2015-09-25 12:32:36

hi. looking to start my space invaders game, well, looking to go with s tart up message, then a menu. so, was wondering which is better, using a built in text to speech engine or recorded audio by humans. a friend helped me out with the music and the images, now just looking for feedback. have done a text based hangman game done in visual basic 2010, and now, this will be a game for the blind and sighted, using javascript, in visual studio 2015. so got a space invaders engine to reference as a guide, got the howler.js audio codex, now, was wondering, unless i have to worry about cross api for all different text to speech engines and then different os, windows, mac, linux, ios, android, blackberry,e tc. so some experts done this beofre, any ideas, or any universal engine that will do that, that has a nice voice. i speak english. will be a multi player game and also able to play over the internet. any ideas, need advice, a newbie. thanks.

2015-09-25 15:36:11

I would vote for the text to speech option.

2015-09-25 21:36:29

Hello StarTrekCafe.
Okay well I would say go with the text to speech because it will be easier on you and save a lot of time. Recorded speech is nice but here's why I don't like it.
First let's say your space invaders game has a story mode. Doing recorded speech will take hours especially if the person doing the speech makes a lot of mistakes.
Now if you did your story mode with a tts voice all you would do is write out the text you need and the voices do all the work. Even if your game doesn't have a story mode recorded speech would take a long time to create menus and whatever else you have in the game.
Now I'm assuming your sighted since you said you don't know about screen readers.
Now on windows there are a few screen readers nvda, jaws, and WindowEyes, also there is sapi which stands for speech api. Sapi is not a screen reader when you make a program it outputs to sapi but otherwise sapi does not read the screen. For windows get the tolk library which has support for all screen readers I mentioned above and sapi. I'm sorry I would give you a link although I don't know where to find it just google it and it should come up. I think these come with the tolk library but you will need the sapi and nvda-32 and 64 dlls so that your game will output to screen readers properly.
Also if your interested in having 3d audio in your game another forum member camlorn has something called libaudioverse google blindly coding and you can find that library there. As far as I know right now this library only works on windows.
Unfortunately as far as I know there is no crossuplatform speech engine at this time.
Now on mac there is only one screen reader called voiceover which comes built-in to almost all apple devices. Macs, iPhone, iPod touch, and all iPads. To turn on voiceover on a mac press command f5 I think and voiceover will come on. To turn it off just press command f5 again. To turn on voiceover on iOs devices go to settings then general then accessibility then voiceover to turn it on then double tap to turn voiceover off again. To output to voiceover on a mac you need to use apple script I'm not sure if you embed this into your program since I have no experience with this. I don't know how to do speech output on ios devices either sorry.
Now if your planning to make the game for linux that also has a built-in screen reader called orca. Sorry I don't know how to output to orca.
On android there is a built-in screen reader called talkback so you can output to that.
As for blackberry and others like that I have no idea.
Sorry for this long rant I hope I helped you to give you some idea on how this stuff works.
Hth.

Guitarman.
What has been created in the laws of nature holds true in the laws of magic as well. Where there is light, there is darkness,  and where there is life, there is also death.
Aerodyne: first of the wizard order

2015-09-26 01:30:33

ehi. i am totally blind. and also want it to be multi player, and play on the internet, so going with recorded audio, do not then have to deal with multi cross speech apis, for windows, mac, linux, ios, android, blackberry, so i will do the game, the controls, then use a engine i found as a guide, got images, and music, will go and find some space invaders sound effects. so, then the people can then record the audio. unless, you now know of any recorded free gpl audio clips, already on the net. so going with this, much easier. people will be professional, unless, there is stuff out there already.

2015-09-26 01:39:56

If your looking for 8 bit sounds similar to Space Invaders you could try using Sfxr or Bfxr which are random sound generators. Unfortunately I don't think either are accessible, but the codes open source.

-BrushTone v1.3.3: Accessible Paint Tool
-AudiMesh3D v1.0.0: Accessible 3D Model Viewer

2015-09-26 04:11:17

Hi.
Oh lol well then nevermind. You mentioned the game would be graphical and I don't know of any audio game developers who works with graphics except aprone and he's sighted.
Anyway get that tolk library I mentioned that works with all windows screen readers. There is also universal speech but I'm not sure that's being developed anymore. There is also accessible output 2 but I think you can only use that with python. I'm not sure but maybe if you compile the python scripts you can use them in your game. Accessible output 2 is setup for all desktop screen readers.
Hth.

Guitarman.
What has been created in the laws of nature holds true in the laws of magic as well. Where there is light, there is darkness,  and where there is life, there is also death.
Aerodyne: first of the wizard order

2015-09-26 05:34:54

hi. wel, will have audio clips recorded, so then do not have to do the cross api. so will look and see if i can find any recorded space invaders clips, and also sound effects, any other good 3d sound engines, would be cool. so off to do some googling. thanks.

2015-09-26 07:10:33

In javascript get JQuery and do:

$(function(){

$("body").append("<p id='p1' role='status'></p>");

function spk(text){
$("#p1").text(text);
};


//test it out:
$("#p1").after("<button id='b1'>Click me!</button>");
$("#b1").click(function(){
spk("Hello world!");
});

})


Then just use this by typing something like:

spk("Hello world");

It will read perfectly.