{"id":24457,"date":"2026-03-29T01:23:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T01:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/?p=24457"},"modified":"2026-04-15T21:55:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T21:55:17","slug":"release-novelforge-4-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/2026\/03\/29\/release-novelforge-4-0\/","title":{"rendered":"Release: NovelForge 4.0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The $50 Windows desktop software <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediachance.com\/novelforge\/releasenotes.html\">NovelForge is now at version 4.0<\/a>. This script and novel-writing software, from the maker of the worthy graphics plugin Dynamic Auto-Painter, now adds &#8220;over 50 local neural voices&#8221; for audiobook production, plus Word export, and more. Nice, though sadly there&#8217;s <em>still<\/em> no native Dark Mode for the UI &mdash; which may be a deal-breaker for many writers. The paid third-party software WindowsTop is the only thing that can make the entire UI go dark and retain visibility\/functionality for the UI. NovelForge 4.0 does however now have a Dark Mode for its special &#8216;distraction free&#8217; editor, which is something. <\/p>\n<p>The new 4.0 version has been tested by me, and the Kokoro offline voices are surprisingly excellent (considering the installer is a mere 260Mb) and there are a lot of them. Lewis (British) is perhaps the best. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026-03-28_230502.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026-03-28_230502.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"526\" height=\"675\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-24459\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026-03-28_230502.jpg 526w, https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026-03-28_230502-234x300.jpg 234w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 526px) 100vw, 526px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>However, one can&#8217;t have dialogue read in different voices from the same page. There&#8217;s no SSML tagging system to change voices in mid-page. And, rather surprisingly, no-one has elsewhere made a Windows text-editor which integrates Kokoro in a way that can do multi-actor dialogue. It&#8217;s not even in Balabolka, the go-to TTS software, which one might have thought would be a natural fit for the local and real-time Kokoro. <\/p>\n<p><em>Update: I have tried and tried and <em>tried<\/em> to get Kokoro TTS running on Windows in an advanced way (voice blending, pitch control, multivoice etc) and must have installed a dozen possibilities, both Python and ComfyUI. They <em>all<\/em> fail. Kokoro is such an utter pain to actually <strong>get working<\/strong> on Windows. NovelForge is the <em>only<\/em> thing that actually works, albeit in a basic way. It just installs and works. That&#8217;s it, no hassle.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The $50 Windows desktop software NovelForge is now at version 4.0. This script and novel-writing software, from the maker of the worthy graphics plugin Dynamic Auto-Painter, now adds &#8220;over 50 local neural voices&#8221; for audiobook production, plus Word export, and more. Nice, though sadly there&#8217;s still no native Dark Mode for the UI &mdash; which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,9,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-companion-software","category-freebies","category-spotted-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24457"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24518,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24457\/revisions\/24518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jurn.link\/dazposer\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}