Re: Creating a code free RPG using Sable (video 12), by Ebon Sky Studios
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
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