Release 2 Update 19

Okay, just a mini-update here, about the voice acting. I reviewed ElevenLabs AI voice updates, and while they're not quite as "life-changing" as I'd hoped they'd be by now, they definitely are an improvement! Some updates that make a difference to me:

• There are now quite a few created voices in the voice library I can choose from for characters. This helps find appropriate voices for NPC-types.
• Based on what I recalled from release 1, it seems to be significantly quicker to get the "feel" I want from a line than it was before. Often the line is perfect on the first try, which saves time.
• You can now add in pauses of whatever length you need. This is great because before the voice would usually "shotgun" past periods so that sentences would often just run together and I'd have to add space in audio editing. Now it's much easier to get more natural-sounding lines because of that.

I'm disappointed they don't have "expression tags" available yet. These would be codes you could add into the script to direct the AI that a particular line or word should be whispered, or shouted angrily, or spoken wistfully, or whatever. THAT would be truly helpful, as well as a consistent way to get the voice to laugh. But, the changes I've seen so far do make a big difference!

I plowed through all of the MC's lines up to TAG-C-100 in what was probably 3-4 hours total ("TAG-C-" is my code for this release, so that's the first 100 scenes). So getting fully up to where I am in the script now (maybe five sixths to the end of the release?) should take me maybe another 10 hours or so, likely for all AI voices, not just the MC's. I also just realized that at this point I've come to the end of Olivia's lines for this release, so I can write those scripting notes to send off to my human voice actress for her, as well as a small set of script notes for Aubrey (a different human voice actress). I kind of dread this, because the voice acting bill for Olivia is likely to be HIGH: several hundred dollars, possibly $1,000 for both characters. This VN is costing me a small fortune.