animalese-rs

Rust library for generating Animal Crossing-style "animalese" speech sounds.

Assets come courtesy of https://github.com/joshxviii/animalese-typing-desktop, also MIT Licensed.

Features

8 voice types (f1-f4, m1-m4)
Pitch shifting and randomization
Intonation control (rising/falling pitch for questions, excitement, statements)
Audio assets bundled with the crate
Interactive CLI tool

Installation

Add to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
animalese = "0.1"

Usage

Basic Example

use animalese::Animalese;

let engine = Animalese::new()?;
engine.speak("hello world")?;

Custom Voice Profile

use animalese::{Animalese, VoiceProfile, VoiceType};

let mut engine = Animalese::new()?;

let profile = VoiceProfile {
    voice_type: VoiceType::M1,
    pitch_shift: -5.0,      // Lower pitch
    pitch_variation: 0.3,   // More randomness
    volume: 0.8,
    intonation: 0.0,        // No pitch glide
};

engine.set_profile(profile);
engine.speak("I'm Tom Nook")?;

Intonation and Speech Patterns

use animalese::Animalese;

let engine = Animalese::new()?;

// Automatic rising intonation for questions
engine.speak_question("What's that?")?;

// Excited speech (higher pitch + rising)
engine.speak_excited("Amazing!")?;

// Statement with falling intonation
engine.speak_statement("I see.")?;

// Or manually control intonation (-1.0 to 1.0)
let mut profile = engine.profile();
profile.intonation = 0.5;  // Rising pitch over sentence
engine.set_profile(profile);
engine.speak("Going up")?;

Advanced: Custom Assets

use animalese::Animalese;

// Only if you have custom audio files matching the expected format
let engine = Animalese::with_custom_assets("./my_assets/voice")?;

CLI Tool

Interactive typing sounds:

cargo install animalese
animalese

Speak text directly:

animalese "hello world"
animalese --voice m2 --pitch=-3.0 "Tom Nook here"
animalese --intonation=0.6 "What's that?"

Available options:

--voice (-v): Voice type (f1-f4, m1-m4)
--pitch (-p): Pitch shift in semitones (-12.0 to 12.0)
--variation (-r): Random pitch variation (0.0 to 2.0)
--intonation (-i): Pitch glide over sentence (-1.0 falling to 1.0 rising)
--volume (-V): Volume level (0.0 to 1.0)
--list (-l): Show available voices
--test (-t): Play test phrase

Known Issues

Audio Clicking in Fast Typing Mode

When typing very fast in interactive mode, you may occasionally hear clicking or popping artifacts. This is due to abruptly cutting audio waveforms when sounds overlap rapidly.

Current mitigations:

5ms fade-in applied to all sounds
Reduced playback duration for fast typing (30ms)

Workaround: Type slightly slower or adjust the fast-typing threshold in the source.

Future: We're evaluating alternative audio backends like kira (designed for game audio with per-sound control and tweening) or creek that provide better control over individual sound instances and fade-outs.

Technical Details

Audio Backend

Currently uses rodio for audio playback. While excellent for music playback, rodio's Sink architecture makes it challenging to apply per-sound fade-outs dynamically, which can cause clicks when cutting sounds short during fast typing.

Potential alternatives:

kira - Game audio library with individual sound instance control, tweening, and proper fade-outs
creek - Low-latency audio playback with sample-accurate control
tunes - Comprehensive music synthesis and composition (heavier weight)

License

MIT

animalese 0.1.1