2017-09-16 01:09:47

Daisy do you sell any of your music at all on bandcamp or something.
Or are you just on soundcloud
If you are on bandcamp I may just grab what you have maybe.

2017-09-16 02:18:08

Hi no not that I can think of.  Keep up the good work.

2017-09-16 04:44:38 (edited by daisyalesoundworks 2017-09-16 05:07:04)

Hey Jeffb, yes it is.
This update has a LOT of polish and bug fixes and the snow level is almost done. I wanted to make this a big update instead of a few little ones. I can't work on it this weekend but I estimate Monday or Tuesday. Thanks for the interest man.

Crash, thanks for that mate! I have a band camp but it's all orchestral stuff. If you like this 8bit stuff I'll ask the people who bought the tracks if I can sell it. If not I'll just send it to you lol.

My band camp, which again doesn't have chiptunes yet, is below, along with my soundcloud and site. Thanks again for the interest big_smile

https://daisyalesoundworks.bandcamp.com
Www.daisyalesoundworks.com
Www.SoundCloud.com/honkytonk38

2017-09-16 05:24:00

I've purchased your Outer Colony album on Bandcamp. I'm listening to it now, but so far like it. If you put chiptune in there, or electronica or hell I listen to most any genre, also I like paddy, ambient stuff for relaxation or low in the background while I'm doing stuff. If you put albums like that in there I'll purchase them.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
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2017-09-16 14:01:09

Thanks Ironcross!! The game is struggling in development so you're officially the first sale lol. I put up two more soundtracks not because I want you to buy them (leave your email and I'll just send them for buying the first one smile ) but because I figured, nobody would want this stuff. But you changed my mind! Thanks!

2017-09-16 16:21:29

Hi.
I have a problem with finding correct trail.
For example
I hear the sound of the trail, so I am trying to center this.
After centering this I am going forward slowly, but this sound has stopped playing, so I can not hear where the trail is.
Some thimes I hear, that I am on correct way to the trail, because his sound is higher, so I am trying to go closer, and it fades or is stopping inmediately.
I can not understand how to play this game.
If you dont understand me go to www.pg13lp.com, where you can find a recording, where ghorthalon the dragon is playing this game, he was confused and has the same trouble as me.
If you have figured how to play this game and have beat the demo do any recording which will shows how to play that.
I love the concept of the game, but I dont understand the gameplay, you should change this abit.

2017-09-16 17:11:30

Hi Mojsior,

Good feedback! I'm going to see if I can make the core of the trail a little louder than the edges of it. That will help.
Some people have beaten it, it's just a somewhat hard skill. When you beat it, the handler does tell you you have won.

Also, there's a much better tutorial coming! It tells you the different things you can do to track.

Please remember it's very early stages, the game is only a month and a half old so it will only get better! I'll work on making the trail a little easier.

2017-09-16 17:42:52

Email is [email protected]. I think its good for putting on if you're doing things around the house. I have a pretty powerful bluetooth speaker that's portable and runs on battery, and if I am cooking, or cleaning up, doing the dishes, etc. I would take it with me and stream playlist from the laptop to it.
Maybe its just that you need more exposure. I am following your twitter too, and you only really talk about the gamedev stuff, not about the music, unless you have that on a different account, but either way. I do wish they had like levels for it, like when I bought the album, it said I could put in my own price and a minimum of $7.50. Honestly I was new to bandcamp and only got on there because crash mentioned it and you put yours up there. Well I put in $10, but it would be cool if say a certain level gets you the flak rather than MP3, I would pay a little more for flak. I don't know if that's a feature they offer or not though.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2017-09-16 19:17:06

Awesome thanks for all the work you're putting into this!

Kingdom of Loathing name JB77

2017-09-17 01:36:36

Hi daisy.
well my email is sm dot everiss at gmail dot com if you want to send me all those chip tracks.
As I write I will not be buying right now mainly because I brought a couple hefty collections this month, and well thats me for a little while but I have looked at your site so maybe after christmas or something I'll go and look at the albums again and see.
As for your stuff, since we blindies just can't play all the cool visual games we do the next best thing, the music can still be enjoyed.
I just brought a lot of digital music and a lot of that from crazy games none of my friends or myself have played but we still listen to it all.

2017-09-17 12:58:51

Hi.
Finally, I got some time to check this out.
I'm running the game on a virtual machine on my Macbook air. The game lags so much so I can't play it. Is it possible to turn off the graphics? Pressing f1 doesn't help.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2017-09-17 19:44:36

Hi SLJ,
I am still working on that. I have one more thing to try before I duplicate all the maps with all of the textures, meshes and lighting completely removed. I don't want to do that because any time I need to go back into a level and change something, I'll have to change it twice, so it will double my workload literally. But it might be the only solution.

When I get it working I'll make a big loud post about it, I promise. Should be soon! Fingers crossed!

2017-09-18 01:33:07

Would that even help? OK, textures are a big part of it, so that definitely would, but lighting, its still rendering all the vertices and polygons, right? so its not really disabled graphics, its just disabled viewing of the graphics. Work is still being done by the GPU / CPU if the GPU can't handle it. So, I think that without lighting, the rendering would still be going on, you would have decreased the work load on the CPU / GPU, but not eliminated it all together. I'm not a  dev though, so what do I know tongue

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
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End division
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2017-09-18 06:19:26

No you're right, but it's the last step I can take in terms of optimizing the game. Beyond that, there's really nothing more I can do. I think it's the engine. Unreal is a really, really powerful games engine so I think that at it's most basic levels it requires more from PCs than most, there are only so many steps I can take to make the game easier to run. I did a LOT of optimization work so that the game naturally requires less to run, and I've added scalability which is F1-F4, but people are still saying they can't run it.
It might help if I remove every tree, shrub, etc and all lighting from the computer workload. It's worth a shot. But I'm also harassing the unreal forums a lot for help to disable graphics completely, nobody has a solution yet.

2017-09-18 08:30:34

Thanks for your reply. I'll get a more powerful computer in the future or maybe find an other solution to run the game. smile

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2017-09-18 09:05:07

To be honest I am finding it refreshing that so many people are having issues due to the fact the game needs a lot of resources.
And I hope a lot more of you have more issues in the future.
To put it in perspective, up till now, audiogames have needed little power, are really basic and use things like vb6, some of the dotnet languages, bgt and some python.
Now I know a lot of sighted games need powerfull systems to run.
The fact that the unreal engine is being used as it is for access in a way it can be used means we are one step closer to things.
It makes me as a user and gamer suddenly realise that I am not alone.
The world left me in a hole and I may as well just use what I have which is not all powerfull but still is well what all blindy related stuff  is needed etc, etc.
Suddenly I find I need to update my video drivers to use the game.
I also find my video card along with a lot of others is expired and will need replacing.
I am however in a position where I can buy with some assistance a new system.
Right now I have a business grade i5 toshiba, I plan by the end of the year to be having a gaming grade i7, the base rate of this system will not break my budget and I should be albe to get in all the upgrades I need for well not much more.
I can not bare to spend 3-5000 or more on a box.
However for 1700 for the basics which is just over the most expensive business pricing, pluss another 200 or so for a case ram and maybe some more drives, who knows.
Fact is games for the blind have never been powerfull in requirments.
Saying that, if this was just for the blind I'd want it written in a less intensive engine, however the fact a sighted blind mainstream indie game is being created excites me a lot.
The last time that happened was teraformas and while it crashed a lot and is a bit crappy, it was a good game, and I enjoyed it.
Mudsplat is another game it is a bit problematic when run but still.
Before that there was the blind eye which while a example only concept it showed what the engine could do.
well not this engine but sighted and blind type hybrids could do.
One thing to note though, I don't see a blind person ever having more than 2gb of video ram unless you got 3-6gb given to you or needed it video cards cost a lot.

2017-09-18 17:48:16

Hey Crashmaster, really awesome points, particularly mentioning Mudsplat and Teraformas.

I agree with you completely. I'm using something called "scalability" in Unreal Engine, and it's how you can tweak graphic settings easily. It's absolute lowest setting isn't good enough, which is where I'm finding problems with getting this game running on outdated tech.

I will say though, I don't have a video card at all, just a dedicated intel one which is the worst possible thing on the market. The computer I'm running it on cost $500, it's an office Dell, and a low/middle of the line one. So while I respect the need to get this running on all possible machines because I'm creating it on a lower end office machine, I think our barriers are, as you say, Unreal Engine itself. I'm starting to worry I won't be able to downgrade the graphics any further even if I duplicate all the levels, and remove everything visual from them.

I'm not sure how much of the problem is my own optimization work still to be done, or Unreal Engine's lack of built in optimization.

BUT I am spamming both Reddit's unreal forum, and Unreal's official forums looking for answers. We won't give up hope yet!

2017-09-18 22:46:31 (edited by Haramir 2017-09-18 22:47:09)

Hello folks! Crashmaster, we think pretty much alike in this regards. I feel good to see I'm not the big bad vilain that think this way, or at least, not the only one!. Muahahahaha! tongue
But yeah, this is not only an audiogame, and it has an enormous potential to make other devs see that it is not that complicated to add accessibility to their projects.
Best regards, Haramir.

The true blind is the one who refuses to see.

2017-09-19 00:26:34

I'm glad it will be for both markets. The fact of the matter is, we're at this point where we want more intense games, and what we've had up until now has been good, but fledgling in a way. It's time to beef up and get more in depth, more interesting games, and if that means we have to upgrade our systems, then that's what we have to do. Nothing different than what any other PC gamer will end up doing.

Of course work should be put into optimization, not only graphics though, but CPU and memory usage; however, what that means is after all that's done, if you still can't run it, well, sorry about your luck, but that's the way PC gaming is. I've had to upgrade my system to play mainstream games before.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
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2017-09-19 05:29:56

Well daisy.
If by the beginning of next year you are still working on games and need a powerfull system to test things on I may be able to afford it.
My system will run the games, however its at the limit, an old outdated legacy amd hd card is in this box I have now from 2012.
its 1gb graphics.
My unit I plan to get will not cost the 5-8 grand most gaming units cost, I plan to have it cost about 3-4, the one I am looking at from gigabyte has 2tb hard drive space a 128gb ssd and 16gb of gaming ram.
I have looked at the updates for it, it can take another 16gb ram chip which I will get, it can take more storage I know bigger drives etc.
The base cost is 1700 which means instead of spending 3000 on the base I can spend it on updates.
That in itself seems good.
My big things will be seeing how far I can push the upgrades without breaking my bank, I know I can have more ram, and I may be able to get more drive space I am not sure about video cards but gaming units have between 3-6gb in them some at least 2.
It will be an nvidia card though but oh well.
Ofcause for the blind the hardware is slightly different.
A gaming keyboard and mouse, a stick which I don't have room for or the games for right now, but still an option.
Ofcause a good headset, sadly the big budget ones are out.
and maybe an external soundcard, or 2, and a good headset.
Otherwise we are the same.
Sadly for a lot of the older systems there are no drivers for them.
I have a system like that with intel hardware.
No driver updates, nothing.
Its good to see an engine like this work for us.

2017-09-19 20:33:49

Hey everyone, update on the update.

I'm about 95% done with it. It's a huge gameplay update particularly regarding the behaviour of the NPC victims. Before, I was relying on a trait called "pawn sensing" which is very buggy. Unreal kind of is sitting halfway between two different basic AI mechanisms right now, and neither one works really well so I pretty much had to create a very basic NPC call system. There are trigger boxes all over the level, and when you step on one, it has the NPCs run to you. Primitive but effective.

So you shouldn't have to think, "Are they still with me?" anymore.

The snow level is DONE! I'm just testing it to get some bugs out.

Barking now calls NPCs to you - before it only called the handler, who is now named Hayden. Now it calls the rescue victims after you've found them of course.

Sniffing now makes the trail twice as loud for a few seconds, in addition to the sonar ping thing.

The rest of the work is back end stuff like I said before, step height and walk speed and stuff like that is now just better overall. There's no big one thing that you can point to and say, THAT is what he spent all this time on. It just is a generally smoother game now.

Music was also added, very low and the volume lowers when you're on the scent trail which is a kind of natural call to focus - when the music lowers, you must be close to the scent trail. This also makes the trail a little easier to follow and creates the illusion of forcing your attention away from the music and general ambiance of the level to the scent trail. I didn't intend that but I'll take credit for it.

I really wanted this update out last night but I've literally spent four 12 hour days working on this and it's almost there.

OH and a new tutorial. So two and a half levels now.

I'm hoping to finish it up tomorrow and upload it. Should be ready by Wednesday morning for all of you! Fingers crossed!

2017-09-21 02:44:17

Cool this sounds awesome!

2017-09-21 08:04:13 (edited by daisyalesoundworks 2017-09-21 10:44:17)

Update - FINALLY. This one was a long time coming.
Important things:
Video settings - press 1 on the number pad, or F1, for the lowest setting. You can do this in the menu.
The menu is narrated but requires a mouse. If you don't use a mouse, just press F9 for the tutorial, F10 for the forest level, and F11 for the snow level.
I'm working on making the menu usable with a keyboard but it's really, really complicated.
Press M to disable music in the snow level. In the forest level, it automatically quiets down when you're near the scent. I want you all to tell me which way you like more.
Scent trail is loude
Stamina and panting were added, but again running is not a great idea when following the scent trail. When all the way at the bottom, the stamina bar sticks so when you stop pressing shift, just hit it once more to get your stamina to respawn again.
Snow level is complete.

x32 version www.daisyalesoundworks.com/Lost%20and%2 … v1.04a.rar
x64 version www.daisyalesoundworks.com/Lost%20and%2 … v1.04a.rar

You won't notice a difference here but I need to talk about it.
The AI system was SO BUGGY. I spoke about it in the above post but now, every 10 steps or so the AI will be told to come and find you, and follow you. They also have learned personal space, because now they stay back 5-10 paces once they do find you.
Haramir (the writer!) are going to start on the Australian level now which is already built physically, just needs some victims, a scent trail and nature sounds and a few mechanics. The goal is to have a four level demo done a week or two before we show the game at PAX Aus. I need your help in promoting it, by the way, everyone! Get the word out! Tell friends, talk about the game on facebook and twitter, emails, whatever.
I think that's it?

2017-09-21 14:53:10

OK, will check this out when I wake up more, I'm laying in bed with the keyboard on my belly. Yeah I know, awesome mental image.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
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2017-09-21 15:31:57

Ahahaha. I haven't changed the optimization - BUT someone on the Unreal forum thinks they might have a way to stop rendering all graphics. It's a small hope but still a hope! Fingers crossed it might be in the next version.