Hi jim.
That reminds me of the old Amigar workbench synthesisor. Again it wasn't a
screen reader but could read out what you typed, and also be recorded if you
were programming for the Amigar and ddn't want to use a full size sound
sample which obvious took up lots of memory at the time.
Workbench sounds pretty dire compared to sapi, and I never actually used it
to do any serious computer things myself me being about 8-11 when we had the
Amigar and never having used a propper computer, but I do remember playing
some public domain games that used the synth in some fun ways.
There was a port of the old (and very difficult), platformer hunchback which
had a sampled version of the music with Workbench wrapping "quasy modo is a
nice man, quasy modo is a nice man" which was funny, (it also had lots of
amusing game text before levels too).
Probably the best use I saw of workbench was in a public domain game called
war. This was a mix of stratogy and action. So you would have a map with
planets to move to, resources to build fleets, research etc, however
whenever you got a battle you'd have to physically fight it in a 2D
spaceship game style. Actually thinking about it it would make a pretty
awsome audio game :D.
The thing I remember best is that the amigar workbench voice was used to
play the evil aliens, the Zargans who were fighting against the player
controled vaigans, and so when it was your turn to place fleets or alocate
resources it'd say things like "try your best hu mon" (and yes, it did say
Hu mon well before Quark in ds9), or "over to you, embryo head"
the best was when you lost battles however as the voice would make comments
like "the Vaigan fleet has been destroyed, I am so sad I think I will commit
suicide" or "the vaigan fleet has been destroyed, ha ha ha"
or even "the vaigan fleet has been destroyed, I think your joystic is made
of concrete"
What was so funny about these is they were all in a dead flat, very robotic
monotone, which naturally made them very hilarious to hear.
My brother also claimed that if you destroyed enough enemy fleets it'd say
"the zargan fleet has been destroyed you bastard" but I never heard this
myself.
Very much a case though of a bad synth actually being hilarious in the way
it contributed to the game.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
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