ok then mate @300

also, one more question, is there a way to set a percentage for enemy encounters, and if so could I set something like 0.25 % if i had like 18 different types of enemies or something

Hi Everyone,

I’ll try and answer some of the questions which have come in:
@number 298, thanks for the continued support  and positive comments, it really is great to see people so excited about the project. Although you can use the inventory outside of battle for things like potions and other stuff, I’ve even seen test maps which have had a player pick up a letter in game, which could then be selected from the players inventory and then read (the letter did disappear after it was read, since items in an inventory are removed once used, but I liked the idea and the clever usage of the item creation tool). As for manually giving  an npc something from the inventory or selecting a key for a door, this isn’t currently possible. We’ve set sable up so that this process is automatic and therefore if you approach and interact with an npc which you have something for or a locked door you have a key to , sable will automatically find and use or give that item, to save the player having to sort through tons of items or keys to find the right one for the situation.
@number  299, thanks for the post and positive comments, as mentioned above its great to see people so excited about the project. Regarding release dates, , I’ve seen developers give  rough release dates  before, although I appreciate  most people respect
These are just estimations others will take these  as exact timescales. I completely understand you are not asking for a release date and just a ball park figure, but our company policy is just to avoid discussing anything regarding release dates until we have something concrete to report, as even with the best laid plans things can come up outside of anyone’s control. I hope you can appreciate  my answer  and our reasoning, and as mentioned above we really are grateful for your continued support and positive comments.
@number 300 hahaha, wow they must have a really hard stance on sales and marketing wherever you work. I think your business model may make Sable worth millions, but I’m not sure we’d have any customers left to sell it to
@number 302. Thanks for the post. You can set the enemy encounter rate for each map, but it’s not entered as a percentage. You enter in a value, this can be any number you like, if you set this as 100, this  means you have a 1 in 100 chance each time you move to encounter an enemy. As mentioned this isn’t a percentage, but nothing would stop you working out  what the equivalent percentage would be. in my above example  of 1 in 100, in percentage terms this would for example translate into one percent. There are also other things you could do to alter the encounter chance in your game. Firstly there is an event trigger which alters the encounter rate, so you might have this fire after you walk into a cave,  then the encounter rate increases, or maybe you anger some NPC , who in turn does something to increase the amount of enemies you encounter . the second thing you can do is you can assign enemy bands to appear only on certain terrain types. for example you could have a forest with a dirt path running through it, you could set it so you only encountered enemies if you leave the dirt path and head into the surrounding forest, or maybe have water spirits or something assigned to river terrain types and make the player cross a river or two in the forest.
@number 303. Although I can’t promise scalable enemies will make it into Sable, I think if we did go the route of adding an option to allow scalable  enemies, I think the way to offer the most flexibility would be adding the option into the enemy creator tool, that way the creator could select it for whichever enemies they chose. This way it could be for just boss enemies, or all enemies, or just a selection of enemies if you wanted so that you could if you wanted create scalable areas/maps, where enemies work like this and then other areas where they are not. I really like your suggestion of a boss/enemy phasing into different forms in battle, although this isn’t currently possible it’s a really good idea and maybe it could work as some kind of status affect which fires when the enemy reaches a certain  HP level. Like I said it’s not currently possible, but it’s a good idea and something I’ll mention to the team. Chaining events /battles, isn’t currently possible. As some alternatives, although not ideal and exactly what you are after you could for the battles have the encounter  rate set to one so with each step you start a new battle, as mentioned in my point above to number 302, you could have the encounter rate alter maybe for just one room or corridor  so its only a small part of the map this happens and  could have slightly different terrain  types, each with different enemy bands assigned to them so you know the player might for example be facing a more deadly foe each time. With the prologue bit you suggested, if you didn’t want the player actually moving or doing anything in between each scene and just wanted these scenes to run one after another  you could simply make one big cutscene incorporating  all these scenes and environment changes happening in that cut scene. I appreciate these solutions aren’t exactly what you were after, and the cut scene thing would take a lot of work with sound editing so might not work, but was just trying to offer solutions using sables current tools.

As ever, huge thanks to everyone for all the positive comments

Paul

Hi everyone,

Sorry for my late reply, but As ever thanks to everyone for all the positive comments. It’s great to still see so many great suggestions coming in, we’ve received so many fantastic ideas and suggestions throughout this whole topic. As mentioned previously , I can’t promise all suggestions will make it into Sable and please do remember it is just a prototype so not everything will make it into Sable’s initial release, but that’s not to say that providing Sable is successful that there won’t be future releases/additions. So Please do keep any suggestions coming in though, as although I can’t promise they’ll make it in to the initial release  we keep a note of all viable  and good suggestions which come in. As ever I’ll try and answer below some of the questions from previous posters: @number  306, thanks for the positive comments. Currently it isn’t possible to have someone  join your battle just as a one off. the only way it would be possible at present is to either have an npc actually join the players party or using the status affect summon, but  its another good suggestion. Regarding having a character turn on their own party, this can be done using status affects, the only restriction is you couldn’t get it to fire based on the characters HP it would have to be cast on the enemy, or as part of an on hit attack/ability. However, a similar suggestion came up from Threeblacknoises a few posts back  when he mentioned having a way of making an enemy or boss phase forms mid battle when they drop below a certain hp level. Although this isn’t currently in sable, I like the idea of status affects which trigger based on HP. as with all suggestions, I can’t confirm whether it will definitely  make it into Sable, but its an interesting idea which would open up the possibility for some unique mechanics.
@number 307, thanks for the positive comments.  there isn’t an event trigger currently which will allow you to  lose a battle and continue afterwards, but it’s a good idea. I’ve seen similar mechanics in games before, where you have to battle someone, but can’t win the fight but it extends or opens up some storyline by  the player losing that fight

As ever thanks everyone for all the posts and positive comments.

Paul

The irony of your name is not lost on me.

yeah, what’s it coded in? because whatever it is, it just  moved up to my second favourite programming language behind pure basic

@BGTLover: What on earth are you on? under what clause are they obligated to release the engine just because they're discussing and presenting it? Just because you want your steak now and can't wait for them to even slaughter the cow, doesn't mean you're going to get it, nor is this demanding immature attitude of yours constructive. They never gave a promised release date, they have said many times that they were going to focus on developing the engine for their own company title first. I just can't believe some of the whiny entitlism from you. GTFU.

Kai

@314: now that I reread my post, I realise it sounded abit harsh, quite demanding, imature and, somehow, not like my usual writing stile at all. I truely think that the problem for my message not coming out the way I want it to is because of what is called a language barier.
You see, I am not an native english speaker, I don't know to write in english verry well. To test if I am spelling a word correctly, I write it on my iphone or laptop or whatever and I let vo pronounce it. If the pronounciation is wrong, I know I missspelled it and if this thing happens to a word or expression in my posts, I try to find a similar one to fit the gap, and, obviously, this is where it gets tricky and the reason for this missunderstanding.
In the post in my head, the main idea sounded something like "if you advertise it with those videos and you gathered so many posts that are full of excitment for it, you are indeatted to the comunity to at least release a beta, even if it doesn't have all features it could have etc" but I don't know how to properly spell indeated and I tried to replace it with obligated and clauses and all that shit and, as you can clearly see, the replacement transmited a wrong message, making it sound more demanding and arogant than necessary, projecting a wining, imature and spoiled child like atitude which is clearly not what I intended to happen.

Hi,
Sorry for the late reply, as ever thanks to everyone who posted and for the positive comments. . I’ll answer questions below. Since my reply to BGT lover was longer than I expected and is a huge wall of text, my answers are not in the order that questions came in, so that way I could leave the wall of text replies until the end of the post. Again, sorry for all my long replies below, I think I’d obviously had far too much caffeine/cups of tea before I sat  down to write my reply hahaha:
-@number 317. it’s not possible in the current version of Sable but it is a good suggestion. Even though it isn’t possible there are still ways you could prevent a player accessing  areas  until they are roughly a certain level with the current tools in Sable. One method, which I’ve seen in various main  stream games, is add an enemy/boss blocking a path to a certain area. When the player first encounters the enemy they very quickly realize the enemy is far too higher level/strong to defeat , and therefore flee the battle choosing a different path and coming back at a point they feel they  have leveled sufficiently to successfully battle and defeat the enemy and then be able to access the area the enemy was blocking. The other method is with keys or quests, you can like in the video series set  for example a quest where an npc sets you a task  and completing that task will grant you access to a certain area or map. As a developer, you should have an idea of what  minimum level a player will be for each of your areas ( this will help with providing good balance to battle/enemies in your game), then you can simply make sure the task you need to complete is  in an area where the player would need to be a sufficient level to battle the enemies there. Then when you complete the task for the NPC you know the player will be of roughly that level if not higher, since they wouldn’t have survived the battles otherwise. As for choosing item drops based on level, it’s not strictly possible, but again, as mentioned previously you should have an idea of what level your players should be for each level so you can  choose the locations of containers/merchants accordingly, also you can specify what enemies drop, so you can set higher powered item drops for higher level enemies. I appreciate they are not exact fixes to what you were after, but wanted to offer some possible solutions. I do like your idea of areas which can only be accessed based on the exact level of the player, it would work also well with a suggestion from  threeblacknoises who suggested enemies  which level dependent on players level. Again, as ever I can’t confirm whether these will make it into sable , but are definitely good suggestions.
-@ number 309, I completely agree with stirlock, there really is some irony in your name I’ll try and  answer some of your questions/points. As for platforms, yes it is windows only,  writing cross platform software is  time consuming, I also don’t think a design tool like Sable would be effective on a mobile platform, using a touch screen to build an entire game through a menu driven system like sable would just be impractical . we chose windows, simply as it is probably the most widely used system by audio gamers.  As for feature creep, as mentioned in my previous post although we’re happy to keep seeing suggestions coming in and make notes of all good suggestions I pointed out they would be unlikely to make it into the initial release exactly because we didn’t want to fall prey to feature creep. as for your comment saying you thought we were being reluctant to discuss specific details on  topics such as  compiling/how game distribution will work  etc. sorry you feel like this, I’ve always strived to be as upfront and open with all posts which have come in. as mentioned in previous posts however we want to avoid discussing anything which isn’t either 100%concrete , or not yet in Sable as sometimes plans can change and the last thing we want to do is over promise or commit ourselves. . Please do remember  the current version of Sable is a prototype  designed to find out whether people would be interested in a  set of development tools like Sable, to give the community a chance to test our current tools and for us to take onboard feedback and suggestions from the community  for things you would like to see in Sable. Yes the prototype is written in BGT , this version will be the first version of Sable to be released, but our intention providing the prototype of Sable is well received is to release a non BGT version of sable written in C# (, there are no dates for this, again we want to avoid discussing future plans and  focus on what is here and now, which is the Sable prototype, as not only in development can plans change but also feedback from the community  can impact   and shape development, based on what people want to see  in Sable, and how popular our first game title is and how well received the Sable  prototype is, I’m sure people will enjoy it, but if no one likes it, then plans would have to change). As for Phillips message from the other week, yes I saw that, but  I don’t think he’s officially supported BGT for some while as the last update was many years ago after he made the BGT engine free.  Sure, BGT has its limitations, but let’s not forget there are some great games written with BGT such as manimun  1 (and  now mannaman 2 as well, which I look forward to playing when I get some time free You mentioned about menus, I’m not sure how that shows it is BGT , since due to the complex nature of Sable and that its creation is very menu driven I needed as much flexibility with menus as possible so  I wrote the menu  code/class myself and they are not the default  dynamic menus from BGT, In this way I can create whatever style/type  of menu I like, so not all menus in sable are edit field to edit field, it  just uses that type for some of the ‘creation tools’ menus, since it seemed the most logical  and practical approach for those particular menus. Don’t get me wrong All of the built in stuff in BGT is handy, but if you want true flexibility you are always better off writing your own class’s or functions to fit more uniquely with your own projects, rather than just relying on what is built into BGT, this allows much more flexibility and opens up many more possibilities . Again,  I appreciate BGT has its limitations and some issues (which is the reason for the move to C# and why only the prototype is written using BGT ), but I think the main thing to remember with BGT was,  that I don’t believe it was ever meant to be the be all and end all of  audio game creation, it is just a tool, and often the most important thing with tools is how they are used. i also think many people were introduce to coding for the very first time through BGT, and then used it as a stepping stone language to go on and  then learn a full language, I’m sure if we never had BGT we may not have some of the developers we now do, as BGT was the inspiration for some people to go learn a new full language. I  respect Philips decision to no longer officially  support BGT, but let’s not forget all the hard and good work he put into an engine which  has been free for years and most people have not paid a penny for. so I take my hat off to Phillip and wish him all the best with his new projects.
@number 312, thanks for your continued enthusiasm towards the project, regarding languages hopefully you’ve seen my answer above.
@number 313, I completely  understand there can be mis interpretations when people write in a language not native to their country, but to address your point, this is exactly why we have been reluctant to discuss anything not already concrete , or things like release dates  as the last thing we want is to over promise or commit ourselves and have people feel we are indebted/obligated, sometimes plans change in development, also in personal life too, recently my dad was taken ill and I’ve been back and forward to hospital with him. I only mention this just to point out you just can’t plan for everything in life.  Despite everything though,  I’ve still managed to make time to carry on working on Sable/crimson eclipse, create and put out videos to let
everyone know we are still working away and also tried to be active on here and answer all questions which have come In, so don't worry we are all still busy working away on Crimson Eclipse, despite what life throws at us.

Again, as ever thanks everyone for the positive comments and continued support and sorry for my wall of text, i promise less caffeine next time i write replies hahaha

Paul

Morning,

Thanks for the reply Ty. I’m only on my first cup of tea, and I haven’t even started it yet, so we should be fine  hahaha.  Your right there is some code which allows the use of both Jaws, NVDA (and I think windows eyes too), which is really simple to add into the code. The bigger issue with adding the support, is that there is no way of the code/Sable knowing when the screen reader has stopped speaking, or what speed the users speech is set too. This causes a problem if you want an event or something to happen directly after a screen reader has finished speaking. An example would be if you want a cut scene to fire  directly after the speech has finished, or in Sable I have a piece of code which fades the background music and ambience when a spoken dialog comes up, then when the text is finished it gently fades the music/ambience back to the usual game volume. This becomes tricky if you don’t know when  the screen reader has finished speaking.  The most common fix to this in games is to have all dialog  boxes stay open  until the user clicks a  continue /ok to close the dialog  box, sable doesn’t currently do this as the downside of having to click each time can break the emersion of the game somewhat, also it’s a fairly big job to go through over thirty thousand lines of code to change all occurrences of speech  to add  the ok button to continue. the one alternative, which I’ve used in previous games I’ve worked on is to have something where if a player selects to  use a screen reader, a setting comes up which allows the code to calculate the users rough screen reader speed. I always preface this  with a warning that Sappi support is recommended, but if the user prefers screen readers they can continue, it then reads the user a short bit of text and asks the user to press a key at the end of the spoken text . this way you can calculate based on word number and time taken the rough speed of the users screen reader. This formula is then applied to the code, so that it calculates each time screen reader speech is played roughly how long it would take for the screen reader to finish speaking and then plays or  performs whatever its meant to at the end of that time. obviously it’s not 100% accurate due to word length being slightly different  in each dialog box, but it gives a rough idea that’s pretty close to what it should be. Not sure which option I will go for, but it is really the last essential feature which needs to be added for the sable prototype and what I am working on next. Would be good to hear which method people would most like. As ever I can’t confirm which option I will go for in the prototype, but would be good for peoples feedback, if not for the prototype for the next version of Sable.

Anyway, time for me to go enjoy that now slightly cold cup of tea hahaha
paul

Wait, what other games have you worked on?

@323 this is what I did for screen readers.

Modified mason's dlg script.

Added a timer in which the user can set in milliseconds an average time they think the screen reader will take to read the message. Although, I really think your idea of that screen reader bpm is genuis.

What I did next, is add a bollian variable called extend, which is another timer. So the user can set the time for that too.

In the script, if you think a message will be longer than the user's average, you can add the boolian variable to attach the extended time onto the message.

What you could also do, is instead of having a boolian of just adding one extend period, you could make an integer variable, and you coud make a much smaller extend time, and multiply that and add it onto the average time. This is handy so you can assign more measurements. Instead of just having average and extend, you have average and extend, with extended being multiplied so each message that is a little longer than others has a better timer value.

But your idea is genuis. If you wanted to, you could yourself calculate each average with each speaking rate increasing by 5, and the user could select their speaking rate and the game already has the average for them. This is a lot of work on your part though. Also different synthesizers speak at different speeds, bu maybe the rate 10 eloquence works at rate 5 eSpeak?