Hi Alex,
Alex Asked:
first and biggest thing I really don't like
Is the games speech can't be interrupted.
Tom Says:
Yeah, I can see how that can get annoying. However, there really is no
help for that seeing as I am using wav files for speech instead of some
text to speech out put like Sapi. Figuring out a way to interrupt the
speech is on or list of things to do before final release, but not sure
how successful that will be since doing so may cause other side issues
with speech along the way. All I can say is give us time to look into
this issue since this is after all only a beta.
Alex Says:
now of course I have to use the view command to get an idea of where I
am in relation
to the ledge.
Tom Says:
Keep in mind here that you are a totally new player. Once you get
practice with the game you won't always have to look for that ledge. You
will figure out eventually that going to say 38 10 or 38 11 and jumping
from there will take you directly to the ledge. Also the ledges drip and
the statue makes its chanting noise. Both are great sound cues as where
to the ledge is in relation to you. My point being is that the view
command becomes less and less important as you learn the game.
Alex Says:
not only that but while speech is
playing I can't move to go up or down the rope.
Tom Says:
Yeah, we have a fairly good idea why that is happening, and we are
attempting to fix that issue by placing speech output into its own
thread rather than speaking on the main thread. This is a rather
involved update so it has been scheduled for some as yet unknown date to
be done. Hopefully it will get done before Beta 2 comes out.
Alex Asks:
My other question also relates to the speech in the game. Why exactly
are you recording
wav files with everything the speech needs to say? when it is easy to
make sapi
on the computer output what needs to be read out.
Tomb Says:
Several reasons. First of all, the new Genesis Engine, which MOTA uses,
is being designed to target multiple operating systems such as Linux,
Windows, and Mac OS. With that in mind Microsoft Sapi support simply
does not exist outside of the Windows environment so I have to use
something a lot more generic. Second of all, in our experience including
Sapi support in a game can be more trouble than it is worth. When we
were using Sapi in the Montezuma's Return test builds several people had
screwed up Sapi installations which we ended up trying to resolve to get
our games to work on those test machines. Since Sapi is technically not
one of our products we do not feel we should have to fix a product that
isn't even ours just because Microsoft can't get their act together and
make Sapi stable. Finally, we can pick the voice we want players to use.
We know not everyone can afford high quality voices so we include them
with our games. This improves the quality of the game and over all
enjoyment for most players.
Alex Asks:
The other issue I have noticed is there doesn't seem to be any sound or
feature
that indicates when you can open fire on an enemy, because of this I
have wasted
a lot of ammo. or is this because I am not picking up on a feature of
the game?
Tom Says:
We did not include a targeting sound because we did not feel it was
necessary to do so. We felt it was rather obvious if an enemy was
playing on the left that turning left and shooting would be very
straight forward and obvious. However, if this becomes an issue and a
request to add one we certainly can.
HTH.
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