Sounds an interesting project, I look forward to it. Unfortunately I don't feel I could test right now.

And lol being British doesn't help any either because most IF games use the US English spellings. You wonder why it's not accepting a command and it turns out you have a S where the game expects a Z.

If you would be so good as to outline the potential duties of a tester here, I would give you a straighter answer as to whether or not I could help you.

Hello again,
As an answer to Jade, the beta tester should probably have about one year of IF playing experience. Other than that, a walkthrough is given to the beta tester to find out how good the outline of the game is. The beta tester, however, would be recommended to try to figure out the puzzles on his/her own before looking to the walkthrough, so that we could decide how hard the game is. After deciding about the things above, since the game is still under development and has come about one tenth of the way, the more experienced beta testers would be allowed to give their suggestions, since we're going to bring great, high quality IF games to the blind (and even sighted) comunity for free, so Lighttechers would not decide on the game themselves, but would appreciate any help from trusted members. This game is going to take part in some IF compititions, so keep in mind that we are not only working for the blind; The power of the blind would be shone all around the world!

And about what Dark Empathy said, I'm using Inform7 to program the games. Although it is called "natural language", it's not as easy as it seems, you know. And i'm sure every blind IF player has "Winfrotz with speech" on their computer (which I don't usually suggest to others), it's playable by winfrotz or any other Inform interpreter.

It was the endless possibility trying that slightly worries me about If testing, but if we get a walkthrough and can see what the recommended replies are, then as long as we try the common varients to avoid guess the verb situations I think things will be okay. I usually trie lots of mad things in If anyway, like asking any charactor anything I can think of that they might answer. In one of my favourite If games in fact (world's appart), I even once typeed:

"Ask Sahl about life, the universe and everything"

Because I knew the game was so huge and well written he'd have an answer.

Dark, last time the beta testers got on my nerves sending email after email that "we want a solution! We want a solution!". I swore that it is my first and last time that I'm posting a solution, but I was so angry that I wanted to relieve myself from this thing. Eria is not character-to-character interactive as much as it has puzzles. Guess the verbs situations are so wide (for example, you can type about 10 verbs in a situation) that you wouldn't have much problems with it if you know what to do. I'm not good at guess the verb situations myself, and this is hard for everyone. But we are developing an in fact very hard game and this is why, it is about 72 hours that I'm trying to streighten a simple point with the plot, just because I _feel_ something is wrong with it!
You'd find a lot of punctuation and gramatical (and sometimes spelling) errors in Eria, because English is not our (mine and Robjoy's) first language, but the puzzles are kind of surprising sometimes, and funny at the other situations. For example, in a point, a wall chases you through the building, and it's just clear what you should do. But it's needed to take the plot further... You certainly know what I mean.

Yep. Babel is probably the one game I love. So is the new game which was released a month ago called "last resort".
I'm trying despraitly to have a great plot since it is one of the strong points in compititions like raif (rec.arts.int-fiction),so this is why I'm still struggling with the thing Robjoy suggested.
Also, there is only one guess the verb puzzle which I have put... Let's count... Yes, 12 verbs for it in the next release (which will be out soon after I figure out what to do about the next puzzle).

Well before each new beta version is released, we'll give out a walkthrough for those who couldn't complete the game to catch up, so don't worry. Also, you can ask for hints!

Such things can be good, particularly when a balance is found betwene giving you a litle nudge in the right direction and telling you far too much.

the If game I was playing yesterday, Earth and Sky episode 3 by Paul O-brian, had a fairly fantastic hints system of that type.

Okay...I've got some experience with interactive fiction, but not tons. I'm a well-versed video game player, however, and am one of the key  people working on puzzles and quests for the browser-based RPG in progress (see other topic).
I have one question though: WinFrotts, or whatever it's called...I'm pretty sure I've used it before, but the speech is hideous, and with many words that have odd punctuation, there's no way to check the spelling. If I could get a little help with such an interpreter, I'd love to help with interactive fiction.

Hmmm, Jayde, it sounds like you used the Win frotz tts program, which is a version of Win Frotz that outputs text directly to Sapi (the synth voice that comes with windows Xp). As you said, the voice isn't great, and some things in the games can cause trouble as well.

But sinse just about all Interactive fiction is text anyway, if you've got a screen reader you should be able to use any standard If interpreter program (like win frotz), with no trouble at all as Parham said.

As to hints systems I agree that the hints should be a last resort, but even when you resort to them, they should gradually reveal information so that you stil have to do at least some thinking (unless your really stuck). This is why , as I said, the invisiclues used in the infocom games are my absolute favourite. You type hint and get a long list of questions, some of which might be completely irrilevent, and then the answer are given in multiple lines as well so you can read only as much as you need.

to give an example:

You walk into a room with a stone floor a shelf high above your head and a stool.

there would probably be these questions:

"Is there anything important about the floor?"
"How do i reach the stuff on the shelf?"
and "What's the stool for"

Say you ask the first question, you'd get an answer like this:

"1 of 3: Well it holds the walls up"

You press enter for the next answer and you'd get:

"2 of 3: have you tried searching it?"

press again and you'd get:

"No"

For the shelf question you'd get something like this:

"1 of 5: grow up a bit shorty?"
you click again:

"2 of 5: have you tried climbing the wall?"

"3 of 5: maybe there's something else in the room that could help you"

"4 of 5: have you had a look at the stool?"

"5 of 5: try standing on the stool"

I'm proud of myself actually. I've beaten Zork I and II without the use of a guide. The maze thing was annoying, as was the mine in Zork I...and there's a part in Zork II that's annoying as well...but I did manage it. Loved the dragon in Zork II.
Zork III, though...let's just say the royal puzzle rhymes with "witch".

Will mess with that IF client at some point once I get sleep.

Yes, by all means. I'd love to help.