Voice Settings

Most of the characters throughout FAITH: The Unholy Trinity use Text-to-Speech (TTS) voices for their dialogue to emulate the technology and atmosphere of a 1980's Atari/Commodore/MS-DOS game. The specific software used to create these voices is called "Software Automatic Mouth" (SAM).

SAM has dynamic voice settings that can be difficult to pinpoint for a specific character. So, with much inspiration and credit to Tangy Mayonaise's Tutorial on Making Voices, this page should have all the necessary information to get your own custom-made dialogue.

Beginner[]

For more inexperienced users wishing to create basic dialogue, the website BetterSAM: Software Automatic Mouth by Imrane03 is the easiest to understand.

The website contains a text entry bar to enter words and sentences in, as well as sliders for Pitch, Speed, Mouth, and Throat, as well as Preview and Download buttons. Once you've typed something into the top text entry bar, you can click the Preview button to make SAM say it back to you, then click Download to save a .wav file of it onto your computer.

The sliders all range from 0 - 255, each applying a different effect to SAM's voice when changed:

• Pitch - Can change Gender, Age, Voice Corruption, and Voice Deepness. Default is 64.
• Speed - Rate of Speech. Default is 72.
• Mouth - Voice "stuffiness", also affects pitch. Default is 128.
• Throat - Voice "nasality". Default is 128.

Counterintuitively, higher values for Pitch and Speed will lower them both, while lower values will raise them.

It's important to note that the way the machine often doesn't pronounce words the way you would expect. The best way to get around this is to restructure these words to make them sound more natural.

• Using default settings, "Forward" sounds like "For War-d". To make it sound like "Forward", type in "Forword".
• Using default settings, "Finish" sounds like "Fine-ish". To make it sound like "Finish", type in "Fin ish".

While you can enter long and intricate sentences, doing so will increase the time it takes to preview and download the audio, as well as increasing the file size. Generally, it is good practice to split up long dialogue into each individual sentences and download each one separately.

Advanced[]

Getting started[]

For more advanced dialogue options that allow for extremely close replication of in-game lines, go to Sebastian Macke's SAM Software Automatic Mouth page and click "Download Windows Executable". Extract the contents of the .ZIP file to somewhere you'll remember it.

Once extracted, open the folder and go into the "demos" folder inside it. Opening any one of the "demo#.bat" files in here should make SAM read the file's contents and display them in a command prompt. (Trying to open the "sam.exe" file in the main folder does nothing.)

To get started writing your own lines, create a new .bat file (or modify one of the existing ones) in a text editor like Notepad. The files in the "demos" folder should start with "cd .." in the first line (which sets the command prompt's directory to the main folder so it can access the sam.exe file).

Subsequent lines should start with the "sam" command, followed by whatever words you want SAM to say. For example: sam "Hello, my name is SAM." will make SAM say that line.

Pitch, speed, mouth, and throat modifiers can be applied by adding them as options in the line before the dialogue, and will work the same as they do in the basic tutorial above. For example: sam -pitch 100 -speed 100 -mouth -100 -throat 100 "Hello, my name is SAM." will change SAM's voice to be slower and lower pitched.

SAM's dialogue can be saved to a .wav file by adding a -wav option in the line, followed by what you want the name of the file to be. For example: sam -wav "DefaultSam.wav" "Hello, my name is SAM." will create a .wav in the main folder where the "sam.exe" file is.

Phonetics[]

Adding the -phonetics option to a line will make SAM use a completely different set of rules for pronouncing words and phonemes, which are outlined in the official Software Automatic Mouth Manual. All you will really need to worry about for making natural(ish) sounding voice lines is learning the basics of SAM's phonemes and stress systems.

For example: sam -phonetic "MAY NEYM IHZ SAEM." will make SAM say "My name is SAM".

Stress[]

Stress can be added onto specific words and syllables by adding numbers after their phonemes, ranging from 1-8. 1 adds very high and emotional stress, and 8 adds extreme pitch-dropping stress. Default stress is 6.

For example: SAM can ask the question "Why should I walk to the store?" in a number of different ways.

• WAY2 SHUH7D AY WAO5K TUX DHAH STOH5R. "Why should I walk to the store?" (You want a reason to do it.)
• WAY7 SHUH2D AY WAO7K TUX DHAH STOH5R. "Why should I walk to the store?" (You are reluctant to go.)
• WAY5 SHUH7D AY2 WAO7K TUX DHAH STOHR. "Why should I walk to the store?" (You want someone else to do it.)
• WAY5 SHUHD AY7 WAO2K TUX7 DHAH STOHR. "Why should I walk to the store?" (You'd rather drive.)
• WAY5 SHUHD AY WAO5K TUX DHAH STOH2OH7R. "Why should I walk to the store?" (You want to walk somewhere else.)

Punctuation[]

SAM's phonetic mode understands the following punctuation marks:

• Hyphen (-): Marks clause boundaries - creates a brief pause.
• Comma (,): Marks phrase boundaries - creates a short pause (about twice as long as the hyphen).
• Period (.): Marks the end of a sentence - creates a long pause, and causes the pitch to fall.
• Question mark (?): Marks the end of a sentence - creates a long pause, and causes the pitch to rise.

Presets[]

Voice settings[]

Use the values in the following chart to recreate the voice settings for the game's major characters. Note that these settings may not be 100% accurate, and that you are free to modify them to your liking.

* Requires 3rd party software to fully mimic.

Line recreations[]

This section may be used to document the community's best attempts at using the SAM software to reconstruct lines of dialogue from the game.

^{(Italics = not 100% accurate / needs verification)}

Trivia[]

• John appears to use subtly different voices throughout different lines. For instance, throughout most of Chapter I, his voice's pitch will be 75, and sometimes in Chapter III it'll be 64 or 70.
• Amy's line "SHE IS MINE, PRIEST" appears to use two distinct voices: one is her possessed SAM voice and the other sounds like a real, uncrushed female voice whispering the same line.
• The Elevator Friend is the only character to use real speech for its dialogue instead of text-to-speech. You can tell the difference because it speaks very clearly compared to other characters, such as "I'll see you in your dreams!" and "Follow me, Timmy!".

• Currently, some distinct voices for demons and characters are unknown:
  • Mirror Demon
  • Chalice Demon
  • Cornfield Maze Demon
  • Umbilical Cord Demon
  • Spindly Lady
  • Doomed Child
  • Basement Demon
  • Peekaboo Demon
  • Thralls
  • Cultists
  • The Mother