Re: Tentative Entombed 2 Design Decisions
Hi Ishan,
actually, Grave of Redemption is based off Entombed 1, the original game by this developer Dingo, whose real name is Jason Allen.
Even GOR in its current alpha state showed quite a lot of promising improvements and potential over the original Entombed that inspired it. I was honestly hoping for it to truly evolve further. Thus, the news about a sequel to Entombed being in the works just made my day! :-) I love to see you're still active. The game had such immense potential that was still not utilized that I really can't wait to see what you have in store for us in Entombed 2. :-) Keep up the great work!
I love the exploration concept you laid out, but I prefer Dark's idea of resting to yours. Both being auto-healed after an encounter and not being able to rest at all somewhat don't seem to suit the style of the original game, so to speak. I would personally prefer resting being a necessity but only limited to having a certain amount of meal on you or being currently located in a safe place, where there would only be one such spot in each floor, or something like that. The final decision is always up to you though, of course, and I'm sure that no matter what you decide to implement in the end, it will be a well thought out and balanced mechanic. Even Entombed 1 seemed very well balanced and pretty impressive to me.
I will be glad to support you along the way however I can. Would love to become a tester if needed as I have also played the original game extensively, and I also have an iPhone, so if an iOS version is ever going to be developed, I'd be able to help test it on that front as well.
I'm not sure what exactly would make it harder to port the game to other platforms if it supported the individual screen readers as opposed to it using only SAPI, because both SAPI and the screen readers are specific Windows technologies. Linux uses Speech Dispatcher as the equivalent of SAPI a
nd Orca as the equivalent of whichever proprietary screen reader you can think of, Jaws, Window-Eyes, NVDA, System Access, Hal or whatever. VoiceOver is also Apple specific software, as well as the built-in iOs voices that became available to developers in iOS 7 for direct output. The only platform I don't know anything about in this regard is Android, but I highly doubt its API for direct speech output would be similar enough to the Windows SAPI that it would be possible to utilize it directly using the same code on both platforms, or only with very minor modifications. My point is that as far as my limited knowledge goes, you would always have to use a different API for speech output on each platform anyway. I believe the various screen reader support libraries might be able to support Orca or VoiceOver alongside the Windows screen readers, but I'm not sure about that. Even if you used an universal wrapper library
though, the windows screen readers have the nasty l
imitation of you as the developer not being able to determine what text is currently being spoken at the moment, what has already been spoken and what is still left in the buffer, etc, so anyone I've ever seen trying to implement direct screen reader support in Windows audiogames has always had to resort to nasty hacks such as rough speech delay calculations in the end. In this regard, SAPI is certainly a better decision as it provides a much more precise degree of control and flexibility. Still, however, you would have to use the equivalent API in Linux/Mac/iOS/Android, making a wrapper library necessary, either of your own making or one that is already available on the internet.
Just my thoughts, I may be entirely wrong here, although I believe my information on this topic is at least semi-accurate. As a newbie audiogame developer, I would appreciate some clarification of this issue though.
Take care, and the very best of luck with the sequel! I'll be awaiting
any further updates and news eagerly! :-D
Lukas
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