Re: Connecting developers and game testers
Hi all.
Ok, a lot of things going on there.
Lets start from the top shell we?
Dark I support an announcements forum for things like oppertunities, testing, new releases of stuff if people don't want to waid through things.
Maybe an announcements email list or something to would be fine.
Moshverhavik, ok, um, this is a lot of data to crunch.
Instead of answering your questions directly I will simply shove my idea rambles at your face, its worked for sonaagames which is just starting up.
Its how I handle the complex things.
With that being said, a lot of the blind spaciffic games can only go so far.
No offence to us blindy people but we only see well what we hear or what we played.
If all we played were games with beeping targets in them thats probably all we know what to do with.
Some of us have played with older units and consoles a thing I have not hit off.
Favorite platform.
I think its what you actually use o
n a daily basis rather than what is most favourite.
For me that is windows 7 and up because I use windows pcs for my day to day life.
Next in the running would be the ios/android devices as I have played games on those to and while only in testing for sonaa that was interesting to say the least.
The next block would be linux, not because I am a player, but because there are not many native games for that platform dito mac though there are a few for that one though I don't play with that.
Right now my focus is on the desktop but in the future, with windows10 going universal and microsoft saying they will attempt at least to bring gaming to universal apps, including bits of linux and being multiplatform well who knows.
Ofcause a multios game depending what it is may be harder to make.
A pure windows game is for a desktop and maybe you can do ios and droid but different animals ofcause.
One thing I have enjoyed playing with is the renpy python bo
ok engine from renpy.org.
It has voice support, and as long as there are alt text for images and even sometimes if they are not, a standard renpy game with no steam module custom graphics, buttons all over the show visual puzzles and rpg extenders should be in theory fully sapi accessable.
Menus and such.
Well to be honest fully voice acted script is probably the easiest to do but you need every file to be done that way.
Environments are good to especially with the way 3d and now binoral audio is getting.
So will games for the blind make cash.
No game for the disabled will make real cash, they are a waste of time to be honest.
Its not happened yet but in the end a hybred type game where all could inclusively play should be all developers goals if at all possible.
Thats probably not going to happen for now well we will stick with what we have.
Ofcause there can be some disadvantages or were, since we get funded for things and since not all
of us earn or at least not that much, we may not have the latest gaming wrig with a 500gb 90 core processer 500 tb of ram and about 15 solid state drives and hard drives of 6000 tb each.
Traditional sighted gaming relys on graphics and while I can see myself with a basic 1gb-2gb card for graphics these days, not all of us will be able to afford the best units.
I know a few people have quad cores and those can be cheap enough.
But I do know people unable to afford the latest units in fact some still run windows xp, its a mix.
Most games should be able to be played therefore on processers that could be 1-5 years out of date but still be good.
We don't buy things generally to upgrade until they break and then only what we can afford.
For example, for about8 years I used a 386 dos box.
then for another 4 a low spec windows box.
another 2 a higher spec but still low grade box.
The last box was still a singlecore box.
This current bo
x is my second duel core i5 and the next may be a quad.
I am not going to get the latest tech in fact price wize it may be better to get the model before.
And then we have the lovely world of the os.
Sadly we can't just plug in windows or whatever andexpect it to work out the box.
While windows and a lot of other oses are good shoving their information to screen reading software, for most of us especially for specialised things and until recently we would have to spend the cash to upgrade our reading programs and thats 1000 dollars or more its not just the computer and things.
Hardware for the blind until recently was quite expensive.
In fact the software and blind designed hardware is quite expensive.
Most of it is funded by others.
Saying that with things like nvda, and a few other things its possible to get the basics and maybe a few extras at 200 or lower dollars but thats still a lot.
There are universal speech libraries and env
ironmental libraries like libaudioverse and tolque and some others on here have made their own.
The major screen reader manufacturers for windows are jaws by freedomscientiffic, windoweyes by gwmicro, supernova by dolphin and nvda by nvaccess.
All of them have their own interface apis.
The next is orca on linux and that should have its own I am not sure about linux.
The next down the line is android which itself has its own interface to talkback and android is itself opensource.
Windows itself has a comprihensive developer program and toolset and wants to previde access for its pc console xbox range as well as its phones.
I am not sure about macs but I do know for ios that you have to buy into apple stuff to get objective c to handle things.
After that there is a process to get it into the store.
Sadly while the programs are cheap I have heard rumors that there is a high cost involved for that and that apple basically own all rights to things
for some reason, so do microsoft for their xbox titles but the info I have is years old now.
The current issue I have with our blind games as of now is while there are a few different things going for games we have the arcade game, the casino game, the card game, the fps game, and the 3d explorer game.
We have to many arcade, card and some of the simple games.
The japanese stuff seems to be fine but to be honest bar teraformas and a few others no hybrid game as gone out for a while.
Technology wise we should be on the level with sighted, ie most of us should have at least a duel core of some sort with 2-4gb ram we may not be all running 64 bit units though.
As for things like direct x windows, etc most of us should have 7, some of us 8 and quite a few on 10.
If its free we will have it but not necessarily the payed stuff.
For my personal thoughts I'd take environmental effects, voiced games with menus unless they are multiplayer with things ne
eded for speech etc for completeness.
However they do get a bit large.
Not everyone has the best quality speech synth though though those types can be a bit smaller.
I have seen many that I have invested in and helped over the years that pushed to hard and set expectations to high.
One even hired before he got started or tried to start with his expectations so high I couldn't even see him get anywere at all.
Ofcause we can't forget life, life gets in the way of things and a lot of us have lives, and quite a few don't.
I am one of these people with a vary basic life for now.
As for payment, I do think that if it could become a job for me I'd take it at whatever comparitive rate that job role would usually get.
Over that though I have not had the experience.
Most of my jobs are government ones a lot on website testing a few on research experimental things.
Those get payed on the hour or per project at a set rate whi
ch is usually within a total team point rather than indevidual points though team is a loose thing because of the nature of the experiments you can never see your team and they are not all physically there at once.
In fact the jobs can be such that you never know what you get.
My idea which sadly has not happened was to get a lot of projects and string them round so I could work whereever I needed.
Its not happened though.
I have a lot of things waiting for work but not getting there and a few things that are not generating enough to keep me in fully.
Then again I have a few one offs which are done and then well.
_______________________________________________ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
