(c)1995 Miller Associates, Inc.

GIVING VOICE AND CHARACTER TO SOFTWARE

Miller Associates develops tools to allow computer characters to speak intelligently, in a way that is highly responsive to the situation in which they find themselves. These tools allow recording, editing, and managing a large library of voice and sound clips and embedding them in an application. The Company's principal business is developing and publishing software games based on this control of language. The Company is investing to expand its games, to improve its development tools, and to apply those tools to other software products--entertainment, business, and educational programs. The Company's proprietary technologies are particularly appropriate for applications combining life-like speech with database intensive content that is culture- bound.

The application possibilities for these tools---the ArtSound TM Authoring System--are many. Art-sounding (emotionally charged) characters give life to the personal computer. ArtSound gives computer characters a full, responsive voice. That voice is heard for the first time in Baseball for Windows 3.0 with Ernie Harwell Broadcast Blast. Harwell is a Hall-of-Fame broadcaster signed to announce games played in the computer game.

The proprietary ArtSound Authoring System includes:

• Outcome Compiler and Editor
• Media Recording and Editing Studio
• Real-Time Run-Time Engine

The scripting tools allow a developer to "paint" cost effectively a complex story in text and sound. This story can have a great variety of paths, dialogues, plots, subplots, twists and turns tied to decisions made by the game player. The story responds to the user. The story can also contain a vast collection of developer and user-defined variables, like the names of people, places, actions, and relationships which are used to create verbal outcomes that are personal and specific to the current game situation (or environment, if the application is not a game).

The recording studio then lets the developer create with the option of direct audio input a large audio library for the complete text, including voice and other sounds, that is then embedded in the application. Through an outcome interpreter (for the appropriate game model) the library is used to create intelligent sounding speech. Using dramatic techniques, characters can be scripted to sound like they know what they are talking about, sensitive to the context--to people and situations--in a way that conveys emotion.

The ArtSound Authoring System was used to add sound to Baseball for Windows. Baseball for Windows 3.0 with Ernie Harwell Broadcast Blast launched in June 1995 contains a fully scripted and recorded professional baseball announcer. The announcer reports not only the play-by-play of the simulated game, but also the introductory and qualifying remarks known in the sports broadcasting business as "color." This recording is not just for one game, like a video or television show. This is for unlimited play. Neither the language nor the fun of the game ever get used up.

This rich speech of the baseball broadcast version conveys an emotional content that pictures alone cannot convey, even animated pictures. Through spoken (or shouted or whispered) language, the behaviors of the players on the field and the announcer are made tangible.

ArtSound is the basis for a new form of communication with the computer user. As the Company's development tools are adapted to other applications, achieving whatever emotional effect the developer is after will depend only on the creativity of the authors and the nature of the characters they create. The ArtSound Authoring System is the tool for managing this development.

Publishers and developers: Miller Associates will help you add dramatic voice and sound to your games for co-publishing projects or under license. For more information contact: Kenneth Miller 203-972-0777.