Hi, would you or someone please do an audio demo of this game. It sounds awesome.

Sorry, forgot I had a YouTube video of the game here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap8ZZ_xdN3s
Not much to see because, well, it's an audio game.

You might have another look at the game, Orin. It's been under continuous developer for a while. If it was a few months ago, there's probably some new features since then.

There's a lot more interactivity now. You are told when other players are playing, and when you happen to be at a system where other players are. There's no true real time interaction, because the platform doesn't really support that.

Messages can be sent from a faction leader to all members of a faction. And individuals can send messages to each other. Unfortunately you have to access the web interface for that. The Echo doesn't do free text entry.

Also new are a bunch of badges you can earn for doing things in the game, and a in-game currency system.

So it's moving along. Right now I'm working on a quest engine. I've got about two weeks left on that and then I can start rolling out quests. The first will be pretty simple. "Take a message to this location" and "Can you beat the top speed between these two stars". But once the feature is there I want to build it up into a larger story, Skyrim like. I dumped the initial chunks of a fictional story to the Starlanes forum. Interacting with the characters in that story is going to be the basis of the linked quest arc.

Overall I agree with your belief that the potential of the Echo as a gaming platform is beyond abstract strategy games. Certainly it's got to be more than the stupid fart joke skills that dominate it right now. I hope to grow Starlanes in that direction. Laying the groundwork for a basic strategy game is the first step.

One thing I get caught between is breadth or depth. You can only add so much to the audio interface before its recognition starts to get confused. To engage other forms of gameplay I want to also add trading and tactical combat. (Old prototype for the trading concept also on YouTube. Search "Jose Fabuloso Amazon Echo") However I'm more thinking to add in related games, StarTrade and StarSquad, that take place in the same universe, and whose actions affect one another. But I have to choose between building StarLanes deep, with more interesting and involved quests, or building it out with these other games and adding more diverse gameplay.

Opinions welcome!

Sorry, I put it on the Subject line: The Amazon Echo. It's not a phone. It's a standalone speaker/microphone. They've kind of aimed it as a verbal front end to the internet of things. Or as a music streaming device. It has a Siri/Cortana/OK Google like interface as a personal concierge.  The big difference is that they let 3rd party developers add to it. I've added to it by writing this game.

They ran an ad during the superbowl. I haven't seen it, but give the wide audience, it can probably summarize who they are aiming at better than me.

I'll definitely try this when I get home. This sounds interesting.

Hi jjaquinta.

This sounds absolutely awesome, I'm only sorry that it's just available on the amazon Ecco device, sinse I haven't heard of it either and being as I don't use amazon kindle or streaming service (I'm not keen on reading books with a synth voice for the text and last I checked Amazon music downloads  were a right royal pest access wise), I possibly wouldn't get one.

Then again if sean or anyone else has access to the device, I hope the game has lots of support and software written for it, I'm just sorry there isn't an Ios version, (lots of Vi people have Ios devices due to the implicit accessibility of voiceover).

Okay, now I've finished my personal platform winje, I will say the game sounds great. i've played tradewars style games online before, and while I'm more an rpg than stratogy fan I can see the advantage and attraction in the genre.
Personally, I'd love to see a space stratogy game with a lot of solo questing and exploring type stuff as an alternative for people like me who aren't competitively minded and would rather expand, explore and colonize than join in teams to defeat the competition, I'l also say that among blind/vi gamers, Rpgs are very! sought after sinse manifestly games like skyrim aren't accessible.

so, great news on the development front and on the game, I hope people who have this device give it a try, and if you ever come out with an Ios or pc port I'd be glad to do so myself too.

Greetings!

Wondering how hard it would be to do an Android version, considering its also on the web.
 
If not an android app, have the web site be taylored for the Chrome web browser.

I got to review Roger on Android in beta, but it's buggy and not that usable. I can't really release that information here. But I can ask the developer to do so once they want an open beta. It is, apparently, already released on iOS. Search for "Roger" and see what you get.

As far as Starlanes, I've actually written an Echo simulator for testing. I've been thinking and it wouldn't be too hard to write a general purpose front end to that, which would allow Alexa skills to be called through other mechanisms. There are three ways I could turn this around pretty quickly. Since this would be aimed at the vi community, I'd like your input on what would be most consumable.

1) Telnet interface. Kind of like your classic MUD. It wouldn't be hard to serve up an Echo app through a telnet server. You just type instead of talk. There are tons of telnet clients, and I'm pretty sure many of those are accessible. Is this something commonly done?

2) Standalone Java app. I could throw together a rich client app. Just a jar file you run that uses standard Swing Java UI. If this used a basic text box for input, and a basic scrolling text control for text display, would that work well with screen readers?

3) Web app. This is a little tricker, as there are many different web technologies. I'm doing a lot of current work with Angular, but it does a lot of real-time DOM manipulation and I'm not sure how well that would play with screen readers. But I could instead do a classic enter text in text box, submit page, and get new page result app. That would certainly play better. And, I guess, usability, in this context is all about working with screen readers, not fancy graphics. :-)

All of these should be platform independent. (Well, other than the rich client on a phone.) Does one of these work well, or is there another solution I haven't considered?

Hmmmm, last I heard the Swing Gui had been dropped by java and development had gone a bit wiffy. I've heard about people trying to write accessible games and such with swing, but I'm not sure any panned out.

Telnet was used a lot and still works fine on xp and other systems but is more problematic to access elsewhere, and most games played through telnet have now either gone web based (eg the old bbs legend of the green dragon), or have turned into muds, that is multi user dimention games which have their own clients, however if you wanted to put together a custom client with a telnet style connection there are some pretty good ways of accessing screen readers such as the toke library on windows.

Web based might work well considering that screen readers handle standard web pages no problem, though obviously anything flashy or graphical wouldn't be good.

I'm however probaably not the most technical person to ask on this subject, and I'd recommend asking in our developer's room or talking to some of the other devs such as Aprone who have successfully made very intigrated online audiogames, Aprone for example has done a great job with swamp, the first audio only cooperative online fps.

@JAquinta  that's cool.
Actually it reminds me of star traders, which is an internet web browser version of an old tradewars style bbs game, find it here 

first, one miner bug when I entered "productivity" I got bounced streight back to the login page for some reason.

Obviously thus ar there is no sound and just the web form interface, but what there is is more than possible with a screen reader, though I might suggest that you consider having some command links or menues to save on typing at different locations. actually most modern screen readers are far more sophistcated and well able to handle a good deal more complexity web page wise, it's only stuff like custom flash controls and a alot of complicated self refreshing ajax scripts and the like that can be a pain in the arse, ---- not to mention the horribleness of a lot of flash controls.

The game thus far looks nice as stratogy games go, though as an exploration fan it'd be nice to see a little more in terms of atmospheric text and other stuff on systems beside basic production rates. I also wonder about mapping between systems, sinse that can be a trifle problematic in text games that have multi layered maze style, trade wars type layout. Then again, I don't know how limited starlanes is on fuel etc.

Either way, thanks for the web interface, I'll definitely be keeping a watch on where this project is going.

Hi.

Well I tried your ajax thing and for some reason couldn't read much of it, though i don't know how much is showing, so the textbox interface is probably the thing to go with.
In terms of sound, I just meant if you had any complicated html to play sounds in the actual web interface, but if not don't worry.

As to maps, connected grid points is a very familiar thing to most vi players who've played muds or text adventure games, sinse manifestly w'ere used to rooms and exits connecting to other rooms, indeed Core exiles, one of the best sf mmorpgs with great access features has a hole jumpgate system made on that concept. I just meant in terms of maps sinse you mention a graphical interface, if players using that got any advantages, if not, cool!

As to games and types of games.
I personlly am an exploration and questing fan more than competition slaughter. I've seen lots of stratogy games kicking around that have great info about new star systems, types of planets etc, but very few let you actually go out and do a startrek in terms of exploring strange new worlds or looking for new stuff, or having to cope with problems of exploration such as running out of fuel, so I'd definitely be a fan of that type of thing if it gets added in the future, actually I love the idea of an mmorpg game with various different sorts of activities for various sorts of players depending upon how things go, after all there is a huge amount of stuff you can have in a space environment besides the hole war thing.

Yay!

The "help" topic on the wiki has a slightly-out-of-date list of commands:
http://starlanes.wikia.com/wiki/Help

If you say "tutorial", it will walk you through most of the basic commands of the game.
Also, Alexa has a "reprompt" feature. If you don't say anything for eight seconds, a skill may optionally prompt you with something. Starlanes uses this heavily to help educate people to the command set. Discoverability is really hard in an audio-only program! Or so I am finding. But then, I'm new to this.

For 3.0 I'm working on a quest engine. That should allow for missions and an overall plot above and beyond the strategic gameplay. Another future release will include further star system improvements, once you've maxed out your drone count. Things like refueling stations, extra drone bays, and a transition catapult to let you jump further. Other iterations will build out loosely interacting companion app. For example StarSquad will let you tactically attack a station and pit your drones against theirs at a low level. How you do will have an impact in StarLanes. StarTrade will let you buy and sell trade goods. You'll still belong to a faction and your trade privileges will depend on who owns the system in Starlanes. Certain improvements in Starlanes will affect trade in StarTade, and money in StarTrade can be used to support the cause in Starlanes. I've got a lovely, detailed geography for exploring for StarScout. (Exploration games are my personal favorite.) But I'm struggling with ways to arrange gameplay around this, and to interlace it with the other games.

The exact order of these improvements is up in the air. One does not necessarily preclude the other. I'll be throwing the ideas up in the forum once 3.0 nears feature complete and see what people think.

Thanks for looking into it!

This sounds absolutely fantastic. Lol how much is an Amazon Ecco in the UK if it's not too expensive I might have to get one just for this game lol. This sounds amazing.

I'm a big fan of games such as elite and x-beyond the frontier. It would be cool to have elements of both games in star lanes.