Moonbase Alpha Text to Speech Handbook & Top Alternatives

Are you ready to experience the thrills and challenges of living on the moon? Developed by NASA Learning Technologies in collaboration with Army Game Studio, Moonbase Alpha is a journey where space exploration meets science. An educational game, it teaches real-world science and problem-solving skills through humor, creativity, and robotic voices.

This realistic simulation video game lets players step into the boots of a lunar colonist and challenges them to complete life-saving tasks. But there’s more to it than just fixing broken parts and navigating the Moon’s rocky surface.

Over time, players have grown to love its text to speech (TTS). What was meant as a practical tool for team communication quickly became a source of endless creativity as players discovered hilarious ways to use the TTS engine.

In this blog, we’ll dive into what makes Moonbase Alpha text to speech so entertaining and explore some alternative tools that offer a similar TTS experience. Let’s get started!

What Is Moonbase Alpha Text to Speech? 

Moonbase Alpha text to speech (TTS) aims to educate and engage players in the possibilities of lunar colonization, exploration, and research. It gained popularity mainly because of its speech engine, which allows players to type words (mission briefings, communicating with fellow astronauts, alerts and warnings) and repeat them in a funny, robotic voice. Its text-to-speech feature is an outcome of this technology and can now be used to create other humorous sounds.

Moonbase Alpha’s text to speech program called DECTalk is at the heart of TTS voice assistive technology. Developed in the 1980s by Digital Equipment Corporation, it was Stephen Hawking’s use of DECTalk that made it famous for using it to communicate as his ALS progressed. 

How to Use Moonbase Alpha Text to Speech Feature?

To activate the Moonbase AlphaTTS feature, follow these steps:

Step #1 Press the Chat Key 

During gameplay, press “Enter” to bring up the chat window.

Step #2 Type Your Message 

Type what you want to say. Moonbase Alpha TTS will read aloud whatever you type, so you can get creative with phrasing, repetition, or punctuation to achieve different voice effects.

Step #3 Send the Message

Hit “Enter” again to send your message. The robotic voice will read it out to the rest of the players

Users playing Moonbase Alpha can also modify how their text is vocalized using specific syntax and commands. Players can change the pitch and duration of individual phonemes by appending numbers and symbols to their input. For example, adding a number can adjust pitch, while symbols can alter the length of sounds.

Additionally, players can use it creatively to generate text to speech song or sound effects by carefully crafting their inputs with phonetic codes.

Top Alternatives to Moonbase Alpha Text to Speech

While Moonbase Alpha’s TTS engine is famous for its quirkiness and fun, it has limited features and voice settings. If you’re looking for a more polished and versatile text to speech experience, there are several alternatives that offer high-quality voices, customization options, and advanced features:

Murf AI

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Unlike Moonbase Alpha’s robotic voices, Murf AI delivers natural-sounding AI voices that can use codes and commands to mimic the tonalities and inflections of human speech. Its cutting-edge technology allows for precise control over the speech output, making it suitable for professional use beyond gaming and entertainment. 

Key Features

• 120+ AI voices in more than 20 languages that can be used for various applications ranging from e-learning to corporate videos to audiobooks to podcasts to sales videos and more
• Offers a state-of-the-art neural TTS that produces voices indistinguishable from human speech
• Ability to add background music and synchronize the voiceover with visuals
• Control over the pacing, tone, pitch, emphasis, and pronunciation of the speech
• Add-ons like AI dubbing, translation, voice cloning, voice editing, and more

Pricing: Trial version is available for free. Paid plans start at $19/month.

Google Text to Speech 

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Google Text-to-Speech allows users to turn text into natural-sounding speech with the help of an API powered by Google’s AI technologies. Users can employ audio data files to power applications or enhance videos and audio recordings. It also converts text to Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) input into other audio files like MP3 or LINEAR16. Unlike the Moonbase Alpha TTS, it also provides WaveNet-generated voices, which are widely considered more human-like than other synthetic voices.

Key Features

• Convert arbitrary strings, words, and sentences into the sound of a person
• Takes two types of input: raw text or SSML-formatted data
• Wide selection of custom voices
• Allows configuration of the speaking rate, pitch, volume, and sample rate hertz
• SSML enables you to insert pauses, acronym pronunciations, or other additional details into the audio data

Pricing: Trial version is available for free. Comes with a pay-as-you-go pricing structure.

Play HT 

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Among the best alternatives to Moonbase, PlayHT is a user-friendly speech platform that converts written text into realistic, natural-sounding voice overs. It can be easily integrated into workflows to enable automatic transformation of text into speech for real-time applications or platforms. Users can choose from a wide range of voices in any language and accent, and bring their projects to life. It is ideal for creating podcasts, audiobooks, training materials for e-learning, or voice overs for commercials.  

Key Features

• Integrates with all major audio players so users can embed audio files on websites or platforms
• Fast-growing library of 907 voices
• Customize your AI voice by adjusting the pitch, pauses, and speed
• Create unique voice models using the AI voice cloning feature
• Offers transcription features for reverse-engineering audio into text
• Available in 143 different languages, including French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, and more

Pricing: Free plan with limited functionalities is available. Paid pricing starts from $31.20/month onwards.

Speechify 

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While Moonbase Alpha’s TTS is restricted to typed text in the game, Speechify’s OCR capabilities make it an invaluable tool for reading physical text aloud, which can help people with visual impairments or reading disabilities. It is currently used by approximately 30 million people to read 3x faster, and remember 2x more. Furthermore, Speechify is a practical and versatile solution for daily use compared to Moonbase TTS, which is limited to in-game communication.

Key Features

• Offers unlimited file uploads at lightning-fast speeds up to 4.5x
• Access to 200+ voices in 60+ languages
• Equipped with AI summarization, voice cloning, natural-sounding speech
• Adjustable reading speed
• Highlights the words being spoken aloud
• Multiplatform accessibility options can be used across web browsers, iOS, Android, and desktop applications

Pricing: Free trial available. Premium plan is available at $11.58/month.

ElevenLabs 

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Rated among the top text-to-speech (TTS) providers along with Moonbase Alpha TTS, ElevenLabs is well-known for its realistic and emotionally nuanced voice overs, near-perfect voice cloning, and AI dubbing features. It has an easy to use interface, regardless of the user’s level, and comes packed with extra features such as Projects and VoiceLab. These are great when you want to convert large amounts of text to speech in one go. This makes it perfect for long narratives or long-form content, like audiobooks or dialogue-heavy pieces.

Key Features

• Replicates an existing voice and designs new ones from scratch with VoiceLab tool
• 1200+ voices in 32 languages
• Recently introduced IIFlash (V2.5) enables the fastest human-like TTS
• Automatically dub voice overs onto existing video footage with AI dubbing while preserving the speaker's emotion, timing, tone, and other unique characteristics
• Suitable for audiobooks, video voiceovers, commercials, and more
• Adheres to stringent ethical guidelines such as SOC2 and GDPR

Pricing: Free trial available. Paid plans start from $5/month onwards.

NaturalReader

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While Moonbase Alpha’s TTS is purely for fun and game communication, NaturalReader is built for education and productivity. Its ability to read different types of documents aloud helps users improve comprehension. Its voices are far more lifelike than Moonbase’s TTS, providing a pleasant listening experience.

Key Features

• Support for multiple file formats aloud, including PDFs, Word documents, eBooks, and web pages
• OCR camera scanner support for enhanced accessibility
• 40+ languages and multi-accent voices with 200+ AI voices
• AI voice cloning in over 100 languages
• Listen with Web app, mobile app, and Chrome extension
• Suitable for content creation for YouTube, training, e-learning, audiobooks, and more

Pricing: Free version available. Their Plus plan is priced at $20.90/month.

Why Is Murf the Best Text to Speech Software? 

As a comprehensive TTS solution, Murf comes equipped with the Speech Gen 2 model and extensive API capabilities.

Speech Gen 2 is Murf’s most advanced, realistic, and customizable speech model. It blends human-like realism with advanced customization abilities. The model has been trained with over 70,000 hours of ethically sourced speech data from diverse demographics and emotion spectrum. The output you get has a human-like quality in every inflection and rhythm. Operating natively at 44.1kHz sampling rate, Gen 2 can capture the entire human audible range more precisely.

Moreover, Murf’s developer-friendly API lets you integrate its versatile voice generation capabilities into your products, applications, and workflows. Feel free to adjust the pitch and speed, thereby adding depth and emotion to your content. 

With 120+ realistic voices in 8 languages and 20+ styles, and flawless native accents, users can find the perfect voice match for various types of content. Further, you can generate audio files in MP3, WAV, FLAC, ALAW, ULAW or encode as Base64.

Final Words

While Moonbase Alpha’s text to speech feature brings an entertaining touch to gaming, its limitations in voice variety and naturalness make it more of a novelty tool than a comprehensive TTS solution. For users seeking a more versatile and polished speech experience, tools like Murf stand out, catering to both creative and practical needs far beyond just in-game communication.