Re: [Audyssey] using dosbox
Hi Thomas, this is actually sad. And I don't mean you explaining to me how certain things work. But since you don't know me personally, I can tell you that I was supposed to know such things. In my country Germany, there are two ways to learn about software development. The first way is to go to university and study relevant subjects there. And there is the other way, where you are trained by either a company or by a school for the blind. In this case your training would take three years. Half that time would be working either in a real company or in one created for training but with realistic simulations of the things you would do in a real company. The second half is to go to school learning all the theory you need. At the end of your three years you would have to take a certain written exam which is the same for everyone who wants to go this route in Germany and to which blind aspiring software developers also have to follow the same rules. The sad fact however is that we had one blind teacher who did not teach us enough in regards to how software, the operating system or Windows work against each other or with each other. My so called training was practically a waste of time, allthough it was formally correct by the educational standards under which it is governed. I know a visually impaired friend who also wants to be a software developer. He is looking for a job but hasn't found anything good yet. I fully believe that one half of his problem is because many companies might not want a visually impaired worker in their ranks. But lately I have come to think that it is more due to the messed up education in ghis field when you don't want to go the university route... I won't go more into detail here, since it is really off-topic. Originally I wanted to know why such programs like Dosbox are not accessible (Flash, too). Now I know that their developers did not consider accessibility when designing them. On the other hand, I also wondered why the screen reader developers did not atempt to create solutions on their own, since I know that the moment the internet became easy to use for everyone, multimedia technologies were developed and deployed. But since it was mainstream at that time, it was strange to not see major screen reader developers atempting to make their own solutions until a form of communication might have been established with the technology developers or until there were more worldwhide accepted standards or guidelines to follow. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] using dosbox
I thought that this talk was ok, since the people of CodeFactory even with sighted assistance must have found a way to work with technology from Macromedia or Adobe, because it is a fact that games like Time Adventures or Alien Invasion are Shockwave applications. If using standalone Flash and Shockwave applications is a problem for the average blind user, then even the experienced blind developer must have more problems if he or she wants to actually develop Flash or Shockwave content. And if Audio Game Maker was continued, we would have had another Shockwave made application. I just wonder how they were able to develop their games/programs with such a platform. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] using dosbox
Yes, it might be true, that standard IT training material doesn't cover accessibility. But the story of a corporation's web services like online database and online banking system using Silverlight was in fact true. The sad fact was that one trainer had JAWS knowledge allthough he was fully sighted, while the other trainer was totally blind. At that time JAWS 10 was the latest available release and neither of us could access that web site properly without sighted assistance. But enough of that now. I really hope that the next few years will bring more accessibility features into Windows. I also would like it if someone either rewrote older games where allowed or that some kind of emulator or virtual machine configuration would be distributed which can be used by blind people to play some older games. I also think that Microsoft should focus more on internal changes for Windows than inventing a new user interface every two major releases or so. I know that not everyone liked the optical design of Modern UI, regardless of what new technology or hardware support Windows 8 brought. If Windows could be more like linux where you could permanently choose which desktop you want to use, it would probably do more good for Windows, because then people (sighted and blind) could choose during the installation which components they want to use. In Linux you can use Gnome or KDE (if that's still up and running). If you should do so as a blind user is obviously another story, but in theory you can choose. And that's something you could not officially with the ribbons in MS Office 2007 and newer over the menus from Office 2003. Same went for the Classic (XP start menu) to the Windows Vista/7 start menu up to no conventional start menu in Windows 8/8.1. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] using dosbox
That is sadly true. But in the case of Flash, I still don't get what the problem is. When I want to listen to a piece of classical music on a computer, I can use Winamp, VLC or Windows Media player. The user interface of any of the players is different. But the song remains the same. No player alters the used instruments or the speed at which they are played. The song in this example remains the same. A flash file should be like a song for this example. If JAWS or Window Eyes can read a flash file in a web browser, then I'd like to know why the same can't be done with the stand alone Flash player module. And if Adobe helped making PDF files accessible, then they must also have done something to make Flash in web pages partially accessible. If they had done nothing, we would be totally unable to interact with Flash. If there some form of allthough limited or partial support exists, the question would be why it was never expanded to also work with the stand alone player module. And please keep in mind that such companies as CodeFactory, allthough they probably had sighted members, made such active content with their games and used a stand alone player module as the main executable program on their CDs. The only difference is that they did use Director now known as Adobe Shockwave. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Dos Games Preservation Project
True, but there is one major difference and I don't mean storyline, weapons or gameplay. I know of the original Doom, allthough I haven't played it. But I know that Doom 1 and Quake 1 shared one thing which Shades of Doom up to now has never brought. And this is the ability to design your own level files and to distribute them. Shades of Doom to my knowledge doesn't alow the creation of user content outside of the main levels. I know of two Shades of Doom 1.x mods from the user with the name locutus. But he probably needed lots of free time to figure out how the .gsf files were set up to make his own altered files. Something which I think is not compatible or possible for Shades of Doom v2.x. And of course Locutus could never make his own level files. That was I hoped we could gain when the Alchemy Montezuma's Refenge was originally announced, because the old developer stated that the level editor would be part of a full registered version. Obviously it never got to that point, but that was what I hoped back then. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] using dosbox
Hi Thomas, that's ok. It is no problem that you don't know all the technical details of this. I was just wondering why there is that huge difference between Flash content in a web browser and as a stand alone application. It sounds a bit strange that web content would be made accessible by design but not the separate applications. I mean, initial Flash support in JAWS for example goes way back to around JAWS 5 or 4. And since then many things were changed but never was there the support for the other Flash Player. And during that time it was more the job of the screen reader developer to provide support for the most often used applications, like it was done for Microsoft Office for example. Thus from the point of view from the end user it looked as if the screen reader developers would not want to include support for such technology even if it was not their own fault. And as I said, even if providing accessibility is more in the hand of the application developers today, at that time it probably wasn't. And that's why it was for the user at least a strange thing that sighted workers had to deal with such things or Silverlight web applications but the blind or visually impaired workers could not do so without assistance because screen readers could not work with such upcoming technology which was in use around the world. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] using dosbox
About the file structure, yes it helped. But not about the question why SWF files made into a .exe file can't be read by any known Windows screen readers and why it looks like that Adobe or the screen reader developers don't want the users to read such Flash applications. - Original Message - From: Tim Chase b...@tim.thechases.com To: gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2015 6:10 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] using dosbox Thomas (et al.), Flash is much like Java in that it's a programming language/environment with a virtual machine. The makers of Flash (Macromedia, eventually purchased by Adobe) put in accessibility hooks so that programmers can take advantage of those, but like with Java and other programming environments, if the programmers don't take advantage of those accessibility hooks, then it results in a (mostly) inaccessible application. Because it's a programming language/environment, the .FLA files aren't just the media, but they are the media bundled with graphics, video, code (the actual code is ActionScript, a cousin of JavaScript), data, etc. or those programs can download additional external resources. For that reason, the .FLA file might not have the media to be extracted, or it might have the media but need the program logic to decode/decrypt the media. So the .FLA file is more like a .JAR file for Java or a .ZIP file elsewhere, bundling lots of stuff together along with some conventions about how to execute it. If you have a .SWF or .FLV file, those are specifically videos designed to be played within a Flash application, so you can use a media-extractor such as ffmpeg or swfextract (usually in the swftools package) on Linux to convert/extract the media to a format such as .MP3 that is more readily playable. Hope that was helpful and clears things up, -tim --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] using dosbox
Hi Thomas, I got what you mean and with an infinite number of custom controls it is practically impossible to get them all. But there are some controls or technologies which have been around for years. I obviously don't know how much changes they got over the years. But I could give you a simple example of what I meant when I said that some controls should be made fully accessible. We both know that for example JAWS is capable to read some flash content within a web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer or Firefox). Not every Flash module is a player for videos or contains animated material itself. If I download a site which uses one embedded .SWF file (HTML code), I can have that SWF file. If I download the Standalone Flash Player from Adobe and link my .SWF file with it, I get a new self contained Flash file. It is another .exe file with the SWF file included in it. This .EXE file can be run on any computer even if the Flash Player is not installed on that computer. If I run this new file, JAWS will be unable to read the absolutely same content you could have read on whatever website you took the file or files from. No one knows why you can't read the window of that application, allthough the controls of the Flash file itself were not altered from the web version. Flash Player was there before or near the release of Internet Explorer 4.0. JAWS was probably around for the same time. And with more and more Windows computers being sold, more people got internet and such more people used such technologies as Flash or Shockwave or later Microsoft Silverlight. I had to access a professional online banking service (within a place I worked at) which was built with Silverlight. At this time it was supposed to be a job requirement to connect with this site. This company specifically employed blind and visually impaired people. We had blind workers and some were in training and some tutors and higher ups were also blind or visually impaired. At that time we only had JAWS 10 (there was no newer version at that time). We blind people couldn't use the online banking feature. Do you want to know why? Because it was a Silverlight application on a web server embedded into HTML content. We barely got the online database application to work and we needed access to their data, so we had to use their software to connect to them. This was at that point a real problem for us. We could not solve this. We asked the visually impaired people in the company to help us. But without sighted assistance it was totally impossible. The point of this long story is that some technology is used really often in the sighted world. And while you are right that we can't make our screen readers know everything non standard, we should at least do with known interactive content like Silverlight or Flash, when it is taken out of a web browser. There must be a reason why JAWS can read PDF files (with Adobe Reader) like a web page. But if it works for a browser or a mail client or a the mainstream PDF reader, surely it should be made possible to do it with the main web technologies which were there at the beginning of modern screen readers. And since that the beginning I have never seen Flash Player (binary, not web object) support and no explanation why this is. This were just examples of the often used and common technologies or programs. And at least they should be usable with screen readers. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] using dosbox
Ok, I got that... But I think that since Windows was created, there were always developers of software who did not necessarily use standard controls or API communications. If this problem is technically that old, why does look it like (from the point of view from the end user of a screen reader) that the screen reader developers seem to be incapable of adding support for more non standard controls? I mean, I don't know how designing controls work. But non standard controls go back to the Windows 95 era. Seriously, Java, Shockwave formerly Macromedia Director or Flash are known technologies, right? If anyone (professional) developers can get access to parts of that technology, then there surely should be a way of adapting the screen reader to handle non standard controls, right? I mean we or our screen reader developers can't force everyone to solely use standard controls, even if Microsoft might like that or not. JAWS for example is one of the oldest commercial screen readers which still exists today. And there are lots of blind users who have to deal with non standard controls at work or at home. This problem is known. Obviously it would take a long time to make every control element accessible, that is surely true. But as I said, everyone knows for example what Flash or Silverlight or Java and a few other partially accessible are and that there might be a certain demand in making such things accessible. And about the Video Intercept drivers, how limited is its effectiveness if it (in theory) can get more data than the Windows API might give the screen reader for a certain application? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] using dosbox
Hi Thomas, I would like to ask a question about the problems with such programs as the mentioned Dosbox. Why is it so difficult for a screen reader to get anything from such a program? Shouldn't (in theory) a screen reader be able to get all the information on the screen as it is given from a graphic card to the screen or whatever component actually puts anything on the screen? If this is not true, what purpose had such things as Video Intercept for JAWS up to Windows 7? If I have a program which in theory has access to all (graphical) information which is currently displayed on the screen, shouldn't a screen reader be able to read more things as long as you are not running a full virtual machine or if you are not playing some kind of video where you have constantly changing images on screen? I mean some text DOS games are not that graphically complex like a video or some high end animations of mainstream games. And while we are at it, Dosbox surely wasn't developed Yesterday. This brings up the question why no screen reader developer seems to have found a way to read such programs like Dosbox in general. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] audio games popularity
Such a community project might be a good idea. And maybe something to bring the focus back to computer users. While I don't have anything personal against mobile devices, we have or will get some rather complex mobile (IOS) games in the near future. But the sad thing about this that not even Mac users won't get anything through this, since IOS and Mac are obviously two separate things. But if Mac has more onboard accessibility features than Windows has, I wonder if mainstream Mac games could be made accessible like some mainstream IOS titles might be playable by blind or visually impaired users. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] audio games popularity
I know that some people made games for fun or because they wanted to earn some money. How much money they actually got, I obviously don't know. And since many of the games we talked about, e.g. Justin's or Liam's titles are a bit older, no one knows how much money could be made from them in the year 2014. But in case of Justin at least, it had been years since he last released a new title. Obviously I can't know why he didn't do more or why he did not close his doors earlier if he wanted to stop. But I also can't know if his next title, if it ever came, would have been a success or not among paying gamers. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] About pc games
That's actually sad in so many levels. First is of course the problems with the high unemployment rates you mentioned. But what I'd like to know is if there is an actual estimation on how many blind or visually impaired people are actually in the USA and how many of them are interested in games and not how many of them could afford them. On the other hand, ESP Soft and later Draconis made more than one paid title. Either the people behind said games had lots of money or they earned lots of it through their sales. If their games were not a success on the small market, we wouldn't have seen more games from them and I think that Monkey Business was their most complex game so far. It seems that however small the market might be, that you still can make money through it, if not, all paid games wouldn't be here anymore. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] About pc games
That's what I thought, too. I mean, mainstream games often use some kind of game engines where you still might need knowledge in whatever script or other language the tools work with. However such engines come with lots of extra tools for level design or for creating your data files once you made your data folder. But most audio game developers probably had to do this by hand inventing data file formats, level layout and then actually code them line by line. This is one reason why I find it a bit sad that there is no public information about the GMA Engine available, even if you would find out that it is not the right tool for you. I also would like to know what happened to the game engine in development by USA Games. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] audio games popularity
But that problem is not limited to the audio games sector. I mean people who demand things for free or who don't care and develop cracks and such stuff and distribute them through the internet. Cracked software or games can be found everywhere. Obviously it has a bigger impact on a small market. But the problem is the same wherever you look. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] audio games popularity
Hi Thomas, I agree with you that a lot of mobile games are either accessible or can be made accessible in a short amound of time, once the basic apps are nearly completed on such platforms. However, what I didn't get was why many of the long time developers of PC audio games had to leave. I mean, it is one thing to actively develop new games and release them. But if you have an automated online shop and an automated system to handle sending out registration keys, then I don't get why Liam stopped selling the two older titles or why BSC Games stopped selling their old titles. And if they thought that they really would want to go, they could surely have handled that exit better, since not everyone bought their final package which contained all their games plus the official key generator. But I think that people who already owned one or more of their games wouldn't want to buy them again and thus were unable to get new keys the moment they had to switch computers or reinstall. I can tell you how I approached that situation. I bought that final package with the unlock tool but only because I had enough money at that time and because I had not bought any of their games before. I knew of them and I played the demos and their free games before. But I didn't waste my money because I have the entire package now and I didn't buy anything before that. If I had, I wouldn't have bought that package because that would have been paying for some games twice. And I don't want to attack the developers we currently have for PC games. But many of them are permanently in a simple game sector like making accessible board or card games. Others make browser and thus online games. And some more are not yet experienced enough to do some complex games. And sadly, when I look at what is out there in mainstream games right now, I really think that it is a bit sad that so many of our games are so extremely small compared to mainstream titles. I don't know how large the world of Paladin of the Sky or Entombed might be as a whole but I am sure that any major RPG title like Elder Scrolls 5, Final Fantasy 13 or even World of Warcraft have a game world the sice of a bigger country of the real earth at least. I also don't get why many audio games don't offer expansions or DLC packages (free or paid downloadable content) once it is released. And many games allow you to make your own extensions. I had hoped that Draconis for example would have released more addons to ESP Pinball Extreme, but up to this point, there is no information for that game. I also wondered why there was not an option to make your own Pinball tables for example. And if the Entombed Dungeon Creator would have been released, then we might have seen some user created addons for that game... And finally, many current mainstream games either include the soundtrack or you can buy it optionally as a regular CD like with movie soundtracks. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] About pc games
Yes I know of such titles like Tactical Battle and Zero Sight. But it is probably true that the older players tell the new ones to go for Draconis or BSC or such first because these games are well known. Maybe it is because it was the first these players got to know... Yes it is true that some new things are coming up, but a few of them seem comparatively smaller than some of the current or upcoming IOS games in scale. And often enough Strathegy or browser games might not be structured the same way than such games like Shades of Doom or the Sarah game are. I mean I don't know if the IOS zombie game from the Papa Sangre developers has ten or twenty levels, but I am sure that I don't know of such a PC game right now and Swamp doesn't cunt since it is more an online game than a single player title. Same goes for Papa Sangre 1 and 2. Something like this doesn't exist for PC or Mac as far as I know. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] audio games popularity
Or an entire fictional continent. If you have games which describe locations with TTS voices and you don't make a full 3d or 2d audio environment, it should be possible to make such a big world in an reasonable amound of time for blind people. Is it that expensive to make that older programmers don't do it, or is it due to a lack of creativity, or are there totally different reasons at work? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] About pc games
You are probably right Dark. However what I meanth was not that we don't get new things, since we do even with different mechanics. But let me say it a bit different. You probably know Sryth, right? Imagine how it could be if you got this game on your PC (not a browser game) with a proper audio environment. Of course this game has been out for years and probably will remain as a browser game. However since some people know this genre of game, I wonder why the only commercial audio RPGs we have are Paladin of the Sky and Entombed. And while these titles are great and their developers did great jobs in making them, you can't create your own expansions for both games, neither am I aware of the availability of paid expansions for said game. It is like with ESP Pinball Extreme where you had the Pinball Party Pack which supposedly was meant to be the first expansion with more to follow later on. But up to this point there was no further release announced up to this point. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] audio games popularity
Hi Nick, You are probably right. But on the other hand, lots of that money would be used for people who design the game world visually, meaning graphics. They have visual design programs from which they can at least start their 3D modeling and such... It is true that high end graphics might cost lots of money, but if you were to make an audio game with a game world the size of London, you wouldn't need to have a huge amound of people just working on the graphical side. Furthermore I think that it also might come down to knowledge and imagination. Yes, you need to know how you technically do things and a beginner might think to start with simple games like card games, Battleship or something like that. And while it is not bad to have accessible card games, we don't need them in huge masses while other (commercial) games are not even considered (it looks that way at least). Entombed for example could have been enhanced by adding more levels to the dungeon and the developer also could have included more skills and techniques. Since all ingame text is read through TTS and only the attacks are represented through sound, the world could have been expanded without needing to buy a sound library with 5 sound files for $6000. And even if it was not in his capability to do at the initial release of the game, that's why there is something like expansions and/or updates apart from bug fixing of course. But since the last update was released over a year ago, it is unlikely that the game will see such content additions. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] audio games popularity
That's true, allthough if we could have such a thing as a game which could be played offline with the option to fight other human players over the internet, it could be even better. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] audio games popularity
That's actually sad. Not that Alter Aeon is a big world of course. But if such things work as an online game shouldn't there be a developer or a group of them who think that it is time to do something like this as an audio game? I mean, if you start today with game development you won't do such a big thing alone. But if you are there in your tenth year as an active member of the audio game developing group, then surely it could be possible. And you can't tell me that such a project would be totally unwanted among the players and the community if it were to be properly made. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] audio games popularity
Hi Thomas, I know that a beginner won't do highly complex games from the start. That is true. However the ones like Justin or Liam or Dan had some rather complex games compared to simple board or card games. Look at the unlockables in Judgment Day for example. But after that you heard not much from Liam in terms of big projects for whatever reasons. The last commercial project was Super Egg Hunt Plus. But if he supposedly still sells it, then there is at least in theory no reason to drop Super Liam or Judgment day. I know that real life can get in the way and that this might be the reason why we had some people leave permanently. But this did for example not explain why Justin did not make his originally paid games free if he was not going to give further key replacements to previous customers. While his final special offer was good for me personally, since I didn't buy his games up to this point, for people who already owned one or two games it was not an ideal option. And if he generally said he wanted to drop all support for these titles, then he could simply have released his unlock code generator like Dan did with his legal unlock patches and no one would have screamed foul play or something similar. And of course you are right when you say people born blind might not know the difference between Entombed or Warcraft. However there are such things as anime, movies, TV shows or fantasy books. And such large fictional universes nmight not be used in audio game development due to copyright issues, creating a similar setting than described in such media might be legally possible. You atempted the same in basing your Mysteries of the Ancients around Tomb Raider, even if you couldn't legally use Lara. This doesn't prevent you from creating a fictional tomb hounter named Anna with a gun and a magical sword just as an example. On the other hand, I know of at least one German gamer (I know him personally) who wants to try Final Fantasy 13 on Steam and owns a PC edition of Injustice: Gods among us Ultimate Edition. I don't know how playable it actually is for blind people, but if blind people partially can play it, then it means that some blind gamers who were born blind want to expand their knowledge by going mobile or by trying such games. If you know what the following mainstream titles are, I'd really like to see an accessible or audio version of Fate/Stay Night or some more Japanese games. I also wonder if we'll ever get something like Star Trek Bridge Commander, since that should be partially playable in its mainstream form as well. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] About pc games
Hi Dark, The sad thing about all this is that all these new things we are currently getting in the audio game sector are partially old school compared to mainstream games. Seriously, I know of a mainstream game called Uprising 2. You wouldn't be able to play it withouth sighted assistance just to tell that first. What I want to say is the following: This game was a science fiction game where you have to fight in a war against an alien race. You had to go to over 30 planets and your task was to destroy all alien bases on the planet. The player controled a futuristic tank with different weapons. He could build factories to produce other units to call during battles to aid you. These units were computer controlled of course. I have the game CD. During these missions you gained more weapons and technology until you came to the final level. Every planet you had to go to was its own map file. On the game CD (it was small enough for one CD-Rom) you had the game, the full user manual as well as other documents. The game itself had three extra levels which were a really big ingame tutorial. But that was not all the CD contained. There was a level editor plus its own manual plus another file which contained the technical specifications for one of the four main files you need for level design. And there was one last document explaining the scripting language which you needed íf you wanted to create story events or define on what terms you won or lost a certain mission. This game let the user edit some but not all its files. It did not require any form of hardware based registrations, nor was the CD copy protected with the kind of copy protection which prevents legal use of the product because it is buggy. This title was released before the year 2000 and ran on Windows 98 systems without problems. This is just one example of what some games of the Windows 95-98 era could do. Or remember Doom and Quake. You could make your own levels and mods for them. And if you like RPGs you know what Final Fantasy is. That series goes back before PCs were common products. But I also knew of a Japanese Play Station game which was originally listed in the audiogames.net database. But up to now we had little in audio RPG titles and the two we have while impressive currently don't have official addons/expansions, nor do they support user created game content as far as I know. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] About pc games
That might be true. But it looks like you might be forgetting something here at least in theory. You probably know that Sryth was developed over ten years as well as World of Warcraft. However do you know that the original World of Warcraft was smaller at its initial release? I also think that many features and content for Sryth was added over the years. But in the case of either browser games or mainstream games, content can be released after the initial release. In the days of Microsofts older operating systems we had such releases known as service packs which some times brought more than bug fixes and security updates. World of Warcraft, while still being an MMORPG had six releases and there will probably be more. The first release was the initial release plus five (paid!) expansion packs which were released over several years and some expansions took more than one year to develop. If we were to make Sryth into an audio game it would take a huge amound of time because the original development of that game took years. But if it were to be made into an audio game just an example, the content could be split between releases and if we were talking paid content, you could get some money per released package. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] audio games popularity
That's true... However, If I look back at the last two or three years I mostly see some rather long and potentially interesting games released, but only for IOS or something mobile. While it is true that the Inquisitor series is cross platform, apart from new versions like Shades of Doom 2.0, Time of Conflict 2.0 one revised Draconis title (Change Reaction 2.0) and Silver Dollar, I can't recall many new commercial PC audio games being released in the last few years. While other projects like Rail Racer 2 and Three-D Velocity 2 are in development, both developers have been quiet for a while. In the case of Rail Racer 2, all references to the game have wanished from the corresponding site. I personally think that we should get some more PC games and I don't mean only simply games, but ones with a longer play time and interesting stories. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] FW: [The Teacher List] Wissp: Beginning ActionScript
While we are talking about web technologies like Flash and their scripting parts, I would like to know how CodeFactory made their games then. Ok, I know that they used Director MX, now known as Shockwave and the Audio Game maker would also have been a Shockwave application. Allthough this might be a bit off topic, I still don't get why seemingly all screen readers can read flash content within web pages, but if you link the same .swf file to the stand alone Flash Player and run that program, you can't read anything. I mean, if the said content was supposed to be text with no graphics, then said content can't change if you put it into another application. This might be another reason why it might be difficult to actually develop accessible Flash or Shockwave content if you are a blind developer, but I am also no expert. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] A Brief Tribute; was: Pizza Delivery
Seriously, If we had audio versions of some Dragon Age, Final Fantasy or The Witcher titles and probably more titles of that type in this community, maybe people would shut up about that little bit of adult material we actually have. Seriously, in a few mainstream games you might have quests which end in your player character having sex with some woman from that game world. Obviously I don't know if they only hint at it or if they show such scenes in great detail in such mainstream games, since I am blind and can't see what's happening in such cases. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] audio games popularity
Hi Thomas, you are probably right when it comes to most audio game developers being only Windows developers. However, this also goes into another direction. I know that some developers made or still make accessible games for mobile devices, mostly for IOS, allthough there might be Android games out there. While I personally have no problem with IOS games, I find it a bit sad that some things remain platform exclusive. I don't know if you know what the Inquisitor is, but this series is being released for Windows, Mac, IOS and Android as far as I know. I have no idea how this is done meaning that I don't know if they use some cross platform technology which allows for releases on several platforms in a relatively short amound of time. However, I have no idea why games like Papa Sangre and Papa Sangre 2 are (to my knowledge) IOS exclusive. I don't have both games, but I could listen to some recordings of both. With their extremely good audio quality, I would have liked to play such a game on a PC or a Mac if I had the latter. But games from that company are as far as I know not cross platform. This shows that it can also go into the other direction, meaning that some game developers seem to specifically avoid Windows releases and focus instead on mobile devices only. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Fwd: LWorks discontinuing sales of Legacy games
True. However, if he doesn't tell the community if this is because he wants to drop the games forever, or if he is in fact working on new versions of said games. We can't know and if he doesn't say (in case of rewrites) it could upset some people. He wouldn't even need to give release dates or such things, but just saying what his game related plans are instead of just saying, that the old games are more or less dropped which is also not a clear statement... --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] mac versus windows sales plus iOS question
@Draconis: I haven't bought Change Reaction 2 or Silver Dollar either for Mac or Windows, so I can't compare the two versions... However I tried your games before you introduced your new engine. I am talking now not of technical features or your internal design of the engine or the games. I however remember the time where there still was a long and nice readme file or some form of a game manual which you could access without running said game, allthough some ingame help, samples (not for a trial version, but for learning game play mechanics) or some interactive tutorials are also not a bad idea. Since I haven't seen the full versions of Silver Dollar or Change Reaction 2, I can only comment on the Windows version of the Draconis Show Case program... And I am seriously wondering why it is impossible to actually choose which of your SAPI voices you want to read for you and why it seems that interupting any speech takes a long time meaning that when any key is pressed or any demo or level or recording is started the voice still reads the description of that game or game mode while the recording or game level is already running, which should not be. If I want to listen to any description of a game mode, I'll surely listen to the entire thing. But when I know what I want to do, I want to skip that, but not that it still is talking while I have already started something. @the users who actually have either Silver Dollar or Change Reaction 2 for Windows: is it the same with SAPI for you in that you can't choose the SAPI voice from within the game and takes it over a second to interupt any spoken message like help or game or mode descriptions before you actually start them? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] mac versus windows sales plus iOS question
I know that XP is near its end. I also know that there are newer operating systems (just the ones from Microsoft). I know that security is a factor which might bring people to upgrade at some point. True, if XP is now longer supported, hackers and other people can possibly find holes in the security systems. And true, not every antivirus program can protect you from such attacks. However, the viruses are not the only danger when it comes to using the internet. Criminals who manipulate websites to not directly target your computer but to record or capture the communication the moment it leaves your computer are more dangerous. If you are on a manipulated website and whatever interactions you have with that site (be it loggin in, doing money transfers or whatever) might be captured without the need of actually cracking some form of encryption. I think that there is a term for such indirect attacks: man in the browser or something like that. And I also think that it has not to be limited to the web browser itself. But that is the extend of that. Fact is that such types of attacks might be a bigger problems. Such is not a form of direct attack where the fact that you have an outdated system might mean nothing. If the transfered data is redirected away from the route it is supposed to take, you can't see it right now. And if such a form of attack happens, it is totally of no consequence whether you used XP or Windows 8.1. And I am sure that this is not the point some people tried to originally make. I am all for better security systems for my computer, but I need to get a manual which explains to me the (probably not knowledgeable) user what I should do and what I shouldn't do. Since XP users had their let's call it Classic design and programs, they might be confused or might be afraid of things like Modern UI in Windows 8 and higher. I won't say that everyone won't be able to adapt in time if they want to, but who will tell them the inns and outs of Windows 8 compared to XP (if your last operating system was XP). These are of course only examples. And let's not forget that Microsoft loves to drop a lot of programs out of their systems without replacements or with suboptimal replacements. This is just for as an argument, but I will adress them shortly. XP has Outlook Express. I have no idea if it is a bad program (security related) or if it is horribly outdated for an E-Mail program. It however does its job. Vista had Windows Mail which according to my mother (she is sighted) is like a newer version of Outlook Express with some new features and some altered ones. Then there is Windows 7 which still has a Windows Mail program with its own folder, but it is totally disabled and effectively unusable. Then back in the day (near the initial release of Windows 7( it was strongly suggested that users who had first switched from Outlook Express to Windows Mail should switch again to Windows Live Mail, which is free, but now longer a part of Windows itself. The same goes for Windows Movie Maker. Windows Movie maker is a tool for actually editing or recording videos. But Windows Live Movie Maker is not a new version of Windows Movie Maker. The newer program is part of Windows Live and more for sharing your videos or for publishing them on video sharing services. But enough of that. There is another interesting thing I'd like to mention here, allthough I did not experience it myself. I read that the rather old Bavisoft games wouldn't work on Windows 7. I of course have no idea why or which component(s) might be missing. I know that several developers mentioned that VB6 or other older technologies are outdated and that there are replacements for them. But I as an end user are not in the position to force the developer (Bavisoft in this example) to make their games compatible with Windows 7. If Bavisoft were still around, I could ask them nicely if they would be so kind as to do something. But if they would refuse I still would have a bought product which I could not use. True, it would be the developer's fault, but is this reason enough to purposefully drop older runtime components from Windows just because the developer product is outdated? I mean, look at Jim Kitchen's games. They use the VB6 runtime. On XP most of the runtime files should be present by default. On Windows 7 they are not just because the system is newer. At least it looks this way from the viewpoint of the end user. Luckily the main installer for the game can install the runtime files on newer Windows versions. But would it have been hard for MS to not remove the components in the first place? Obviously installing them yourself doesn't destroy your Windows right away. And why should the users of third party software be punished with incompatibility if it would have been these software developers who should have upgraded their development technology in the first place? And which standard end user
Re: [Audyssey] 64 bit windows and tts
Hi Thomas, You are probably right... But it doesn't mean that I have to like it. And while it is not really game relevant in a direct manner, it should be mentioned somewhere, since we had talks about what platforms game developers should or should not support in the near future. And what I don't get is why it is seemingly super easy and cheap to get nearly all current Acapela voices for Mac for personal use, while it is nearly impossible to do it for Windows. If the major screen reader companies would make deals like with Nuance, then I still could get German children's voices or an Australian English female v voice, even if it was limited to one program... But not even that seems to be possible to keep with that example, because the voices I mentioned are sold freely for MAC, but neither free (SAPI) nor a limited (non SAPI) variant can be bought (at the moment). And when I say that something can't be bought I do not mean that I can't afford it, I mean it is not available. I know of JAWS 15 and IOS 7 and that both will bring new voices for their respective products. But it is still not nice when you know what there is and you can't buy it as simple as buying your newest Microsoft Office, Windows or whatever. And that is technically not even limited to blind users, because you can use speech products for lots of purposes, some commercial, and others are non commercial. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] 64 bit windows and tts
That's exactly, what I don't like about this. I know that nextup.com sell SAPI and non SAPI voices... However, regardless of which Windows you have, it is impossible for end users to buy Acapela voices individually for SAPI. You can buy Infovox 4 on USB stick but that is usually limited to five voices out of around 80. On nextup.com you can get many of them, but they are only for use with their own products and thus can't be used with all speech programs. Assistive Ware on the other hand sells Acapela voices individually, but only for Mac users. I would like to have the same service for Windows, because Ivox 3 (Mac version) offers more voices to select from than the Windows Infovox 4 Stick product. If nextup.com could sell SAPI voices like they do non SAPI voices and could update to version 9.1, they could offer the exact same voice catalogue than Assistive ware. I am also aware of the upcoming JAWS 15 and the updated and new Nuance voices. And once more it seems that they are purposefully ignoring the third German voice of Vocalizer Expressive, like the other company did with their voices for NVDA. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] BSC Games shutting down, and reactions.
Why shouldn't I be? I live in Germany, but that doesn't mean that I know where audio game developers live. And even I know what lockdown and manhunt mean. Besides, we have reports of some people who say that they bought the package and got no link or damaged files while atempting to get said files. And we also have at least one or two people who said that everything was ok with their order. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] BSC Games shutting down, and reactions.
I think we might have a bigger problem on our hands. I read in the audiogames.net forum that some people actually bought this new package and got a partially strange order confirmation mail, but no further messages in which the key generator is included or linked to. And since the current blindsoftware.com site doesn't host the old free BSC titles which are part of that bonus offer except 15 Numbers, we might have found a problem. Does anyone actually have that key generator already or more important, does anyone know if the Boston situation could have messed up things for Justin or his company or the service SWREG which is used for actually ordering that package? - Original Message - From: Cara Quinn caraqu...@caraquinn.com To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Friday, April 19, 2013 3:13 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] BSC Games shutting down, and reactions. Actually you're not forced to buy anything. Don't want it? -Just don't buy it. :) Nobody's forcing you to do anything. Sorry for being so glib, and I definitely do understand people's worry about the future of these games that mean a lot. -but please, can we kind of turn this ship around a bit and be constructive even if we disagree? There's still a month left before the company goes away. Surely we can come up with some situation so that this legacy can be at the very least preserved, or better still, be kept alive. I'm waiting for a note back. Perhaps more of us might want to approach Justin or maybe we could suggest the idea of making the support of these games a community-run project. Either way, we do have time and options… Thanks, Cara :) --- View my Online Portfolio at: http://www.onemodelplace.com/CaraQuinn Follow me on Twitter! https://twitter.com/ModelCara --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] The Dragon Answers Questions
Sorry, but it is true that this entire system has caused us really nasty problems. I think that the hardware is also messed up and not only the Windows DVD. Now I am wondering whether it would be a good idea to use the Windows 8 upgrade DVD I have on that system to hopefully fix some of the problems. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] The Dragon Answers Questions
Ok, while we are talking .net framework here, I'd like to know something. When .net 3.5 and later .net 3.5 SP1 were released, there were two ways to install them (Vista or XP only). You could download and run a web setup program, or get a full package. I know that two such files were available, namely the .net framework 3.5 SP1 full package and a .net 3.5 Client Profile Offline Installer. What I never got was why the 3.5 SP1 claims to be a full package, while it *always* wants to download at least one file (XP). I think it is a language pack, but why it is not included in the file I don't get, since lots of files from Microsoft can be downloaded for different languages. And what I also don't know is if the mentioned Client profile installer for .net 3.5 is with or without SP1, and if there are some ways of getting either of theese as full localiced offline installers with no need for any automated downloads from within a 200+ MB full installer. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] The Dragon Answers Questions
Then I was right in thinking that her system was deliberately fucked up... A few weeks ago, I had to fix a nasty virus problem, which required removing the hard drive and look at it with another computer. The structure of the drive was messed up before that, so I had to recreate everything down to the file system manually. The point here is that I know where most of the files of any .net installation are located and this copy had no such folder of .net 4.0 files. When I installed said package on XP, I got over 300 MB files in that special folder for .net 4.0, patches and security updates not included... And all of them were really missing and the .net 3.51 files had to be installed separately, but as a Windows component. I think running a full upgrade to Windows 8 Pro on that laptop should deal with some components being messed up for good. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] The Dragon Answers Questions
Hi Thomas, I am in Germany, and so is my mother. She bought a laptop a while ago with Windows 7 Home Premium. And I can tell you the following (she is sighted, while I am blind, thus she did checking): 1. Her Windows includes a subversion of .net 3.5 which seems to be called .net 3.51 (by default (pre SP1, which is not included in the installation DVD). 2. There are two offline installers for .net 4.0, the full package and the Client Profile. I can run the full package on my desktop computer, which currently runs Windows XP. The same installation file for .net 4.0 I use, had to be used on her laptop to install .net 4.0. After this was done, she could use Windows Update to get patches for .net 4.0 3. Microsoft announced and released a version called .net Framework 4.5 which can be installed on Vista and Windows 7 (if I am not mistaken), but I am not sure if this is included in Windows 8 or not (not Windows RT). It seems to be more an update than a separate version with its own folders, but I might be wrong here. I am not sure if this version of Windows was altered by the hardware manufacturer, but theese are the facts, at least for this one Windows 7 system... --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] The Dragon Answers Questions
Hi Thomas, While we are talking technology here, I'd like to ask something. .net 4.0 can be run on XP and is not shipped with Windows 7 directly, what exactly does Windows 8 have? I heard of a .net 4.5 package which can be installed on Windows 7. While XP might be outdated, Windows 7 seems to be closer to Windows 8. This however brings the question of compatibility for Windows 7 when it comes to Windows 8 based programs (and I do not mean Modern Apps). --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] The Dragon Answers Questions
I will definitely wait and see what you can and will do, before talking about it either positively or negatively. It is true that lots of mainstream and small developers have found ways to do business like they want. But please let me tell you two things I have seen and of which I am not sure what to make of them. Not because change was introduced into a running system, but because the players seemed to not need that big change (from any economical viewpoint). 1. Egosoft: Said company developed the X series of huge strathegy and exploration games. Theese are in a science fiction setting. A game named X 3: Terran Conflict was released a while ago. Lots of patches and improovements were released during the post release time. Then, near the end of 2011 they announced the imminent release of an expansion named X3: Albion Prelude. This was offered as a stand alone product for all the people who got Terran Conflict before and with the latest version of Terran Conflict as a three disc boundle. However, out of the blue, this new boundle had to be (exclusiveley) used with Steam. Meaning, anyone who got this title on DVD had to install or use (if already present) Steam. The official reasoning behind it was to to ease and streamline updates because Steam could automatically download updates as soon as they were ready. Furthermore it was said that it would mean that they would have to pay less for their internet presence and it would take traffic off their servers... While this surely is true, I started to wonder, why this was done at this point. The older X games still don't use steam (when bought in a store), and the same old and new small or big patches (depending on the game) are still offered on their own web platform, and the Patches Albion Prelude got are not exceptionally big and most patches are cumulative in nature, so you wouldn't fill up your space with outdated files anyway. Besides, they run their own community with user created content and this probably takes up more space than patches, but it was not shut down or brought to another owner/place due to money issues... This shift seems not to be a new way of dealing with piracy either... 2. Betesta Softworks: More specific, the Elder Scrolls game series. Elder Scrolls Oblivion was released (Windows) as a stand alone offline RPG on DVD. There is downloadable content (free and paid) and two expansion packs were created. Now, we have Skyrim. This is the next title in the series. And again suddenly we have an offline play based game which you have to buy normally and to actually run it you again need a Steam account. It is again not a matter of delivery of updates or downloadable content (because the Betesta network is big enough to host such things). Maybe it could be a new atempt at better copy protection, but then we have console versions of this game. If you buy console games on a disc and not as a download you don't have to install third party software to run your game and you don't have to be actually logged into your account to run your game, even if you can switch to an offline modus in Steam... But to force to be connected to the internet for every (first) startup of your registered and legally bought program after you turned on your computer is a bit overkill. Even activating Office, Windows or even JAWS is not that hard provided you do not alter your hardware permanently. And same goes for IOS or Mac Apps you bought and have installed on your device or Mac. That's enough of me telling you this. But I really hope that whatever you are going to do with your engine and busines/sales model won't be harder to use for any user just because he or she has Windows instead of possessing OSX or an IOS device. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] The Dragon Answers Questions
Yes it does in a way and I can understand that. I am not asking you to make anything difficult for Mac users because something is not possible for Windows. That's true. However, even if Windows seems outdated in some ways, it would be interesting to know how you think about Windows 8 and their own app store. Of course, this might be not big enough at the moment (for the VI community), but there are new devices with Windows 8 RT and the Modern APPs can be used on devices with RT and normal computers with their own Windows 8 editions. I am looking forward to the windows releases and I will definitely check them out once they are released. One more thing though. Somewhere I heard that the CD versions of the ESP games had some extras the downloadable and still current Windows versions never had. Since I never got such a CD, I am not entirely sure what theese contained except some form of game installer, but somewhere thinks like bloopers or such things were mentioned. OK, that's nothing new or expanded in comparison to the downloadable versions, but it was there nonetheless at one point. Since the current game versions (Windows) are not that big and can be played as demos or registered without having two separate files (one as demo, one as a full version), I can understand, why you dropped CD shipping. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] The Dragon Answers Questions
I would have to reinstall the demos to give you the exact error message for Ten Pin Alley, but I do know for a fact that my Desktop Computer with modern hardware (two or three years old) can't run TPA 1.2 under XP, while I have no problems with your other titles and I have DirectX properly installed, .net Framework, VB 6 libraries and Visual C++ Runtime 2005 and 2008 as well. I know of two or three more XP computers (not my own ones), where it also was absolutely impossible to get the game to work at all. I have both versions, version 1.1 and 1.2. Version 1.1 runs fine under XP, but not 1.2. I know at least one friend with two Windows 7 computers and he told me that he could run the latest version of the game properly. He didn't even know that his version is 1.2 while you list it as version 1.1 on your game download page. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] The Dragon Answers Questions
I'd like to say a few things as well. When it comes to the question of demos, it depends on the type of game. I am here in Germany, and I know a few people who wanted to look at Monkey Business before you released the version 1.9 of it which included a playable demo. When I heard of it for the first time, I couldn't try it, at this point there was no playable demo of it. A few months later a friend showed me his game collection and there he had a few of the games you developed, but they were old versions from the time before Draconis Entertainment took over development of theese titles. There was a playable demo of Monkey Business, but it was really old and it was a permanent level limited demo, which meant, that it could not be registered or somehow exploited or cracked. That was just one example. Games like Silver Dollar might not need a Windows demo, if you can hear a good recording or trailer, because it is comparatively simple to understand regardless of which operating system you use. The Pinball games however are another story alltogether. Sure, explaining or demonstrating how Pinball is played in general via trailers or written instructions is one thing. But since each table in your Pinball games is actually like a different game alltogether, I am not sure if it is good to go without a demo. I am not a owner of theese games, but I'd like to know which tables the players really like and which ones they don't. I'd also like to know how things are supposed to go in the future. Mac users can use the app store to get your titles. Regardless of the demo question I'd like to know how buying, optaining and registering your games is supposed to be done once you are ready for Windows releases. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] The Dragon Answers Questions
Thank you for the answer, but it seems that you are not completely correct with Monkey Business. I know three versions of the game. One is old, and I mean pre-Draconis time... The second is 1.8.11 or 1.8.12. This one was there as an 1000+ MB download. This one was unplayable without having an actuall registration key, which I found out after I downloaded, installed and atempted to run it. Then there came version 1.9, which gave the lab, the temple and the beach levels as playable without entering any registration keys. If I remember correctly, and this might be wrong, there were reports of one level being skipped (bug?) once you would have registered your copy, which I did not do, but read about. A workaround supposedly was to copy a level file somewhere, but I might be wrong again. What I do however, is an issue with your current Windows version of Ten Pin Alley. You list its version as 1.1.0. When someone loads it today, it is in fact version 1.2.0. And for some strange reason, it cannot under any circumstances be run under Windows XP. I know that Windows 7 and theoretically Vista should work, but it is not working for XP. The still listed version 1.1 however has no such problems and it is not a question of the game being registered or not. You couldn't register the 1.2 release under XP, because you would be confronted with a nice Run Time error, and all this happens on a system which is more filled with older libraries and such components normally dropped in Windows 7 or later by default. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Inspector Cindy Inquirie
What about this other series sinister cities or whatever it was originally called? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Other SAPI voices was Kitchensinc games
Phil, Are the Windows 8 voices the same ones found within Microsoft Speech Platform version 11, which could be used from XP onwards to Windows 7? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Jim Kitchen's games and Win7?
Hi Jim, that's ok. But could you think about doing something different? Since you released your last version of the golf game, lots of golf courses were released. But there are a few of them grouped together, as well as the fix for the golf course maker. Shouldn't that fix be included in the main game and don't you think it could be time to put the ten different golf course files into one? I think you did something similar with all the trivia sets when the last major trivia update came out and the same was true for the monopoly game and the board files. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Redistributing RPG Source Books
Hi Thomas, That might be true for books or music. What I never got was the why all things had to be limited. For example, one of my friends bought the complete Outlander Series (at that time six books) as an audiobook series on a few MP3 CDs. They didn't use DVD discs at that time except for movies in Germany. That was around 2006. Other media like DVDs or Blu Ray discs have more storage capacity than your average CD ROM, but the only thing they are used for is either games or HD movies or TV shows. But you also could store a high quality (lossless) music archive on such a disc and sell that. But apparently no one is thinking of that. But it seems to be easier to cry for help because pirates are the cause for not getting enough money. But one reason why people might use file sharing services could be that prices for audiobooks or music have been rising (at least in Germany), or because lots of music from smaller labels can't be found on Amazon, or Itunes. Or the other problem someone might encounter is that your favorite book or CD is no longer on sale in your favorite store or onlineshop. And when it comes to games (mainstream), I still can't get, why so many games have to be released for one platform only. While it might be expensive to get awhatever library or tool set to program for game consoles, once you have said tools, you can rdevelop your product and release it. And theoretically you don't need to edit content for porting the product to another platform, but you would have to change your code. But if you released one platform version first and if your title was a success, you could use the gained money to cover cost of porting, if you didn't start cross platform from the very beginning. And if the console creators or apple set high quality standards the games have to follow before release is allowed, then that should be no problem for a PC (Windows or Linux) release, because your content and basic game play mechanics follow the required standards at the release date, because they wouldn't get out if they weren't... And while we are at it, I still don't get, why several games get expansion packs, or some other downloadable content exclusive to platform x while platform y users get something different. I heard some rumors that Mass Effect 3 and Max Payne 3 are getting some downloadable content. But since the PC version of Max Payne 3 is to come out somewhere around the end of this month while the console versions are already out, no one knows if extra content is being released or not. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Reply to steven regarding Eamon
I know that World of Legends was written in C++. You could download the game and its source code as well. I even recompiled it to test if my Dev-C++ was correctly set up at work. I found out that my compiled EXE was smaller than the downloadable compiled version and that the file had a readable version number in its file properties dialog (Windows XP), which the original EXE also didn't have. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Monopoly
Hi Thomas, I have a question. I also read a test report for the latest version of Windows 8. It was made by a sighted user and he called the new desktop and start menu Metro. Windows 8 apparently has two versions of Internet Explorer and Metro has its own app store like Apple has. But I also read that the classic desktop (whatever is left of it) can be launched as another app. Two versions of IE are present, one included in Metro and another stand alone version like IE 8 or IE 9 currently are. They do not share data with each other like settings, session data, chache and other data. Now I'd like to know a few accessibility things. Are we talking about build in screen reader support for Metro, or the classic desktop? And what exactly is the new SAPI version and what kind of voices might come with it? And is this somehow related to the separately released Microsoft Speech Platform (or whatever its correct name is)? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Monopoly
This might be the case, but why should be the new interface be better than the old one? I have seen a lot of XP computers where sighted people were working at a time before Windows 7 and not everyone of said sighted persons found the new start menu of XP better than the old one. I also heard several sighted people say that ribbons were not their prefered way of using their Office products. In not all cases, but a few, there was the opinion that functionality is more important than the question whether an element of an interface is located in the top left corner of the screen or the bottom right corner... And because the mobile phone has a different interface, the computer needs it to, is not an argument for me. And this is because a computer or even a netbook is not a mobile phone. Yes, it is surely not bad if a new computer has multi Touch capable hardware, then why shouldn't be there software for said purpose. But because there are touchscreens does not mean that all mouses or keyboards are going to get destroyed this moment. I think it is not the best idea if we limit ourselves to just one method of doing things, when everyone should have the freedom to do things the way he or she likes best, as long, as it is not destroying your productivity (if we are not talking about end users)... --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Monopoly
Ok and how about MAC OS? Now you told us how you think about Windows and Linux. But where is MAC OS placed in this picture? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Monopoly
I have another question. If TTS is good for us and other business people who want to get something read to them, why can't I buy loquendo voices in an online store (regardless of the price), or several other voices like the Scansoft products? OK, nextup.com offers Scansoft voices for TextAloud and other programs, but even they do not have the new voices. But I know that German IPhone users with IOS 5 and later have the voice Anna on their devices. Even the non SAPI versions of RealSpeak Direct for JAWS doesn't have Anna. And this is not only about this one voice. There are new products and it seems that no one can buy them. Whether you have the money to do it seems to be not the matter here, but even I as an end user or a member of a company can buy products from Adobe via an online shop. If I would do so as an end user is not the question, but I could do so. But the question remains why it is so difficult to get some TTS related products or information on them. Back to accessibility, a few programs blind people use surely could also be used by people with other impairments. What about all the other people with special requirements appart from the blind? How are the numbers there? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Monopoly
I totally agree here. Doing things differently does not necessarily mean we are outdated or behind whatever some company makes trent... And I'd like to get a copy of this document you are working on as soon as it is finished. - Original Message - From: dark d...@xgam.org To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 1:54 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Monopoly Hi Tom. that's bad news in my book. I'm afraid I strongly disagree on your statement of a blind user getting used to the way sighted users do things for purpose of accessibility simply on the basis of the deffinition of access. It would be possible for a paraplegic to get out of his/her wheel chair and drag themselves up a flight of stairs on their hands. We don't however say Get used to doing this because it's what normally walking people do simply because we recognize that the amount of effort involved to the paraplegic in such an undertaking is wildly unreasonable. I'd apply the same principle here. Accessibility is not just being able to do x or y, it's do with equal effort. For a sighted user, having a maximal range of information in the one location provides less effort sinse they can use the mouse to click it after a visual overview. This is not true for a blind user, and there is absolutely no reason why they should! from an access perspective get used to anything. myself, sinse I regard computers simply as tools, I'd be in favour of any and all work arounds to make the blind users' use of a computer as easy as the sighted users, ie, requiring same amounts of effort. if this involves redesigning the interface, turning off features x y z, so be it. As to the job markit, well once again there is a principle from my thesis. Just as it would be unreasonable to expect a sighted based business to go over entirely to braille, it would be equally unreasonable to expect a blind employee to use software that took significantly more effort. This requires a level of compitance from both the blind user, and indeed the employer in coming to an understanding that best serves the needs of the blind user wcompromising ithout the employer. This is why in my thesis I advocate an independent body be setup to oversee disability related debates in employment and leasure who have skills and knolidge of disability, but have no vested interest either way. In the absense of such a body though, I'm inclined simply to say stick it, the effort needs to be equalized especially given the current impossibility of anyone disabled getting a job at all anyway. Beware the Grue! Dark. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Monopoly
What I never got was the reason why screen readers had to use all the stuff like video intercept and got so little result in using it. If I can clone my graphics card virtually and the screen reader is controlling the clone, then why does a screen reader need external OCR to handle letters? Moreover, if I have access to the entire screen and all graphic information, shouldn't i (the program) be capable of reading nearly anything except for moving and continously morphing pictures out of the box, so that MS or others thechnically wouldn't need to create a second voiceOver for Windows? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Monopoly
If the desktop computer is not the all in one package, why do I hear people saying that the IPhone or other mobile devices are the all in one package, when it is obviously not true? And, if consoles like the play station 3 are running their own operating system with internet access and such, then there would be the question why theese parts of their interfaces don't have their own build in accessibility features. And what I also don't get is, why developers, be they mainstream or audio game ones do limit themselves to one market segment. It is true that devices like the IPhone are growing in popularity even for blind users. And because of this we have some accessible games for the blind for such devices, like Papa Sangre. But What I don't get is, why there isn't a version of Papa Sangre for Mac OS X, which is like IOS and shares several components with it. Or there could be a version for Windows or Linux. And from a capitalistic point of view, it wouldn't be a bad idea to target several platforms together to gain maximum profit. That's why I never got why several PS2 and PS1 games like all God of War, Darkstalkers or Naruto games were never released for the PC. In the times the first titles of each series were released, there was no IPhone and computers (namely desktop computers) were still more like the all in one device and had a bigger market. It also doesn't explain, why severa l console games do have expansions or extra content available via some download service, while several old and new PC games don't have such features. And then there is the case of games like Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light where we have a massive content difference between platforms... --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Monopoly
Hi Dark, I am not familiar with MAC OS or IOS. But what I last heard was that you need to run MAC OS to compile IOS apps. I am not sure if that's still the case, but that was what I last heard. And the question about operating system access is not only about blind users. Somewhere I once read that you could install and run a linux distribution on the Play Station 3, but this feature was removed and without serious hacking, you can't do it right now. Yes, you are probably right that the PS3 doesn't have DirectX. But since I am not a developer of console games, I do not know if the PS3 has their own directX or at least something like it. So, we don't know what you would officially require to develop console games appart from licenses of course. And what about the xbox 360? It is a device developed by Microsoft, but because I don't have it, I can't know how games are developed and what files they do use. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Monopoly
Ok, let's think about this the other way around: Then if it is not in the companies interest to make DVD players or other devices accessible due to financial reasons, why does Windows have Narrator and Mac got VoiceOver included into the operating systems? If it is (theoretically) not a good idea because you won't make money with it? And while we are talking about market size. There are somewhere over six billion people on earth. How many of them are blind or or have other impairments? I only hear that our community is small but what is the actual size and do such statements about a small market include the world outside of the USA? I am not sure here, but most audio game developers are situated in the USA, correct? But no one seems to be asking if there are people outside of that region of the world, at least that's the way I see it. I am from Germany and regardless of how many developers my country has, even here are some people who have bought some audio games or have played the free ones. I have the unregistered version of BGT to play several free games created with it. I was there from the time of TopSpeed 1.1A up to the latest version of it. I also was there when the Alchemy version of Montezuma's revenge was first released. The point is, that we have an unknown number of people scattered around the world. And about speech technology and accessibility: If making devices accessible is not profitable, why does every major company developing TTS voices state that their products are used for embedded devices, automotive applications, phone call centers or for automatic teller machines? I went back to the town where I was born a few weeks ago. I found out that announcements of bus stops for public transport was changed to a German TTS voice instead of using the voices of several radio moderators and voice actors. Said TTS voice can be found in the program called Voice Reader. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Monopoly
And wwhere are the still existing computer or netbook and laptop users whoose hardware doesn't have touchscreen capabilities? Do they think at all? Surely, android might look nice, but what is more important, the look or the functionality? And who exactly thinks that the visual design of Android or IOS is cool? And moreover, Android and IOS devices are not exactly like a desktop computer, so why should a desktop computer have the interface of another device in the first place? Why must it all be alike? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Monopoly
All of this might be true... But I have several questions. If mobile devices and new technologies are created and let's say touchscreens are so great, why not take it up another level and finally create a computer system like the fictional LCARS from Star Trek, where you have instant access to your data and where you have the option of full real time interactive voice control plus voice output of everything? Surely voice input and output shouldn't be desired by blind users in the world alone, it could be adapted for everyone. And the other thing I am wondering about is the usage of mobile devices in general. I was born blind and could never see, nor do I currently have a device like an IPhone... But I'd like to ask anyone who could see at some point in their life to tell me why watching some HD videos on super small mobile displays or playing complex and graphically intensive games with said small devices instead of using more stationary devices and large screens capable of handling digital HD media? I can understand why people would like to have more functions in small devices. But things like listening to music with more than two speakers like 5.1 or 7.1 audio systems or watching high resolution movies and such surely should remain on the currently needed technology instead of being ported to small devices unless you can adapt them as well to handle all this. I don't know what the processing capabilities of android phones are or what said capabilities are for other mobile devices, but I doubt that they are really better than current high tech computing equipment and the big computer networks and super computers. Surely, there is still time for such developments, but the question remains who does set such trents and can companies like Microsoft influence or stop such trents, because Microsoft is not small and should have considerable power, so it could be asked if Microsoft must adapt, or could Microsoft force others to adapt to whatever they create. Besides, why do we or companies have to follow and copy whatever someone makes before us? This discussion of user interfaces (Office 2003 vs 2007 design for example) is pointless in my opinion. I personally don't have problems with the idea of changing the design of a program. But we do we have to be forced to a design. Let's take the Office 2007 design for an example. I have read several reports and posts in various forums (sighted users) where people were not happy with the new design not because they had to learn new things, but because they did not have a choice in the matter meaning that everyone who got the new Office for whatever reason had to use the new design. But what I never got in this talk was, why Microsoft did not offer two designs? Look at Windows Media Player or Winamp. Both programs have skins which you can download or create yourself to alter and customice the interface of your program. But why don't more programs have the option for skins (surely it can't be because they want to make money, because you could theoretically sell anything you develop). So, what is the problem with the talks of designs and user feedback companies are getting and seemingly ignore here and there sometimes? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Monopoly
I have only a few things to say here. I know of several new laptops in Germany which have Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit preinstalled, and that can't be good when things like the features of let's say the ultimate edition are surely missing and when there is a 64 bit version available and might be better suited for the new hardware... And Thomas, can Internet Explorer 9 really be installed on XP? And what about IE 9 accessibility and the same goes for Firefox 10 and the upcoming Firefox 11 as well? And what about the plugin issues with Firefox? How are you supposed to handle them? I have read reports of components like quicktime support in Firefox being unstable or failing. This can't just be fixed by uninstalling the offending object. If we are talking about browser extension, it might be right, but what about content plugins (Flash, Shockwave, Silverlight, Java, Adobe Air and so on)? This is nothing the end user can fix, same goes for other extensions. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] The dragon awakes.
While it is really good to hear that Draconis is still here and working on new projects, shouldn't they make an announcement to adress two issues with two of their games? I mean the fact that the current version of Ten Pin Alley. As far as I know it can't be run on XP at all, so you need a previous version to properly run on XP. And wasn't there a lot of reports that in Monkey Business 1.9 a level was either missing or was skipped? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] game speech
What? I know at least one friend with a Windows 7 Netbook (X86) who has the european Version of the JAWS RealSpeak CD and he had no problems in installing and running them. However because he has the European version, he has only Daniel and not Emily or Serena... You only get into technical troubble when you install RealSpeak voices bought from nextup.com and the RealSpeak CDs in the wrong order... But since we are talking about Nuance, what about the German voice Anna and Russian Milena? Even JAWS and the RealSpeak Direct page has the new voices, and as far as I know it is not only a German and a Russian voice but there were more new voices... --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] What has happen to audio games website?
Actually, at the time of this message, audiogames.net is completely inaccessible. Error messages and such, but no page content. And I do not mean no forum, but no entire audiogames.net. For me the site was not accessible since yesterday evening, but naturally I didn't try every minute. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Great Trek 2000 Battle
I forgot something, something not talked about in canon Star Trek (TV shows and movies) and that is quantum slipstream, shown only in the season four finale of Voyager and another episode in the fifth season. That would technically still be wormhole like in Armada and Armada II, allthough user created mods exist, you cannot realice them, because all wormhole objects in the games are jump points, where you are at point a, select your point b and jump to it. And this kind of tech is allways a special weapon, meaning that it is not standard. And if we are talking about a ship simulator, then we should do something like Bridge commander, but then it should be possible to allow the users to create their own ship modifications, at least for a free battle mode. You still could create campaign missions and expand your game after initial release with new missions and put something in like the quickbattle of Bridge Commander. Or you could give users access to more aspects of your game. Remember Star Trek Eliteforce and Elite Force II? Both were based on Quake 3, and besides mission scripting the user could create their own maps and could also alter some more things like game menus and weapons if you had the source code to several compiled files you were allowed to recompile, since you did not alter the main EXE files. The Armada titles allowed you to create multiplayer and singleplayer maps, but no missions (scripted missions), and I am not sure if Legacy allows it either. The only thing I know is that most Legacy fans are encouraged to download an over 1 GB big universal Legacy modification called Legacy Ultimate Universe to add more game modes, more ships, improoved models/textures, better music and sounds, before gameply becomes worthwhile, according to fans... In either case, if we go for a ship sim, we should have it as open as possible, even if it is not open in mission mode, but I'd like the idea of creating my own missions... If we were going for strathegy, then I'd say not to hold back when it comes to non scripted maps where it's free for all as you like. Even if Dauntless was not a federation ship, I'd like to use her, or to be able to command the ship of the borg queen for once in an accessible game... --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Great Trek 2000 Battle
And even if you wouldn't use canon, you could go into the fictional universe of Star Trek Hidden Frontier, the biggest fan film universe with several movie lenght episodes and several fan shows linked together. Or do you think it wouldn't be totally impossible to solve Voyagers slipstream problems with alien tech after Nemesis? And back to voyager and the Borg: No one knows if the borg do have several queens active at any given time. Yes, the cube atempting the second invasion had its queen, but the moment the sphere traveled back in time the queen's link to the present day collective was cut, otherwhise there would have been more Borg coming. Also, she was killed in the past and only her remaining drones aboard Enterprise E were destroyed... I still wonder, why the Borg gave Janeway Seven Of Nine as a second Locutus when she made the alliance and why the queen was not shown there. But if I am right, Janeway destroyed the queen more than once, however I am not sure. In Dark Frontier, Part II, Janeway was in the Unicomplex and left with Seven. However a ship followed and it was not a cube. It was destroyed when Voyager fired at the transwarp conduit. It is not entirely certain if the queen was aboard it... In Unimatrix Zero the queen should have been aboard a tactical cube under attack by Voyager and a sphere under the control of unimatrix zero. The queen ordered the self destruct of that cube and if she was aboard, she should have been destroyed again... And the future Janeway let herself being assimilated, so her virus would infect the queen, so that Voyager could destroy the transwarp hub and fly home, but it is not entirely clear, if the unicomplex, not located in the nebula where the hub was, was destroyed . Fact is, the hub and 47 borg ships in the nebula were destroyed... --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Great Trek 2000 Battle
Hi Thomas, You made some good points story whise for a Star Trek game. But, if we look at the mainstream Trek games, we have for example the two strathegy games Star Trek Armada and Armada II. Both are games with plots placed around the sixth and seventh seasons of Voyager. However, after the end of Deep Space Nine we don't get as much story of the Alpha quadrant. We see the Briar Patch in Star Trek Insurrection and we see Voyager return home and in Nemesis we see Janeway as the Admiral who contacts Enterprise E because the Romulan situation starts up. But theese are just small moments Timeline whise from the end of DS9 to Nemesis it is over four years which are unexplored in canon. I am not into the books, so anything that might happen in them is unknown to me. But the point is, that the mainstream games (e.G. the Armada titles) happen near the end of voyager and even if you discount the Delta Quadrant tech shown in Voyager, the mainstream games are really not up to the tech standards. I'll give you a few examples. The Armada series has no real warp drive in the form that you have a big map where you engage warp and navigate trough the map and drop out at your destination. Second, the techtree in the games is not entirely accourate, because the weapons in both games are either badly designed, too limited or unrealistic. For example, every one knows that Defiant and Enterprise E fire Quantum Torpedos, but this weapon is not in the game directly, but a relatively weak upgrade you have to research. Second, Species 8472 has a (in Armada II) has a weapon capable of destroying planets (Scorpion Part I), but in the game, the damage value is too low, and even then it is technically useless, because planets cannot be destroyed in the ggame. Next, the Omega Particle shown also in the game is nothing of the destructive force it is told to be. And finally the borg ships are limited in their capabilities. Whether the borg have more ships besides spheres and cubes is not the ppoint, but every known borg ship is capable of entering transwarp conduits and theese are no damn wormholes! If we get our own Star Trek game, then it should be not limited to the main (canon) TNG era, but should go up to the contents of Unimatrix Zero and Endgame. I'd like to be capable of destroying a transwarp hub myself for once, or to fight a borg cube to find out that it contained a sphere which launches when the cube explodes (seen in First Contact), or to recreate the battle in DS9's Tears of the Prophets with hopefully proper sounds in real time... Something which no mainstream Trek game offers, because the game is too limited to handle lots of ships on a map, because the game isn't capable of handling a really large mass of fired torpedos at the same time, or because the game doesn't have a large ship selection for free campaign less battles. Even Star Trek Legacy can't be used for it too its fullest, because all sounds and music are absolutely non Trek things, even worse as the sounds of the other Trek games even if they are in the post DS9 era and don't use the proper sounds. And for stories, I also know a few, namely what about the members of unimatrix zero and why they did not battle the borg queen in the last Voyager episode. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Great Trek 2000 Battle
Hi Thomas, but who said that the borg are not a serious enemy? The battle of wolf 359 was a disaster, and it was against one ship. The beginning of first contact was also not good until the Enterprise showed up and gave special attack instructions and several ships hit the cube with Quantum Torpedos... But the point is, in all instances, only one ship was shown. When voyager entered borg space in Scorpion Part one, 15 borg ships were detected and flew directly past Voyager. We don't know how big the collective is, but it is probably that they have billions of drones and thus they have lots of ships. Do you think that the borg after their contact with voyager would make the same mistake again and send only one ship? Even if starfleet had future Janeway's tech, do you think earth could stop a real Borg fleet of lets say 300 ships in time? I am not sure. And the Borg might adapt against the future tech in the future, but due to Star Trek 11 and the really necessary split off timeline with old Spock and young Spock, we probably won't see the future (post voyager) on screen... --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] looking for an accessible version of risk
But who has the rights to board games? Ok, one developer might have created a PC or console version of Monopoly for example, but everyone can play this game without a computer and everyone can buy such a game around the world. Same should go for other dice and board games and also for card games. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Possible New MOTA Story
Hi Thomas, Isn't it getting worse? There is The Guardian of Light which isn't a part of the main Tomb Raider series. And isn't there another game coming out, another Tomb Raider with a relaunch of the series with a totally different Lara or rather her story? What is that supposed to do if it is true? Does anyone know more about this thing? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Mysteries of the Ancients News
Hi Thomas, as I said once, I'd like to look at a 3D game from you, but I am not discounting the idea of getting it before I have seen the product. If you are really creating two games, then it is likely that I would like to get them both, but we'll have to wait and see. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Fw: Eamon Deluxe Update-12-27-2011
Hi, I am not sure if this is the whole truth... I can remember that JAWS 5 or 6 can be run on Windows 9x without you being forced to install a Video Intercept like driver on your PC. However on XP and maybe 2000 as well you are forced to do so. So, I am not entirely sure why it is on theese systems with more APIs than 9X had in its time. And there is one other thing I am not sure about. While the new APIs might be good and all, the question is a bit different. We established that non Windows API conform objects or controls might be difficult to figure out or read, because we are missing some information which would be given to a scrreen reader via Windows APIs. But if Video Intercept is a kind of filter which gets access to all graphic information present on the screen without blocking the main graphics card, why doesn't the screen reader recognice all non standard API cobjects or controls? Why would we need the Java Access Bridge, when a program not using it still has menus with words written like open file, copy, or exit? Shouldn't the whole graphic information read the screen? I meana moving picture (video, animation) might still be not readable, but static text? It cannot be the font choice which decides what you can read or not, because it is not important what font I use for writing a letter in MS Word, the screen reader can figure out each word and each character... Or the Flash problem. If I create a SWF file with the words hello world (with Flash 10), and load it into my browser via the object tag in HTML, I might be able to read Hello world. If I used a program to create a self containing Flash player with the same SWF and run it (it is of no consequence whether the EXE is in windowed or in full screen mode), no known screen reader can read out hello world. In the case of JAWS, the JAWS Cursor won't go below the title bar of a windowed Flash player and becomes stuck in this upper most part of the window. And no one is able to tell me why... --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Fw: Eamon Deluxe Update-12-27-2011
Hi Thomas, I see what you mean, but now I wonder... Firstly, why use Video Intercept or something else at all? My Desktop Computer has an NVIDIA Graphics card. Every year the NVIDIA software with drivers gets updated several times. If I update the Software and restart my machine as part of the process, JAWS comes with a warning and the prompt to install the graphics driver aka. Video Intercept. If I cancel this dialogue, JAWS won't read anything, allthough I have a graphics card with its corret drivers installed, but if I install Video Intercept, then another identical card shows up in the control panel... So, If MSAA and other features are used for information gathering, why do most commercial screen readers force you to install something like Video Intercept at all? And about controls, even within Windows Spin Boxes or Spin Edits (have forgotten, which term is correct) are present within the dialogue where you set date and time in Windows up to XP. But the list of controls JAWS knows out of the box is limited to not more than thirty entries... But surely new programs or operating systems have more controls than the ones JAWS knows for example. So the question remains why this list of controls is not expanded or why it is so hard to recognice similar controls automatically. As I said before, whatever type of editable text field you might encounter, it has still the same principle, meaning that there is a field where text is either present, or it can be entered. Same goes for radio buttons or normal buttons. I know several programs where the class name of a control element is not button, but for an example xbutton (this is a made up name). But I would have to tell JAWS that xbutton is of the type button. But shouldn't a screen reader be able to determine this on its own? As I said it must still have something that makes it a button, if only its name is different... --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Fw: Eamon Deluxe Update-12-27-2011
Hi thomas, I have a very important question about this topic. I'll use JAWS as an example here, because I am not sure what other screen readers do. You said that any program which uses the Windows API is theoretically readable with a screen reader because the program broadcasts some information through the API which the screen reader can optain. But of course programmers can allways do without the main API of any given operating system. This might cause confusion for a screen reader as you said. But now there is my question. A screen reader should be able to read most of the information currently on screen, at least in theory. When JAWS is first installed on a PC, a program wants to install Video Intercept which adds a virtual? secondary graphics card into the control panel. Video Intercept should be able to get all information from the real graphics card to the screen reader. Even if a program doesn't use non Windows API controls, it should be possible to find non standard controls and recognice them via Video Intercept. Even if controls are different, the basic principles still apply: selecting entries from various lists, radio buttons checkboxes or any and all forms of fields to enter any form of text... So, the question is why do create a secondary Graphics card (probably a virtual one) when most information gained from it seems to be unused all the time, or does JAWS (or any other screen reader) need an update to the list of standard controls it knows? There are so many forms of editable fields in forms or other programs where you can enter text, but you have to tell your screen reader manually that it is an edit (in JAWS via your the configuration Manager). I know that the list of known controls can be seen via the Insert+7 key combination, but as far as I can remember (my first long term contact with JAWS was before JAWS 4.0), this list has not seen many changes since that time, and it can't be good this way... --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] my beef about Microsoft - Re: plans for an updated Lone Wolf
Hi Thomas, I am aware of this, but I am seriously questioning some of theese facts. Why do I have to use my web browser for dealing with E-Mails, when I have any Mail application installed, whether it is from MS or someone else. I know a friend and one of her mail accounts was with the German part of Windows Live. She personally told me that the web interface to access and send mails via her live account was inaccessible. Thus using Thunderbird for example was a good choice for her. But this doesn't explain why they want to promote the Windows Live tools. As I said, the feature set of Windows Live Mail is not the same as Windows Mail from Windows Vista... And Movie Maker of XP might be old, but there is also a version of Movie Maker in Vista... But Windows Live Movie Maker you are encouraged to use is not mainly a video recording and editing tool, but more like a content preparation tool for video sharing on platforms like Youtube. It means pa program with a similar name, but an entire new program behind the name. While I personally have no problems with a video sharing tool, I have a problem when MS says we dropped a video editing tool from Windows 7, but hey, there is a program with the same name, but totally different functionality!... Same goes for Windows volume control. I had the misfortune to atempt to assist my sighted mother with playback of some non standard Midi files on a Windows 7 laptop, where the installation medium (DVD) is altered by the manufacturer in a bad way... The result of the atempted midi playback left much to be desired and because the volume control program of XP was missing plus some more sound related settings, I quickly came to the end of my knowledge even with a totally sighted person next to me... That's the thing I meant... --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] plans for an updated Lone Wolf
Hi Thomas, I don't want to judge anyone. But there is a difference here. Fine if MS wants to remove VB 6 support. It is a developer's job to do something about a programs compatibility. But what should someone do as an end user? It is not my fault if a program screams about missing DLLs... OK, I can download the VB 6 runtime if I need to run a VB 6 file. But isn't part of current DirectX end user license specifically forbidding you to manually install DX7VB.DLL or DX8VB.DLL into your current operating systems and/or their DirectX (DX 10 or DX 11)? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] my beef about Microsoft - Re: plans for an updated Lone Wolf
Hi Thomas, I personally are also not against new technologies or new features in future Windows operating systems or other programs. But I'd like to adress a few points as well. If a company wants to improove their software, then this is often good for all users and not because security might be better. But what I often don't get is why people think it is time to force design changes. I know of the ribbon interface of MS Office products and such. I don't have used them (Office 2007 or 2010) thus I won't comment on which screen reader can best handle it. I also know that every major upgrade brings new features as well. But what I don't get is why MS did come up with the new interface and removed the old interface instead of having them both in the product for every person sighted or not to choose the design of their product. I mean, why do programs like Winamp or Windows Media Player allow skins or skin packs? The players ship with a standard interface, but are open for user created content. Besides I had a sighted teacher who personally told me that he had several sighted friends and colleagues who were users of MS Office pre 2007 and when the new products came out they also had problems adapting and getting to figure out the new interface and they could see and use the mouse properly compared to us blind people. And about screen readers like Voice Over or Narrator. It would be good if thoose could be improoved. But what I still don't get is why any assistive technology included in an operating system (windows mostly) cannot be used to aid during first installation (when you format your hard drive or when you use a blank one). For years there was nothing short of a sighted person to help even if it became a bit easier with unattended installations of XP and a few older Windows versions. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] plans for an updated Lone Wolf
Yea... But what do you do about the classic games? Surely, there are still many people in the world who want to use the old games. But running an outdated operating system like Windows 95 or older on modern PCs isn't an option when the os doesn't get along with your hardware due to a lack of drivers... And you might want to use a virtual machine, but then is the question where to get that old operating system you need legally. Good if you still have installation media, but what if not? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] my beef about Microsoft - Re: plans for an updated Lone Wolf
Hi Thomas, Yes, windows programs get new features and yes, it is up to you to decide if you want to use them or not... But let me ask you something just as an example. Do you know what the difference between Windows Movie Maker and Windows Live Movie Maker is? As far as I am informed the Windows Movie Maker of XP or Vista isn't included in Windows 7 anymore and the Windows Live product of the same name is not the same product with more features and just a new design. A blind person might not be interested in video editing, but a sighted person could be. Or another example is E-Mail programs. Windows XP had Outlook Express, Vista had Windows Mail and Windows 7 has the Windows Mail folder included, but the program cannot be run except you can replace the entire Windows Mail folder in your program files directory with the folder from a Vista installation... Or you use Windows Live products again... But the question remains what about things dropped out of an operating system? You are right in saying that Windows Explorer of Windows 7 has more features than the one of Windows 98 - no doubt there. But what about dropped features? While the system restore feature of Windows XP is good, it is not needed when you just want to repair your registry a bit for which Windows 98 had scanreg. Now you are required to buy third party tools like Tune Up Utilities or other PC cleaning and tuning programs to get similar features. Or what about the Windows XP style volume control program or the XP style Audio Recorder? What do I do with Windows 7 and altered or missing programs (not limited to programs best accessible for blind people)? Or does Windows 7 still include the Pinball game from Windows ME or later from XP? You get what I mean. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Poll: playroom on iPhone or on mac
Hi Thomas, I have a few questions here. Since you talked about open source things like SDL and such I'd like to know what mainstream games for Mac or Linux use. They obviously don't have DirectX components, but if a a 3D first person shooter is created or ported to something non windows, there must be alternatives for the programmers. They could create their own sound libraries or use propritary ones. But the question remains what they use. And even if mainstream games do have graphics to look for doors or hallways this doesn't necessarily mean that the positioning of the audio related to said objects has to be only approximately near the spot. In many mainstream games it is as precise as you need it for your games or like in Shades of Doom. Since Mac and linux are not one or two years old, there must be ways to technically deal with better game controller support or better audio handling. Thus I'd like to know what other companies or programmers use when it comes to either cross platform porting of their games or when a game is directly developed for a non windows operating system. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] MOTA was Game Concepts
Hi Thomas, While Mysteries of the Ancients might not be finished yet, I'd like to ask a few questions. As you said James North prematurely allowed preorders for his games. But when you took over and got to Beta 7 of Montezuma's Revenge, it also became possible to buy it. I did so and thus I have a legal registration key for the last Monti versions. What I'd like to know is how will you handle the customers who originally ordered your Monti because Mota replaces Monti once the RC1 version of Mota comes out. And I also like to know more of the Mota 3d version and if you can tell us more about the things it has which the 2d version doesn't have. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] MOTA was Game Concepts
Hi Thomas, I'll await the rc version of standard Mota first. Once it is here and I can look into it more than the first two levels of the last beta versions, I'll probably try the 3d version out, once anything playable of it is released. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] legalized speech - Re: Possible MOTA Features
Hi Thomas, I thought Speech Works did no longer exist, meaning that Eloquence was no part of Nuance or Scansoft. Furthermore I also thought at least the IBM versions of the voices were now also available as SAPI 5.1 versions at least, thus I thought the original Eloquence would also be available in some SAPI 5 form. But due to a general lack of easily available information I might be mistaken. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Possible MOTA Features
Hi Thomas, I know the advantages of using whatever speech engine is available on the user's computer. But if this is done then you would need to find a way to create some configuration options for your games which don't change system defaults. For example, let's talk about SAPI. It should be possible to select any SAPI voice without changing the default voice from within the Windows control panel. It also should be possible to change the speed of the voice and/or pitch where it is applicable and save that into something where it can be kept so that you don't have to configure it every time the game starts. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] legalized speech - Re: Possible MOTA Features
Hi Thomas, I have a question about this. I thought it was legally possible to buy a SAPI 5 version of Eloquence instead of only having boundled versions like JAWS or other programs? And what about ViaVoice TTS from IBM, which is essentially the same than Eloquence, at least concerning the voices themselves... Do you know any more about this messed up business? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Possible MOTA Features
Hi Dark, I didn't want to say that it is absolutely necessary to have all SAPI options available. But if you are using avoice in a non English language as your default voice, running a game without changing it in the control panel might cause you some problems. Besides, I know some programs which use their own SAPI configuration sets, and why not use them, so every program can be configured individually instead of having to rely only on the settings of the control panel. That was one big problem with Blind Man's Bluff. There was a SAPI 5 version, but actually changing the voice for the game only didn't work in the unstable 1.3 version. Thus it is better, if you have the option to do the configuration completely. If you go to include permanent voice changes (each time game starts, the same voice is used unless you change it within the game), then why not also add the proper configuration parameters of voices which are volume, rate of speech and pitch (not all voices support adjustments of all three parameters)? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Perilous Hearts preorders?
Hi Philip, I don't have problems with a possible preorder of your game and I know how to deal with SAPI, so even if not all things were spoken by humans, I wouldn't have any problems with that. I'd like to know two things, if you can answer (estimates are ok): 1. How much would the game be? 2. How far are you from a final release (weeks, months)? Regards, Michael --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Perilous Hearts preorders?
Hi again, I would preorder the game, too. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games News
Thanks for the info. I'll have to look into them soon. And I'll probably contact them. They do sell German voices and French besides several different English ones. Unfortunately they have a totally inaccessible demo on their site. Yes, you can listen to pre-recorded samples, but their interactive demo doesn't show up on any screen reader I know and thus it is inaccessible and I would like to get a bit more than some thirty seconds of speech as a sample before deciding to buy a voice. But I am aware of them and maybe I'll get one of them later, same goes for Ivona, because their newer voices sound good. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games News
You are totally right. I just wanted to show that new things are in development. And maybe today it is only a Russian voice. But there are two things you should remember. First one is that no one guarantees that a new British voice might not be developed in the future. And there is this supposed merger between Loquendo TTS and Nuance. So no one knows if this means all voices of both become available in one or both products (e.g. Vocalizer in Loquendo TTS, or all Loquendo voices in Vocalizer). And the second thing is that no one knows if the RealSpeak Direct voices will be maintained indeffinitely or the nextup.com variants. You as a person might have RealSpeak Direct voices for your own use, but what would happen if the next JAWS version removed them and the download capability from their site? We (and I mean developer and end user alike) are totally uninformed in regards to the no merged company. We know less than Microsoft discloses about their upcoming software or their sdks... --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games News
Hi Thomas, unfortunately that's not the end of the story. I can give the next piece of information only for German voices, so if you can't understand my language it is of no use to give you any voice samples. There is a site which does extensive voice comparison by recording three sentences with each voice ever created in German. This site offers the MP3 samples for listening and downloading. I am sure that you know that RealSpeak voices cover the German language. Up to now there have been two German voices. One male and one feemale. Both can be bought via nextup.com with a TextAloud license for $45 each. Every RealSpeak voice from nextup.com is a SAPI voice. The only requirement is the TextAloud license. But you might also know that the RealSpeak voices are also available for mobile devices and for Talks and maybe also Mobile Speak. I don't have a smartphone, but what I know is that the male German voice does sound differently in its smartphone version compared to the PC version, and it is not due to a bitrate or other quality setting difference. Furthermore RealSpeak and Vocalizer seem to be two different products. Thus the reason why JAWS doesn't offer the third German voice, or the second Russian one, which also applies to nextup.com. The worst about Vocalizer is not the high price, but the fact that the quality of the voices seems to be worse than the JAWS versions of the same voices. And voices like the Australian English ones and the Indian English voice can't be bought via the Koba online shop, but you have to request them, if you wanted them, while the RealSpeak variant of them is either available for JAWS without SAPI or from nextup.com with SAPI probably in better quality. If you have a computer with a virtual machine running, I'd suggest that you download the demo versions of Koba Speech 2 and listen for yourself, so you can compare one voice at a time without damaging your primary SAPI core when trial time of thirty days runs out or when the base Koba Engine is still unstable (might be still the case). --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games News
I have another question. I have used demo versions of Ivona voices and thus I know what they sound like and how they work. But what can you tell me about Cereproc voices in general, even if they are only 32 bit products? Are there updates to the products and do you get such information or are your voices years old by now? And what do you have to do when you bought one or more voices? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games News
Hi Thomas, I don't know if you are aware of this, but there might be several problems coming the way of all JAWS and RealSpeak Direct users. Unfortunately no one in that the Speech Market except Ivona seems to be willing to give apropriate information about their products. I'll post this here in public, so that all people know of this, since the talk on games and speech engines has already started. First of all Nuance/Scansoft has developed several new voices. Some of them being in new languages and other ones give more choices for existing languages. First of all, the new voices are not named RealSpeak, but Vocalizer 5. The only company who does sell the new voices to end users is Koba Vision. There you have to pay more than $300 for two voices of your liking. However there are two problems with the new product. First of all, It seems that the new engine might not be totally stable, but this might have been fixed by now. But the more important issue is that the new distribution of voices seems to be of lesser quality than the RealSpeak Direct voices. The next thing you should know is that the new Scansoft voices haven't been made available to JAWS users up to now (the reason is unknown). Furthermore, the new voices can't be purchased from nextup.com for TextAloud, either. And the last piece of news is that Nuance and Loquendo are effectively becoming one company now and that again no one knows what this means for the individual products of both companies and for general availability of said products... That's it, more information seems to be unavailable. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Running Older Games on Windows 7
Hi Thomas, There is only one question to ask when it comes to dealing with virtual machines. How am I supposed to install the operating system in the virtual system? When you first install an operating system on a new hard drive, you would need sighted assistance, because the installation of Windows is not with sound and thus not accessible for blind users. Even if you create an unattended installation, then you still would need to check some things with a sighted person doing it for you. My question is now, how is it done with a virtual machine? Is it possible for your screen reader to interact with the software within the virtual machine long enough to get the software within the virtual machine set up enough so that a screen reader within the virtual machine can take over? --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games Halloween Project
Hi Thomas, this is my own opinion and my own experience here. I was born blind. And it is true that I never played mainstream console games. However I know the basics of games like Tomb Raider or Doom or Quake. Even if vi developers might not have the money for expensive sounds or music and maybe less experience than longtime mainstream developers, this seems not enough to explain why some games are way behind their mainstream versions. Even if we might have some unexperienced developers in comparison to mainstream developers, this doesn't explain, why Sound RTS is the only full real time strathegy game, when such things are much older than our products. There we had and might still have the Age of Empires game series, of which many sighted people know even if they haven't played them yet. Or we have the total lack of really big RPGs. I mean, everyone probably knows Final Fantasy by name and theese were originally created before Windows. Or the Elder Scrolls series. OK, maybe we couldn't do a clone due to license issues, but that's not keeping us from inventing something new. While games like Shades of Doom and some other titles are not bad products, no one seemed to want to create another of them with a new story. You said that the problem might be lack of mainstream knowledge, but that doesn't explain away the fact of less creativity. We have interactive fiction titles and free gamebooks. But why not create an audio version of something like out of the game books (provided it would be allowed)? Or we had the talk about RPGs. Why don't we have games like Alter Aeon or Sryth made into a something for offline play and with audio? Creativity is apparently there. And if our developers might have not enough knowledge or experience to atempt something like it, why not do it with a team instead of doing it alone? I would not say I do know all about games or game styles, but I have experimented on my own with and without sighted assistance. I know several blind PC users in Germany who are glad if JAWS or whatever they use can read a program and its controls. But they are not the ones who use the advanced tools (e.G. various JAWS tools) to help make unknown objects accessible. I at least have tried and in some cases it was enough to use some things like labeling graphics or such simple things to improove my access to a given program. I also think that not enough training in using such things as screen readers is given to thoose who would need it, especially if it is their first contact with such technology, especially, if we are dealing with people who became blind or visually impaired after their birth... But that's far enough in that direction . But the Things I know are enough to know that I'd like to have more RPGs for example. And finally I am interested in the upcoming game. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games Halloween Project
Hi Dark, while I am not an expert in programming myself, I know a few things and how tricky it can be to just create a simple program... I have done so myself with other people in a small team... But the point about simple VS complex games in our community is another. Look at Sryth. I have played it a bit some years ago and while my stay was short due to not enough time, I know of it. You are correct in saying that starting from scratch with game creation is nothing done in few days. But obviously some people managed, if they did not, then we wouldn't have entombed or Shades of Doom etc. And if we have creators of games like Sryth, which already exists, using such a thing as a basis for something audio RPG related would theoretically be not so bad, right? But you are right, some Super Nintendo RPGs are in some ways still better than aspects of Entombed. If I create classes of spellcasters, then it is a bit weak to give each class one main offensive spell only with no way of permanently getting more spells. Yes, you have scrolls in Entombed, but by finding one, you get one usage of the spell. But why shouldn't a Necromancer have unholy light, or whatever it is called. While more work would be needed to make Entombed bigger (I'll use it as an example), adding more skills and abilities to the established core shouldn't be less difficult for the developer, since the game in its current form is stable (Don't know many bugs) and working mostly fine... The other question I'd like to ask about the community in general is, why not many games (Top Speed or Sound RTS) get improoved with time. Many games are developed, (don't know development time) and then they are released at a specific point in time. If there are no problems or serious bugs, they are finished . But most mainstream games are released and updated more or less frequently, and not all updates are just for error correction, but possibly with new content or with improovements of gameplay if people's feedback requires it... --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] USA Games Halloween Project
Hi Thomas, first , back to combined projects. You are right, that everyone here probably uses different programming languages and tools. But isn't that the reason why mainstream companies have special tools or game engines to solve that problem? What about all the games with the Unreal Engine for example? And isn't BGT, G3D or the GMA engine supposed to be that bridge which would (theoretically) allow you to write a game together with David? This is hypothetical, but shouldn't we do greather projects in the future with such tools? And about game books: I didn't say we should steal anyone's work. It was just a suggestion to make a point. We have games like Sryth or the Arborell game books. If the creators would theoretically aggree to it, why could it not be done converting one of them into an audio game? And even if it would not be allowed, to use such game material as an example to learn how they work and what they do contain (game play and other elements, like Sryth, which is already an RPG), then we would have at least a starting point... --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
Re: [Audyssey] Questions about Top Speed 2 and 3
Hi again, anything new about the collection already, or do you need more time? - Original Message - From: dcoc...@comcast.net To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2011 12:11 AM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Questions about Top Speed 2 and 3 Hi Mike. I'll have to check the lengths of the 2 folders but I'll be happy to do something in the next couple of days as i can find time. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
