2018-01-23 18:03:41

Moderation!

@ironcross, that came across as rather superior on your own behalf.
You've been warned about hasty remarks before, please bare that in mind.

Road of life.exe wrote:

---------------------------
Error
---------------------------
You must run a screen reader before starting this game!

The following applications are supported:

Jaws for Windows;

Window Eyes;

System Access;

NVDA.
---------------------------
OK   
---------------------------

This is what happened when I ran the game with supernova to test if Sapi or indeed Supernova was supported.
I'm afraid Orko you picked up User100 completely wrongly there.
What he means is the game was tested with nvda but will also support Window eyes, System access and Jaws, he's just not tested the game with any of those applications so can't confirm how well it works. It also says this in the Readme.

While I agree screen reader specific applications (and not supporting Sapi), is minerly annoying (I had to cope with a lot of that when Supernova was my primary screen reader), there is no need to start jumping down throats, especially of a developer who has! made an effort to support multiple screen readers even though he himself only has access to one of them.

Myself the only problem I have with Road of life in this area is that I do wish it supported Sapi so it was accessible to people without a specific screen reader at all, though being as Nvda is free anyway this isn't as much an issue as it might be.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-01-23 18:09:23

I just tend to get annoyed with people who come across as bullies, I don't like bullies, and what he was saying was a school yard bully tactic, but I'll try to tame it down.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-01-23 18:35:34

Hmmm, I wouldn't have said bullying. Fairly partisan perhaps as happens in debates when people put a point too strongly, but not bullying.

Unfortunately Ironcross your remark in this case came across as much the same, indeed were there such a thing as "screenreaderist" Ie, judging all people who use a specific screen reader a certain way what you said  would fall into that category, indeed if you substitute the words "Jaws user" in your remark for any other pejorative term for another group of people you'll see what I mean.

Either way no point continually debating this as hopefully the matter is resolved now.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-01-24 06:34:28 (edited by JasonBlaze 2018-01-24 06:45:28)

hi there,
yeah should agree this is a nice game,  really chalanging smile
anyways guys, seriously, comment like that could  bring the dev down, why should we have that bad atitude? , if you want to delete the game, fine, do it!, 
you don't have to be an urm, sorry, A** and brag about it here
sad something like these happends so many times, what were you are thinking when posting it? lol.
don't mean to bring the   discussion up again but, I feel I should post something big_smile
NVDA is free anyways, is that really hard for you to download one and try? , in fact, if you are a gamer you should have that, since some  games here only support NVDA/sapi.  jaws I       usually use for text editing and some browsing.

2018-01-24 07:39:45

@Jason as someone who didn't! use a usually supported screen reader, I can say  the "just try another screen reader" isn't quite as simple as it appears, since any screen reader requires learning.

What if someone were newly blind and got a computer preloaded with say Supernova or Thunder Cobra or a less used screen reader and was struggling how to use that one? You wouldn't want them disbarred from games playing on that basis.

That is why I would myself prefer if games always supported Sapi in addition to Nvda, jaws etc, despite the fact that I use Nvda as my main screen reader of choice anyway. Everyone can use Sapi, it's inbuilt into Windows. A sighted person who downloads an audio game to try out has access to Sapi, and playing audiogames with Sapii sin't too bad, I did it myself for years since Supernova was rarely if ever supported.

That being said, it's not an issue to get ones knickers in a twist over, some  just program things differently.

Apart from WinBoard, and Jfw Hangman, I can't think of any game off the top of my head that just! supports one  screen reader, most either work through Sapi, or support multiple (programs in addition to Sapiusually Nvda, Window eyes and Jaws, often system access as well, and rarely Supernova).

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-01-24 08:27:26 (edited by JasonBlaze 2018-01-24 09:12:53)

hmm,  yeah, that's probably right.
NVDA isn't so hard to learn anyways, still remember back then when I use jaws and a friend challange me to a dragon pong match, and he tould me dragon pong doesn't support jaws and I have to use NVDA, that doesn't stop me to accept the challange however (being a curious kid and all that wahaha) then I realize NVDA is almost the same as JAWS ( although NVDA love to crash alot on me for some reason that time tongue ). , some of the key combination is almost the same. so I learned quickly from there.
lol well so the point is you probably have to slowly learn new things, not just stuck in 1 screenreader forever, since evry screen readers have it's own pluss and minus. hard I know but hey big_smile
it's just like when I can't move on from simbian to newer touch screen phone big_smile

2018-01-24 11:27:26

That's okay for you Jason, however bare in mind not everyone is quite as adaptable or ready to experiment in this case, especially people who are generally worried about computer use.

My mum is a perfect example, since she has used supernova for years and has enough trouble remembering key combos and working out the difference between a file and a folder, let alone having to use something else.
This is where Sapi support helps since then the game will run straight out of the box.

Heck, despite using Nvda as my main screen reader for the last year  I still occasionally have  to check things in the Nvda user guide if there is something particularly obscure which I would know how to do in Supernova but needed to check in Nvda.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-02-07 04:13:44

Wow. Talk about a challenge, and one with really well done sound effects. Lesson from today: I'm a very bad truck driver.
@user100:
If its something you'd be interested in, this could certainly be added to the audiogames archive, which would help deal with any hosting issues and provide another distribution source.
Its a really cool concept, thanks for sharing!

2018-02-07 04:30:29

If the game was made in BGT, there's really no reason not to have a sapi fallback mode, but anyone who has a screen reader that doesn't impede their gameplay will use that as even with the best sapi voices, there is lag. Hell, even if it wasn't made in BGT, there is always Tolk, and it has wrappers for many languages, and if a dummy like me can get it working, anyone should be able to.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-02-07 22:37:43 (edited by john 2018-02-07 22:40:23)

Returning to this topic with a mounting bill for all the trucks I've destroyed.
My record thus far is about 4.5km, which I'm presuming isn't terribly good compared to everyone else in this topic, but I'm still pretty proud of it.

@Ironcross:
agreed. Running screen reader can be determined at program start, and optionally reset by the user. If none's present, its fairly easy to fall back on sapi without any major code changes (as long as you have a central "speak" function). Speech won't be as smooth, but it'll work.
@orco:
Unfortunately its pretty difficult to test for full compatibility with all screen readers. In the case of Jaws, its also illegal (the license forbids use of the demo version for testing purposes). The best you can do is to code in what you hope will work, test it with what you have available, and then wait for your users to help iron out the rest.

2018-02-10 00:28:52

One thing I just ran into (litterally) is that there's a lot of difficulty in telling when you've safely past an ice hole. This is because of the way audio panning works; left and ahead is the same as left and behind, and its easy to get confused when you have multiple holes in close proximity. In my case the hole was on one side with another coming up on the other, and since I couldn't tell I'd past the first hole, I didn't think I could turn back and drove into the second hole.
Have you considered adding some form of cue to tell the player they've past a hole? Maybe a sound, maybe lowering the pitch of the hole they past, maybe just stopping the audio completely (if I'm by the hole I don't care about it anymore). Personally I like the last one a lot, but it would be pretty jarring in terms of audio design. You could even add an option to let the player shift between the three.

2018-02-10 13:54:38

John, the pitch is already being decreased when a hole is behind of you. Maybe the difference is too weak, but, as you mentioned, strong pitch decrement can break the sound design, so I have decided not to implement big decreasing.