2018-07-25 06:06:38

Hi all,

I don't know much about this game, other than it's text, seems to have a pretty huge story behind it where you can influence multiple plotlines, etc.

The only problem? It's in Unity. I'm not sure if there's any blind players who went to the developer asking for TTS support, because it's added, with one or two issues apparently. I just wanna play, so the issues are minor compared to no TTS at all.

However, OCR isn't even enough to get at the main menu or whatever to see how TTS support can be enabled. Is it enabled for just story scenes, or can we browse the menus thereafter?

The game is located here for those that want to experiment with me. There's always aira, but their hours are over now for today.

https://carnalcoup.blogspot.com/

2018-07-25 12:32:41

Moderation!

While accessibility of this game is in doubt I will move this topic to general game discussion, (I can always move it back again if the game is made accessible later).

If the game does have tts support the problem seems to be firstly that there is no way of activating it, and secondly that there is no way of interacting with the game itself without clicking on things.

When I start the game, IE after I've hit "play" on the config property sheet, I can hit the left mouse button once to get from the title screen to the first options screen.
I can visually see a list of textual options there and use Ocr to read them with NVDA, but unlike with say a console game, there is no way of interacting with them via the keyboard, you seem to need the mouse to click with.

This might be just an oversight, but I am guessing this means  the entire game is mouse based, and the tts option is simply an additional output method for sighted players rather than something specifically access based.

While it wouldn't be hard for the developer to add  an accessible way of starting the tts itself, EG shift s on the main menu, if the game is entirely mouse based I'm not sure how easy it would be to add keyboard shortcutts for things.

sadly, just because something is text based, doesn't mean sighted players will forgo their clickerty click mouse based interface rather than, you know having  to actually type stuff big_smile.

So, while its definitely worth contacting the developer and asking , this might be one of those instances where adding accessibility might be harder than it initially appears, tts or not.

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.)

2018-07-25 17:52:00

Promising response from the developer on Reddit.

"To be honest, I'd implemented it at the request of sighted players who said they preferred to listen to text games than read them, and hadn't really considered blind players. But I can definitely implement that!"

2018-07-25 20:57:32

Well if the developer could make the tts work correctly and also give us a way to interact with the game that would be awesome, hay, it might even make up for missing out on tales in tainted space big_smile.

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.)

2018-08-01 05:29:57

Very nice. The developer of this game just released an update containing the first of what will be improved TTS support, including keyboard controls to enable said TTS and getting information.

More info here:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/20447891

2018-08-01 07:52:54

Hi.
Nice. Now things starts to get interesting. Is it text only, or are there also sounds accept for the music? I look forward to hear more about this.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
Facebook: https://facebook.com/sorenjensen1988
Twitter: https://twitter.com/soerenjensen

2018-08-01 08:29:04

Moderation!

As the game is apparently now accessible, I'll move this topic back to new releases so its more visible for those who want to try out the game and give feedback to the developers.

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.)

2018-08-01 09:20:01

I hope that this guy releases a new public build soon because I don't really want to donate to patreon unless I've tried the game out.

2018-08-01 13:45:58

Relations with pigeons? My word! What has this world come too!

2018-08-01 20:31:01

A public build is supposed to be released today. I'm not sure if it'll have these changes.

2018-08-01 21:27:28

Is this correct? The web site seems to be saying that only the 64 bit version has TTS support. If that is true, I wouldn't call this accessible. To me being accessible means any blind or visually impaired person can use it regardless of the assistive technology they use or the version of Windows they are running.

2018-08-01 22:58:47

Meh, I mean, it's reasonable to expect people to not be running legacy hardware or an OS that isn't supported by it's makers any more even with security updates, and dealing with two separate update schedules can be a pain in the ass for Devs that slows down more important development.
Tech stops for no man... :-)
The 32 bit to 64 bit change over kind of fucked everything up it's true, but it's been a long time since that and maybe you should just consider buying a new computer at this point if yours can't handle semi modern stuff.
I mean I've had this Macbook for nearly 5 years at this point, and since it has a pretty powerful third generation processor and a good amount of RAM, it can run 64 bit stuff just fine.
And I think it's reasonable to expect a computer to last 5 years at least, but anything beyond that is a real gamble, and the personal computer situation is still allot better than the mobile device one.
It shouldn't cost more than 800USD for a decent modern laptop, 700 for a desktop, and that's not factoring in any sales you might find that could knock up to 200 dollars off of that.
Not a small chunk of change it's true but hey, that's the price you pay in the tech market, and you may be able to recoup some costs by selling your old computer for like a hundred bucks or something.

2018-08-02 00:31:14

For knowing something like near zero about me or my computer you sure do make a lot of assumptions. Unfortunately for you, and fortunately for me, they are all wrong.

My computer is more than capable of running the 64 bit Windows, I however choose not to because I have no real need to. The only thing the 64 bit version of Windows gives you over the 32 bit version is access to more than 4 Gb of memory. True the 64 bit version is slightly snappier, but to see it you have to run both the 32 and 64 bit version side by side, otherwise there's not enough performance difference to notice the difference. And for what I'm doing, I don't need more than the 4 Gb of memory I currently have. Plus the 64 bit version of windows has some compatibility issues that the 32 bit version does not have.

Answer me this, if 32 bits is as useless as you would have me believe, why do 99% of software vendors only produce 32 bit versions of their products, including Microsoft who only make 64 bit versions of a few of their software titles?

2018-08-02 08:33:54

The TTS wasn't specificaly for blind people. He just added an expantion for it to be.

2018-08-02 10:13:52

I'm not sure on the 64 bit argument.
On the one hand I do agree that expensive or difficult accessibility requirements for games are not a good thing, one reason why I am less keen on games that only support Jaws or require some very expensive software or hardware *cough leasy *cough.

On the other, its not as if 64 bit Windows is an expensive or difficult requirement, indeed as people might remember I myself was forced to upgrade to Windows 10 in 2017 since too much new stuff was coming  out that I needed access too, and I will say the legacy support has been far better than I feared it was going to be, (I think only dos applications and the Bsc games have failed to run under Windows 10 once I'd installed all the dependencies etc).

so while it might be worth politely contacting the developer just to ask if he'd be willing to include 32 bit sapi support, for those who cannot or do not wish to upgrade to Windows 10, I wouldn't go as far as saying its a "must" in accessibility terms, its something that would be "helpful" undoubtedly", but I wouldn't say its %100 necessary for access terms at this point.

indeed to what extent an operating system requirement comes under the auspice of "accessibility" and to what extent the "accessibility" is an independent concept of operating system I am not sure, after all while I would rather like to play the Android rpg town of stone on my Iphone, I doubt I'd get much sympathy if I argued that the fact the developers only made the game for Android means the game is "not accessible"

its just accessible on a platform I don't myself have available.

To get this matter back on topic, I'd be interested to know what the game is like. I'm interested in a space rpg, but having spent some time with corruption of champions and Flexible survival earlier this year, I'd like a miner break from erotica for a little bit, albeit it sounds like this game will be needing a db entry sooner or later.

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.)

2018-08-02 11:08:59

Has anybody an email adress or such to contact the dev of the game directly? I haven't found it on the patreon page or on the blog.

2018-08-02 12:40:01 (edited by defender 2018-08-02 12:41:04)

@13
I wasn't assuming, I heard you mention you only had 4GB of RAM where as now 4GB is the minimum required and 6 to 8GB is more comfortable.
I may have remembered wrong about your CPU though, I thought I remembered you saying something about it struggling to run 64 bit Windows properly in another topic.
And yeah, it's true, most stuff is still running on 32 bit, and most stuff still isnt' taking advantage of multiple processor cores, both things everyone said would have happened by like, 2014 and never did.
But I'm still noticing a trend over the last year or so especially when it comes to newly produced programs, where only a 64 bit version is made and the 32 bit version, if it's made at all, is lagging behind in terms of updates.
It was already happening a few years before this in the mainstream too, for some software categories allot more than others, E.G. audio and video editors, but it's still not nearly as much as people thought it would be by now.
I think some newer dependencies and libraries are starting to only run on 64 bit or at least the more up to date versions do, so for a coder it's becoming more of a squeeze when they need a specific feature that only the newer version offers.
Sometimes I think making a 32 bit version would be nearly impossible because some underlying things that the program uses are 64 bit only, but it may not be that bad yet.
The push is definitely their though, kinda like IPV6 and such, slow and steady, and Apple switching over is kind of a big deal.


I mean, I can't make you go with the flow of course, and it's really not much skin off my back if you don't, but please try to understand the difficulty for the developer and the extra time you may be asking them to put in on top of normal coding, without trying to make them feel guilty about (not supporting everyone) since that's just not really realistic and IMO pulling the accessibility card is a bit premature for this type of thing.

2018-08-03 07:38:13

It would be great if anyone knows a way to contact the dev directly, via Email for example. I'd like to ask some questions regarding the game to him directly.

2018-08-04 14:52:24

Heya, Carnal Coup dev here, glad to hear that folks are interested in the project! I'd like to start by explaining that Coup is mostly a weekend project for me, and the initial TTS implementation was literally a one-weekend task for me at the request of a user; I simply grabbed a free library, tossed it in with a couple of UI controls, then got back to writing smut. It's Windows 64 only because the library does not work in Windows 32, and the WebGL version has no access to Windows system TTS functionality (it'd probably have to come packaged with its own TTS implementation, which is way beyond my scope).

My first objective with expanding all that is improving the controls around the current TTS functions. The latest version (which will be released free next month) has controls working for most of the core gameplay, except for character selection which still has some hiccups. After that I need to expand it to some of the secondary screens like save control, codex, etc. Then I can take a look at using a better library, but I can't promise yet what improvements that will or won't bring. Some of the options out there cost a chunk of change, and the project runs on pretty shoestring budget already. I hope the game lives up to expectations once you guys get into it. tongue

2018-08-04 19:08:18

It sounds unique, as far as smutty games go. I'll be interested in trying it.