And...

Slight
spoilers
ahead

If you've beaten the master on the top floor of the belltower, go back down and see if the stadium's open yet.

Short disclaimer: I'm going to say "gym" when I mean "stadium", "pokemon" when I mean "manamon", "ground" when I mean "earth" and so on, at least sometimes. I'll try and catch it, but you're working against basically eighteen years of off-and-on conditioning to a very well-established franchise. Haha.

Oh, sorry, but another thing I've noticed:

Manamon seem to be getting fairly balanced stats, at least so far. Stats don't seem to be spreading out much. But maybe that's because of the creatures I have.
Will this start to change as levels increase? For instance, is Hydrake a glass cannon with high attacking stats and bad defenses? Or is Squirmunk really really fast? I mean apart from training here.
That's one thing which, when compared to the source, seems a little different (and no, that might not be a bad thing). But if every manamon is fairly good at almost everything, that will worry me a bit, as it will take a lot of the competitive edge out of things, and will ultimately risk falling back on "use biggest attack, rinse, repeat".

While I'm on that "use biggest attack" thing, I have a couple more questions:

1. Is there any way to teach manamon new moves, or is their level-up list the extent of what they can learn?
2. Is there any way to see what a move does -before you learn it? I believe the description keys don't work while, say, learning an attack at the end of battle when you've already got five learned.
3. Does the computer AI, particularly in stadium fights or other boss fights, ever use strategy, or does it just pick a move at random? For example, Magic Lights to confuse, then spam a defense-drop move to make confusion do more damage when the target hits itself. One thing many pokemon trainers (particularly bosses) did was to have specific gimicks and strategies that you had to learn to counter (think Witney's Miltank, haha). And they didn't always execute flawlessly, but the move combos were there. Of course, this folds neatly into question 1, because if your movepool is limited to level-up attacks and those attacks don't contain good combinations, then obviously advanced tactics won't be quite as possible.
4. Do foes ever use items in combat? If you have enough herbs, I feel like you can sorta cheese your way to victory if you aren't being two-shotted by something. And okay, yeah, you can do that with the pokemon games too, it's true, but at least some of the bosses in those games use items to make the fight harder. Maybe you consider that an artificial difficulty enhancement, and that's fair enough I suppose. I'm also thinking of Norman's gym from RSE, where each trainer in a specific room of the gym would use an x-item on their pokemon at the start of combat. Example: in the attack room, the trainer uses an x-attack on his Zangoose right away, which gives Zangoose a boosted attack if he survives that first hit, and makes him considerably more dangerous.

If you don't have ways of teaching new moves, or the type of strategy discussed in questions 3 and 4, that's fine. I'm only curious.

Slight
spoilers

You shouldn't be trapped. I was able to bring the guy his ring beforehand.
Or rather, I found the ring after he sent me looking for it, went to the new city with the stadium, unlocked it, went  in, killed some tamers, then gave him his ring back. The stadium master is still unbeaten because I'm playing the demo.
But I can't think of a reason why you've been trapped. If you made it to the village where the guy lost the ring, there should be nothing stopping you getting back to any of the three exits from the tunnel (one where you fought the dude who beat you and knocked you out, one to the village, one to the highroad or whatever it's called).

Hang on, what path are you stuck on, and how do you mean that you're stuck?

If you're min the mine tunnel, be sure to follow the walls. that place is a little confusing.

This is just my opinion, and I might be wrong, but one of the reason why the developer doesn't want to add screen reader support are sounds. Like he stated in one of his privies posts, with a screen reader you can't know when it has finished speaking. You have probably noticed that sounds play at relatively the same time as when something is spoken. With screen readers that couldn't be cone, because he can't predict when a screenreader will say something. Some people have their speed at 75 % and some just at 15.
Anyone who tried to play entombed with a screen reader probably knows why it's better to play it with sapi.
For everyone that hasn't: to put it simply, after you press attack or choose a spell the sounds will just play one after another without caring for the speech. they might finish playing long before the speech stops or long after.

Well, hello Aaron, a few questions.

First of all, if you don't want the option for add NVDA, why simply you add two things.
1. the option to switch between NVDA or sapi, depending the preferences of the user, and simply put a default text speed.
2. About the text speed... ¡the battles are too low! Can you give the option to increase the speed of the battle information? Simply play pokemon omega ruby, or pokemon cristal, and try to put a speed similar of these games or more. For example, the speed of dialogs is OK, but in battle is necessary give the option to increase this, without disabling the animation sounds.
3. Apart of NVDA and Sapi, can you give the option for output to clipboard?
4. how works the speed and the turn based system? Is like a pokemon, when one turn consist on all moves of each active pokemon, and you chooce your move before the turn, or each turn is each move of each pokemon, and you only pick your move before your turn.
When I playing, I've dettect that you implement the system like the second option. For example  I have a slow manamon, and when I encountered a wild manamon, it attacks me without brings me the menu to chooce mi action.
With that system, is too hard train a manamon using the pass system. If you want to carry with a manamon with low level, to a higher area, you can't sent it for next switch to a higher manamon and next share qthe ex. Because the opponent attack before that you can switch and kill the training manamon u.u
5. viewing that the speed system aparently works like that... how woks when you reduce (or increase) the speed of a manamon? When is check the order of turn to determine who have to move and chooce its action?
6. What is the factor of each level of changes on any stat? Is like a pokemon, where a boost of two levels in a stat, is a increase of X2 on that stat, and a level of -2 is a *0.5 factor on that.
7. Currently exist a hidden stat factor that affects to each stat of a manamon, like IVS (individual values) and EVS (efort values) in pokemon? Or only have the base stat, and the distribution of TP that you do in your manamon.
This is thinking, for example if you catch two murkits and they have different base stats, because values, or natures.
And ¿exist in the game the breeding?
And if exist, what things you can get with the breeding.

Thanks, these are all things.
pd! One more think that I forget!
¡please, add a option to shut up sapi! t-t. Is necessary te classic control function to shut up the currently spoken text!
A, and with that, say every time that you press z (copied to clipboard) is ... unecessary u.u
A, another option to switch the keis.... i want use Z as a, and X as b. not c t-t.

While I won't be purchasing Manamon based on my experience with Psycho Strike, I'll play devil's advocate and state that the developer shouldn't cave in and add options he didn't want to implement from the outset. He obviously had his own reasons for not implementing the screen reader support, and the game works just fine without that feature.

Sometimes, a developer just has to put his foot down and say no. When a developer tries to cater to every whim and desire, his project becomes tedious and prone to more bugs as he scrambles to fulfill every request. If he keeps the project at a standard, then there's not as much to contend with.

Now, granted, this doesn't mean I think he should repeat Psycho Strike and abandon the game now that it's released, but future dev should be restricted to bug fixes and content delivery, if possible. Just as Pokémon went through several generations, Manamon could stand to do the same.

Oh, as an amusing note: When you view the firebreath skill for the Flammea manamon, it says it's "fame" type. lol. A fire breath that makes you famous?

Kai

@previous poster,

I take your point. Don't cave just to cave, by any means. But sometimes a developer will decide to do something (or not to do something) for a reason that doesn't make sense, and sometimes the players outcry for something should trump that. There is, in other words, such a thing as putting your foot down purely because you can, and that's arguably worse than caving just because you can't be bothered arguing. That argument is a double-edged one.
Basically, having the mind of a developer myself, I ask myself the following questions:
What are my problems with the suggested implementation?
How great is the outcry for said implementation? Is it considerable enough to compete with my misgivings?
If my game is a commercial endeavour, and the implementation might attract future customers, is the boost in revenue great enough to offset my issues with the implementation in question?
Will the implementation in question negatively impact either the game (from the player side of things) or my revenue stream from the endeavour?

I can't just say "I don't want to do it because I personally don't like screenreader support, so it's done". Well, I can, but I wouldn't.

Aaron,

Quite apart from all the other discussion, I'm having an issue with Paypal at the moment which could use your attention.
I would've contacted you using the Contact link on your website, but it's a send mail link. Which means you need a Microsoft account. I use gmail only, so I can't get in touch with you that way.
Would you consider tweaking the VG Storm website to actually give an email address so that people can just use that in their email provider of choice?

I will detail my problem below, without identifying info of course:

I went to purchase the game using your website. I put my first and last name in the box and hit "pay now with Paypal".
When prompted, I logged into Paypal, then hit the "pay now" button. I was immediately logged out of Paypal, despite only being on it for about ten seconds.
I tried again, this time with Firefox. Same result. Logging back in didn't work (actually caused IE to freeze once). Now I'm not necessarily figuring you can fix that part, that sounds like maybe a paypal thing.
But here's the weird part. I waited a bit, and tried again. Now, if I type my name into the box on your website and hit the "pay now using Paypal" button, it immediately throws an error, and says the transaction could not be completed. It does this before asking me to log in, and it didn't do this before.
I called Paypal technical support, who suggested I get in touch with you first on the off chance you've tweaked something on your website or merchant info that would throw an error.
In the meantime, I guess I'll just hold on.

Jayde,
I just quickly varified that when I click it, it still lets me log-in, which it does. This definitely sounds like a PayPal issue.
I'm very sorry your having these issues, but I don't have access to anything to help.
And I feel for you, PayPal customer support can be a pain sometimes.
Best of luck.
Oh, and the email link is a mailto link. Just right click to copy the address to the clipboard. There are bots all over this forum, so I'll not write it here, even though its public on the site.
Best,
Aaron

Okay,

Regarding your NVDA thing, we may just have to agree to disagree about learning curve. But I'm gonna take one last crack. Again, this is discussion, nothing more and nothing less. I have a tendency to be abrupt and sometimes forceful when I write, so please bear that in mind.

If I'm playing a regular pokemon game, if I hammer the a key, I will skim past dialogue. If a sighted player is doing likewise, he misses things. This is par for the course. It doesn't add to the learning curve because the only thing you have to know as a gamer is "don't just freaking button-mash". This is not a valid defense of SAPI because even if you button-mash in the first little bit of the game, you'll miss a bit of dialogue and that's all. You can easily talk to people to get refreshed, or explore and figure out what you're doing. Besides, even using SAPI you can button-mash and miss the actual attack the foe is doing, so it's even weaker as an argument.
Frankly, there is no way to totally stop a player from potentially skipping info. Let them do it if they want. Don't force-feed them at a pace you personally prefer.
If this was a heavy action game with no way to review the last line sent to the game, then okay, you'd have me. But it's not, so NVDA support for a game of this type would make a lot of sense, same as it did with Paladin.
Hell, you could always stick a mention in the manual, should you add NVDA support, that doing so may cause you to skip things if you're not careful. Give players warning, then let them decide if they want to bother. If you can add the NVDA support within a couple of hours, and if it wouldn't break the game (which it won't, the same way it didn't for Paladin), I'd say go for it. Let 'em have it and deal with the consequences.

Regarding interrupts, I have never, ever been interrupted while playing Paladin. And believe me, dragon-strike scrolls would be a bitch to be interrupted if your screenreader was constantly feeding you outside info. A lot of external programs are configured such that they don't actually announce anything unless they've got focus. And yet again, I'll cite the sighted player who's gaming on his laptop. If he really doesn't want to be interrupted, he shuts off the things he doesn't want in the way.

What it sounds like here is that you are trying to protect absolutely everyone from absolutely every conceivable gaming issue even when they're neither prominent nor within your control. And you're doing it at the potential expense of the pleasure of your players...players you're trying to convince to pay forty American dollars for your pokemon clone. It's laudable, in a way. I admire your heart. But sometimes a heart gets in the way. That's not snideness or sarcasm, BTW, it's just straight-up fact. You're saying "the other SAPI voices are better", except I'm not going to pay seventy dollars to have Eloquence for SAPI and another forty to pay for your game. That's asking one hell of a lot just so I can have the voice I prefer narrating a game I want to play.

If I was asking you to force players to use only NVDA, then you'd have a strong case. As it is, I'm asking you to add the support so that players who wish can use it. It will come with a couple of shortcomings for those players, but they, not you, should be the ones deciding whether those shortcomings are worth it. Because here's the thing. Say I play your game with NVDA. Native NVDA support doesn't screw up the game for anyone else who's not using it, so some SAPI-content user will not have the problems. Put another way, think of people who drink soda. Soda will rot your teeth. Now, you could either sell soda at your well-loved family restaurant because it's very popular and everyone loves it, or you could say "I don't want you drinking soda, so have water instead". Taking that approach suggests rather strongly that you, as a developer, are presuming to decide what's best for me.
To wrap it up: sell soda, and let me drink it if I want to. I've been duly warned that it will rot my teeth, but at least while I am drinking soda, it won't hurt others who choose not to. And it especially won't hurt you.