Hi John, Thanks for the post and the research on the PI, I have to confess I hadn't really looked into using the PI with windows before this post, but I did think there was a version of windows which had been specifically designed to work optimally with the PI. I've just done some googling myself, and although Microsoft have released a stripped back version of windows 10 that is designed to run on the PI, its not windows in the usual sense but windows 10 IOT which from what I understand is more of a tool for developers and from what I have gathered it won't run standard windows programs/apps as they are incompatible with the PI's ARM based hardware, so will only run universal programs that are designed to run across multiple devices such as PC, phones and the Xbox, so I wouldn't imagine it would run audio games.
Shame about the windows 10 PI OS not being an answer for this, and as you mentioned in your post XP wouldn't really be a suitable option either, well it looks like sticking to my desktop for games for the moment. Shame I can't remember who it was I thought I saw on here that had used a PI for audio games, would be interesting to know what and how he did it and what the results were like that he had from it Anyway, thanks for the google research and reply Paul -----Original Message----- From: Gamers [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of john Sent: 21 October 2016 22:18 To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] creating an audio game console - was RE: memory Because I needed things to google, I did a bit of looking at the Pie's specs for the feasibility of running windows as a miniature gaming platform. It's got 1 GB ram, which means you're outright using up or earlier. Xu will run happily enough on 1 GB - though it's happier with 2. Expect some lifetime reduction in whatever card you choose for your OS drive. This outlaws all of VG Storm's titles, unless they manage to get their games running on up, but other than that, I can't think of anything that won't run on these specs. The CPU looks ok - 1.2 GHz, but its running four cores which will help offset some of the speed issues. Fine for up and games, as long as you don't expect it to move the world. Storage will depend on the micro SD card you pick. A brief amazon search shows me a 64gb sandisk for $20, and a 32gb for $10. If you want more, there's a 128gb for $42, which means there's no real cost per gb gain for any of the capacities (a 16gb kingston is also available for $5.25, but that's pushing the lower limit of what would run xp, and audiogames aren't exactly small). The latest Pie (released in February of this year) has built-in wireless, so you'll be able to play games like swamp or run muds if you want to do that. However, I see a couple relatively major problems: Firstly, you're doing one of the major noNos in computing - running an operating system off something like an sd card. Xp was not designed to do this. The card was not designed to do this, and the middling amount of ram you have means that once you start gaming you're going to be abusing the card even further. The larger the card you get the longer it'll last - so that 128gb suddenly looks a lot more appealing if you don't want to have to replace your storage device. Secondly, is the fact that you have to run windows Xp. I'm not going to start on the unsupported thing - it doesn't matter for our purposes, because you're not going to be doing anything secure on the pie - if its on the internet, you're probably only connecting to game servers. What I will say though is that you can't buy Xp anymore. This may be the death null for any project that wants to sell these as fully decked out audiogaming machines. The last thing you want is Microsoft kicking down your door with a lawsuit over those 250 pirated copies of Xp you sold. I think its a really cool idea, but when you get into setting it up, its probably not going to work out as well as you'd hope, unless you somehow manage to configure a linux distro via wine to run all the games you want to include (linux will run fine on those specs but since all of our audiogames are compiled for windows you'd have to script an amazing amount of prep work). Best, John -------------------------------------------------- From: "Paul Lemm" <paul.lem...@gmail.com> Sent: Friday, October 21, 2016 12:52 To: "'Gamers Discussion list'" <gamers@audyssey.org> Subject: [Audyssey] creating an audio game console - was RE: memory Hi Travis, I don't know a huge amount about it, but wouldn't something like the Raspberry PI be perfect for something like this? There cheap at less than £40 for a brand new latest PI model, and I know you can get free text to speech for the PI , as I have one myself which I use as a kind of media server for streaming movies and sport so it had spoken menus. I did however brought a PI for my brother as a present and turned it into a retro gaming console (sorry before anyone gets excited, this was a retro gaming console for sighted people so completely inaccessible( that played everything from the ZX spectrum through to the Nintendo N64, because it already had built in WIFI and USB ports it was easy to hook up to the internet wirelessly and we plugged an Xbox controller straight into the PI so it was fairly straight forward. I believe you can get a windows OS for the PI, I'm just not sure if audio games would run on that or not, if they did it would be a simple case of installing the windows OS, setting up the text to speech, loading it up with audio games then once done just copying the SD card , you could then either sell an SD card with the preformatted image on the card, or set up a download to the SD card image that people could download and then put on an SD card themselves, you could either sell the PI yourself or leave it for people to buy the PI themselves as they would just need to insert the preformatted SD card and it would be good to go with no setting up required. Again like I said I don't know a huge amount about the PI and the different operating systems and whether this would work, but now I think about it I vaguely remember someone on this list saying they had set up a PI to play audio games on, I could be wrong on this, but I'm sure someone did, I just can't remember who it was. Sorry for the long message by the way People would just need to insert the SD card into a PI and it would be all set up and ready to go -----Original Message----- From: Gamers [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Travis Siegel Sent: 21 October 2016 16:38 To: Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] memory No it wouldn't cost much at all. I've already tried to fly this concept, and got turned down flat by most developers I approached. They['re just not interested. <sigh> Using a raspberry pi as the heart, it would be a trivial matter to build a menuing system, pack the sd card full of every kind of game imaginable, and sell the thing for a hundred bucks or so, and still make a bit of a proffit (admittedly, not much, but still ...) The problem is tht you'll need games for the thing, and since it uses an arm processor (the same line as the iPhones) folks just don't want to port their windows apps to the arm processor, even though, in some cases it's as simple as recompiling with a different mainstream compiler. I thought about going ahead and making an sd card with all the stuff I could find and port on my own, then just sell the sd card for a few bucks more to cover costs than anything else, and I may still do that, but without ports of things like rsgames game client, and a bit more sound variety, folks aren't going to be much interested in it. (Just for reference) This is my second attempt to float the idea of a gaming console for the blind, the first attempt was several years ago using a small credit card sized computer from parallax, and although initially folks said they were interested, once the capabilities of the chip were discussed, they all gave it up as a bad idea, because it wasn't on par with modern windows systems. (well duh), that's the whole point of a gaming console. But anyway, that's it in a nutshell. On 10/20/2016 6:38 PM, The Life of Z wrote: > Thanks Dark that' is some incouragement. Maybe I'll be able to play it > aafter allWWWell, that was an intresting post. I think the reason why > developers don't make any game additions for the sighted is because of X > box 1 and playstatttion 4. I had an idea for a console for the blind but > I don't know how to get it off the ground. It would be like a game > console like and x--box or playstation except it could handle games for the blind. > I'd even have a li'l button tthat you could press to have a visual > display just incase you had sighted family or friends that wanted to > play with you. > Of courrse, if I got some developers to help me bbbuild the thing, it would > probably cost a bunch like everything made fffor us blind people. > Somtimesss I hate that. > > On Oct 20, 2016 11:43 AM, "Travis Siegel" <tsie...@nfbcal.org> wrote: > >> You're likely to get a lot of responses to these questions, but I'll chime >> in anyway. >> >> To answer the first question. >> >> No, it doesn't take as much room for a game for the visually impaired >> as it does for a sighted gamer. The reason being, although sounds >> can be large, (especially high-quality ones), you don't have to deal >> with graphics, which can eat considerably more space. My son is >> always buying the newest games, and these days, they're almost always >> several gigabytes in size. I have yet to see an audio game that >> packs that big of a punch, though I'm not exactly an expert on audio >> games for the blind, considering >> I'm not a fan of windows, and only recently got another windows >> machine which I have done without for more than 10 years. On the >> other hand, I'm quite a bit puzzled why absolutely no attempt is made >> by folks who make blind games to make them sighted friendly. >> Admittedly,it would take extra work, and in some cases, it might be >> more work than it's worth, but in general, when a game is made for >> the blind community, nothing is done to the game to make it be playable by sighted gamers. >> >> Sometimes, the effort is so minimal, it is laughable, and yet, >> developers of blind games do the very thing they accuse the sighted >> world of doing to >> us. <shrug> I have never released a product that wasn't usable by >> both sighted and blind users alike, though again, I haven't been >> doing anything >> at all in the windows world for more than 10 years, and most of the >> freelance work I do has nothing to do with blind folks at all, but >> that's beside the point. I find it frustrating sometimes when I >> download a shiny >> new game to play, only to find that my wife and children can't enjoy >> the game with me, because there is no attempt made to give the >> sighted world any interface at all. Case in point, rs games. Except >> for the sounds, there's absolutely no reason whatsoever why the >> client can't have the text >> written on the screen right along with the spoken text. Instead, the >> sighted folks have to use the web interface wich is so plain, they >> don't even want to bother with it. >> >> I've been a web developer for roughly 20 years, and honestly, it's >> not hard to make web sites presentable to the sighted as well as the >> blind if it's done correctly. Yes, you'll need a sighted person to >> look at the thing, and say things like, move the graphic to the other >> side of the text, >> or why does that link not have a picture, but it's not a difficult process. >> >> As for the rest of your questions, I'll leave those for others, as >> I've gotten badly off topic with this post, and while I could rant >> for several pages, it's not helpful to do so, so I'll stop here, with >> the expectation that I'll get blasted 3 ways from sunday for daring >> to speak such blastphemy, and discussions of how hard and time >> consuming it would be to make things usable by the sighted. I don't >> mean full out graphics with full >> motion video and such, but just a little effort put into maybe having >> a few >> pictures, (or as pointed about rsgames client,) just adding text >> instead of >> having speech only. It's not hard, and it allows friends and family >> to play along, even if it's not the best experience in the world for them. >> >> >> >> On 10/19/2016 12:53 PM, The Life of Z wrote: >> >>> I have a question for you guys. Does it take a lot more memory for >>> games for the blind to be created or is it about the same as a game >>> for the sighted world? My second question is does it take up a lot >>> of space for all you gamers out their who have PC computers? My >>> third and final question is >>> this: is their a gamers page on youtube for the blind gamer like myself? >>> Thanks list. >>> --- >>> Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the >>> list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. >>> You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at >>> http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. >>> All messages are archived and can be searched and read at >>> http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. >>> If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of >>> the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. >>> >> >> --- >> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. >> https://www.avast.com/antivirus >> >> >> --- >> Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the >> list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. >> You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at >> http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. >> All messages are archived and can be searched and read at >> http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. >> If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, >> please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. >> > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the > list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. 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