2019-03-11 21:33:59

Hi everyone,

So the next video is here, this one is basically  taking everything we’ve created in the last 6 videos and making it feel a little more like a game, I was planning on getting this all into a single video , but it ended up longer than I expected when it came to actually recording it, so I’ve split the video into two parts. We’ve uploaded the first part, and the link to part one is below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88PmoDor_yo

Thank you everyone for the continued support and we Hope you all enjoy this latest video.

The Ebon Sky Studios Team
email: [email protected]
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2019-03-12 03:26:27

Hay Lemm, is their any way to have scriptable cut scenes?
What I mean by that is a cut scene with text where; for example; someone wants to tell you a secret so they take you to a corner of the inn where you can't be overheard and tell it to you.
After the scene ends, the player character is still standing in front of said person, but you're both in the corner of said inn where the conversation finished.
Now, I realize that adding programming for end-users to use for this kind of stuff might be tricky; especially if you actually had to tell the game to walk both characters to the desired places before the secret is told.
What I'm proposing instead is something much simpler where the end-user would only need to creat the audio files of the characters walking, then put the text and files in a timeline so; for example...
(Player talks to NPC 4 (Josh)
Scene starts
Text line 1; Josh; "Hay, I know a secret that might be of interest to you in your travels. Please follow me."
Play Sound file; Walking.wav
Text line 2; Josh; "When you're climbing the mountains west of town, look for a large crater shaped kind of like a dragon's head. An old airship is still baried there."
Event code; Place main character and NPC4 in top-left corner of inn.
Scene ends.
When talking to NPC4 (Josh) again, they'd simply ask you to not forget the secret.

This would let creaters craft vary detailed scenes even if they don't have access to voice acters, while still letting the scenes be easy to program.
Well that's it for now.
And sorry for the vary rough example, I just made it up off the top of my head for this post.
Later!

2019-03-12 11:28:22

Hi,

@number 152, thanks for the post. The suggestion of a trigger  event that would move the player either to a different map or location has come up previously, which is I think a good idea, if something like this was added  it would allow you to achieve what you are suggesting simply using the existing trigger event system.   I’ll explain how, so basically with an event trigger you get the following options , you can firstly set a cut scene, plus tts to be spoken during  or after the cut scene, then you  can select a specific event trigger to fire and then have some TTS spoken after. So to achieve  what you have suggested you could set the event trigger to fire after you first speak with the NPC, maybe they say “I have something I wish to share with you, but not here somewhere quieter”, the event trigger would then fire, you could have set it so the cut scene plays footstep sounds, maybe even have some TTS speak  “that’s it follow me”, then you have the event trigger fire the ‘move player trigger’ this transports the player to the new location and then the closing event Trigger would be the inn keeper telling you about the secret location. So everything which you suggested would be possible without needing scriptable cut scenes and just using the existing event trigger system. The only restriction is TTS you want spoken during the cut scene will just start playing when the cut scene fires , so if you wanted to have the tts only spoken at certain points in the cut scene with pauses for sounds to play and then the tts to continue this wouldn’t be possible, but would also cause problems due to  people having their tts speed set differently to one another you wouldn’t be able to get the timing of TTS to sounds  playing correct without every one playing the game to have their  TTS set to the same speed. The two alternative solutions would be to voice act out the scene, although I appreciate this could become costly and won’t be an option for many people, but the simpler and cheaper option would be when creating your cut scene in which ever sound editing software you use, you could simply record the TTS you want spoken and add that into your cut scene at the appropriate points using your audio editing software, so your cut scene has the TTS built into it. Sorry for the long reply, I hope this all makes sense and it’s not total waffle, but its early here still and I haven’t yet had my full fix of caffeine, so  time for me to go make that much needed cup of tea now haha


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2019-03-12 12:15:41

Hay Lemm, thanks for getting back to me.
I do understand what you're saying, and if I just wanted to text to fire after the sounds play then yeah! I can do things like what I described!
I do have one thing to point out to you.
Most SAPI-based synths have an agreement that you have to agree to saying that you won't use the voice in any public context whatsoever; even if money never changes hands.
They do offer a way to get around that restriction, and that is to basically hire the voice talent of your SAPI synth to say the lines for you, even if it's just a recording of the synth itself.
That option won't be something everyone can use however, so you're basically telling anyone who wants to bake SAPI synth lines into cut scenes to use either Espeak, the Microsoft mobile voices, something like piko, Microsoft Sam or old sAPI 4 voices; if people still have those...
You'd basically have better luck hiring someone that's not a SAPI voice talent.
I'm not trying to be a downer, just letting you know how things are in the synth landscape now...
Anyway it's early for me to...
Later!

2019-03-12 16:47:05

I have a possible idea for scripting. I know you don't like the idea but it opens up lots of possible options.
When Sable is released, you can just add a new folder to the installation, called extensions.
Then, people can get access to an additional set of things which provides resources for scripting. Then, these people can make .js files or so.
These files go into the extensions folder, all the end user has to do is copy them. Then, the game will run all these files on start up.
These files can add options to the menu, and run code when these are executed and such things.
If an error happens, the game just reverts to not using scripts at all (some scripts might depend on others) and the game then tells the user to upload an error log somewhere.
BTW, why is SAPI speed a problem? There has to be a way to tell when SAPI is speaking or not, BGT can do this.
Thanks for all the work on the project!

2019-03-12 23:56:43

Hi,

@number 154, thanks for the quick reply, I’m pleased I wasn’t the only  one up early checking messages/posts haha. So I want to preface this post by saying  we definitely don’t condone anyone using copyrighted materials of any kind in their games they create , be it sounds, music, characters, stories or anything else. Regarding your point about the use of sappie voices  though, and I don’t claim to be an expert in the laws regarding synth copyright, but wouldn’t any recording say such as a YouTube playthrough of any audio game containing TTS  or any other publicly accessible blind  video with TTS be a breach of that copyright since the TTS is being publicly used? Again, I’m not asking to be a pain , but just wondering  where the difference would be in sappie being used in a video clip on YouTube to sappie being used in a video clip in game? again if this is something that is prohibited by copyright we do not   recommend anyone uses SAPPIE in this way. You mentioned some alternative speech which could be used in this way  though, could you use  pre-recorded jaws or NVDA TTS in a cut scene, or would that also be copyrighted? It’s not something we would use either way in our own games since we would use Sables built in features supplied in the event trigger systems if we ever used TTS in our cut scenes, but I was just asking as I was interested and thought others may be too.
@number 155. Thanks for the post. Regarding scripting, we appreciate this is something that some people do want to see, but as stated previously our focus with Sable is a set of tools where every part of the RPG audio game can be created with absolutely no coding or scripting , , allowing anyone regardless of programming knowledge full access to every aspect of creating their very own game. Regarding SAPPIE speech , you are right it is possible to detect when this has finished speaking for the purpose of firing sounds  in game once speech has finished, but the poster was asking about adding SAPPIE to a pre-recorded cut scene, which is different since the cut scene is one big audio file. So say for instance you had a cut scene play with footsteps leading down a corridor  with a door opening and slamming shut,  there is no way of sable knowing when the door slamming sound is since its part of a singular  audio track. So if you say wanted a long bit of spoken TTS which ended speaking  at the point in the track where the door slamming is heard , even if sable had a way of you specifying when the TTS started  although you could calculate when you needed the TTS to start so  it ended at the exact point in the track of the door sound, that calculation would be worked out based on your own TTS speed and someone listening to the cut scene with TTS at double the speed or half the speed would have the TTS  end either too soon or too late. Again, this isn’t an issue for in game sounds, but is a problem with cut scenes  as there is no way of sable detecting  when a certain sound happens within that audio trac,  and because of differing TTS speeds it’s just not possible  to know the point TTS would need to start in order to finish at the exact point in that audio. And keep the audio in sync with TTs throughout the cut scene for each different user playing your game.

The Ebon Sky Studios Team
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Twitter: @ebonskystudios

2019-03-13 01:12:05

The obvious solution is to do it like JRPGs have been doing it forever, which is to create a system where you page through your dialog by pressing enter. If a sound had to happen in the middle, Sable could simply play that sound, wait for it to finish, then play the appropriate next dialog. Since you page through it with enter, you only page to the next bit once you've read the current one, that alleviates that concern. I would also recommend having at least one review key to repeat the current page.

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2019-03-13 01:59:48

Hi,

@number 157, thanks for the post. For dialogues for NPC’s you can do this in sable, where the dialog is broken up into smaller sections reading it part by part and pressing enter when ready to hear the next part. You could also set event triggers to fire in between each or certain parts to play a sound or trigger event action too. although this wouldn’t be one big cut scene which plays continuously  without pressing a key to progress the scene,  but your right it would definitely be another way of creating the desired affect the original poster was after ,using existing  Sable features. There is also a built in function to be able to review previous NPC’s dialogs too, which  I agree can be handy if you missed something, or need to check what was said.

The Ebon Sky Studios Team
email: [email protected]
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/ebonskystudios/
Twitter: @ebonskystudios

2019-03-13 02:12:22

So I would do as you suggest and bake the tts voices into my cutscene and have Sable play the file as an event. I'm assuming that you can basically have the game essentially paused when certain triggers are fired? If so, then this would be the best option. I'm not sure as to the copyright issue either, but I am sure that companies would probably become aggressive and pursue litigation if they felt their products were being misused. The individual licenses for such voices are just to be used as that, individual for the needs of the person, and not commercially or public production and the like. It's a gray area to be sure.

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2019-03-13 04:26:11

Hay Lemm.
What you described in post 158 is what I was going for.
I'm not sure how jaws works as I doubt eloquence speech is based on a real person; someone correct me if I'm wrong on that one.
Regarding scripting:
I know this may seem a bit harsh, but everyone, please shut up, at least until sable is in our hands!
We have no idea what this game engine will be able to do until we can actually test it out.
Once it's in a state where end-users can start playing around with it, then we can start asking the team to maybe add this feature or that one.
They have their hands full just getting this finished, so please let them do that first.
I do understand that everyone wants this to be the most robust blind RPG creation tool on the planet; especially as this may vary likely be the only one, but please, it's still only in pre-alpha, so give it some time to cook okay?
Another problem with adding scripting into the game is that people who don't know how to do it are going to want someone out their to create a prepackaged set of tools to extend sable, and then we're going to have a BGT situation on our hands, and I'm sure you all know what that's about.
False Virus Alerts anyone?
We'll have people plugging bits of code into their games that they don't understand the true function of, and that creates even more problems for both end-users, and the sable team.
Later!

2019-03-13 15:53:57

i'm looking forward to this sable it is a interesting concept keep going bro

the bestest reward for people who are working so hard they should receive their experience of their own life.
everyone can collect in everyday.
:d

2019-03-13 17:44:50

Re: Post 160. Amen ThreeBlackNoises. I think we're getting a situation here where Ebon Sky Studios wants to sell us a legos set, but we keep trying to convince them to give us the Lego Robotics Storm stuff, before we even see the finished bricks. I've seen people do this with A Hero's Call and indeed in Swamp, the project I was actually involved with. People wanted such strange things for Swamp that were so completely outside the game play style and premise of the game, that it just left me shaking my head (things such as being able to raise, train, and show pets... in a zombie survival FPS game).
While I understand that part of the problem is that we have so few offerings, those we have we get so excited for and wish them to be the penultimate product, this just cannot be. You need to let the chef's come out with the cake first, then we'll worry about the frosting afterwards.

Kai

Spill chuck you spots!

2019-03-13 19:14:18

Hey everyone, Brian here from Ebon Sky Studios.

We are using vocal music as mentioned in the last video, to further our world building. Here is a full version of the first inn song you’ll hear.

https://youtu.be/EvIjWpi60iA

2019-03-13 20:07:43

@160, I realize where you're coming from, but by the way, a system could be added where the engine can only download scripts that were verified from the internet.

2019-03-14 19:11:47

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all the posts and support. Below are a few replies to some of the posts:
@number 159, thanks for the post, and yes Sable can pause the game whilst the trigger event is running.
@number 160, thanks for your post, also pleased the suggestion in post 158 would allow you to achieve  what you were after.
@number 162, thanks for the post, love the lego analogy  by the way haha.

Again, huge thanks to everyone for all the comments, it really is fantastic to see so many positive comments and see so much enthusiasm towards  the project.

The Ebon Sky Studios Team
email: [email protected]
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/ebonskystudios/
Twitter: @ebonskystudios

2019-03-18 22:34:01

Hi Everyone,

As mentioned last week, we had to split the latest video into two parts. we hope you all enjoyed part 1, the link to part two is below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71hXhRAAv2M&t=112s

The Ebon Sky Studios Team
email: [email protected]
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/ebonskystudios/
Twitter: @ebonskystudios

2019-03-18 23:20:47

If this is only the alpha, what will be the difference in beta? And if that difference is only beta, what difference will be in public release?

2019-03-19 03:10:07

I have a few questions. One. Will the engine be free? Two. What language does this script it’s Games in,  as in, you give instructions, but mustn’t it convert those to script? Or is it something only the engine itself understands, not an exe file.  And last, will there be any beta testers at one point or another down the line, or early public releaces, any thing of that sort?

I would rather listen to someone who can actually play the harmonica than someone who somehow managed to lose seven of them. Me, 2019.

2019-03-19 06:14:46

Wow. I love these videos. I really can't wait for the engine to come out. I've been wanting to be able to create my own RPG games for quite a few years now.

2019-03-19 06:43:32

I'm just wondering about a time frame for release, I understand if you can't give a date, but I'm wondering like, are we talking years, a month, a few months, maybe a year, etc.

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2019-03-19 07:13:38 (edited by Zarvox 2019-03-19 07:24:54)

This thing is apparently only in Alpha. Who knows what the hell the beta will be like, and god knows what on Earth the  Final release will be like. At this point, I am wondering if they are trying to achieve every single little thing before release and then it ends up being a tenure project that never gets released because they want to perfect every single thing. In other words, I don’t think they realize it is OK to make mistakes. They want nothing less than perfection and they want 1 release version only,  unless they add some new very important features after that one released versione.

2019-03-19 08:09:44

I think they feel relatively confident with it so far or they wouldn't be making videos on it, and from what I've seen so far, they have every right to feel confident about it. So if I had to guess, I'd say like within a year and a half, because yes, while it's in alpha right now, you don't really show off something until you've got it pretty well worked out.

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2019-03-19 23:13:06

Hi

@lemn,

Very well done, i enjoyed all the 8 video's so far. I am very curious on what the playthrough video will show, i know it will be the stuff you created during the video's, but am very curious on how the end result sounds. Again, keep up the awsome work, and i am very curious to see on where your first games will go.

Greetz mike

Visit the following website to see what games we have:
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2019-03-21 19:50:18 (edited by lemm 2019-03-21 19:52:46)

Hi Everyone,

Firstly, sorry for the late  reply, my weeks been pretty nonstop so far.  So as ever thanks for all the positive  comments, they are all really appreciated and really pleased so many people are enjoying the video series. there have been quite a few messages/questions which have come in and sadly I just can’t answer some of them, rather than addressing them all individually I’ll try to answer them all in  one big answer below, I’ll apologise  in  advance if any answers seem vague , but we are very weary of not wanting to over promise , so because of that I can’t confirm what will be in future iterations of sable, sure we have some future plans and additions we’d like to add, but sometimes even the best laid plans just don’t work out, so we’d much rather focus on what Sable can currently do, rather than what additions might or might not make it into future versions. . The same thing is true for release dates/timescales, we’re all avid gamers here at ebon sky studios, so we get just as excited about new projects as everyone else, we want to ourselves make our own RPG audio games, but we also want to share our development tools with  the community so you can all build your own RPG audio games too, we’re excited about seeing those games too so we do understand why people are asking about release dates. I’ve seen developers give rough indications of timescales before though, and although most people respect they are guide lines, some will take that as an exact date and because of that we just don’t want to tie ourselves  down to even a rough timescale at this stage , we all  have lives and sometimes unexpected stuff happens which can slow things down. What I will say though, is before we release Sable we want to release our first two game titles created using Sable, which will give us a chance to road test sable, apply tweaks and adjustments where necessary, but I can say by the same token, no we are not talking about a ten year wait for Sable  as someone suggested. .  We do have plans to get people onboard for beta testing of our games and also Sable, again I don’t want to give specific details on this at this stage, since we’re simply just not ready for testers yet. However, when we do start looking for beta testers, I assure you we will put out an invite to the   forum here and the mailing list too. finally, yes we are already confident in Sable, if we weren’t we wouldn’t have done the video series, but we also wouldn’t be working on our first game title either , which the whole team is currently busy working away on, and as soon as we have more details on that title we will again be sure to share that with everyone.

Again, I apologise if my answers seem vague, but we just don’t want to fall into the trap of over  promising or setting dates  which we can’t be certain of ourselves, I do assure you though when we have specific dates for Sable or are game titles we will be sure to let you all know and you can always keep up to date with news and updates by subscribing to our YouTube channel, or following us on social media.

The Ebon Sky Studios Team
email: [email protected]
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/ebonskystudios/
Twitter: @ebonskystudios

2019-03-22 21:50:32 (edited by Zarvox 2019-03-22 21:53:13)

@lim that was not too veg. That was actually an extremely well thought out response, and I feel more at rest about your team and the release of Sable. Your team knows what they are doing and are very cautious of keeping a good reputation, and I do not mean that in a bad way at all.