How better to use TTS (Text to Speech...)

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1

Godot Version

Godot 4.6.1

Question

Having tried out Godot TTS, it works very well for my modest usage, but could be so much better if there was a way of identifying the end of the speech, with a signal, for instance, in similar fashion to animation endings. I suppose that this is rather more difficult, as the speech itself is not coming ‘native’ from Godot, but is there any work-around that others use..? Maybe a ‘safe word’ to be detected and used to Stop the TTS..? An ASCII code to append to a text..? Find the length of the speech and set off a Timer..? For the moment, I have a generic 10-second Timer which cuts it off by declaring an empty ““ text, followed by Stop, but the voice repeats the message until the time-out cuts in. Is there a better method..?

2

You can register a callback to know when it starts or finishes using DisplayServer.tts_set_utterance_callback() like:

func _ready() -> void:
	DisplayServer.tts_set_utterance_callback(DisplayServer.TTS_UTTERANCE_STARTED, func(id: int): print("Started speaking"))
	DisplayServer.tts_set_utterance_callback(DisplayServer.TTS_UTTERANCE_ENDED, func(id: int): print("Ended speaking"))
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3

Excellent..! It took a little fettling to get to work as a ‘one-shot’ speech, without losing future speech, but I got there in the end. Here’s my (clumsy…) code, inside a Canvas _Process for my HUD…

~~~

if GlobalVariables.gv_mess != "":
	DisplayServer.tts_set_utterance_callback(DisplayServer.TTS_UTTERANCE_STARTED, func(_id: int): DisplayServer.tts_get_voices_for_language("en"))
	DisplayServer.tts_speak(GlobalVariables.gv_mess, voice_id)
	DisplayServer.tts_set_utterance_callback(DisplayServer.TTS_UTTERANCE_ENDED, func(_id: int): DisplayServer.tts_stop())
	GlobalVariables.gv_mess = ""
else:
	DisplayServer.tts_set_utterance_callback(DisplayServer.TTS_UTTERANCE_STARTED, func(_id: int): DisplayServer.tts_get_voices_for_language("en"))

~~~