Kelly and Tristan, As Thomas says, we're using Free Text To Speech from Carnagie Mellon. The voice is named Kevin, after the fellow who did it. Kevin says in his notes, "Hey, it's the best we could do for free" I personally call it "Robbie the Robot on Acid".
We didn't go with SAPI and DirectX because we want the games to be cross platform. I'd like to implement a JSAPI (as in Java) solution so we could use all the neat voices out there, especially the non-English ones. But that probably isn't going to happen for awhile. The games do work with JAWS, though. And the play testers seem to find that OK. It's good to hear that the Equals key toggling for the Game Voice is evident to you. The reason the Game Voice is off to start is that most of the people who buy the games are not blind. I worked with the Blind and Visually Impaired Users Group Webmeister here in Boston, to smooth out the installation and set up process. (Actually, Steve ripped my ears off over the first one.) I'm concerned about the delay you mention when you type in something. Gotta look into that. Dark, Actually, I had some concerns about the free games vs. purchased Game Book issue. Got Marketing to agree to put some disclaimers, warnings, announcements, whatever to that effect on the Web site. The Popcorn games are what are called "Loss Leaders," stuff you lose money on in order to just get people to look at your other stuff. That's probably not going to change; but maybe someone can offer a better way to communicate it. Folks, As to the demo time out. We just added free demos, so that whole thing hasn't gelled yet. What number of days do you suggest? John Bannick 7-128 Software --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
