2021-01-31 00:42:00

Hi guys. Long time no post. Something that caught my attention last week, was the release of Alt-Frequencies on the Nintendo Switch. It's very much playable, but since the Switch has no built-in TTS, the menus don't read, which is the only drawback. That got me thinking though, about the possibilities of ways to play audiogames on the Switch. Games like Control, and Hitman 3, received cloud versions on the platform, which is an approach that's actually working pretty well from what I've heard so far. As for how audiogames would work, I can't say, because I don't know how much latency there might be, but it sounded like a great idea in my head.
Who knows though. Maybe I'll be browsing the EShop for deals, and stumble across another audiogame. A guy can dream, right?

2021-01-31 11:24:38

Wow. I didn't knew that alt-Frequencies has been released on the Switch. That's really cool.

Best regards SLJ.
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2021-01-31 11:48:00

does the switch have tts support?

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2021-01-31 13:04:56

soren wrote:

does the switch have tts support?

Seriously? Read post 1 again, and please tell me how you missed the answer to your question.

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2021-01-31 13:20:05

no build in tts does not mean no support for tts.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.

2021-01-31 17:19:58 (edited by defender 2021-01-31 17:20:57)

It seems kind of pointless until they add TTS to the main system, and Nintendo has a bad track record with accessibility.  If the games them selves are self voiced it would fix the problem from that end at least.
Before that, I don't see blind people buying a Switch just for a few games they can play on other systems already, regardless of the joycons.
Still, it is cool for sure.

2021-01-31 20:35:06

i mean minecraft has a tts and i plan on making a homebrew screen reader one day for it so until nintendo does i dont see a reason to port them

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2021-02-01 09:43:26

soren wrote:

no build in tts does not mean no support for tts.

There are no official support for TTS on the Switch. However, nothing stops the developers from making menu narration by recording a TTS and put that into their games.

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.
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2021-02-01 22:40:22

Will the Switch ever get more in terms of Vision accessibility aside from Zoom?

2021-02-02 09:21:50

Rich_Beardsley wrote:

Will the Switch ever get more in terms of Vision accessibility aside from Zoom?

Properly not.

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.
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2021-02-02 11:02:12

well, I have been fancying about what it would take to make an audiogame for the nes, currently searching for ways to build roms in C instead of nes assembly. Anyway, what one could do is literarely embed a lightweight tts engine inside the game itself, like flite, for example, then redirect the generated samples to the sound chip, like the sample playback channel on the nes. I considered the eSpeak once, but it is kinda too big, plus it's not using standard C anyway, so harder to port it to such a low-level platform.
Yeah, for real hardware, even the flite might be overkill, but I don't think this would actually go anywhere, maybe just a research paper or whatever. Plus, if someone would build something on my findings, I bet everyone using it will do so with an emulator, so yeah, no big deal.

2021-02-02 13:47:00

@11. this is interesting. I would like to see what happens with this data.

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2021-02-02 18:18:33

well, what will happen with it is I will publish my findings in a kind of semiformal, technical essei in the public domain or something. I will try to provide as much info as I can about the workings of a nes, how would this limit or impower audiogames, ideas on how one can make an audiogame for this platform, complete with tts engines, mainly flite.
On that subject, I think that should be all I do, I will let other enthusiasts tinker with my findings after that. Note, however, this might take a lot of time, as I am burdoned with school and other stuff besides, like too other nearly completed projects, at least one of which shall be released to the community.

2021-02-02 21:51:30

What about RH? Those voices aren't too big are they?

2021-02-02 22:04:02

not too big by today's standards, but big enough for a rom to not overfit the memory of the real hardware by a few bytes or so, but entire KB or more. Anyway, rhvoice is made in c++, thing that is kinda slow for this platform, even C needs very weird optimisations to run properly, like not too many global vars, constants should be static, make your functions always inline or not at all, make your loops almost always predictable, so that the compiler can perform loop unrolling, etc. That is, one must do that only if one wants performance. Otherwise, one can just mess around for a while. Besides, about the rhvoice, I see I'd need to make some modifications to the infrastructure itself, for me to be able to just grab the spoken audio as a sample buffer. So, in that alone, one can see it perhaps needs more than the standard/ancy C level of native functions, think that the nes won't provide anyway. I will presume flite works untill I can actually get to compiling the static library, voice packs, etc, maybe then I will think otherwise, upon seeing it failing. First, however, I must learn a thing or two about the nes, plus I would need an accessible emulator with a debugger included or something.

2021-02-03 01:05:07

FCEUX and Mesen both have debugger tools available, and they are both accessible (though Mesen is the better of the two due to its high accuracy).

NES resources are available at http://nesdev.com/

2021-02-03 02:43:56

is it possible at some point you can provide an audio clip?
like, when all the hard stuff is done and over with.
this is grate stuff your doing. keep it up.

I am a divine being. I can be called a primordial deity, but that might be pushing it, a smidge. I am the only one of my kind to have ten tails, with others having nine. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I have ascended my own race.

2021-02-03 02:54:32

i'm wondering how its possible

i am a system, i have headmates, and that is my life, and my discord is rings2006wilson#8609

2021-02-03 12:19:15

yes, I maybe could at some point, now am trying to make flite talk, don't know how to send the sample buffers to the dpcm channel. Otherwise, I think I could make it talk a message or something already, like press a to start game, etc.

2021-02-05 01:57:02

Wow. This is actually generating discussion. I like that. To get back to the Switch though, TLOU 2 demonstrated that a console doesn't necessarily have to have built-in TTS, as that game uses its own TTS from what I can tell.
While it's true that Nintendo hasn't exactly had Sony or Microsoft levels of accessibility, the potential is there. The Switch, in particular, has some "accidental accessibility" features, like navigational cues on the home screen, different sounds to indicate which icon you've selected, "Settings, Controler Config, Eshop, etc. I think we're seeing the beginnings of accessible mainstream gaming on the platform, but the idea of playing an audiogame like Paladin of the Sky, Manamon, Super Liam, etc, seems perfect for the Switch. Not to mention, dev kits cost only $400 or so from what I've been able to research, and Nintendo has been extremely indie friendly as of late. So much so, that they have presentations specifically for indies.
I'M curious to see how far you guys go with these ideas you've been discussing about the NES as well. I'd love to contribute more than just discussion and ideas, but I don't know an ounce of code, and I wouldn't know which language to begin with.

2021-02-05 06:09:47

Dev kits cost $400, but it's a lot more than that to get a game published. I forget the exact price offhand, but it ain't cheap. I know that much.

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2021-02-05 06:18:54

what you do is port the game, then publish the nsp to where ever, so the rair person, aka me, can test it

i am a system, i have headmates, and that is my life, and my discord is rings2006wilson#8609

2021-02-08 22:23:02

At post 22, I would love Switch ports of games like A Hero's Call, Shadow Rine (in english,) maybe even BK 2/3.
Thinking out loud here, I know BGT seems to get a lot of crap these days, but as its language is similar to that of C+, I wonder if ports of BGT games would be possible.

2021-02-09 00:17:50

@20, I think that was because Sony didn't allow third party devs to use their TTS on the PS 4. Whether or not the PS 5 let's Sony's TTS be used I'm not sure

2021-02-09 21:59:44

That's true. I would go so far as to say that TLOU 2's screen reader was better than Sony's though, so either way things worked out well. To be fair though, the Switch and PS4/5 are completely different Architectures, so it might not even be possible for game devs to build a screen reader into Switch games.