Hi.
Thanks for fixing the aria issue that stops thee chatter nicely.
I had another go today on medium so I could get to a high scene number. I'm afraid I'm still seeing the slowdown in the speech reaction that starts to creep in around scene 250 or so.
I tried disabling sound in case it was that, but that didn't make a difference, I also tried reloading NVDA, but again, nothing specific.
Oddly enough though, I did notice that in the merchant screen, the speech was reacting instantly as indeed it should.
I wondered if this was reflective of pack size, since my pack size is now over 40, but when I sold all my gear and items and tested back in the world, the slowdown was back again, so I'm afraid I'm not sure what is happening here.
Again, this might just be an issue with screen readers processing speech from a single html page, NVDA can experience slowdown on a slower machine with system lagwhen a lot is going on, though usually if that is the problem the slowdown is universal with all speech, and it's usually fixable by just restarting the program, where as in this case, the slowdown just seemed to involve reading of incoming text, and only it appeared in the main event log at higher scene numbers in the game from what I gathered.
If this is just one of these things to be lived with, fair enough.
BTw, in other matters, I was quite amused by the sentient invasive plant, so it's not just a sentient plant which wants to kill you, it's an invasive plant which will totally ruin your garden too .
You might also consider inserting situations where running is a bit more necessary and smoke bombs are actually useful, for example creating a few special enemies that cannot be killed, such as undead that rise from the grave when you kill them or self repairing automata, since currently I literally never! use the run button, making the stats related to running from a fight rather pointless, since usually by the time you start running into enemies strong enough to do you significant damage where running would be useful, that is an indication you're approaching humble pie time, albeit at the moment the slowdown bug is preventing me from doing that on medium, since I can't get to a high enough scene number for difficulty to be a factor.
You could also consider the way potions work, since right now you can be at full health whenever you want to be, and the rate you find potions at is pretty insane.
One idea might be to disable potion use during combat (say by disabling the potion button), but add in pack items with healing properties that could be used during combat.
Indeed, if you go down this route, you could think about renaming the potions you find in the dungeon to some other more common item which might have healing properties, EG flagons of ale, flasks of saké or wisky, or bottles of wine, (it always seems a bit strange to me that there are all these potions lying around), and then let the player find a variety of potions as pack items.
Indeed, one thing I've always liked in games is when you find a hole bunch of potion types, different colours, fizzing potions, bubbling or viscous potions, bad smelling potions etc, and the player basically has to risk trying them out to see what they do .
Either way, if healing was a bit more restricted in the game, running might be more useful, since then there might be advantage to players in running from a fight and healing out of combat, and of conserving their healing items for boss battles.
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)