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 = "0.2"

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: 1.0,   // High variation for natural sound
    volume: 0.8,
    intonation: 0.0,        // No pitch glide
};

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

Note on pitch variation: Higher values (0.8-1.2) create more organic, natural-sounding speech by randomizing each letter's pitch. Lower values (0.0-0.3) sound more robotic and monotone. The default of 0.8 provides good variation without being distracting.

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, default: 0.8)
--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

Technical Details

Audio Backend

Uses kira for audio playback - a game audio library designed for real-time sound with individual instance control, tweening, and smooth fade-outs. This provides clean audio without clicks or pops, even during rapid-fire typing in interactive mode.

Why kira:

Per-sound instance control with proper fade-in/fade-out
Low-latency playback suitable for interactive audio
Built-in tweening for smooth parameter changes
No audio artifacts when sounds overlap rapidly

License

MIT

animalese 0.2.0