012.440

Additions

• Added browser-based synthesized dialogue voices using window.speechSynthesis.
• Added different default voice profiles for Spark, Lady Spark, Gootz, and Ivan.

• Dialogue Voices

  • Spark uses a lower-pitched male-style voice.
  • Lady Spark uses a female-style voice.
  • Gootz uses a higher-pitched, faster kid-style voice.
  • Ivan uses a slightly slower, lower voice.
  • Added synthesized voices to Script Block dialogue.
  • Added synthesized voices to the local player's speech bubbles and chat.
  • Added synthesized voices to PlayerShadow and remote player speech bubbles.
  • Player voices use the character or skin associated with the player where possible.
  • Enemy speech bubbles are intentionally excluded from synthesized speech.
  • Added persistent voice profiles so selected voices, pitch, and rate settings can be retained locally.

• Dialogue Sound Settings

  • Added separate Player Dialogue Volume and Script Dialogue Volume sliders to the Sound menu.
  • Player Dialogue Volume defaults to 0%.
  • Script Dialogue Volume defaults to 50%.
  • Dialogue voice controls are available to Subscribers, Bug Finders, and Developers.
  • Non-entitled users can still see the dialogue sliders, but they are disabled and open the Subscriber Feature popup when interacted with.

Improvements

• Scripted dialogue now waits for both the text display and synthesized speech to finish before advancing.
• Script speech is automatically cancelled when appropriate, including script reset or end, death, and world transitions.
• Script dialogue voices take priority over normal player-chat voices so multiplayer chat cannot interrupt a scripted scene.
• New player chat replaces previous player-chat speech instead of building a long text-to-speech queue.
• The main Sound On/Off setting now also controls synthesized dialogue.
• Dialogue volume is handled separately from regular sound effects volume.
• Speech entitlement now uses one shared authoritative Subscriber, Bug Finder, or Developer value instead of separate role checks in different systems.
• Audio volume is now clamped to valid browser ranges.
• Rejected browser Audio.play() promises are safely handled.
• Dialogue voice settings persist through localStorage.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Player Dialogue sometimes no longer speaking after scripted dialogue finished.
• Fixed the speech manager occasionally remaining stuck in the Script channel when the browser failed to fire a speech completion event.
• Fixed Subscriber and Developer accounts sometimes failing the dialogue-speech entitlement check while Bug Finder accounts worked correctly.
• Fixed dialogue sliders appearing enabled while the speech system independently considered the user ineligible.
• Fixed an accidental duplicate <script> tag in the Sound menu that caused an Unexpected token '<' JavaScript syntax error and prevented the rest of the sound settings code from running.
• Fixed cancelling Script Dialogue by lowering its volume to 0 potentially leaving the script waiting for speech completion.
• Fixed stale synthesized speech state so normal Player Dialogue can resume properly after a scripted scene.