Hi,

@number 326  and number 327thanks for the suggestions and feedback. I think you’re both right in that it seems a huge number of people definitely prefer screen reader support over Sappi or self-voicing. I was actually surprised with just how many people wanted to see screen readers support added, as it’s something I get asked more and more these days . I tend to use Sappi myself, but then I also have the real speak solo voices that used to ship on CD with Jaws many years back and that you can set as Sappi voices too. So I appreciate that me having these over the standard windows Sappi voices maybe one of the reasons I prefer using them instead of my screen reader.
@number 327. I completely agree, I think as a developer it’s such a fine balance between giving people what they want but also wanting to produce  really high quality immersive sounds and soundscapes at the same time. I know the most obvious fix for screen reader support, is to add dialog style boxes where there is a box to click to continue, that way you know when the screen reader has stopped speaking. I’ve seen this used lots in games, but I often feel it sometimes breaks the emersion  of the game., since you mentioned Aprone, I think swamp is a great example, it’s an all-round great game anyway, but in my personal opinion I think one of the things that really makes it stand out  is the soundscapes and game emersion, the sounds in game are all really good, but also all natural    sounds too (if you are the Kai, which worked on sounds for swamp by the way, really well done on those, like I said I really like the sounds/soundscapes in the game), there was  really clever map creation too, with well placed sounds which allowed you to navigate  around the map outdoors  without radars if you wanted and with minimal TTS speech, all of which I think really adds to game emersion and atmosphere and are one of the reasons it is such a great audio game. So although I do want to add screen reader support, I want to try and add it in a way  which is less likely to break the emersion of the game for the player.

Paul

Hi.
Is there any way to give a game made in Sable a story line? From the demos, it seems like you are just thrown into the game, and you really don't know what all is going on, or why you're doing the things you're doing

hello
ok I m got message from ebon sky studios
"Hi, sorry for the late reply, we’ve  been a little non stop here. As for progress, things  are going really well with development. The game design team
are busy working away on crimson Eclipse and I’ve been busy working away on Sable over the Christmas break, adding the last couple of features and doing
some bug testing (which I’m actually working on this evening too). I’m hoping  to put out a new video  once  I’m finished bug testing.  so there should
be a new video Somewhen  this month.   I’ll be sure to post  the video  here on our face book page  once its ready,   so keep a watch out for that. Thanks
as ever for the continued support."

Hay Paul, glad to hear things are going vary well on your end.
I do have a small question regarding story building in SABLE.
You said that prerecorded speech can be added to characters when they speak, but that TTS could also be used.
I wonder though, if one wished it, could they add short soundclips to characters, but still use TTS for the actual diologue?
I think I asked a variant of this question before, but specifically, can you have text that is spoken by TTS, but, as the player scroles through it, could small sound clips play that could indicate the emotion of the speaker, but not get in the way of the TTS?
Examples would be for if a character sighs because they're frustrated about something, or grunt in anger.
I know this is an odd question to start out the year, but I figured I'd ask it and get an answer so I could start planning out how I'd develop my test RPG.
Also, one final question, or rather, a proposition.
Sometime after your first game and SABLE go up for purchis, might it be possible to offer a bundle option to get both at a slight discount?
Well I'm truly done now.
I hope you all had a good holiday season.
Later!

hi,

@number 334. it’s not something currently in Sable but it’s a good idea, I think mannaman might use something like that, although I haven’t played it in a while so I could be wrong and I haven’t had time to try mannaman two yet). although it’s definitely a good idea, it’s not likely to make it into the prototype release though since that’s pretty much feature complete now, but I’ll add it to the list of possible future additions. As for pricing, I want to avoid confirming any specifics as to how this will work, simply as we haven’t yet finalised this for Crimson Eclipse yet. It could be difficult to bundle Crimson Eclipse with Sable, since we want to release crimson Eclipse first, then sometime after that we will release Sable, but this will be the prototype version,  to give  people a chance to try Sable first hand, but also for us to gather feedback on the engine, what people like/dislike about   it and also  just generally how well received this type of development tool is within the audio game community.

as ever, thanks everyone for the messages, continued support and suggestions they are all much appreciated.

Paul

yeah, any more? I'm really keen to try this out!

If there were any news, then I'm sure you would have heard about it.

Hi Everyone,

We’ve just uploaded a new video for you all, thanks to the previous poster for putting up the link (you beat me to it hahaha). Sorry it’s been a little quiet from us recently, the whole teams been nonstop busy working away . I’ve been busily adding the last couple of features to Sable and the Sable prototype is now finally feature complete. I’ve been keen to finish the work I’m doing on Sable so we can move into the next phase, take Sable from pre alpha into alpha and start some external QA testing on Sable, we’re almost at that stage, not quite yet but there is some info about this at the end of the video  and as soon as we do start looking for those testers we’ll be sure to post the invite out here and on our social media pages. Anyway, back to the latest video, it shows off some previously unseen features and some new features too. The video is a little longer than usual , as it shows off quite a few bits. Its planned to be a two part video, this is part one, I’ll record and get out part 2 in the next  couple of weeks which will be a play  through of everything created in this video. Link to the video for anyone who hasn’t already got it is below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CktNdGcV86A

Hope you all enjoy this latest  video, I had fun making it and look forward to doing the playthrough of everything created in the video.

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

You can be sure I'll be signing up to test Sabel. Best of luck.

really enjoyed the latest video, but I do have two questions.
One. Will it be possible to insert randomization where doing so makes sense? Four instance, inserting   1-3 in place of a single value when choosing how many health potions to put inside a corpse, So that the player may get either 1 2 or three potions.
And or, something similar to how the merchant rarity works, where are you can also have a percentage chance of receiving the item. Four instance if you wanted a player to search several barrels until they found an item as part of the quest, But wanted to make it so that the proper barrel is different each time the game is played for replayability.

two. would it be possible to create a way for A map editor to insert a beacon at a location that can be tracked by the player? Either something like what swamp does, hot and cold, using sound cues and or A simple directional read out(For instance) "North East 147 "with increasing accuracy as you get closer.
it's a powerful navigation tool that can be very useful, particularly in large or complicated maps.
thanks for reading.

Hi Everyone,

Pleased to hear so many people enjoyed the video I posted yesterday. Thanks to everyone who has expressed an interest in testing too, its really nice to see people so excited about Sable and as soon as we are ready for creating our group of external QA testers we’ll be sure to post here and on our social media pages. Below I’ll answer the questions which have come in:
@number 346, pleased you enjoyed the video. I really like your idea of randomisation for amount of loot that can be found, it’s not possible at present but I’ll definitely add it to our list of potential future ideas. Although I like the suggestion of the location of key items moving each time a game is played, I’m not sure how I could implement something like that into  Sable, but its food for thought since I think anything which can add replay ability into a game is a good idea. I know in Entombed, that its randomisation and procedurally  generated maps are one of the elements which added a lot of replay ability to the game. As for beacons, yes this is currently possible in Sable. You can place beacons wherever you like on a map, they let off a small radar sound when you are close to them. There is also something called the ‘player map’, which you access by pressing ‘M’, this will show any key locations and placed beacons in the current area/level, it also shows their relative direction from the player (say north 23, east 14). You can also select  an item from the player map to track it, similar to how you can in swamp, whilst tracking that object you can press t for updated tracking information where it will read your current relative position to the tracked object (say north 2, east 5). I’ll maybe try and show this in the play through video that I’ll put out in the next couple of weeks.
@number 347, thanks for the post. At present it isn’t possible to have the radar sound continue to loop once you reach the object in question. The reason I did this, is I found whilst the radar sound was playing  it made it slightly more difficult to hear things like the contents of the container  you are searching, or to hear clearly the NPC’s dialog or to read a description of something you are looking at in game. it’s something I played around with quite a lot during the earlier stages of sables development to try and find the best solution, the objects radar sound cutting off seemed to work best, plus it seemed to work as a good audio queue too that you had reached the item you had been looking for too.  I think this is one of those areas that when we start beta testing Sable or put out crimson eclipse we will monitor feedback to see how well the current set up works or whether  people would prefer  the option of constant radars, since it would involve probably having to play around with the sound code to ensure the radar sound is manageable, since you are when at the middle of the object at its loudest point of the radar sound.

Thanks as ever for all the positive comments and continued enthusiasm towards the project.

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