Voice

Ren'Py includes support for playing back voice in conjunction with dialogue. This is done through the voice statement, which gives the voice filename to play:

voice "line0001.ogg"
"Welcome to Ren'Py"

Normally, a playing voice is stopped at the start of the next interaction. The voice sustain statement can sustain voice playback through an interaction.

voice "line0001.ogg"
"Welcome to Ren'Py..."

voice sustain
"... your digital storytelling engine."

The config.voice_filename_format variable allows you to customize the voice filename, making it possible to omit directories and extensions.

Voice Tags

Ren'Py includes a voice tag system that makes it possible to selectively mute or unmute a character's voice. To take advantage of this system, supply a voice_tag argument to each Character(), and use the SetVoiceMute() or ToggleVoiceMute() actions to allow the player to toggle the voice.

For example:

define e = Character("Eileen", voice_tag="eileen")
define l = Character("Lucy", voice_tag="lucy")

screen voice_toggle:
    vbox:
        textbutton "Mute Eileen" action ToggleVoiceMute("eileen")
        textbutton "Mute Lucy" action ToggleVoiceMute("lucy")

label start:
    show screen voice_toggle

    voice "e01.ogg"
    e "You can turn a character's voice on and off."

    voice "l01.ogg"
    l "Yeah! Now I can finally shut you up!"

    voice "l02.ogg"
    l "Wait... that means they can mute me as well! Really?"

Automatic Voice

Ren'Py includes support for automatically determining the voice file to play, making it possible to play back voice without having to put voice statements before each line of dialogue.

This is done by creating voice files that match the identifier for each line of dialogue. To determine the identifiers to use, first export the dialogue to a spreadsheet by choosing from the launcher "Extract Dialogue", "Tab-delimited Spreadsheet (dialogue.tab)", and "Continue". This will produce a file, dialogue.tab, that can be loaded in a spreadsheet program.

The first column of the spreadsheet is the identifier to use, with other columns giving more information about the dialogue.

To make Ren'Py automatically play voices, set config.auto_voice to a string containing {id}. When dialogue occurs, {id} is replaced with the dialogue identifier, forming a filename. If the filename exists, it is played.

For example, if we have:

config.auto_voice = "voice/{id}.ogg"

And the dialogue identifier is demo_minigame_03fc91ef, then when the corresponding line is shown, Ren'Py will look for the file voice/demo_minigame_03fc91ef.ogg. If the file exists, Ren'Py will play it.

Multilingual Voice

To benefit from Ren'Py's translation system when dubbing a game in several languages, it's possible to make use of Image and File Translations. For a game whose original language is English and dubbed in French, and the following dialogue:

voice "omelette.ogg"
e "I like scrambled eggs with cheese..."

Placing the english version in game/omelette.ogg and the french translation in game/tl/french/omelette.ogg will make Ren'Py use the french version when the french language is activated in the game.

It works just the same for automatic voice, as long as the filepath of the translation file starting from game/tl/<language>/ matches the filepath of the original file starting from game/.

Voice Functions

_get_voice_info()

Returns information about the voice being played by the current say statement. This function may only be called while a say statement is executing.

The object returned has the following fields:

VoiceInfo.filename: The filename of the voice to be played, or None if no files should be played.

VoiceInfo.auto_filename: The filename that Ren'Py looked in for automatic-voicing purposes, or None if one could not be found.

VoiceInfo.tag: The voice_tag parameter supplied to the speaking Character.

VoiceInfo.sustain: False if the file was played as part of this interaction. True if it was sustained from a previous interaction.

voice(filename, tag=None)

Plays filename on the voice channel. The equivalent of the voice statement.

filename

The filename to play. This is used with config.voice_filename_format to produce the filename that will be played.

tag

If this is not None, it should be a string giving a voice tag to be played. If None, this takes its default value from the voice_tag of the Character that causes the next interaction.

The voice tag is used to specify which character is speaking, to allow a user to mute or unmute the voices of particular characters.

voice_can_replay(): Returns true if it's possible to replay the current voice.

voice_replay(): Replays the current voice, if possible.

voice_sustain(ignored='', **kwargs): The equivalent of the voice sustain statement.

Voice Actions

PlayCharacterVoice(voice_tag, sample, selected=False)

This plays sample on the voice channel, as if said by a character with voice_tag.

sample: The full path to a sound file. No voice-related handling of this file is done.
selected: If True, buttons using this action will be marked as selected while the sample is playing.

SetCharacterVolume(voice_tag, volume=None)

This allows the volume of each characters to be adjusted. If volume is None, this returns a BarValue that controls the value of voice_tag. Otherwise, this set it to volume.

volume is a number between 0.0 and 1.0, and is interpreted as a fraction of the mixer volume for voice channel.

SetVoiceMute(voice_tag, mute): If mute is true, mutes voices that are played with the given voice_tag. If mute is false, unmutes voices that are played with voice_tag.

ToggleVoiceMute(voice_tag, invert=False): Toggles the muting of voice_tag. This is selected if the given voice tag is muted, unless invert is true, in which case it's selected if the voice is unmuted.

VoiceReplay(): Replays the most recently played voice.