the latest news.

[HardcoreLegend]

I can do the player names, for Vin Scully. I really want to get the Scully mod out there but it appears you are doing something entirely different.

[OTBjoel]

Not a problem HCL. You are welcome to download the Scully names I uploaded and create pname.dat's out of them. My mod will have Scully, I just want to mix the other two guys in. I always intended to have a Scully only mod and if you want, you can do that mod and I'll send you my spreadsheet.

[MrGravyard]

How is this going? I know it has to be lots of work but well worth it.

[OTBjoel]

It's going slowly but surely. I just ran into some more Mel Allen sound bits from Tony LaRussa 4 (I know it bombed) but it still has some material we can mod. I am indexing first/last names from this. If anybody wants to help indexing names, I can still use help in that area.

I am taking a month to cleanup my original HighHeat sound files and when I'm done with that, I'll dive in to merging this stuff into MVP.

[HardcoreLegend]

I tinkered with this a few weeks ago but the problem I ran into was a loud 'click' noise at the end of the files I imported into the game.

[OTBjoel]

HCL, you will first need to add some silence to the end of the Scully files. Most wave editors will allow you to insert silence at the end of the file. That will usually take care of the problem.

[Suns]

This is going to be one of the best mods around, can't wait. Classic voices would greatly improve the game. I grew up with Curt Gowdy, Tony Kubek, and Joe Garagiola. Would love to see those added one day. Thanks for the great work.

[theoren1]

Has there been any discussion about extracting the PBP and color from a newer PS game?

...which isn't to say I'm not excited about Mel, Vin, and Ernie. I am. I just thought it might be easier to import from a newer game with (possibly?) more transferable calls/variations/current player names, etc.

In any case, keep up the great work, all. This project feels like mod history in the making.

[OTBjoel]

If you've got some suggestions for another game, that's fine. MLB 2004 has over 22000 calls which is actually more than MVP 05 had. Granted that's because MLB has all the team names and players names all in one huge file rather than split up like MVP. If you take that into account then MVP probably has more. Point being, MLB has plenty of calls with Vin. On the other hand, Mel will probably repeat some calls more often because there's not as much variation but we can live with that to get him in the game. Vin's variation will offset that so it shouldn't seem too repetitive. The Mel Allen name file has all the oldtimers and we'll rely on Vin too have some more modern players. Since this mod is too cover all of baseball history, I'm not too worried about missing some of the new guys, you can't have everybody. If somebody really wants to, they can splice and dice the names later to create newer players.

[OTBjoel]

I've uploaded a new sample on page 1 of this post. I'll post more samples as more sounds get incorporated in.

[stecropper]

Man ! That sample sounds fantastic ......... I know how long a road you have to travel to get this done but if you are able to do it this will could be a real game changer of a mod !!!

Thanks Joel ---- I really enjoy hearing those guys and can't imagine how it would sound with these great conversion mods found here on mvpmods.

If one can envision the successful completion of your Legends in the Booth mod combined with Homer's All Time Legends mod then we are all in for a real Treat !!!

[OTBjoel]

Thanks for the feedback, Stecropper. As you can tell, I took your into idea from TC69 (national anthem and Umpire's "playball" ) and changed it just a little to get my oldtime tunes in there.