Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list Hmmm, that could work, at least the "a lower pitch reverb means a gap" idea (while higher pitch reverb means a ceiling). Will see if I can get it working today and comment on the results (possibly post a recording if the router decides to behave).I was also wondering about adding panning to the reverb for gaps (to indicate the direction on which the gap is), was thinking that this probably wouldn't work, but coupled with the pitch hint that's probably way more feasible.magurp244 wrote:This is assuming though that the reverb sound effect your using for the ceiling doesn't clash negatively with the edge detection sound.Yeah, things may get weird if both play simultaneously on the same clue. Seems worth trying, however. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=243002#p243002 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list Hmmm, that could work, at least the "a lower pitch reverb means a gap" idea (while higher pitch reverb means a ceiling). Will see if I can get it working today and comment on the results (possibly post a recording if the router decides to behave).I was also wondering about adding panning to the reverb for gaps (to indicate the direction on which the gap is), was thinking that this probably wouldn't work, but coupled with the pitch hint that's probably way more feasible.magurp244 wrote:This is assuming though that the reverb sound effect your using for the ceiling doesn't clash negatively with the edge detection sound.Yeah, things may get weird if both play simultaneously on the same clue. Seems worth trying, however. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=243002#p243002 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list Hmmm, that could work, at least the "a lower pitch reverb means a gap" idea (while higher pitch reverb means a ceiling). Will see if I can get it working today and comment on the results (possibly post a recording if the router decides to behave).I was also wondering about adding panning to the reverb for gaps (to indicate the direction on which the gap is), was thinking that this probably wouldn't work, but coupled with the pitch hint that's probably way more feasible.magurp244 wrote:This is assuming though that the reverb sound effect your using for the ceiling doesn't clash negatively with the edge detection sound.Yeah, things may get weird if both play simultaneously on the same clue. Seems worth trying, however. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=243002#p243002 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list Hmmm, that could work, at least the "a lower pitch reverb means a gap" idea (while higher pitch reverb means a ceiling). Will see if I can get it working today and comment on the results (possibly post a recording if the router decides to behave).I was also wondering about adding panning to the reverb for gaps (to indicate the direction on which the gap is), was thinking that this probably wouldn't work, but coupled with the pitch hint that's probably way more feasible.magurp244 wrote:This is assuming though that the reverb sound effect your using for the ceiling doesn't clash negatively with the edge detection sound.Yeah, things may get weird if both play simultaneously on the same clue. Seems worth trying, however. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=243002#p243002 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list Hmmm, that could work, at least the "a lower pitch reverb means a gap" idea (while higher pitch reverb means a ceiling). Will see if I can get it working today and comment on the results (possibly post a recording if the router decides to behave).I was also wondering about adding panning to the reverb for gaps (to indicate the direction on which the gap is), was thinking that this probably wouldn't work, but coupled with the pitch hint that's probably way more feasible.magurp244 wrote:This is assuming though that the reverb sound effect your using for the ceiling doesn't clash negatively with the edge detection sound.Yeah, things may get weird if both play simultaneously on the same clue. Seems worth trying, however. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=243002#p243002 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list OK was trying to upload an OGG of what I have so far but this router is rather unstable... I have to find out a way around that since I'll be stuck with it for a long while.How would reverb work? I did give it a quick consideration before, but I don't know how it could be implemented without it clashing with ceilings (in particular, accidentally thinking a gap is a ceiling). Any specific remarks? (yes, details on how it'd get mixed are welcome - right now reverb is implemented by playing a clue multiple times at the same position with some delay and reduced volume)Also I guess the other problem here is the definition of "gap", in audiogames it seems that gaps are always pits and nothing else (and not that common either). Sol is a traditional platformer so heights go all over the place, there are pits you're meant to jump, there are stairs you just walk down, there are borders you're expected to drop off. This makes things not trivia l. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=242963#p242963 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list CAE_Jones wrote:Most of the 1.5D audio side-scrollers give pits a wind sound, but also have the player's steps change when they get close to the edge (mud, crumbling rocks, squeaky boards, whatever's thematically appropriate).Yeah, I was wondering about maybe make footsteps sound like you're running into more slippery ground or something. I was going to give it a try later today actually (first I need to think on how to make the sound effect, mind you).CAE_Jones wrote:Battle Zone doesn't bother with the altered steps and just uses the wind, but it is louder than the wind in most games. This helps given how obstacles work in that game, but I'm not sure it'd work well in a platformer.What Battle Zone are we talking about? (since that's the name of an '80s arcade game with 3D tanks and a 3D RTS game from 1999, so searching for it won't help at all)CAE_Jones wrote:Solutions I've floated around for this are altering the pitch or something of the pit sound, or using camera panning;Right now I'm using the sound pitch to indicate how deep is a gap (let's just say that there's an important difference between going down a stair and going down a bottomless pit).CAE_Jones wrote:alternatively, just making sounds for each ledge, rather than the gap itself, but that would mean even more noise. And, yeah, I tried implementing that last one once and had the same problem.Yeah, this is what I'm doing right now (just putting sounds at the boundaries). It sounds like there's a storm incoming (not anywhere as bad as the old sonar beeps, but unless you stop and carefully listen you end up no t paying attention to them, and having to stop is precisely what I don't want).CAE_Jones wrote:(I'm specifically thinking of 4-2 and 8-1.)Don't remind me of those... URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=242691#p242691 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list Well, have been implementing some of these ideas in a simpler variant of the sound engine proposed here. What works fine so far:Footsteps, including pitch variants to indicate slopesUsing reverb to indicate something is under a ceiling (works really well)Bop sounds when you hit a ceiling or a wall, as well as a landing soundReverse jump sound to indicate that you're fallingWhat does not work: the idea of using wind to indicate gaps. I got it implemented as intended, but honestly feels like random noise that doesn't help much. This is kind of an issue since you need to be able to tell gaps before you fall into them (so you can jump over them, especially those that lead to bottomless pits).OK, so back to the drawing board on this. Does anybody have any other ideas? I think that if I get this done most of the stuff would be taken care of (I already got clues for nearly ever y object in the game, in many cases they even are timed to the animation)Last night I was looking into the Bokura no Daibouken games and they don't seem to be even remotely similar to Sol, they focus on exploration way moreso than on platforming apparently. That's a completely different set of constraints it has to cope with. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=242678#p242678 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list Thought I had replied. The link doesn't work though (the site doesn't... ugh, I hate how unreliable is that server).Anyway, today I was giving it some more thought, were you thinking on something like this?Walking on normal ground makes dusty footstepsWalking on breakable platforms makes cracky wood footstepsBeing under an one-way ground lets you hear faint rocks fallingRight? Although I still wonder if the last point could be confusing or not (is it a ceiling? is it something that could fall on me?), and thinking about it, that fails to account for ground you can break using the hammer (maybe just make it more rocky?).Comments? URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=235780#p235780 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list Well yeah but you're likely to find the one-way floors before the ceilings. In fact, you're guaranteed to, since the game has you start right next to one (to let players know those walls aren't fully solid).magurp244 wrote:Are there objects that can fall on the player like spikes? I may be mistaken but don't recall encountering those in the Demo.There are falling stalactites in the second half of the game, but yeah the demo doesn't reach anywhere that far. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=235815#p235815 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list When above it I think it's better to just treat them as normal floors (especially since you can't drop off them). The only real issue is when you're below one. Also I just realized this means they'd have the wind sound from the "gaps" at their sides... If I can make their vertical position clear somehow, maybe that'll do the trick?Also a crumbling sound would make it look like the floor could break, wouldn't it? URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=233941#p233941 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list Well, decided to just put the list on a proper page (note that it was remade from scratch):http://sik.titandemo.de/audio_clues.htmlFor now the biggest focus should be describing the level layout since that's the hardest part (for objects I can probably come up with some random sound in the worst case). I want you to think of any possible situation you could think on and comment on that. What's covered so far:Being on a floor (slopes and platforms too)Being close to a gapStuff under a ceilingConveyor beltsFloors you can break...I think the only big thing missing so far is when there's a chunk of one-way floor above you. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=233482#p233482 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list Yeah, the panning suggestion I mentioned worked similar to that, except it involved the volume of both speakers instead of just one (note: didn't get to check the recording yet, no sound right now). I guess that using plain volume would be easier, but first you'll need to know which direction it represents.CAE_Jones wrote:Try a couple of hours.Actually not, because level 12 of Sonic 3 happens to be Launch Base 2, which has a four minutes long boss rush in a game that has a time limit of 10 minutes for each level... chances are you'll die from time over until you figure out how to get to the end in under six minutes (and unless you outright speed through it, that's hard). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=232239#p232239 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Platformer audio cues list
Platformer audio cues list Warning: heavy abuse of list tree structures (also giant wall of text)OK so, since trying to use a sonar in Sol didn't seem to really work out, I'm trying to think again how to add clues that could make a platformer accessible (at least for later developing a much better alternative to that method). The problem is, I'm not exactly somebody who plays audio-only platformers so I don't really know well what they do nor do I have enough time to check so I want help making a list of every possible situation.Stuff I came up with so far:Obviously updating the whole sound engine to 2D position everything (the original engine didn't even allow panning, this was a last minute hack)Walking around makes footstep soundsNormal footsteps mean flat floorHigher pitched footsteps mean an upwards slopeLower pitched footsteps mean a downwards slopeA cracky sound means a breakable platformMoving under a ceiling causes reverb or echoStronger effect means ceiling is closerJumping into a ceiling causes a bop soundNearby gaps will make a windy noiseStarting to fall makes a cartoon falling soundMoving enemies will make some faint mechanical noises to indicate their locationI guess non-moving enemies could make some sort of noise too?Collectible items would make some variant of the sound effect they make when takenKind of problematic for the power-ups since all of them have the same sound effect, should come up with something hereSprings aren't collectible but probably could make a similar noise as wellLiquid hazards would make bubbling noise, fire hazards would make burning noiseImportant stuff that still needs ideas:One-way floors above you (e.g. that you can jump onto them)For a similar reason, moving platformsWhen a ceiling is around but not right above youOr panning alone of the reverb is enough?How do I mark conveyor belts? Obviously some engine sound, but I need a way to mark their direction as well.Probably something involving panning and moving noises I suppose? But no idea how well would that work.Spike hazards (not to mention only one side of them is hazardous and the other sides are just plain solid)Floors you can break with the hammer, cracking noises would cause confusion with breakable platformsOther stuff:Page Up and Down will mess with the background music volumeShift + Page Up and Down will mess with the sound effect volumeSome clues have to be explicitly enabled (or they'll get too annoying for sighted players), though others may just stay there permanently for extra effectI'll update this post with new suggestions as soon as I get the chance (assuming I find them OK), and more ideas as I come up with them as well. Still, I want help with this so maybe in the future I can come up with a better audio mode and also to keep this list for reference for anybody else who may want to implement an audio platformer. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=232058#p232058 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Platformer audio cues list
Platformer audio cues list Warning: heavy abuse of list tree structures (also giant wall of text)OK so, since trying to use a sonar in Sol didn't seem to really work out, I'm trying to think again how to add clues that could make a platformer accessible (at least for later developing a much better alternative to that method). The problem is, I'm not exactly somebody who plays audio-only platformers so I don't really know well what they do nor do I have enough time to check so I want help making a list of every possible situation.Stuff we came up with so far:Obviously updating the whole sound engine to 2D position everything (the original engine didn't even allow panning, this was a last minute hack)Walking around makes footstep soundsNormal footsteps mean flat floorHigher pitched footsteps mean an upwards slope< /p>Lower pitched footsteps mean a downwards slopeA cracky sound means a breakable platformMoving under a ceiling causes reverb or echoStronger effect means ceiling is closerJumping into a ceiling causes a bop soundNearby gaps will make a windy noiseStarting to fall makes a cartoon falling soundMoving enemies will make some faint mechanical noises to indicate their locationI guess non-moving enemies could make some sort of noise too?Collectible items would make some variant of the sound effect they make when takenKind of problematic for the power-ups since all of them have the same sound effect, should come up with something hereSprings aren't collectible but probably could make a similar noise as wellLiquid hazards would make bubbling noise, fire hazards would make burning noiseImportant stuff that still needs ideas:One-way floors above you (e.g. that you can jump onto them)For a similar reason, moving platformsMoving platforms may have different sounds depending on their directionWhen a ceiling is around but not right above youOr panning alone of the reverb is enough?How do I mark conveyor belts? Obviously some engine sound, but I need a way to mark their direction as well.Probably something involving panning and moving noises I suppose? But no idea how well would that work.Spike hazards (not to mention only one side of them is hazardous and the other sides are just plain solid)Floors you can break with the hammer, cracking noises would cause confusion with breakable platformsOther stuff:Pag e Up and Down will mess with the background music volumeShift + Page Up and Down will mess with the sound effect volumeSome clues have to be explicitly enabled (or they'll get too annoying for sighted players), though others may just stay there permanently for extra effectI'll update this post with new suggestions as soon as I get the chance (assuming I find them OK), and more ideas as I come up with them as well. Still, I want help with this so maybe in the future I can come up with a better audio mode and also to keep this list for reference for anybody else who may want to implement an audio platformer. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=232058#p232058 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list In other words, you ran into just about every single problem I had with the sonar.I like the idea of moving platforms changing their pitch to indicate their direction. Maybe I can make falling platforms go lower pitched and rising platforms go higher pitched. Not sure how to make this work with horizontal moving platforms, however (pitch changes wouldn't be as intuitive there). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=232076#p232076 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list In other words, you ran into just about every single problem I had with the sonar.I like the idea of moving platforms changing their pitch to indicate their direction. Maybe I can make falling platforms go lower pitched and rising platforms go higher pitched. Not sure how to make this work with horizontal moving platforms, however (pitch changes wouldn't be as intuitive there).And yeah, my problem with blind-friendly platformers is that they simplify the design in order to make it easier to cram in everything. I completely refuse to do that, I'm being stubborn here. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=232076#p232076 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list Spikes don't break... I have the feeling the list tree didn't come out right (or at least it doesn't on some screen readers, despite each entry should be its own line?) Also please let's make the assumption that all sound effects would be 2D where relevant. (note that this is 2D and not 3D since there isn't a depth axis)The high pitched beeping sound is pretty much what the old sonar method did, let's say people weren't happy with it and would get confused constantly. Making the screen reader talk is rather blunt (and could get annoying) so I'd try to keep that at a minimum where possible, especially for situations that are likely to happen quite often. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=232065#p232065 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Platformer audio cues list
Re: Platformer audio cues list I actually had thought about that idea for the belt before (though good call on using the motor sound for the extremes), no idea if it would work though. I assume the belt would be represented by mechanical sounds (maybe some humming part?), but I wonder about the spacing between clues since belts are long running so a single sound won't do.Actually, this gave me the horribly crazy idea of doing double panning: the sound itself has 2D positioning, and then on top of that there's panning (like: if panning is at the right, you won't hear the sound if the source is to your left, etc.) This honestly sounds horribly confusing, but it could possibly work with the belts since their panning would be constantly changing. Would need experimenting. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=232081#p232081 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Platformer audio cues list
Platformer audio cues list Warning: heavy abuse of list tree structures (also giant wall of text)OK so, since trying to use a sonar in Sol didn't seem to really work out, I'm trying to think again how to add clues that could make a platformer accessible (at least for later developing a much better alternative to that method). The problem is, I'm not exactly somebody who plays audio-only platformers so I don't really know well what they do nor do I have enough time to check so I want help making a list of every possible situation.Stuff we came up with so far:Obviously updating the whole sound engine to 2D position everything (the original engine didn't even allow panning, this was a last minute hack)Walking around makes footstep soundsNormal footsteps mean flat floorHigher pitched footsteps mean an upwards slope< /p>Lower pitched footsteps mean a downwards slopeA cracky sound means a breakable platformMoving under a ceiling causes reverb or echoStronger effect means ceiling is closerJumping into a ceiling causes a bop soundNearby gaps will make a windy noiseStarting to fall makes a cartoon falling soundMoving enemies will make some faint mechanical noises to indicate their locationI guess non-moving enemies could make some sort of noise too?Collectible items would make some variant of the sound effect they make when takenKind of problematic for the power-ups since all of them have the same sound effect, should come up with something hereSprings aren't collectible but probably could make a similar noise as wellLiquid hazards would make bubbling noise, fire hazards would make burning noiseImportant stuff that still needs ideas:One-way floors above you (e.g. that you can jump onto them)For a similar reason, moving platformsMoving platforms may have different sounds depending on their directionWhen a ceiling is around but not right above youOr panning alone of the reverb is enough?How do I mark conveyor belts? Obviously some engine sound, but I need a way to mark their direction as well.Probably something involving panning and moving noises I suppose? But no idea how well would that work.Their extremes should be marked by motor sounds to make their endpoints more obvious.Spike hazards (not to mention only one side of them is hazardous and the other sides are just plain solid)Floors you can break with the hammer, cracking noise s would cause confusion with breakable platformsOther stuff:Page Up and Down will mess with the background music volumeShift + Page Up and Down will mess with the sound effect volumeSome clues have to be explicitly enabled (or they'll get too annoying for sighted players), though others may just stay there permanently for extra effectI'll update this post with new suggestions as soon as I get the chance (assuming I find them OK), and more ideas as I come up with them as well. Still, I want help with this so maybe in the future I can come up with a better audio mode and also to keep this list for reference for anybody else who may want to implement an audio platformer. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=232058#p232058 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems Well, implemented the scanning. It honestly sounds as messy as before, but at least it seems to be good enough to prevent it from overloading all other sounds (now I can hear footsteps just fine). Also it removed all the clicking, which is nice. Pits dont sound anywhere as annoying now, either (made them pulse too just in case). Probably still not good enough but better is better.magurp244 wrote:Anyhoo, what sort of hack did you pull off for the menus?Originally the game lets you assign the next option for all four directions (meaning the layout is not linear at all, making better use of screen space and looking prettier). This only makes sense when you can see, though. I made the menu code override this behavior in audio mode and always navigate options in a linear manner based on the IDs of each item. Turns out that for the most part they were already in a decent arrangement (I just disab led a few buttons that only made sense when using the mouse and thats it), and the left/right actions for changing values are pretty much in place already. The only catch would be toggle buttons then (those want spacebar instead of left/right, so it may be a bit confusing at first, but its not anywhere as bad as it was before).To put an analogy: I had a pretty website with _javascript_ and such and forced it to degrade to raw semantic HTML.magurp244 wrote:Curious though, how fast paced is the game? Having played the demo there are moments when things attack you, yes, but there also seemed to be many positions where you could stand still safely. It would make sense that players navigating would optimally want to use those moments to get a sweep of the area for information.You really dont want having to stop in those fast paced areas though... (and the viewport isnt really larg e enough to cover everything youd need to know from the next section) I guess those areas still could help a bit though, they already do when youre sighted after all. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=228214#p228214 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems Double post to bump the thread.Added footsteps using some bass kick I had around that sounds close enough... but its nearly unhearable even after normalizing and leveling, there are simply too many clues making sound around but I dont think I can remove any more without the level becoming unreadable (its already problematic as-is).Was wondering to just bite it and turn it more into like a radar that scans from side to side quickly, playing only the clues in the area being scanned (panning would remain to help you figure out the relative position), and hope that it shows information fast enough to not make the game unplayable (you can always just reduce the game speed, but still...). This would rule out the idea of pulses though I imagine? (or at least heavily hamper them) URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=227961#p227961 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems In the end decided Ill just release it as experimental in version 1.2 of my game (clearly marked as such) and then later finish figuring it out. I still want to see how whats currently around fares as well. Today I worked on redoing the menu interface so they work better for people without vision, turns out that a quick hack worked much better than expected (I still need to tweak the menus a bit more but at least theyre properly usable now). The only serious issue now is the level editor, but that will have to wait for now.I dont like releasing unfinished features but I have other things to patch too and this is better than nothing for those who dont have any vision, not to mention that Im not sure if anybody has attempted to adapt a game like this before (except maybe for AudioQuake). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=227642#p227642 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems The problem with slopes is that if they arent marked, then suddenly everything changes height and you cant tell why. Thats about as confusing as playing the game without any sort of clue.I think we should stablish some sort of standard regarding what each kind of tone means (no blink, slow blink, fast blink).Current situation so far if I recall correctly:Floor corners (wall): nothingFloor corners (gap): fast blinkCeiling corners (wall): nothingCeiling corners (gap): no blinkSlopes: slow blinkWe probably need to come up with something that feels more consistent and conveys more useful information. Also there isnt any way to tell when the corners are off-screen (e.g. a ceiling without gaps that goes from the left to the right of the screen, it wont make any sound even though you cant go through it) And Im not even getting on ot her kind of clues like conveyor belts.Any ideas? URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=226217#p226217 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems Slopes are not entirely hazard-free since they affect the height of everything else relative to you (suddenly a platform may become higher or lower because you just went through a slope). Also, there should be a way to tell ceilings as well (since you need to be aware that you cant jump beyond them). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=226080#p226080 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems Yep, pretty much. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=225964#p225964 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems I was referring to clues describing the map layout (objects are pretty much all handled already). I bet a significant amount of the silhouette isnt properly described yet. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=225861#p225861 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems Well at least 3D positioning here works. The problem is more that there arent enough clues to cover everything yet (and some clues are not exactly in the best locations either). So um its maybe playable, could be enough to get through at least one level if you persevere but not a guarantee.Any quick suggestions on how to add clues and where are welcome (as long as they dont require me to create new sound effects, I dont have time for that right now). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=225740#p225740 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems OK, I need to release a patch to the game because I screwed up some scoring calculation at some point (the feature is being used by a mod and was an addition for 1.1 when the mod wasnt ready yet, so I misguessed massively how it was meant to be calculated), and to fix minor issues. I was waiting to get this audio mode done first but its taking longer than I want.What would you prefer?1) Hide audio mode and for now keep it for testers only.2) Allow audio mode, despite the fact its not 100% usable yet.#2 would be better than nothing, but I dont like the idea of releasing something that isnt ready yet (even if its explicitly marked as experimental), it could come off as lazy and careless. On the flipside at least it would give me more proper testing than I had so far. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=225685#p225685 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems http://sik.titandemo.de/.junk/old_sol_sounds.zipOut of those the only one that survived was yupee.ogg. Most were made with a Mega Drive (serious). Also do note that those are less than 44KHz (some 22KHz, most 11KHz) and rely on the sound engines upsampling (which does not do interpolation, giving a less muddly sound).Mind you, people also complain about Project MDs sound effects... URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=224362#p224362 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems The piercing sound may be the blob of poisonous water near the beginning (that still stands as a problem, thats multiple objects all making sound at the same time)The problem with sound effects is that every time I attempt to make my own, everybody screams that theyre horrible... (Sol was going to have a completely different set of sound effects before an overhaul at last minute) URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=224294#p224294 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems The volume balance of the objects was completely off after the new algorithm so not surprising, they were barely hearable at all. Now I tweaked them back in. Moreover, now theyre represented by a single point, which indicates the closer part of their silhouette. This was done to reduce sound overload... honestly theres still a lot of overload though.Current attempt so far:http://sik.titandemo.de/.junk/audio4.oggI really cant think on a way to get rid of the overloading =/ Also later Ill need to think on a way to do the conveyor belts (which will need to be marked in a way that makes it clear theyre moving), and come up with a better way to represent pits. Also, I noticed that inner corners from rooms dont make sound if the ceiling is too high (because they lack a mark to represent them). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=224276#p224276 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems The volume balance of the objects was completely off after the new algorithm so not surprising, they were barely hearable at all. Now I tweaked them back in. Moreover, now theyre represented by a single point, which indicates the closer part of their silhouette. This was done to reduce sound overload... honestly theres still a lot of overload though.Current attempt so far:http://sik.titandemo.de/.junk/audio4.oggI really cant think on a way to get rid of the overloading =/ Also later Ill need to think on a way to do the conveyor belts (which will need to be marked in a way that makes it clear theyre moving), and come up with a better way to represent pits. Also, I noticed that inner corners from rooms dont make sound if the ceiling is too high (because they lack a mark to represent them).magurp244 wrote:It might help ov erall readability to put in more supporting sound effects like sounds for the player walking, landing, bumping into things, or tettering on edges to help reinforce the environmental queues.The problem with this is that extra sound effects costs money to get done, the sounds from the sonar are generated on the fly instead =P URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=224276#p224276 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems The volume balance of the objects was completely off after the new algorithm so not surprising, they were barely hearable at all. Now I tweaked them back in. Moreover, now theyre represented by a single point, which indicates the closer part of their silhouette. This was done to reduce sound overload... honestly theres still a lot of overload though.Current attempt so far:http://sik.titandemo.de/.junk/audio4.oggI really cant think on a way to get rid of the overloading =/ Also later Ill need to think on a way to do the conveyor belts (which will need to be marked in a way that makes it clear theyre moving), and come up with a better way to represent pits. Also, I noticed that inner corners from rooms dont make sound if the ceiling is too high (because they lack a mark to represent them).magurp244 wrote:It might help ov erall readability to put in more supporting sound effects like sounds for the player walking, landing, bumping into things, or tettering on edges to help reinforce the environmental queues.The problem with this is that extra sound effects costs money to get done, the sounds from the sonar are generated on the fly instead URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=224276#p224276 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems New attempt:http://sik.titandemo.de/.junk/audio3.oggThis is definitely much better. At least now I can tell apart things even though Im not using headphones. Still needs improvement I suppose, but I want to see if people can start getting an idea of whats going on. (also I noticed that pretty much every sound effect is happening where the player is so far, making 3D positioning for them useless...)Amusingly at this point it barely even resembles vOICe at all. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=223925#p223925 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems I dont want to use different tones since thats already used to differentiate the kind of objects and such. I already have enough trouble with four of them (though I may remove one of those as superfluous).Rendering both sides of the screen is important, you never know when a hazard could be coming from behind otherwise. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=222872#p222872 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems magurp244 wrote:Whats the difference between a gap and the ceiling, such as when you take floating islands into consideration?Ceiling is a solid chunk above you, gap is a non-solid chunk below you.magurp244 wrote:Would the absense of a slow blinking slope indicate that the edge is a gap?Wouldnt it be a fast blinking point then, not slow? (thats the idea)magurp244 wrote:Hm, how about animated points? You could use a single sound to begin at the start point, and then move along and stop at the end point. So a floor would be represented by a moving sound your standing on, and a slope would move at an angle to its end point, it could also potentially solve the off screen wall issue.Wouldnt it be basically going back to the big gest downside of vOICe, that it requires time to convey a single image? URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=222491#p222491 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems I was considering this:Gap = fast blinkSlope = slow blinkCeiling = no blinkI was wondering about how to mark the direction of the slope, but maybe context is enough. Also I need a way to easily mark the boundaries of the level... also what to do if theres a wall where the top is higher than the viewport? URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=222411#p222411 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems Well it means I shouldnt need headphones to hear stereo for sure... so if I cant hear stereo with my sonar it means its stereo is horrible.Later Ill try the corner idea I mentioned earlier, maybe it reduces overload enough to make this feasible. Just a dumb question though, how do I mark where slopes start or end? Wondering if I should use blinking to distinguish the different parts of the silhouette. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=222085#p222085 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems magurp244 wrote:Thats... Strange. Do you mean the volume bars are different playing the recorded raw output or playing in the sound engine itself?In Audacity.Note that the UV meters showing different values doesnt mean much, the overload probably kills any possible perception the brain could try to figure out. I mean, when you play the same sound over both speakers the brain interpretes it as being in the center, not as being two separate sounds...magurp244 wrote:Wierd though, if theres a slope to your right and a flat surface to the left, or moving between two points there should be some kind of stereo effect in the recording.I think theres still such a massive sound overload that it basically nullifies any stereo effect you could hear. Also for some reason it seems slopes are less notorious than it used to be in the early tests I made (and this is noticeable even from mono) so I definitely need to do something about the viewport.Honestly now I wish I had just stuck to the zoomed viewport but the problem is that people had trouble seeing the enemies before it was too late (theyre still easier to notice when youre sighted, after all).magurp244 wrote:Maybe you could try recording the output through another program like Audacity instead to see if theres an issue with how its being logged, though youll have to change audacitys Preferences: Recording Device from Mono-Mix to Stereo-Mix.I tried but I got garbage for some reason. Probably PulseAudio messed up and I wasnt in the mood to fix it (restarting PulseAudio solves the issue, but... lazy).coltonhill01 wrote:Ive seen people do it only with sine waves, but that, sounds, like, absolute, crap!Thats because everything can be made out of sine waves. How well you can recreate the relevant harmonics is a different story altogether. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=221989#p221989 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems magurp244 wrote:Thats... Strange. Do you mean the volume bars are different playing the recorded raw output or playing in the sound engine itself?In Audacity.Note that the UV meters showing different values doesnt mean much, the overload probably kills any possible perception the brain could try to figure out. I mean, when you play the same sound over both speakers the brain interpretes it as being in the center, not as being two separate sounds...magurp244 wrote:Wierd though, if theres a slope to your right and a flat surface to the left, or moving between two points there should be some kind of stereo effect in the recording.I think theres still such a massive sound overload that it basically nullifies any stereo effect you could hear. Also for some reason it seems slopes are less notorious than it used to be in the early tests I made (and this is noticeable even from mono) so I definitely need to do something about the viewport.Honestly now I wish I had just stuck to the zoomed viewport but the problem is that people had trouble seeing the enemies before it was too late (theyre still easier to notice when youre sighted, after all).magurp244 wrote:Maybe you could try recording the output through another program like Audacity instead to see if theres an issue with how its being logged, though youll have to change audacitys Preferences: Recording Device from Mono-Mix to Stereo-Mix.I tried but I got garbage for some reason. Probably PulseAudio messed up and I wasnt in the mood to fix it (restarting PulseAudio solves the issue, but... lazy).coltonhill01 wrote:Ive seen people do it only with sine waves, but that, sounds, like, absolute, crap!Thats because everything can be made out of sine waves. How well you can recreate the relevant harmonics is a different story altogether.EDIT: WTF checking that test recording, I can perceive the stereo even with the laptops speakers, I think this is the first time I can perceive stereo without headphones. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=221989#p221989 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems magurp244 wrote:Hmm, the difference in stereo is negligable, its hard to tell where anything is spacially.I have been considering last night to change it again so only the corners of the level are marked (reducing sound overload a lot), but honestly at this point Im getting convinced that the idea itself simply doesnt work at all.magurp244 wrote:The volume and stereo position of the stomping sound doesnt seem to change at all, so its difficult to tell what the proximity is to the player.Yeah, I need to update that =/magurp244 wrote:What recording software are you using?Raw log straight off the games sound engine.magurp244 wrote:Looking at them in Audacity it looks like the tw o channels are vitually identical.I thought so at first too, but playing it shows that the L and R volume bars are completely different (so theres obviously a difference). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=221822#p221822 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems Two more attempts, and I verified that these two do have panning... although I guess the overload still makes it useless:http://sik.titandemo.de/.junk/audio1.ogghttp://sik.titandemo.de/.junk/audio2.oggSecond attempt was me trying to see if its better rendering the floor as a series of beeps rather than a continuous line. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=221713#p221713 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems Two more attempts, and I verified that these two do have panning... although I guess the overload still makes it useless:http://sik.titandemo.de/.junk/audio1.ogghttp://sik.titandemo.de/.junk/audio2.oggSecond attempt was me trying to see if its better rendering the floor as a series of points rather than a continuous line. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=221713#p221713 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems Still clueless whats going on with the panning. Ugh. But Im thinking the current formula is wrong (no wonder why the initial tests with the smaller viewport seemed to be easier to tell). Also starting to think Ill just have to come up with yet another new camera system just for this.I thought about pulses for hazards (really would be the audio equivalent of blinking), but Im afraid thatll probably bring up even more attention to them and not less. I guess I need to test to make sure.Enemies are rendered through the sonar, but again it seems the volume balance is just unusable. In fact it seems that in the last versions the sonar has been completely useless (you cant tell easily the parts of the level, you cant tell easily where are the enemies... um yeah, may as well not use the current sonar). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=221369#p221369 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems The game already does the volume thing in both directions (horizontally as a result of panning, and vertically to gimmick the same side effect). The problem is that the pit has too many objects and is indeed close by Also the fact that at last minute I had lowered the volume of the level sound because I thought it was too loud, but I think I may have overshot that one...Heres another attempt making only the corners of objects visible instead of their whole silhouette (also restoring the original volume for the level):http://sik.titandemo.de/.junk/sonar2.oggEDIT: it also doesnt help that the viewport is now rather large. It used to be smaller so I could reduce the amount of stuff to be shown and apparently that was better for moving around, but the problem is that it apparentl y made enemies too hard to notice (and unlike zoomed mode, its harder to tell when an enemy is bound to come). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=220195#p220195 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems The game already does the volume thing in both directions (horizontally as a result of panning, and vertically to gimmick the same side effect). The problem is that the pit has too many objects and is indeed close by Also the fact that at last minute I had lowered the volume of the level sound because I thought it was too loud, but I think I may have overshot that one...Heres another attempt making only the corners of objects visible instead of their whole silhouette (also restoring the original volume for the level):http://sik.titandemo.de/.junk/sonar2.ogg URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=220195#p220195 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems The game already does the volume thing in both directions (horizontally as a result of panning, and vertically to gimmick the same side effect). The problem is that the pit has too many objects and is indeed close by Also the fact that at last minute I had lowered the volume of the level sound because I thought it was too loud, but I think I may have overshot that one...Heres another attempt making only the corners of objects visible instead of their whole silhouette (also restoring the original volume for the level):http://sik.titandemo.de/.junk/sonar2.oggEDIT: it also doesnt help that the viewport is now rather large. It used to be smaller so I could reduce the amount of stuff to be shown and apparently that was better for moving around, but the problem is that it apparentl y made enemies too hard to notice (and unlike zoomed mode, its harder to tell when an enemy is bound to come).EDIT 2: great I just realized the panning wasnt being recorded at all. Looking at this... URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=220195#p220195 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems Yeah theres a pit there if I recall correctly (dangerous stuff has a harsh sound).The most important part is if you can tell where theres a wall and such, although I think that with the last tweaks now it became too weak... Also I need to find out a way to prevent the sound from being overloaded when theres a lot of the same stuff together (as happens with that pit). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=220084#p220084 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems OK the recording code is trolling me because it decided to start working out of nowherehttp://sik.titandemo.de/.junk/sonar.oggLater Ill do a proper playthrough recording, and I need to retweak the volume levels and such, but for now this is what is going on. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=219997#p219997 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems magurp244 wrote:When you say that only the top and bottom lines of each color area are stored, does that mean that for a 64 by 64 image for example, you only calculate the top and bottom rows pitch into the waveform and ignore everything in between, like rendering an outline?Er, for each block (e.g. a player or an enemy), but yeah. If I include everything in-between then all of those pitches will play which makes it an unbearable mess to hear as well as renders the waveforms indistinguishable from each other due to how much they got distorted with all the mixing. You only need to know the covered range so Im only using the top and bottom rows instead.magurp244 wrote:I also take it you dont scale the image in any way before processing it?Actually it is, from 320×200 to 40×25.Note that replacing graphics with the color indicators happens earlier (in fact, graphics are never rendered, the colored blocks are rendered directly as-is in their place). Then this is shrunk down, then filtered so only top and bottom rows remain (as mentioned earlier), then finally converted into audio.magurp244 wrote:Also what do you mean by not using time as a factor? That instead of using a sweep from left to right to determine position along the X axis via time your using stereo positioning on the left and right with a high speed sweep?Yep, except no sweep at all, it just mixes in everything together (remember the entire image is processed at once).Victorious wrote:@Sik: could you upload the recording and provide a link? Id be really interesting in listening to it.Thats precisely the part Im having trouble with (the recording system has to replay every single sound in order to account for the framerate loss and this means figuring out a reasonable way to log the new output first) URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=219035#p219035 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems magurp244 wrote:When you say that only the top and bottom lines of each color area are stored, does that mean that for a 64 by 64 image for example, you only calculate the top and bottom rows pitch into the waveform and ignore everything in between, like rendering an outline?Er, for each block (e.g. a player or an enemy), but yeah. If I include everything in-between then all of those pitches will play which makes it an unbearable mess to hear as well as renders the waveforms indistinguishable from each other due to how much they got distorted with all the mixing. You only need to know the covered range so Im only using the top and bottom rows instead.magurp244 wrote:I also take it you dont scale the image in any way before processing it?Actually it is, from 320×200 to 40×25.Note that replacing graphics with the color indicators happens earlier (in fact, graphics are never rendered, the colored blocks are rendered directly as-is in their place). Then this is shrunk down, then filtered so only top and bottom rows remain (as mentioned earlier), then finally converted into audio.Note that the scaling is just to make things easier so I dont have to go around all over the code to change the resolution it expects (Im literally adapting a full-blown finished game for the sighted into an audio game, remember).magurp244 wrote:Also what do you mean by not using time as a factor? That instead of using a sweep from left to right to determine position along the X axis via time your using stereo positioning on the left and right with a high speed sweep?Yep, except no sweep at all, it just mixes in everything together (remember the entire image is processed at once).Victorious wrote:@Sik: could you upload the recording and provide a link? Id be really interesting in listening to it.Thats precisely the part Im having trouble with (the recording system has to replay every single sound in order to account for the framerate loss and this means figuring out a reasonable way to log the new output first) URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=219035#p219035 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems magurp244 wrote:Do you plan on implementing an Audio Renderer? Or adjusting the textures to make it compatible with the vOICe externally?I have the full blown audio renderer already implemented.First the game renders things in a completely different way: the level gets turned into a solid white silhouette, while objects get turned into colored blocks (with colors for player, goodie (items) and danger (enemies, hazards)). Then this gets filtered so only lines at the top and bottom of each color area is stored (otherwise it becomes a mess), and this gets processed as follows:Horizontal position: panningVertical position: frequency (pitch)Color: waveform (how it sounds)Note how unlike vOICe Im not using time as a factor, so I can update this at 60FPS without problem. So far I only got a person to test but the little t esting so far seems to suggest that yes, the idea works (and now is in the process of tweaking).If you want to test just follow the contact instructions and Ill send you want you need over e-mail. (Id have uploaded a recording of how it sounds, except for the part where the recording code still isnt setup to record this output) URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=218920#p218920 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems I think this is relevant to this discussion.Yes, I just went ahead and gave it a try, after a tad of tweaks to the rendering engine to remove as much superfluous information as possible (during the early tests it resembled CrazyBus). Its preliminar work and needs tweaking (as well as then adapting the rest of the interface) but its something. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=218805#p218805 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems
Re: Audio Interfaces and Systems So wait, is this actually a feasible way to play a game?Im honestly skeptical and think that the best thing would be to adapt the interface with proper audio indicators and such, but if that idea or a variant of it (e.g. using panning to indicate horizontal position) can yield somewhat usable results, I may consider giving it a quick try as a stopgap until I can implement a full blown audio mode in my game.Also I wouldnt rule out 2D games completely, but any attempt to do this with them will definitely require changing the way things are rendered (e.g. no background, replacing sprites with detail-less boxes representing the object type, possibly reducing the viewport to allow things to be larger within the limited resolution, etc.). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=218521#p218521 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Audio games in the Web Browser
Re: Audio games in the Web Browser frastlin wrote:How does initial loading of sounds work? Is it fast? If I have like 500 sounds, will it take ages to load?Initiating 500 connections to the server... um... If you can get it all into a single request its not an issue, but asking for each file separately is going to be a really serious issue. Is there a way to get a sound off a ZIP archive or something like that? Because that would solve the issue and your only real problem will be filesize. I know Pixiv does it to store animated images as a sequence of JPEG files, so maybe it can be pulled off with audio files too. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=217505#p217505 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Getting arrows to be spoken by screen readers
Re: Getting arrows to be spoken by screen readers Well, since I ran out of ideas... any suggestions?For the record, the stuff Im writing is a sequence of keys to enable some cheats but those cheats can also be enabled passing parameters to the command line (which are listed after them and should be readable to the screen reader since theyre just letters, numbers and hyphens). Should I bother trying to fix this or just let screen reader users go with the command line alternative?I had also wondered about including a _javascript_ button to change the arrows to words but including _javascript_ in a manual seems pretty fishy to me. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=203164#p203164 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Getting arrows to be spoken by screen readers
Re: Getting arrows to be spoken by screen readers Guh. Now? Fourth paragraph (yeah, always the last one). I dont make any guarantees that I didnt make a mistake writing the HTML though.camlorn wrote:This is part of HTML for all intents and purposes, its just not going to be fully implemented for another year or two.Yeah, support for aria-label seems to be worse than lackluster. May as well go with images, but as I said, they come with ther own whole set of issues (and the theres the issue that they may get prefixed with graphic, which will be annoying).camlorn wrote:If anyone deserves ridicule, its the AT companies for not implementing any proper support for Unicode, and it is a problem in much more serious places than your web site. On wikipedia, for example.Still not an acceptable excuse to not make this thing accessible now Its not like software developers dont have to work around broken stuff all the time either.camlorn wrote:Edit for clarification:You can probably put the entire combination in the same div. Putting each character in the same div is possibly going to make them show up as on separate lines, but the definition of what I mean by line is a bit complex. Probably better to say logical unit.Eh, in the document where I want to put them theyre in a table cell (theyre the entire content of the cell), so in theory the label could just be applied to it.camlorn wrote: Get a windows VM and install NVDA and Firefox, if you can. I sincerely think it would be worth it for you to be able to try something that is not Orca.I would need a Windows license though, wouldnt I? (could still work under Wine I suppose, but not sure) Even then that wont help me with the behavior in other screen readers, and from what Im seeing they vary wildly in stuff like this. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=202083#p202083 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Getting arrows to be spoken by screen readers
Re: Getting arrows to be spoken by screen readers If I have to make an alternative page then it means I failed miserably at accessibility and I deserve any insults that I receive for it.Anyway, came up with another idea. Check the test link again, I added a third paragraph. This time Im trying to use CSS to replace the words with the arrows visually. Hopefully this works - at least when I try to copy and paste the text I get the words, so I assume the text would still be readable to a screen reader. (it looks rather ugly when youre selecting it, though...) URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=201980#p201980 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Getting arrows to be spoken by screen readers
Getting arrows to be spoken by screen readers Having a problem trying to write something using HTML. In my game you can enable some cheat codes by pressing a sequence of keys at the title screen (more specifically, eight presses of the arrow keys). I planned to show them as, well, arrows, both because it looks nice (and probably the only way it looks decent) and because the font Im using has some good arrow characters. The problem is that if I recall correctly screen readers ignore arrows. I was considering using abbr to give them some sort of alternative text, but Im not sure if they will be read since from what Im reading its a setting and it usually defaults to off (honestly what worries me is the fact that the text would be outright skipped without giving any hint of being there, if the user can tell to enable abbreviation expansion at that point it would be acceptable).First of all lets test this... heres an example HTML file s howing what Im talking about. The first paragraph is just the arrows as-is (I dont expect this to work). The second paragraph is the arrows using the abbr tag. Is it possible to read the arrows in the second paragraph? (do not mess with the screen reader settings please, this should work as-is)Does this work, at least for the major screen readers? If not, any suggestions? I dont really want to use images here since I have the feeling those may make things worse (and from what I was reading, JAWS prepends all images with graphic by default, and having that pronounced before every arrow is just going to be extremely annoying, if not outright confusing), and spelling out the words directly will just make it harder to read for visual users.PS: no, I cant test it myself, turns out Firefox doesnt want to work with my screen reader (not even the menubar works), and yes, I tried other programs and the screen reader works w ith them. Ugh. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=201847#p201847 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Getting arrows to be spoken by screen readers
Re: Getting arrows to be spoken by screen readers For the record, immediately after posting that I realized I could just put right before the offending section some text warning screen reader users to turn on abbreviation expansion if they have issues (and then make it invisible to visual users using CSS), at least that would give users a clue that there should be something there (and they can turn it off later if needed). I didnt edit the post to see if anybody knew anything better though.frastlin wrote:Have you triedNVDAand used the speech viewer?Isnt it Windows-only? (Im on Linux)camlorn wrote:Images can work and will actually work fine for many of us, but its probably the same amount of effort.Yeah, the problem is that images bring in their own set of issues. Also I would like to know w hat could be done in case this situation comes up again later. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=201900#p201900 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? Returning to this thread since Im looking for more information (though I should probably change the name of this thread).Does anybody happen to know anything about UI Automation or Microsoft Active Accessibility? I found the documentation but they seem to be rather complex (I could be wrong), so I was wondering if somebody here could give me a hint as to where to start looking into.Also if somebody happens to know the Linux equivalent (I think Gnome and KDE have some way to talk to screen readers) that would be nice, though if not Ill probably try looking into it later anyway. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=196848#p196848 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? Another advantage of formant synthesis (although I think formats are just the vowels, not sure) that you didnt mention is that voices and languages are decoupled. Voices are just parameters that tweak the way the waveform is generated, while languages affect the way phones are combined (and which phones are used in the first place). You cant do this easily with concatenative synthesis because youd need to record the sound for every possible phoneme, thereby voices and languages being tied together with those engines.But yeah, Id defintiely take a formant-based one over a concatenative-based one, both because a well done one would be less prone to issues as well as allowing me to use any voice regardless of what I feed to it (and also its much easier to make a voice for them since you dont need to find a person and figure out how to get them make the required sounds). The problem is that the former is much harder to get right so most of th e effort goes in the latter instead. But in theory it should be doable, and it would be flawless if it can be pulled off. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=194853#p194853 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? OK, so this is what I have in the game currently:Native mode (SAPI on Windows, Speech-dispatcher on Linux)Clipboard modeStandard output modeIs that good enough?camlorn wrote:the hardest part is, ironically, the text-to-phonemes part.Honestly I think this depends on the language. For instance, with Spanish you can pretty much figure out the pronunciation of a word entirely from the written form (only exception being foreign words), it has its quirks but ultimately its unambiguous as long as there arent spelling errors. With English on the other hand the only foolproof method is pretty much a dictionary, since there doesnt seem to be any relation between vowels and their pronunciation at all (and worse, from what Ive seen the pronunciation can even change based on the meaning of the word - ugh).P roper entonation is a whole different can of worms though, only way to truly work around this is to add metadata (this is what SSML does), although even then at least you can try to use heuristics to get something out of there (e.g. if the sentence ends in a question mark you can assume it needs the entonation of a question). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=194856#p194856 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? Yeah I tried to look at those espeak voices but it seems theyre nowhere.Anyway, got SAPI working now (was lucky to find somebody with a working SAPI install immediately), only thing I need to figure out is how to set the output language (and hope I dont need to resort to SSML just for that). So I guess that between SAPI on Windows and speech-dispatcher on Linux I should be set. Besides these two (which Im going to call native mode) and the clipboard mode, should I bother keeping around the standard output method? URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=194721#p194721 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? OK, before we all keep arguing here: should I just drop voice settings altogether? I mean, it feels weird having a female character speak with a male voice, but should I just leave it at that or what?Also, does anybody know how to use SAPI with MinGW-w64? (I dont care about vanilla MinGW) Because it turns out that apparently I dont have the relevant files, although looking around it does seem like theres an implementation of SAPI for MinGW-w64 (not to mention Qt apparently having it as well, QtCreator using MinGW). I think the problem is that it was only added recently to MinGW-w64 (so its not in the Ubuntu repo yet) and Im trying to figure out where are the relevant files to install them.Sebby wrote:Youre trying to judge the quality of a TTS synthesiser by how Natural it sounds precisely illustrates the problem; accuracy and speed are higher up on the list than uot;Naturalness, at least in typical screen-reading applications (but ironically, often not in games, which usually only output short, predictable and oft-used sentences).Again, I explicitly said that speed does not account my definition of naturalness (thats just a synth setting!), and in fact for the record, that Axel synth you linked is pretty much the prime example of what Id consider natural. For the record, I actually cranked up the synth speed here because I found it too slow, and thats despite not being accustomed to it and being horrible at understanding spoken English (it isnt my first language).And for the record yes, I was talking about the context of games, where having characters sound like people (synthesis tweaking aside) affects how we perceive the game (in a productivity application you just want to know whats on screen). Although beware, when characters talk you may want to speed it up b ecause text is longer but understanding it 100% exactly isnt a priority. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=194680#p194680 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? OK, before we all keep arguing here: should I just drop messing with voice settings altogether (i.e. go with the defaults always)? I mean, it feels weird having a female character speak with a male voice, but should I just leave it at that or what?Also, does anybody know how to use SAPI with MinGW-w64? (I dont care about vanilla MinGW) Because it turns out that apparently I dont have the relevant files, although looking around it does seem like theres an implementation of SAPI for MinGW-w64 (not to mention Qt apparently having it as well, QtCreator using MinGW). I think the problem is that it was only added recently to MinGW-w64 (so its not in the Ubuntu repo yet) and Im trying to figure out where are the relevant files to install them.Sebby wrote:Youre trying to judge the quality of a TTS synthesiser by how Natural it sounds precisely illustrates the problem; accu racy and speed are higher up on the list than Naturalness, at least in typical screen-reading applications (but ironically, often not in games, which usually only output short, predictable and oft-used sentences).Again, I explicitly said that speed does not account my definition of naturalness (thats just a synth setting!), and in fact for the record, that Axel synth you linked is pretty much the prime example of what Id consider natural. For the record, I actually cranked up the synth speed here because I found it too slow, and thats despite not being accustomed to it and being horrible at understanding spoken English (it isnt my first language).And for the record yes, I was talking about the context of games, where having characters sound like people (synthesis tweaking aside) affects how we perceive the game (in a productivity application you just want to know whats on screen). Although beware, wh en characters talk you may want to speed it up because text is longer but understanding it 100% exactly isnt a priority. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=194680#p194680 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? OK, before we all keep arguing here: should I just drop messing with voice settings altogether (i.e. go with the defaults always)? I mean, it feels weird having a female character speak with a male voice, but should I just leave it at that or what?Also, does anybody know how to use SAPI with MinGW-w64? (I dont care about vanilla MinGW) Because it turns out that apparently I dont have the relevant files, although looking around it does seem like theres an implementation of SAPI for MinGW-w64 (not to mention Qt apparently having it as well, QtCreator using MinGW). I think the problem is that it was only added recently to MinGW-w64 (so its not in the Ubuntu repo yet) and Im trying to figure out where are the relevant files to install them.Sebby wrote:Youre trying to judge the quality of a TTS synthesiser by how Natural it sounds precisely illustrates the problem; accu racy and speed are higher up on the list than Naturalness, at least in typical screen-reading applications (but ironically, often not in games, which usually only output short, predictable and oft-used sentences).Again, I explicitly said that speed does not account my definition of naturalness (thats just a synth setting!), and in fact for the record, that Axel synth you linked is pretty much the prime example of what Id consider natural. For the record, I actually cranked up the synth speed here because I found it too slow, and thats despite not being accustomed to it and being horrible at understanding spoken English (it isnt my first language).And for the record yes, I was talking about the context of games, where having characters sound like people (synthesis tweaking aside) affects how we perceive the game (in a productivity application you just want to know whats on screen). Although beware, wh en characters talk you may want to speed it up because text is longer but understanding it 100% exactly isnt a priority.EDIT: is it safe to assume that a Windows system with a screen reader installed already has sapi.dll as well? (at least those screen readers that work with SAPI anyway) URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=194680#p194680 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? Just to make it clear, by default settings I mean whatever are the current system settings, so e.g. if the user sets the speed to 800 WPM then thatd be the default setting for the program.Also I managed to find the SAPI header files for MinGW-w64. No libraries, although I think that it just uses the OLE libraries and I already have those, so I believe Im already set. Im going to see if by tomorrow I can have something working. As long as the program works on Windows XP (the current system requirement) I should be fine, I can make the DLL a requirement for the SAPI-based screen reader.camlorn wrote:Speed and naturalness are inversely proportional. Start cranking up a natural synth and it starts sounding drunk before topping out well below the capabilities of many blind people. I have yet to have anyone anywhere show me a synth that sounds remotely humanlike and have it continue to do so post-200 words a minute.OK, Im seriously convinced I have a completely different idea of natural than most people here do. As long as the base synth sounds natural it should be fine in my opinion. And yeah, huge speeds are not really human-like, but I bet that if we could speak that quickly we may sound like that (although I dont know if current methods introduce issues at those speeds, maybe pure synthesis has a chance to fare better than pre-recorded formants at those speeds).The problem is when it cant sound natural no matter what settings you use, which is the problem with low-quality speech synthesis. The Axel synth linked earlier seemed pretty good to me, for instance (I wish espeak was even remotely close to that). URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=194687#p194687 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? Just to make it clear: both console and clipboard output are already implemented (theyre very trivial to program actually, took me like a few minutes each at most), Im just trying to make sure that Im not providing something that is useless in the end (which creates false hopes).Also I managed to turn on the screen reader on Linux and it decided to start reading anything I wanted except what I was pointing to, including a not focused window at some point *sigh* This is going to take a while.Sebby wrote:We designed both the TTS processor and the engine output so that we could do portable TTS ( actually, now I think of it, it was pretty awesome, though I say so myself ). The idea is that each platform has some idiom, EG Windows had ag_say which used SAPI (youre right, if you can go direct, is better), OS X had the say command, and Linux had--what was it? oh yeah, we handled that directly and used serial to an Apollo TTS device.Is ag_say something from AudioQuake? Because thats what I seem to have found around. I guess that wont work for a default setup, but then again I dont know how common is to have that program installed for a blind user who plays games (maybe it is and I can just rely on it). Also I couldnt find info on how to use it (e.g. is it game | ag_say or ag_say game or ag_say text-to-say?)And yeah, Linux is a horrible mess. There isnt an equivalent to SAPI but rather several different engines (at the very least two major ones, it seems one for Gnome and one for KDE) and any of them could be installed on a given system. Thats annoying, Im not sure if theres some de facto standard API to communicate with them. (mind you, its likely you can just pipe the output to the engines directly, knowing Unix philosophy, although Id still need to know their filenames)It seems that on Linux theres Festival, but Im not sure how it works. I should check.Sebby wrote:To encode priority, you have to contrive some scheme that the backend knows, EG you have a prefix before a message string result in a TTS reset prior to speaking the new string. Etc.Oh, so engine specific.Sebby wrote:Now our game launcher is handling all the TTS on both OS X and Windows in Python using PyTTS, so there must be a market for a universal TTS API and hopefully there will be one in your language.Im using C (not C++) and the game is for Windows and Linux, so if theres something cross-platform that works on those, itd be nice (oh, and theres the issue of the license being compatible with the GPL 3 as well). Tried doing a quick search but I didnt seem to be able to find anything useful (the only one I found was using an incompatible license).Sebby wrote:The other measure you suggested, that of using the clipboard, is also known to work with a tool people have been using, though if youre going that far you might as well just build in SAPI support directly.Clipboard support is so easy with SDL 2 that its a no-brainer though, compared to implementing SAPI support (not to mention still having to figure out what to do with Linux, which seems to have two major engines at least).camlorn wrote:You can easily call the screen reader APIs directly, and to be honest thats what Id do. Clipboard requires extra setup, as does the console thing.I assume you me an extra setup for the user? Because programming those two is actually much easier, console output is just a call to printf, while clipboard output is just a call to SDL_SetClipboard (Im using SDL 2), while programming the screen reader APIs directly is a much more involved effort (not to mention platform specific, so I need multiple codebases), and I dont have any suitable TTS engine available right now.camlorn wrote:SAPI can be used and will work, but most of us find the SAPI voices to be sad and way, way, way too slow. The average screen reader user is going 3 times as fast as what Microsoft seems to think the maxes ought to be.Actually, looking at the SAPI documentation the impression I got was that the program set a speed relative to the user settings, which would solve that problem for every program. The problem is that Microsofts own engine doesnt provide any settings from what Ive read.camlorn wrote:See http://hg.q-continuum.net/accessible_output2/ which provides Python source to talk to all of the ones on Windows, and I believe also Mac. Not sure if it handles Linux. Its fairly simple, though I cant rattle off the API function names and whatnot--I just use accessible_output2 when I need them. Porting it to your language of choice should be pretty simple, though.Well it doesnt seem as simple as me, but then again I dont have enough experience with SAPI (I just looked up some functions to get an idea of how it works), so that probably isnt helping. And thats assuming I ignore the rest of the APIs it supports. Id need to see.Ideally Id want to make a proper TTS engine thats more portable (ideally just
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? Just to make it clear: both console and clipboard output are already implemented (theyre very trivial to program actually, took me like a few minutes each at most), Im just trying to make sure that Im not providing something that is useless in the end (which creates false hopes).Also I managed to turn on the screen reader on Linux and it decided to start reading anything I wanted except what I was pointing to, including a not focused window at some point *sigh* This is going to take a while.Sebby wrote:We designed both the TTS processor and the engine output so that we could do portable TTS ( actually, now I think of it, it was pretty awesome, though I say so myself ). The idea is that each platform has some idiom, EG Windows had ag_say which used SAPI (youre right, if you can go direct, is better), OS X had the say command, and Linux had--what was it? oh yeah, we handled that directly and used serial to an Apollo TTS device.Is ag_say something from AudioQuake? Because thats what I seem to have found around. I guess that wont work for a default setup, but then again I dont know how common is to have that program installed for a blind user who plays games (maybe it is and I can just rely on it). Also I couldnt find info on how to use it (e.g. is it game | ag_say or ag_say game or ag_say text-to-say?)And yeah, Linux is a horrible mess. There isnt an equivalent to SAPI but rather several different engines (at the very least two major ones, it seems one for Gnome and one for KDE) and any of them could be installed on a given system. Thats annoying, Im not sure if theres some de facto standard API to communicate with them. (mind you, its likely you can just pipe the output to the engines directly, knowing Unix philosophy, although Id still need to know their filenames)It seems that on Linux theres Festival, but Im not sure how it works. I should check.Sebby wrote:To encode priority, you have to contrive some scheme that the backend knows, EG you have a prefix before a message string result in a TTS reset prior to speaking the new string. Etc.Oh, so engine specific.Sebby wrote:Now our game launcher is handling all the TTS on both OS X and Windows in Python using PyTTS, so there must be a market for a universal TTS API and hopefully there will be one in your language.Im using C (not C++) and the game is for Windows and Linux, so if theres something cross-platform that works on those, itd be nice (oh, and theres the issue of the license being compatible with the GPL 3 as well). Tried doing a quick search but I didnt seem to be able to find anything useful (the only one I found was using an incompatible license).Sebby wrote:The other measure you suggested, that of using the clipboard, is also known to work with a tool people have been using, though if youre going that far you might as well just build in SAPI support directly.Clipboard support is so easy with SDL 2 that its a no-brainer though, compared to implementing SAPI support (not to mention still having to figure out what to do with Linux, which seems to have two major engines at least).camlorn wrote:You can easily call the screen reader APIs directly, and to be honest thats what Id do. Clipboard requires extra setup, as does the console thing.I assume you me an extra setup for the user? Because programming those two is actually much easier, console output is just a call to printf, while clipboard output is just a call to SDL_SetClipboard (Im using SDL 2), while programming the screen reader APIs directly is a much more involved effort (not to mention platform specific, so I need multiple codebases), and I dont have any suitable TTS engine available right now.camlorn wrote:SAPI can be used and will work, but most of us find the SAPI voices to be sad and way, way, way too slow. The average screen reader user is going 3 times as fast as what Microsoft seems to think the maxes ought to be.Actually, looking at the SAPI documentation the impression I got was that the program set a speed relative to the user settings, which would solve that problem for every program. The problem is that Microsofts own engine doesnt provide any settings from what Ive read.camlorn wrote:See http://hg.q-continuum.net/accessible_output2/ which provides Python source to talk to all of the ones on Windows, and I believe also Mac. Not sure if it handles Linux. Its fairly simple, though I cant rattle off the API function names and whatnot--I just use accessible_output2 when I need them. Porting it to your language of choice should be pretty simple, though.Well it doesnt seem as simple as me, but then again I dont have enough experience with SAPI (I just looked up some functions to get an idea of how it works), so that probably isnt helping. And thats assuming I ignore the rest of the APIs it supports. Id need to see. (EDIT: meh, forget that, the SAPI 5 one seems easy actually, but I still need to
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? Yeah, just found out about espeak (it has a command line tool) and... lets say its just plain horrible, OK?On Linux I found flite instead. It isnt installed by default but I can just make it a dependency (its in the Ubuntu repo after all) and it doesnt even need a screen reader enabled. Admittedly its far from great, but tweaking some parameters the default voices can be made more tolerable. The two biggest issues are that its English-only (language support seemed to be an issue in general with all the tools I checked now) and that I cant stop a voice when I need to start a new one... for now just gonna let users press Shift to make the text get output again (using that key since its unlikely to conflict and it doesnt cause trouble in the game).For the record, I think I can fix the latter issue by using the flite library instead, although Ill see later about it (looking for a quick solution right now). Also flite is available on Windows as well it seems, so I can just install it alongside the game. Only thing Ill need to see then is about how to carry the voices around. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=194600#p194600 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? Yeah, just found out about espeak (it has a command line tool) and... lets say its just plain horrible, OK?On Linux I found flite instead. It isnt installed by default but I can just make it a dependency (its in the Ubuntu repo after all) and it doesnt even need a screen reader enabled. Admittedly its far from great, but tweaking some parameters the default voices can be made more tolerable. The two biggest issues are that its English-only (language support seemed to be an issue in general with all the tools I checked now) and that I cant stop a voice when I need to start a new one... for now just gonna let users press Shift to make the text get output again (using that key since its unlikely to conflict and it doesnt cause trouble in the game).For the record, I think I can fix the latter issue by using the flite library instead, although Ill see later about it (looking for a quick solution right now). Also flite is available on Windows as well it seems, so I can just install it alongside the game (if I dont just go with the library instead). Only thing Ill need to see then is about how to carry the voices around. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=194600#p194600 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? OK, so got around implementing speech-dispatch support (which took quite a lot because the documentation indicated how to use the functions but not what library was needed or even the header file, I had to guess those argh). Also already found a bug on it that I had to work around... (note to those who want to try it: make sure your never pass an empty string to spd_say, youll hang the program later otherwise). Does anybody know how to make a more decent setup for speech-dispatch anyway? I doubt that espeak (with stock settings) is even remotely realistic to what somebody uses, and without a good setup Ill probably tune things in a way that turns out to be unusable in practice.I guess now to figure out how to use SAPI then (and more importantly, how to test it in the first place).camlorn wrote:One of my biggest annoyances (as well as that of many others) is the current push towards natural voices. To ma ny (if not a majority, then at least very close to one) of us, its not about natural. Its an I/O method and, like other I/O methods like typing, needs to be fast.Eh, for me natural just means could reasonably pass for a human. And by that I mean the pronunciation is right (although English being a horrible mess in that sense isnt helping matters). And entonation, I can understand not being perfect due to lack of context, but come on, flite completely ignores question and exclamation marks (it treats them like periods), and espeak not only does that but if theyre repeated it will outright spell them out (when theyre usually added emphasis). Is this normal for most screen readers or what?I could care less about things like messing with speed, pitch, etc. to push them to extreme values. That doesnt count in my definition of being or not natural, thats just messing with the speech sy nthesis settings.camlorn wrote:P.S: I am in no way saying that clipboard isnt good enough. Clipboard is good enough, but I wish to forestall you removing it and replacing it with flite. Also to aid understanding of the synth issue generally, and why we dont consider Espeak to be nearly as bad as you do.The game is set up to support multiple output methods for the screen reader (the first post should have already hinted at it), so no, clipboard mode is not going away. It sorta irks me in that it needs a very specific setup to work, but its staying. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=194618#p194618 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? Hello, new here!I came here to ask a question. Right now trying to make my game accessible to at least the legally blind (through residual vision, fully blind will have to wait since its not easy to adapt), and that means screen reader support. Currently trying to make it as easy as possible to implement, especially since its crossplatform. Right now two methods are supported: outputting text to a console and outputting text to the clipboard (the Skullgirls method).I wonder about the former. If I recall correctly, all screen readers should be able to see text on a console. But the game still has its own window, and that one has to have focus to receive input. What I wonder is: what do most screen readers do in this case? Do they only see the console when itself has focus, or do they read any text sent to the console as long as any window of that program has focus? (the game outputs an entire line whenever text changes, if you wonder)Thats all I want to know, to see if the option of outputting to the console is still useful. Thanks for the information.PS: output to the console is done by writing to the standard output, so as a side effect anything that works by redirecting that to a file will also work with that method. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=194531#p194531 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? Well yeah, the problem here is whether they still detect it when it isnt focused (either updating the console itself or writing to the standard output). Take into account that a program can only have a single console (they are treated in a different way than most windows), so it doesnt seem that farfetched. Alas, I have no idea how screen readers work.Sebby wrote:Weve done it using redirection through a pipe, and encoding information about message priority in the messages themselves, thus allowing the reader end of the pipe to process the messages through TTS and interrupt as appropriate.Nice, so that alone makes that method useful (since any sort of redirection should work). Are there any common filenames to take into account? Maybe I could just make the game output to those directly if possible. URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=194540#p194540 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window?
Re: How do screen readers work when there's a console and a normal window? Well yeah, the problem here is whether they still detect it when it isnt focused (either updating the console itself or writing to the standard output). Take into account that a program can only have a single console (they are treated in a different way than most windows), so it doesnt seem that farfetched. Alas, I have no idea how screen readers work.Sebby wrote:Weve done it using redirection through a pipe, and encoding information about message priority in the messages themselves, thus allowing the reader end of the pipe to process the messages through TTS and interrupt as appropriate.Nice, so that alone makes that method useful (since any sort of redirection should work). Are there any common filenames to take into account? Maybe I could just make the game output to those directly if possible. (EDIT: oh, also, how would I encode message priority?) URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=194540#p194540 ___ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
