Hi,

@number 377, you’re right they are all good characters, the more I think about his books though the more other characters suddenly spring to mind that  I love too, but to avoid taking the thread off topic I’ve dropped you a private message regarding Terry Pratchett. So getting back to the video i posted earlier today, to answer your question, when I created the book I selected its item type as ‘reusable’, in this way the player could read the book, but the book then not disappear. I could have created it as a standard item, given it the book opening sound as its ‘use  sound’ and applied some specific using text to be spoken when the book is used. This would have given the same effect as in the video of someone opening a book and then reading the text in the book, so would work the same as in the video, but without the book closing  sound at the end and when the book had finished reading it would be deleted from the players inventory like any other standard item.  However, standard items and key items which complete tasks and open doors etc, are two different things, so you couldn’t make for instance a standard item a requirement of opening something or completing  a quest. It’s another good suggestion though, it’s not likely to make it into the first release of sable since we’re keen to move onto the next phase with Sable where we start to look for QA testers, but I’ll definitely add it to our list of potential future ideas from the community as I think it could again make for some interesting mechanics.

Paul

So watching that video brought to mind a question.
Would it be possible to have a book or NPC teach a character specific spells or skills? Coming up with lots of neat ideas for my teddy ruxpin game lol.

Hi.
Wow. Thanks a lot for yet an other great video.

Hi Everyone,

Really pleased everyone’s enjoying the video we posted yesterday. I think this was probably my favourite sable video I’ve recorded. Thanks as ever for all the positive comments, I’ll try and answer some of the questions below:
@ number 380. Pleased to hear you have lots of ideas already for your game, hopefully watching the video and seeing some of Sables features helps give you ideas for what you could include. As for your question regarding abilities , it isn’t currently possible to assign abilities through an item the player collects. Currently new abilities or skills can only be learnt through levelling up.
@number 381. Really pleased to hear you found the topic and are excited about the project. One of the reasons we wrote Sable, was exactly for the reasons you mentioned. Coding a game from scratch can be a hugely time consuming  task, not to mention stressful at times too. .. although There are lots of tools in the sighted community which allow people to create games from scratch with little to no coding knowledge, but there’ is very little similar to that in the audio games community, So we built Sable so anyone could try turning their hand to game development even if they have no coding or scripting experience . it’s particularly encouraging though to see people such as yourself who already code but see the benefits of a tool like sable and how it can cut down on the time it would take to code a game from scratch.
@number 383. Thanks for the post. Crafting isn’t something that is currently possible, but I know the suggestion has come up a few times and is something people are keen to see. Random map generation and loot drops has come up before too. although I really like the idea it’s a  very big change to implement into sable and also adds the extra complication of making games more difficult to balance from a creator stand point  due to not knowing what the player may or may not find. I do however agree it’s a good idea in principal   and I know it works really well in the audio game entombed and I think is one of the reasons the game has so much replay ability.

Huge thanks again to everyone who’s watched the video from yesterday and for all the positive comments and posts.

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

Hi

@number 385 thanks for the post, to answer your questions: 1. Yes sized  transitions (like the large gate in the video) can be set as an auto transition, which will mean the moment the player stands on the transition they will  be automatically taken to wherever the transition leads too, without them having to press the action key. in my door sounds folder in sable I have a sound file which is tiny and has no sound which I use if I ever want no sound played. There is however a fade out of the old map music and then a fade into the new map music when you go through a automatic transition.  2. There are already some radar systems built into sable, I just have them turned off in the demo videos since we haven’t finalized which sounds we will be using yet, plus since my demo maps have all been small I haven’t really needed them. in sable there are currently three radar options, one where you can just turn it off, for people who don’t like the distraction of radars. the second radar option is more like the manimun radar system you described where you have a radar sound constantly playing  when you are near or next to a wall, which fades as you move further away, or louder as you get closer.  The third radar option is a little more similar to a hero’s call in that rather than having a constant radar playing, you just get a single tone play once when a space opens  up  next to you, or if  you are walking with an open space around you and then suddenly a wall appears next to you. I’m not sure I explained that well, since its late here and I think my brains turning  off hahaha, but if you’ve played a hero’s call I believe they use something similar to what I’m trying to describe, the idea for this final option is to keep radar sounds down to a  minimum. On a separate note, the other day you made a suggestion for NPC’s which have TTS  voice lines to be able to add a sound clip to their voice lines to maybe accentuate the NPC’s emotions, but without giving voice lines to the NPC. I was playing around in the NPC code the other day, and thought I’d have a play around with your idea. well hopefully you’ll be pleased to know I added it in. although I might expand on it in the future  with further options, for the moment you can select any of an NPC’s voice lines and add a sound clip if you like to any of their voice lines (this is totally optional for people not wanting to do this by the way, its just an extra option accessed through the object editor tool wanting to add sound clips as well as the TTS). It will play when the NPC starts speaking  and cut off when  they finish speaking. So as you suggested you might have the sound of some NPC weeping as they tell of their sad plight, or the sound of an NPC sighing as they deliver you bad news. Thanks for the suggestion, I hope that gives you something like what you were after for that.

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

I apologize if this has been asked and answered already, but I don't have the time at the moment to go through older posts.
Have you guys figured out how we can distribute our products? Will it be one of those where you can only play if you have sable, or is there something else?
I'm excited for this, and I have a bunch of ideas already.
Something that came up as I was typing, will it be possible to customize characters beyond class choice? I mean, name, gender, maybe even a physical description? I am a very detail oriented person, so little things are what I'm looking for.

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all the posts and positive comments. I’ll answer below some of the questions which  have come in. my replies are not in order of the posts, since my reply to number 387 was longer than the rest, so I put that response at the bottom, to save people having to read through that first  before they could read answers to their own questions.

@number 388. Thanks for the post, really pleased to hear you are excited about the project, hope you’ve enjoyed all the videos. Regarding distribution, its just a little too early to confirm details on that at this stage, but once we are nearer to Sable’s release we will be able to confirm the finer points such as distribution. What I can tell you now though, is that our first game title Crimson Eclipse which will be completely created using Sable will be a stand alone game and will not require you to download Sable to play it. Regarding  party member details, such as names gender and description. As a creator you can specify  whether you want your game to have set characters, where you the creator will decide on names, class and gender for each party member and the player can not change these. It is also possible though to set your game up so the player can pick their party, so the player can pick name, class and gender for each party member. You did mention descriptions, at present its not possible to give starting party members descriptions,  but if you meet NPC’s which join your party mid game you can give these descriptions.
@number 389.  Pleased to hear you liked the sound clip feature in the latest video. As for previous maps I’ve built, although I have created loads of maps for testing, they normally aren’t very well planned out as I just build them as I go, without any real pre thought as to the end result, so the end test game is often quite random, so I’m not sure they would make good video show cases  of what sable is fully capable of. I think at some point showing off radars and more navigation systems would be a good idea though, I’m just not sure if we’ll save this for a crimson eclipse video demo (sorry I don’t know when these will start) or whether we’ll show them in another Sable video.
@number 387. Pleased my radar descriptions made sense yesterday. I think good navigation tools in audio games are essential. I really like the radars in AHC and in manimun 1 (it’s probably the same in Manimun 2, but I’ve been so flat out working on sable I haven’t gotten a chance to try the second one yet). I also really like some of the techniques swamp uses too. I think what is nice with swamp and one of the things that makes it so immersive is you can run around freely outside without getting lost or bumping into walls all without even having radars turned on. I think in  Swamp the maps are very well designed , with lots of points of interest and audio queues throughout the maps which allow you to quickly get your bearings. The other feature I like in swamp is that when you get near a building, it announces that building before you actually reach it and also says which part of the building you are at too (i.e. behind the supermarket)  which allows you to quickly orientate  yourself  and avoid actually hitting walls and again all without radars on which is really impressive. I actually added something similar to buildings in Sable. So when you place a building in Sable  it automatically places an invisible perimeter around the building and when the player gets within a few steps of the building it will announce the building and which part of the building  you are at (i.e. behind the inn). In this way much like swamp it should hopefully allow people to not  only  orientate themselves in maps but  allow them to run  around  and avoid ever hitting a building wall even if radars are turned off. it’s a feature I really like, but I’m not sure I’ve shown it in any of the videos, it’s possible at some point in the earlier videos it might have said  in front of the inn, but I’m so used to the feature now I probably forgot to point it out . As for the NPC sound clip thing, pleased you liked the addition. I’ve built the function into the object editor tool rather than clutter up the npc creation tool , since it’s probably not something everyone would use and almost definitely not for each voice line so didn’t want to add unnecessary options into the actual NPC creation tool. So once you’ve place the NPC, bring up the object editor tool for the NPC  (currently shift and o whilst at the object in question). If you’ve given the NPC TTS voice lines the bottom option in the editor is called sound bites’. Once you click this you are presented a submenu with three options. 1. Add new sound bite, this gives you a list of the current voice lines, once you select one you can then select a sound bite to go with it (you can add different sound bites to each voice line, or just specific voice lines). The second submenu option allows you to view existing sound bites already added, this shows all the voice lines and whether they have a sound  bite assigned and if so which sound bite. The final submenu option is looping, here you can select whether the sound bite should loop or just play once (since I imagine there will be people or situations where people want one or the other). The limitation with this final option is its either set to loop or not, and this setting applies to all sound bites for this particular NPC. so you can’t have say the sound bite for line one loop and the one for sound bite   3not. You can set it differently however for each NPC, so you might have one NPC where sound bites loop and another different NPC where it doesn’t. 

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

sorry for double poste, but, crafting is a must have. also, can you add online functionality? that, would be sweet! I know this is a lot, but its kinda limited, so just pitching some stuff in.
:3

To Gaki_shonen;
The capture mechanic is most likely a no-go; especially at this early stage of development.
I've played some RPGs that do this,like Ark The Lad 2 and Puppet Princess of Marl Kingdom (AKA Rhapsody A Musical Adventure), but it'd take a lot of new programming to make such a system work; especially if you're wanting something more like Pokémon, as that'd require adding a storage system for the monsters and being able to make SABLE distinguish between a standard RPG and a monster taming RPG.
A less advanced system might be able to work if enemies are created like party members.
Their'd only need to be a small change to a few variables in SABLE to allow game creators to put enemies into the playable party.
An example of this less complicated monster capture system is found in Rhapsody, where if Cornet; the main character; deals the finishing blow to a monster with her horn, that monster has a chance of joining her, where in it acts just like a normal enemy; sans CPU control.
Ark the Lad 2 has a similar mechanic where one of your party members can train monsters, but they still act like main party members.
So, I guess, in a vary scripted situation, you could emulate monster capture where a party member does something in a cutsceen after a boss battle and that monster would join the party, you'd just have to build a separate version of the monster to add to the party.
So, your prisoner example could also work, you'd just need to build him or her, then script a situation where your character enslaves the prisoner in some way via cutsceen, then have the script add that prisoner to the party once it completes.
You could also do like Manamon 2 does where in extra characters don't really get added to the party, they just function in cutsceens.
You could even be creative and make it a sad situation when characters join your party.
An example of this occurs in Mother 3, where a monkey named salsa is forced to join up with a highly abusive man, and the normally happy jingle that plays is in a minor key.
Well those are just my thoughts...
Later!

Hay Lemm, I couldn't have said it better myself regarding balance in monster catching RPGs.
One thing I feel I need to add, however.
I've seen this in a few Pokémon fan games, where through varying mechanics, the designer limats the number of monsters the player is able to catch; thus making the game easier to balance.
While creating a monster catching RPG is indeed a dawnting challenge, it'd be a cool thing to try; several years down the road once SABLE is at; say, version 4.0... LOL!
Later!

hi,

@number 396, wow Sable 4.0 , that seems a really long way off right now as I’m currently sitting  here trying to get sable pre alpha 1.0 ready for its first external testing hahaha. I’d love to see Sable reach a 4.0  though and also see exactly what makes it into that version. Sable has already grown so much since its initial conception back in 2016 and when I started work on it just over three years ago now. It’s been a long road and some hard work, but it’s exciting to be at a stage where it is almost ready for external testing for the first time and also to see so much excitement from the audio game community around the project and its future . thanks for the suggestion though, I’ve seen similar things to control game balance, I know entombed isn’t a monster catcher , but it controls the potential max party size by limiting summoned creatures and raised undead, so the player can’t have a ridiculously large party and break game balance.
@number 397. I’m with you on that, although who doesn’t like a good old bit of necromancy hahaha. As for class’s in Sable though, this is an area I want to avoid going into detail about just yet. We currently have Sable set up ready for our own first RPG crimson eclipse, and I don’t want to spoil which class’s will be in the game. So with class’s this will have to be something we wait until details of crimson eclipse start coming out (I don’t currently have a date for that, but the game design team and sound designer are all busy working away on Crimson Eclipse)

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