Valve researching games for the deaf
Valve may be planning to introduce a new hearing-impaired character in Half-Life: Episode 3 as a love interest for Alyx.
The news comes from a series of YouTube videos filmed at Valve headquarters which are part of a focus group Newell conducted with a hearing-impaired audience to gauge the reaction of the deaf community and to try and understand some of the issues surrounding how sign language might be introduced in games. The focus group is also attended by Valve animators who study the movements and facial expressions of participants.
While Newell admits that the interest in sign language is really just an "excuse to build the technology" and to see if characters who communicate solely through sign language is possible, it apparently may also tie in to the larger Half-Life universe.
There's talk of a new character being introduced, for example, whom Alyx knew long before the events of Half-Life 2 and whom she "had a crush on" long before Gordon showed up. The unnamed love interest communicates solely through sign language, driving Alyx to upgrade D0G to talk through sign language so that she can practice having signed conversations when he isn't around - answering the question of why the giant robot can't speak.
Valve seems especially interested in how it might incorporate signing technology into multiplayer games too, a situation where closed captioning and subtitles aren't always helpful. It'd be interesting to see that idea carried over into a stealth-military setting too of course.
Newell makes no explicit mention of incorporating signing technology into Episode Three, but has talked in the past about how Episode Three may be delayed because of exciting new technologies being incorporated into the next version of the Source Engine.
What are your thoughts on sign language being used in games? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyOh, and Dog doesn't even have hands!
would be good to have a 15 minute section to teach the basics, also maybe parts later whereby the player must understand wht the NPC is saying in order to complete the level
Personally, I'd welcome that - it's an interesting idea and a brilliant addition to the tech. Would be fun to see the tables turned a little like that.
I guess, though, if they're going to (presumably) motion capture it and have a virtual character do it, they could have more than one language track.
If the tech is there as Bauul suggests though then it could easily localise itself, assuming Valve don't cater to both as they currently do with other foreign languages.
I can tell you've never made a Source mod, because FacePoser isn't as automatic as you seem to think.
In fact, the only auto part Valve has done is to provide the tool (Face Poser) and HL2 character phenomes, which you then have to sequence manually according to your best judgement of facial movements.
And then it is a flaky bitch off her anti-psychotics as you try to troubleshoot why the &%@* it WON'T WORK!!! <demented screech - pulling of hair>
Quite frankly, there are times I genuinely would rather be hit by a car and roll the dice on permanent injury than to use FacePoser.
OTOH, exactly what you describe is used in Crytek's CryEngine2 (Crysis' engine), and it is so easy! Falling over and hitting your back-side easy. Paris Hilton easy!
Not being hearing impaired, I confess I don't really understand why signed programmes are more attractive to deaf people than subtitles, but I presume you can convey more information and/or emotion with signs than with subs? They might have to add additional metainfo to subs to allow effective addition of this information, but it would still surely allow a far greater amount of signed programming than there is currently?
I'm partially deaf so I like the subtitles (I can understand everything without them, it just allows me to be lazy) but I don't know sign language anyway so I can't really comment.
The main problem with subtitles is they take a long time to write so pretty worthless for news/sports programs since there's always about 10-20 delay from the words spoken to the subtitles.
On a lighter note: I often play with apparently deaf people online, especially in TF2 when I am commanding the team and the do not go where I ordered.
Yours in Louder is not better Plasma,
Star*Dagger
As opposed to watching Justin on cbeebies ("Look a Robot! Can you sign 'Robot'?") - spent far to long watching cbeebies with my nephew
It's a good idea (if they can get it to work)
Yes, because Valve deliberatly sets out not to release their product and do everything possible not to earn any money.
In all seriousness, if the tech is being produced and could be used for a range of things outside of video gaming then its a worthwhile project to pursue. I have always fancied learning sign language, would look good on a CV. Now if I was being taught it by a video game character I would be a lot more inclined to pay attention.
Absolutely, it would also make much more sense for Valve to actually use BSL (British Sign Language) Rather than ASL (American Sign Language) because ISL (International Sign Language) is much more similar to BSL than ASL. It is easily possible to communicate with others in Europe (and beyond) using ISL even though we don't speak the same language verbally (I have done it a number of times). So by using BSL or ISL you have a wider audience.
Being profoundly deaf myself I am fortnuate to have very good English which cannot be said for the majority for profoundly deaf people (due to the fact their listening and speaking development as a kid is slower). Sign Language if put into words would not make much sense but the expression of it gives deaf signers (not all deaf people sign!) more information to them than words ever can. For a lot of deaf people subtitles do not make sense (because of their poorer English) so the development of sign languge in games would be a great thing, especially if one day there was an option to change subtitles and speech to sign language.
Valve have won several awards for subtitling, Half Life 2 has excellent subtitling facilities which is different to HL1 which didn't have anything. http://www.deafgamers.com/ is a good website.
Its already being done by IBM in Hursley - http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/videos/virtual-translator/
Learn sign language? Many local colleges do evening courses, go to http://www.rnid.org.uk/ for mor info.
Who cares, if it's going to be the same length as other episodes. Cannot believe some people I knew who blitzed through the episodes on easy when they were two years apart. Mad. If all this stuff turns it into an add-on and it lasts a tiny bit longer, fine. Plenty of other games to play whilst we wait, DNF, it certainly isn't.
You are right but I believe it is one step closer. :)
It'll be interesting to see how this affects animation data for realtime 3D rendering.
There are some drastic differences in conversational sign too, but for Deaf people these obstacles are easier to get around than for hearing people dealing with a different language. A lot of Deaf sign is fairly universal and discrepancies can be clarified with figurative signs. Even BSL can differ quite drastically across different areas of the UK (and even more with Ireland), and Deaf people tell me that they get around that with ease.
Hopefully it works out, it would be cool to see the technology adapted to replace some of the captions as well.
The problem with captioning for many is you can't read them very well on non-HD TVs (for games consoles).
Our game currently in development will use this method and we plan to allow the engine modules responsible for converting text (and later directly from speech recognition) into sign language to be used for other purposes. With a lot of help from users, we plan to add support for as many sign languages as possible.