HI Dark, Yeah, well one thing is for certain regardless what I do I can't please everyone. That's true with every game a developer creates, and it becomes more of an issue any time a game features something like Star Trek, Star Wars, wrestling, etc as hard core fans see it as a type of fan fiction where those who aren't hard core fans just see it as another game.
For instance, let's take Trek 2000 verses Final Conflict. Well, when David Greenwood wrote his Star Trek game, Trek 2000, it is pretty obvious he wasn't interested in making it too technical. I.E. doing everything achording to cannon. As a result the game was ok, but wasn't great. My biggest complaint was that it lacked a lot of technical details from the original Star Trek series, and it was dumbed down to help novis gamers. For example, i know for a fact that the original Enterprise had 100 photon torpedoes. The Enterprise in Trek 2000 only carried 10. On Star Trek, as in real life, they had to set a course like (0, 9, 0) rather than north, south, east , west. I thought the north, south, east, west directions in Trek 2000 was really hoky. I.E. not at all realistic or technically accurate. Basically, because I was a big Star Trek fan, follow cannon the way some people might follow their favorite sports team, I had all these expectations what a Star Trek game would and should be like. These are details that would only be of concern to a hard core Trek fan, but not matter to your average gamer who maybe purchased the game just for a little fun. Someone who isn't up on Trek cannon wouldn't care, but those who know the cannon would find it disappointing. Which is what happened. So my first project for USA Games was to basically rewrite Trek 2000 my way which resulted in the creation of Final Conflict. Admitedly it wasn't my best work, I could have done better, but I did my best to write it using actual facts and cannon based on the television series. Plus instead of using generic names like navigation, scanning, and weapons I used the actual names of those stations like Helm, Ops, and Tactical. Trek fans loved it, but some people who tried the game who didn't know anything about Star Trek asked me why I called it Ops instead of Sensors or Scanning or something self-explanitory. Which brings us directly to the heart of the matter. One of the things I set out to do when starting USA Games is to write games based on cannon. Weather I write a Star Trek game or write a wrestling game I do my best to make the game as true to the cannon as possible which generally is widely accepted as a good thing by dedicated fans. However, someone like yourself, who doesn't know wrestling cannon well, that obviously isn't a good thing. I guess it is kind of like coming into a movie half way through and asking everyone, "who is this or that character, what is going on, why is he/she doing this or that?" All are valid questions, because you simply don't know the back story, and you aren't going to enjoy it as much as the guy sitting next to you who watched it from the moment the movie started. I think this is actually where our diference of opinion originates. I'm the guy who has been watching the movie from the beginning, so to speak, and you just entered after missing a good portion of it. Your idea of wrestling is sketchy at best so Toni the Tiger and Captain Crunch are just as viable options as Hulk Hogan and Ricky "the Dragon" Steamboat to you. However, as a cannonest myself I would feel like Toni the Tiger and Captain Crunch don't belong in the game and should be barred from playing on any official roster.However, that's not to say we can't do both. One of the things I like about Srith is you can select from a list of pregenerated/created characters, I.E. cannon adventurers, or you can custom create your own. I think a similar idea could apply here. For the wrestling cannonest like myself I can simply choose to play one of the existing restlers from the list. Someone else who doesn't really know wrestling that well or wants to add a wrestler not in the database they could add him/her as a custom player. If you want to have a fantasy match between the Super Mario Brothers and the Powers of Pain that should be possible even if it isn't necessarily official cannon just by adding them to the database and playing them. So I'll think about it. Anyway, as far as text goes again I have to agree. That's over all I think the best user interface/output for this kind of project. Its easy, very cross-platform, and as I mentioned before some screen readers like Window-Eyes 7.5 reads everything on the screen pretty well anyway. After all, as you said using Sapi voices etc to do interviews etc would suck anyway so might as well just read them with your screen reader rather than try and fudge it using Sapi voices. So I think what we can do is try it using a text UI to begin with, and if there is a big demand for self-voicing we will cross that road when we come to it. HTH --- 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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