Hmm, how ironic, I was having a chat with a friend of mine about creating games today (of various different sorts). this is somehting I'd love to use, providing it's stil relatively easy to actually create the games with and you don't really need any knolidge of programming to use it (though obviously, a knolidge of sound recording would help methinks).

One thing I don't really understand, is what kind of games this could create? I could see how you could create a programme to make audio interactive fiction and puzle games with your own audios for the story and sound (as was done with desent into madness), but I'm not sure how you'd go about making a program that could equally create other types of games such as racing or action games.

Well, there's no point me standing here and going on about it, I'm going to have a look.

I recall there used to be mainstream tools to "make" games. Unfortunately they were mostly restricted to platform games I seem to remember. Not that this is the same at all.

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This does sound cool. I am going to try to actually learn programming here at college but it's good to know there's a chance that I might be able to create games even if that doesn't pan out. It reminds me of the old RPG Maker applications you used to be able to get off the internet. The developers chose to keep them for their own country apparently and didn't release them to others, so of course somebody went and translated them illegally into other languages. Unfortunately the guy who translated it into English wasn't a native English speaker, so the translation was buggy. Then the actual developer came down on everybody and told them to take the program off their web sites. Again, I don't know if you can still find them. However I was going to make a suggestion based on those old programs. The RPG Maker program came with quite an extensive library of music and sound effects built-in, but they also allowed you to import your own music, usually Midi files, and sounds. I think it could actually handle MP3 files as well. I would suggest that, if a similar system was possible to implement in this project without too much unnecesary trouble, you might consider it. It would add even more flexibility to what already sounds like a neat project.

I'd be curious myself whether SAPI would be supported. Recorded voices are great, but you might need the ability to read text that isn't necessarily fixed. Multiplayer support would also be a bonus, but I won't get my hopes up too much on this since it would be asking rather a lot.

Sapi? Ugh! I don't like Sapi voices. I find them far too difficult to understand. Well, I have heard neospeach is part of the Sapi system or very similar, and I do have both the Neospeach voices and the AT&T Natural Voices on my system. I could see myself using the Neospeach system for statistics and score type reading in my games, but there's no way I'll use the Microsoft Sapi voices. Oh well, guess we all have our preferences. I think what the Audio Game Maker should do is be able to automatically detect what synthesizers are installed on your system and then give you a choice of which ones you want to use or, at the very least, let you select from the various voices. I have, as I said, Neospeach and AT&T Natural Voices on my Laptop as well as the Sapi voice that came with JFW 7, and when I play one of Jim's Sapi games it lets me select from those five voices, Sam, Mike, Crystal, Paul and Kate. That would give you some flexibility if you didn't like the voice you were working with. Then you'd just have to use Text Aloud or whatever program you prefer to create the speach files you actually wanted to use in your game. I myself have Text Aloud, which I find to be quite cool.

BryanP:
I know for certain that the Neospeech voices I got with Kurzweil and the Realspeak voices I got with an earlier version use the SAPI interface.

SAPI is an interface system for speech synthesis, it just happens to have a couple voices included with it. There are certainly other voices which can use SAPI as an interface.

Besides, SAPI is freely available and costs nothing. Sometimes pre-recorded voices just aren't an option, especially if there is any customisation in the game. For example the Lone Wolf mission editor. In these situations a synthesiser just is the only option.

I'm interested to see what games this thing can make as well. I mean, could it make games such as Rise to Honor, or even Mortal Kombat? Let's just wait on it...

Modular? assuming I'm not reading too much into that Richard, I would guess that this means there will be different parts of the program to create different elements of a game, rather than different types of games in particular?

So for example, a menue generator which could be used in interactive fiction style games like desent into madness, a module to create sterrio panning reaction effects (iether at random or in a specific way such as in Troopanum), and combining the two could lead to something like Chillingham?

then perhaps generators for different styles of maps, 2D, full 3D as in shades of doom and partial 3D with a board and limited movement as in the Vip games ---- and maybe continuous circuits or scrolling travvel routes as in a racing game? Then a score creating program and maybe something for other forms of statistics or reading text files?

I don't doubt such a system would be hard to develope, but Imho this sort of thing would give much more scope for creativity than just having a "Racing game generator" or a "3D action game generator", sinse it would let multiple game elements be put together to form different games, rather than just similar games with altered parameters and statistics (which would basically play like glorified mods).

You could for example make a battle-racing game, where you raced around on a continuous track but had different weapons on your vehicle to targit the other cars ----- which you could do with left-right troopanum style sterio targiting and panning when you got within range.

Of course, my personal preference would be to create an Rpg or exploration based game (audio Metroid anyone?), but sinse we're all different people with different interests in gaming, Imho it would serve the community very well if the software be made able to create as great a variety of games as possible. Obviously, there will have to be some limits as to the amount of options and capacities available in the program, but I hope these can be pushed as wide as possible to allow those using the program the greatest chance to develope their tallents, even if this means complicating the program to a degree (there can always be tutorials and basic modes and such to help people just starting out with it).

Ooopse! sorry again about the wrant, I just wished to make my opinions clear.

This is how where are thinking right now. A "game making tool" is often somewhere between "a level editor" (basically a fixed game where you can only change some fixed parameters) and "game programming tool" (often just a bunch of difficult code with which you can built almost anything, but at a prize).

We would like to be somewhere in between, although a bit more to the game programming tool, but with the easiness of a level editor
We're currently investigating the possibilities. If things get to difficult (given the short period in which to develop this tool - just a couple of months) then it is likely that the design will be more towards a level editor (with maybe some modules - which is always an option?).

So you want RPG's? Anyone else have a personal favourite?

Greets,

Richard

I'd go for rpg. But, yes, I have a personal favorite. I won't say much. Suffice it to say, one on one fighting, brawlers, or three D beat em ups?