NetTTS

Demo video (YouTube)

NetTTS is a small Win32 GUI that wraps FlexTalk and other SAPI 4.0 voices. It’s meant to run on old Windows boxes, modern Windows, or Wine.

Project Strengths

• Works on retro Windows installs without a hunt for old DLLs.
• Builds cleanly on Linux with MinGW-w64.
• Bundles a known-good speech.h so headers don’t drift.
• Matches the maintainer’s Devuan + Wine workflow.
• Preserves the legacy of AT&T's Flextalk Engine in a public repository.
• Preserves the legacy of Valve's game "Halflife" as this Engine was used for the "VOX"/Black Mesa Announcement System samples in the game.
• Implements a unique prosody encoder system based on observations of the utility of valve's fictionally created VOX announcement system
• Fun! :D

Run the prebuilt binary

1. Download the zip from Releases and unpack it.
2. Install the SAPI 4.0 runtime (third_party/Dependencies/spchapi.exe) if needed.
3. Install FlexTalk from third_party/Dependencies/flextalk.zip.
4. Launch nettts_gui.exe on Windows or via Wine (wrun ./build/nettts_gui.exe).

Want to make it sing? There’s a NetTTS sing-along gist.

Wine prefix automation

If you want a ready-to-roll Wine XP sandbox with SAPI 4.0, FlexTalk, and NetTTS preinstalled, run:

./scripts/winetricks/setup_nettts_prefix.sh

Or pull the latest helper directly from GitHub:

curl -fsSLo setup_nettts_prefix.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/h4rm0n1c/NetTTS/main/scripts/winetricks/setup_nettts_prefix.sh \
  && bash setup_nettts_prefix.sh --root-dir "$(pwd)/nettts"

Defaults:

• Prefix and files land under ~/nettts/.
• Prefix path: ~/nettts/wineprefix/.
• Logs: ~/nettts/wineprefix/drive_c/nettts/nettts.log.

The script uses winetricks (winxp, vcrun6, mfc42, riched20), downloads SAPI, FlexTalk, and the NetTTS zip, then wires up helper scripts.

FlexTalk’s Installer will launch and complete installation on its own thanks to @zulc22

Helper scripts:

• ~/nettts/bin/nettts-daemon.sh – start/stop the TCP server.
• ~/nettts/bin/nettts-gui.sh – launch the GUI.
• ~/nettts/bin/flextalk-controlpanel.sh – open the FlexTalk control panel.

More detail: docs/winetricks.md.

Quick start build (Linux host)

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y make mingw-w64 g++-mingw-w64-i686

make -f Makefile.mingw -j"$(nproc)"
# → build/nettts_gui.exe

The binary lands in ./build/ and can be run via Wine ($HOME/bin/wrun ./build/nettts_gui.exe).

Customize the include path

By default the build uses third_party/include/speech.h. To point at another SDK:

make -f Makefile.mingw INC_DIR="C:/Program Files/Microsoft Speech SDK/Include" -j"$(nproc)"

Housekeeping

• Clean: make -f Makefile.mingw clean
• Artifacts: ./build/
• Optional: third_party/Dependencies/ may contain installers for SAPI/FlexTalk.

Live status sidechannel

Run nettts_gui.exe --runserver (or press Start server) to expose:

• Command socket on --port (default 5555).
• Status socket on --status-port (defaults to --port+1, so 5556).

Status socket messages:

• START when speech begins.
• STOP when playback ends.

One-shot TCP commands

The command socket keeps the connection open. To send one line and exit:

printf 'Hello World From Net TTS NetCat TCP Server!\n' | nc -q 0 127.0.0.1 5555

BSD netcat also supports -N:

printf 'Message for Gordon Freeman, you will not escape this time.\n' | nc -N 127.0.0.1 5555

A minimal status consumer:

nc 127.0.0.1 5556 | while read -r line; do
  case "$line" in
    START) echo "duck bgm" ;;   # replace with your OBS control shim
    STOP)  echo "restore" ;;
  esac
done

Thanks to Valve for the games and to the classic Win32 UI era that inspired this project.

AutoHotKey Automation by @zulc22