Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing device/unit

[john]

There are talking linux installs - presumably you could also use one of 
these? Just boot from device x and install to device y, and you aught to be 
good to go.

--
From: "Jacob Kruger" 
Sent: Monday, November 16, 2015 6:24
To: "Gamers Discussion list" 
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing 
device/unit

No idea if it includes orca, etc., but, here's a sort of announcement page
for the raspberry pi version of ubuntu mate, including both a torrent
download link for the image, as well as, I think, a direct download link -
they actually ask you to use the bittorrent, and offer seeding afterwards:
https://ubuntu-mate.org/raspberry-pi/

Also seems like you'd definitely need sighted help for initial boot-up, for
the setup wizard, but anyway.

Stay well

Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlindZA
"Roger Wilco wants to welcome you...to the space janitor's closet..."

- Original Message - 
From: "Josh K" 
To: "Gamers Discussion list" 
Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2015 5:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing
device/unit


> and I also read the latest ubuntu mate 15.10 has a version for the
> raspberry pie.
>
> follow me on twitter @joshknnd1982
>
> On 11/13/2015 11:20 PM, Jacob Kruger wrote:
>> Thomas, it's way more than just an interactive fiction gaming unit, but
>> that was my sort of context-specific posting to this list.
>>
>> It's a full debian linux PC that literally fits in the palm of your hand,
>> and in terms of portability, biggest issue would be needing to use it
>> with an external keyboard.
>>
>> My primary reason for actually getting hold of one was since want to try
>> using it as a small, portable, low-end web server, and have got 80% of
>> that process sorted - apache is installed, along with PHP script
>> processing, and now just need to still get MySQL support installed, and
>> good to go.
>>
>> Check out the mainstream documentation page:
>> http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianDocumentation
>>
>> And, the less than complete VI specific usage website:
>> http://www.raspberryvi.org/
>>
>> Did also try out frotz interpreter, with wumpus.z5 yesterday, via SSH
>> terminal, working on unit, and worked pretty much perfectly though.
>>
>> Stay well
>>
>> Jacob Kruger
>> Blind Biker
>> Skype: BlindZA
>> "Roger Wilco wants to welcome you...to the space janitor's closet..."
>>
>> - Original Message - From: "Thomas Ward"
>> 
>> To: "Gamers Discussion list" 
>> Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2015 3:56 AM
>> Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing
>> device/unit
>>
>>
>>> Hi Jacob,
>>>
>>> Cool. Sounds like a nifty little gaming device you got there. The only
>>> thing is while I do like interactive fiction games I'm not sure I'd
>>> want to pay out the investment for something like this myself since I
>>> only play interactive fiction  games occasionally. If the /Raspberry
>>> device had a broader spectrum of games I might actually consider the
>>> investment in something like it since it would come in handy in times
>>> like now when I may be in the hospital for an extended amount of time
>>> with little to nothing to do. Dragging around a laptop isn't really an
>>> option in my case and I don't have a smartphone so I could see
>>> something like your Raspberry Pie being a nice little device between
>>> those extremes.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 11/12/15, Jacob Kruger  wrote:
 Am currently playing around with a raspberry pi unit/device, which is
 effectively a low-level full linux/debian operating system PC
 implemented on
 a piece of hardware roundabout the size of a box of cigarettes.

 It took a little bit of effort to get it up and running/cooperating,
 and
 don't seem to be able to use orca screen reader with it's version of a
 GUI,
 which is x-windows, but, after installing speakUp console screen
 reader, you
 can switch between the multiple console windows, and thanks to Thomas
 having
 helped me out with the relevant commands a while ago, to install frotz
 interpreter on a linux system - sudo apt-get install frotz - I now have
 the
 frotz interpreter installed on this unit, and since it runs off
 micro-USB
 cable for power - the same thing most modern smart phones use for
 charging
 their batteries - if I plug it into the portable cellphone charging
 unit
 have here, and plug in my earphones, then I could literally play most
 IF
 games anywhere/everywhere, without having to drain my phone's battery,
 etc.

 Does require connecting a USB keyboard, but, still - besides full-size
 keyboard, it's a PC-in-your-pocket.

 There's also at least one other raspberry-specific game I know of, but,
 

Re: [Audyssey] got my new solid state drive in

[Josh K]

i got a refurbished hp laptop hp elitebook 6930p i upgraded it to 6gigs 
of ram and put a solid state hard drive into it and now it works great. 
i had it for two or 3 years now. did you get your lenovo from newegg and 
how big is your solid state drive 128gigs or 250gigs?


follow me on twitter @joshknnd1982

On 11/16/2015 5:44 AM, Thomas Ward wrote:

Hi,

I have similar experiences. I now avoid HP like the plague myself
because their systems tend to be very below the par on average, and I
know others with similar experiences. My dad, for instance, had a HP
laptop for about six months, very barely used, and it died. So I don't
generally buy HP anything if I can help it these days.


On 11/16/15, englishride...@gmail.com  wrote:

Ah. I avoid HP like the plague now. The first and only laptop I got from
them kept having issue after issue, where both of my Dells, except for one
problem, have run for years before giving up the ghost. One lasted for six
years, and The other lasted for five years and seven months. Technically the
one that lasted for six years still works, since I put Vinux onto it after I
couldn't find my XP disc's after reformatting the system after I got a
rather nasty virus that I was having a ton of trouble removing.

I can't wait to have a solid-state drive in the new laptop that I'm getting
soon. It's going to be awesome! It'll be my first system with eight gigs of
RAM and a 2.9 Core i5 processor; it's the architecture that's one generation
behind the new Skylake processors, but that's fine for me. The model I'll be
getting is a Lenovo ThinkPad T450S.


Thanks,
Ari

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Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing device/unit

[Jacob Kruger]

Josh, I configured/set up my wifi dongle last night, and it literally took 
me like 5 minutes overall - turned unit off, plugged in a realtek wifi 
dongle, turned it on, double checked that it had initiated the device, by 
scanning through boot up log, edit the one text file using the nano editor, 
switched unit off, and turned it on again, and good to go.


Instructions were pulled off this page:
http://raspberrypihq.com/how-to-add-wifi-to-the-raspberry-pi/

Think it really just depends on compatibility, etc.

Stay well

Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlindZA
"Roger Wilco wants to welcome you...to the space janitor's closet..."

- Original Message - 
From: "Josh K" 

To: "Gamers Discussion list" 
Sent: Monday, November 16, 2015 2:30 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing 
device/unit



how easy is it to set up wi-fi? I am totally blind and would be using orca 
or speakup. though i prefer orca and a gui but speakup is fine if needed.


follow me on twitter @joshknnd1982

On 11/15/2015 4:24 PM, Cara Quinn wrote:

Hi Travis,

I have been thinking about a Raspberry Pie for a while. You answered many 
of my questions with this post but one that I have is how easy is it to 
set up with a visual impairment?


Also, you had mentioned that the sound is not great. I assume you can 
plug a headset into one?


Considering the headset idea, would it then be possible to install a 
third-party audio library such as OpenAL?


You can see where I am going here. I am wondering what would need to be 
done here to bring this closer to an audio gaming environment.


Thanks for any feedback or insights you may have.

Have a  great day!

Cheers!

Cara
---
iOS design and development - LookTel.com
---
View my Online Portfolio at:

http://www.onemodelplace.com/models/Cara-Quinn

Follow me on Twitter!

https://twitter.com/ModelCara

On Nov 15, 2015, at 12:34 PM, Travis Siegel  wrote:

I bought a raspberry pi, case, power adapter, and pre-installed raspbian 
system (never did get the sd card with the raspbian installed on it 
though) and the entire bill including shipping was around the 85-90 
dollar mark.  It's an excellent little unit.  It has 4 cpus in it, and 
runs at 1GHZ, with 1GB of ram.  It uses standard micro sd cards, up to 
32GB (if I remember correctly) though some of the 32 gb cards don't 
behave properly, so there is that to look out for,
but otherwise, it is truly an excellent system.  I'm actually using it as 
my main pc at the moment, since my imac went belly up a few months ago, 
and the only other machine I have is an old xp machine that has some 
serious dll issues, so it doesn't like to run for more than an hour or so 
at a time, depending on when/how windows decides to do things.  I've 
never managed to fix it, because my xp pro disk is unreadable, and I've 
not found another xp pro hd I could copy the dlls from to repair my 
system.
I have other linux systems in the house, but mine was disassembled to 
give parts to my son who built his own computer for gaming purposes, and 
I've not managed to get the additional parts I needed to rebuild my linux 
machine, so the raspberry pi is filling in quite nicely as my main pc at 
the moment.  It works well enough, and I can run it for about an hour 
using one of those pocket juice things, though I've not (yet) 
experimented with other battery power devices, although there's one on 
the raspberry store that claims 8 hours of usage.  I do plan to purchase 
one of those, so I have a nice portable unit.
I'd actually been considering trying to turn mine into a gaming unit as 
well, (thus the writing of the memory game Jake referred to in his post) 
The sound isn't anything to write home about, so for the moment, complex 
audio games aren't possible, but otherwise, it's quite the neat little 
unit, and I'm looking forward to see what else I can accomplish with it.



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Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing device/unit

[Travis Siegel]

The pi doesn't have a very good sound chip in it.  It is only capable of 
stero at 48KHZ.  It can't do surround sound, and all the tests I've done 
on it seem to indicate even front/rear speakers make no difference, 
there's only left/right on the pi.
I did go hunting for sound cards that will work on the pi, and have found 
3 of them, though detailed specs on the various cards were not available, 
so I have yet to determine of any of those usb sound cards could be used 
to render full audio required for the kinds of games the vi community 
would like to see.  I'm going to purchase one of the cards in a couple 
weeks, and begin experimenting.  Hopefully I can find something that will 
work for us as a whole, but of course, having more folks looking/playing 
with the pi would of course speed any and all progress towards the goal of 
build our own gaming machine.
I would love to port anything of interest to the pi, but since I don't 
know what is of interest, I'm kind of just nibling around the edges (so to 
speak) and porting things I've already ported to the mac or linux from 
before.  I'm of course perfectly willing to help anyone port anything if 
they have the desire to make a version for the pi, but until we can find a 
better soundsystem for the pi, basic audio games are all we'll be able to 
make, since things are constrained by the pi sound at the moment.  Of 
course, this doesn't mean we can't build up a nice collection of things to 
play anyway, things that don't depend on positional audio will work just 
fine.  I've written to RSG games asking for a pi version of their client, 
since python is one of the major languages for the pi, I expect that 
porting the rsg client would simply be a matter of including a proper 
version of their compiled python code, and poof, it's all done. 
Unfortunately, I received no response to my inquiry, so no idea if that's 
due to lack of interest, lack of knowledge, lack of message receipt, or 
some other reason.  However, I'll continue porting things I can get my 
hands on, and perhaps, even without a great sound architecture, the pi 
could still be used as a basic gaming rig by some.



On Sun, 15 Nov 2015, Cara Quinn wrote:


Hi Travis,

I have been thinking about a Raspberry Pie for a while. You answered many of my 
questions with this post but one that I have is how easy is it to set up with a 
visual impairment?

Also, you had mentioned that the sound is not great. I assume you can plug a 
headset into one?

Considering the headset idea, would it then be possible to install a 
third-party audio library such as OpenAL?

You can see where I am going here. I am wondering what would need to be done 
here to bring this closer to an audio gaming environment.

Thanks for any feedback or insights you may have.

Have a  great day!

Cheers!

Cara
---
iOS design and development - LookTel.com
---
View my Online Portfolio at:

http://www.onemodelplace.com/models/Cara-Quinn

Follow me on Twitter!

https://twitter.com/ModelCara

On Nov 15, 2015, at 12:34 PM, Travis Siegel  wrote:

I bought a raspberry pi, case, power adapter, and pre-installed raspbian system 
(never did get the sd card with the raspbian installed on it though) and the 
entire bill including shipping was around the 85-90 dollar mark.  It's an 
excellent little unit.  It has 4 cpus in it, and runs at 1GHZ, with 1GB of ram. 
 It uses standard micro sd cards, up to 32GB (if I remember correctly) though 
some of the 32 gb cards don't behave properly, so there is that to look out for,
but otherwise, it is truly an excellent system.  I'm actually using it as my 
main pc at the moment, since my imac went belly up a few months ago, and the 
only other machine I have is an old xp machine that has some serious dll 
issues, so it doesn't like to run for more than an hour or so at a time, 
depending on when/how windows decides to do things.  I've never managed to fix 
it, because my xp pro disk is unreadable, and I've not found another xp pro hd 
I could copy the dlls from to repair my system.
I have other linux systems in the house, but mine was disassembled to give 
parts to my son who built his own computer for gaming purposes, and I've not 
managed to get the additional parts I needed to rebuild my linux machine, so 
the raspberry pi is filling in quite nicely as my main pc at the moment.  It 
works well enough, and I can run it for about an hour using one of those pocket 
juice things, though I've not (yet) experimented with other battery power 
devices, although there's one on the raspberry store that claims 8 hours of 
usage.  I do plan to purchase one of those, so I have a nice portable unit.
I'd actually been considering trying to turn mine into a gaming unit as well, 
(thus the writing of the memory game Jake referred to in his post) The sound 
isn't anything to write home about, so for the moment, complex audio games 
aren't possible, but otherwise, it's quite the neat little unit, and 

Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing device/unit

[Travis Siegel]

There are wi-fi dongles for the pi, but I've not used any, so can't speak 
to how easy they are to configure.  Jacob has though, and based on his 
comments on the raspberry-vi list, it wasn't difficult.
Here at home, I have 2 wi-fi routers in the house, and a 48-port hub that 
everything plugs into from the whole house, so we've got plenty of network 
connectors to play with, so generally, the only things that we use 
wireless for are the cell phones and tablets.  Everything else gets a 
wired connection, though I have to say, installing new ethernet jacks in 
the bedrooms is a bit of a task, even with sighted assistance, it's a bear 
to get all those colored wires in the right spots, and make sure none are 
stripped back too far, so that we don't get touching bare wires which can 
cause any manner of trouble with a connection. :)



On Mon, 16 Nov 2015, Josh K wrote:

how easy is it to set up wi-fi? I am totally blind and would be using orca or 
speakup. though i prefer orca and a gui but speakup is fine if needed.


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Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing device/unit

[Josh K]

how easy is it to set up wi-fi? I am totally blind and would be using 
orca or speakup. though i prefer orca and a gui but speakup is fine if 
needed.


follow me on twitter @joshknnd1982

On 11/15/2015 4:24 PM, Cara Quinn wrote:

Hi Travis,

I have been thinking about a Raspberry Pie for a while. You answered many of my 
questions with this post but one that I have is how easy is it to set up with a 
visual impairment?

Also, you had mentioned that the sound is not great. I assume you can plug a 
headset into one?

Considering the headset idea, would it then be possible to install a 
third-party audio library such as OpenAL?

You can see where I am going here. I am wondering what would need to be done 
here to bring this closer to an audio gaming environment.

Thanks for any feedback or insights you may have.

Have a  great day!

Cheers!

Cara
---
iOS design and development - LookTel.com
---
View my Online Portfolio at:

http://www.onemodelplace.com/models/Cara-Quinn

Follow me on Twitter!

https://twitter.com/ModelCara

On Nov 15, 2015, at 12:34 PM, Travis Siegel  wrote:

I bought a raspberry pi, case, power adapter, and pre-installed raspbian system 
(never did get the sd card with the raspbian installed on it though) and the 
entire bill including shipping was around the 85-90 dollar mark.  It's an 
excellent little unit.  It has 4 cpus in it, and runs at 1GHZ, with 1GB of ram. 
 It uses standard micro sd cards, up to 32GB (if I remember correctly) though 
some of the 32 gb cards don't behave properly, so there is that to look out for,
but otherwise, it is truly an excellent system.  I'm actually using it as my 
main pc at the moment, since my imac went belly up a few months ago, and the 
only other machine I have is an old xp machine that has some serious dll 
issues, so it doesn't like to run for more than an hour or so at a time, 
depending on when/how windows decides to do things.  I've never managed to fix 
it, because my xp pro disk is unreadable, and I've not found another xp pro hd 
I could copy the dlls from to repair my system.
I have other linux systems in the house, but mine was disassembled to give 
parts to my son who built his own computer for gaming purposes, and I've not 
managed to get the additional parts I needed to rebuild my linux machine, so 
the raspberry pi is filling in quite nicely as my main pc at the moment.  It 
works well enough, and I can run it for about an hour using one of those pocket 
juice things, though I've not (yet) experimented with other battery power 
devices, although there's one on the raspberry store that claims 8 hours of 
usage.  I do plan to purchase one of those, so I have a nice portable unit.
I'd actually been considering trying to turn mine into a gaming unit as well, 
(thus the writing of the memory game Jake referred to in his post) The sound 
isn't anything to write home about, so for the moment, complex audio games 
aren't possible, but otherwise, it's quite the neat little unit, and I'm 
looking forward to see what else I can accomplish with it.


---
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Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing device/unit

[Jacob Kruger]

Those wouldn't necessarily operate/cooperate on this somewhat limited 
hardware - know normal ubuntu, with gnome GUI won't.


Stay well

Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlindZA
"Roger Wilco wants to welcome you...to the space janitor's closet..."

- Original Message - 
From: "john" 

To: "Gamers Discussion list" 
Sent: Monday, November 16, 2015 2:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing 
device/unit




There are talking linux installs - presumably you could also use one of
these? Just boot from device x and install to device y, and you aught to 
be

good to go.

--
From: "Jacob Kruger" 
Sent: Monday, November 16, 2015 6:24
To: "Gamers Discussion list" 
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing
device/unit

No idea if it includes orca, etc., but, here's a sort of announcement page
for the raspberry pi version of ubuntu mate, including both a torrent
download link for the image, as well as, I think, a direct download link -
they actually ask you to use the bittorrent, and offer seeding afterwards:
https://ubuntu-mate.org/raspberry-pi/

Also seems like you'd definitely need sighted help for initial boot-up, 
for

the setup wizard, but anyway.

Stay well

Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlindZA
"Roger Wilco wants to welcome you...to the space janitor's closet..."

- Original Message - 
From: "Josh K" 

To: "Gamers Discussion list" 
Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2015 5:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing
device/unit



and I also read the latest ubuntu mate 15.10 has a version for the
raspberry pie.

follow me on twitter @joshknnd1982

On 11/13/2015 11:20 PM, Jacob Kruger wrote:

Thomas, it's way more than just an interactive fiction gaming unit, but
that was my sort of context-specific posting to this list.

It's a full debian linux PC that literally fits in the palm of your 
hand,

and in terms of portability, biggest issue would be needing to use it
with an external keyboard.

My primary reason for actually getting hold of one was since want to try
using it as a small, portable, low-end web server, and have got 80% of
that process sorted - apache is installed, along with PHP script
processing, and now just need to still get MySQL support installed, and
good to go.

Check out the mainstream documentation page:
http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianDocumentation

And, the less than complete VI specific usage website:
http://www.raspberryvi.org/

Did also try out frotz interpreter, with wumpus.z5 yesterday, via SSH
terminal, working on unit, and worked pretty much perfectly though.

Stay well

Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlindZA
"Roger Wilco wants to welcome you...to the space janitor's closet..."

- Original Message - From: "Thomas Ward"

To: "Gamers Discussion list" 
Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2015 3:56 AM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing
device/unit



Hi Jacob,

Cool. Sounds like a nifty little gaming device you got there. The only
thing is while I do like interactive fiction games I'm not sure I'd
want to pay out the investment for something like this myself since I
only play interactive fiction  games occasionally. If the /Raspberry
device had a broader spectrum of games I might actually consider the
investment in something like it since it would come in handy in times
like now when I may be in the hospital for an extended amount of time
with little to nothing to do. Dragging around a laptop isn't really an
option in my case and I don't have a smartphone so I could see
something like your Raspberry Pie being a nice little device between
those extremes.



On 11/12/15, Jacob Kruger  wrote:

Am currently playing around with a raspberry pi unit/device, which is
effectively a low-level full linux/debian operating system PC
implemented on
a piece of hardware roundabout the size of a box of cigarettes.

It took a little bit of effort to get it up and running/cooperating,
and
don't seem to be able to use orca screen reader with it's version of a
GUI,
which is x-windows, but, after installing speakUp console screen
reader, you
can switch between the multiple console windows, and thanks to Thomas
having
helped me out with the relevant commands a while ago, to install frotz
interpreter on a linux system - sudo apt-get install frotz - I now 
have

the
frotz interpreter installed on this unit, and since it runs off
micro-USB
cable for power - the same thing most modern smart phones use for
charging
their batteries - if I plug it into the portable cellphone charging
unit
have here, and plug in my earphones, then I could literally play most
IF
games anywhere/everywhere, without having to drain my phone's battery,
etc.

Does 

Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing device/unit

[Cara Quinn]

Hi Travis,

Actually OpenAL does support positional audio in software with a stereo setup.

So if OpenAL can run on the Pie, (which I am assuming it can) we could have 3D 
audio.

Just a thought for now.

Cheers!

Cara
---
iOS design and development - LookTel.com
---
View my Online Portfolio at:

http://www.onemodelplace.com/models/Cara-Quinn

Follow me on Twitter!

https://twitter.com/ModelCara

On Nov 16, 2015, at 8:54 AM, Travis Siegel  wrote:

The pi doesn't have a very good sound chip in it.  It is only capable of stero 
at 48KHZ.  It can't do surround sound, and all the tests I've done on it seem 
to indicate even front/rear speakers make no difference, there's only 
left/right on the pi.
I did go hunting for sound cards that will work on the pi, and have found 3 of 
them, though detailed specs on the various cards were not available, so I have 
yet to determine of any of those usb sound cards could be used to render full 
audio required for the kinds of games the vi community would like to see.  I'm 
going to purchase one of the cards in a couple weeks, and begin experimenting.  
Hopefully I can find something that will work for us as a whole, but of course, 
having more folks looking/playing with the pi would of course speed any and all 
progress towards the goal of build our own gaming machine.
I would love to port anything of interest to the pi, but since I don't know 
what is of interest, I'm kind of just nibling around the edges (so to speak) 
and porting things I've already ported to the mac or linux from before.  I'm of 
course perfectly willing to help anyone port anything if they have the desire 
to make a version for the pi, but until we can find a better soundsystem for 
the pi, basic audio games are all we'll be able to make, since things are 
constrained by the pi sound at the moment.  Of course, this doesn't mean we 
can't build up a nice collection of things to play anyway, things that don't 
depend on positional audio will work just fine.  I've written to RSG games 
asking for a pi version of their client, since python is one of the major 
languages for the pi, I expect that porting the rsg client would simply be a 
matter of including a proper version of their compiled python code, and poof, 
it's all done. Unfortunately, I received no response to my inquiry, so no idea 
 if that's due to lack of interest, lack of knowledge, lack of message receipt, 
or some other reason.  However, I'll continue porting things I can get my hands 
on, and perhaps, even without a great sound architecture, the pi could still be 
used as a basic gaming rig by some.


On Sun, 15 Nov 2015, Cara Quinn wrote:

> Hi Travis,
> 
> I have been thinking about a Raspberry Pie for a while. You answered many of 
> my questions with this post but one that I have is how easy is it to set up 
> with a visual impairment?
> 
> Also, you had mentioned that the sound is not great. I assume you can plug a 
> headset into one?
> 
> Considering the headset idea, would it then be possible to install a 
> third-party audio library such as OpenAL?
> 
> You can see where I am going here. I am wondering what would need to be done 
> here to bring this closer to an audio gaming environment.
> 
> Thanks for any feedback or insights you may have.
> 
> Have a  great day!
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> Cara
> ---
> iOS design and development - LookTel.com
> ---
> View my Online Portfolio at:
> 
> http://www.onemodelplace.com/models/Cara-Quinn
> 
> Follow me on Twitter!
> 
> https://twitter.com/ModelCara
> 
> On Nov 15, 2015, at 12:34 PM, Travis Siegel  wrote:
> 
> I bought a raspberry pi, case, power adapter, and pre-installed raspbian 
> system (never did get the sd card with the raspbian installed on it though) 
> and the entire bill including shipping was around the 85-90 dollar mark.  
> It's an excellent little unit.  It has 4 cpus in it, and runs at 1GHZ, with 
> 1GB of ram.  It uses standard micro sd cards, up to 32GB (if I remember 
> correctly) though some of the 32 gb cards don't behave properly, so there is 
> that to look out for,
> but otherwise, it is truly an excellent system.  I'm actually using it as my 
> main pc at the moment, since my imac went belly up a few months ago, and the 
> only other machine I have is an old xp machine that has some serious dll 
> issues, so it doesn't like to run for more than an hour or so at a time, 
> depending on when/how windows decides to do things.  I've never managed to 
> fix it, because my xp pro disk is unreadable, and I've not found another xp 
> pro hd I could copy the dlls from to repair my system.
> I have other linux systems in the house, but mine was disassembled to give 
> parts to my son who built his own computer for gaming purposes, and I've not 
> managed to get the additional parts I needed to rebuild my linux machine, so 
> the raspberry pi is filling in quite nicely as my main pc at the moment.  It 
> works well enough, and I can run it 

Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing device/unit

[john]

Seconded on the 48khz bit - most audio files used in games are actually 
44.1khz, if not less (early GMA was 22.05).
I'm not sure how many games actually make use of surround sound at all, and 
I can't think of any that require it, meaning that, presuming they ran on 
Linux which most don't right now, there shouldn't really be a problem with 
that either.

--
From: "Dennis Towne" 
Sent: Monday, November 16, 2015 17:03
To: "Gamers Discussion list" 
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing 
device/unit

A 48 khz sampling rate has nothing to do with audio quality.  Lack of
surround sound is probably pretty big though.

Dennis Towne

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 10:48 AM, Cara Quinn  
wrote:
> Hi Travis,
>
> Actually OpenAL does support positional audio in software with a stereo 
> setup.
>
> So if OpenAL can run on the Pie, (which I am assuming it can) we could 
> have 3D audio.
>
> Just a thought for now.
>
> Cheers!
>
> Cara
> ---
> iOS design and development - LookTel.com
> ---
> View my Online Portfolio at:
>
> http://www.onemodelplace.com/models/Cara-Quinn
>
> Follow me on Twitter!
>
> https://twitter.com/ModelCara
>
> On Nov 16, 2015, at 8:54 AM, Travis Siegel  wrote:
>
> The pi doesn't have a very good sound chip in it.  It is only capable of 
> stero at 48KHZ.  It can't do surround sound, and all the tests I've done 
> on it seem to indicate even front/rear speakers make no difference, 
> there's only left/right on the pi.
> I did go hunting for sound cards that will work on the pi, and have found 
> 3 of them, though detailed specs on the various cards were not available, 
> so I have yet to determine of any of those usb sound cards could be used 
> to render full audio required for the kinds of games the vi community 
> would like to see.  I'm going to purchase one of the cards in a couple 
> weeks, and begin experimenting.  Hopefully I can find something that will 
> work for us as a whole, but of course, having more folks looking/playing 
> with the pi would of course speed any and all progress towards the goal of 
> build our own gaming machine.
> I would love to port anything of interest to the pi, but since I don't 
> know what is of interest, I'm kind of just nibling around the edges (so to 
> speak) and porting things I've already ported to the mac or linux from 
> before.  I'm of course perfectly willing to help anyone port anything if 
> they have the desire to make a version for the pi, but until we can find a 
> better soundsystem for the pi, basic audio games are all we'll be able to 
> make, since things are constrained by the pi sound at the moment.  Of 
> course, this doesn't mean we can't build up a nice collection of things to 
> play anyway, things that don't depend on positional audio will work just 
> fine.  I've written to RSG games asking for a pi version of their client, 
> since python is one of the major languages for the pi, I expect that 
> porting the rsg client would simply be a matter of including a proper 
> version of their compiled python code, and poof, it's all done. 
> Unfortunately, I received no response to my inquiry, so no idea if that's 
> due to lack of interest, lack of knowledge, lack of message receipt, or 
> some other reason.  However, I'll continue porting things I can get my 
> hands on, and perhaps, even without a great sound architecture, the pi 
> could still be used as a basic gaming rig by some.
>
>
> On Sun, 15 Nov 2015, Cara Quinn wrote:
>
>> Hi Travis,
>>
>> I have been thinking about a Raspberry Pie for a while. You answered many 
>> of my questions with this post but one that I have is how easy is it to 
>> set up with a visual impairment?
>>
>> Also, you had mentioned that the sound is not great. I assume you can 
>> plug a headset into one?
>>
>> Considering the headset idea, would it then be possible to install a 
>> third-party audio library such as OpenAL?
>>
>> You can see where I am going here. I am wondering what would need to be 
>> done here to bring this closer to an audio gaming environment.
>>
>> Thanks for any feedback or insights you may have.
>>
>> Have a  great day!
>>
>> Cheers!
>>
>> Cara
>> ---
>> iOS design and development - LookTel.com
>> ---
>> View my Online Portfolio at:
>>
>> http://www.onemodelplace.com/models/Cara-Quinn
>>
>> Follow me on Twitter!
>>
>> https://twitter.com/ModelCara
>>
>> On Nov 15, 2015, at 12:34 PM, Travis Siegel  wrote:
>>
>> I bought a raspberry pi, case, power adapter, and pre-installed raspbian 
>> system (never did get the sd card with the raspbian installed on it 
>> though) and the entire bill including shipping was around the 85-90 
>> dollar mark.  It's an excellent little unit.  It has 4 cpus in it, and 
>> runs at 1GHZ, with 1GB of ram.  It uses standard micro sd cards, up to 
>> 32GB (if I remember correctly) though 

Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing device/unit

[Dennis Towne]

A 48 khz sampling rate has nothing to do with audio quality.  Lack of
surround sound is probably pretty big though.

Dennis Towne

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 10:48 AM, Cara Quinn  wrote:
> Hi Travis,
>
> Actually OpenAL does support positional audio in software with a stereo setup.
>
> So if OpenAL can run on the Pie, (which I am assuming it can) we could have 
> 3D audio.
>
> Just a thought for now.
>
> Cheers!
>
> Cara
> ---
> iOS design and development - LookTel.com
> ---
> View my Online Portfolio at:
>
> http://www.onemodelplace.com/models/Cara-Quinn
>
> Follow me on Twitter!
>
> https://twitter.com/ModelCara
>
> On Nov 16, 2015, at 8:54 AM, Travis Siegel  wrote:
>
> The pi doesn't have a very good sound chip in it.  It is only capable of 
> stero at 48KHZ.  It can't do surround sound, and all the tests I've done on 
> it seem to indicate even front/rear speakers make no difference, there's only 
> left/right on the pi.
> I did go hunting for sound cards that will work on the pi, and have found 3 
> of them, though detailed specs on the various cards were not available, so I 
> have yet to determine of any of those usb sound cards could be used to render 
> full audio required for the kinds of games the vi community would like to 
> see.  I'm going to purchase one of the cards in a couple weeks, and begin 
> experimenting.  Hopefully I can find something that will work for us as a 
> whole, but of course, having more folks looking/playing with the pi would of 
> course speed any and all progress towards the goal of build our own gaming 
> machine.
> I would love to port anything of interest to the pi, but since I don't know 
> what is of interest, I'm kind of just nibling around the edges (so to speak) 
> and porting things I've already ported to the mac or linux from before.  I'm 
> of course perfectly willing to help anyone port anything if they have the 
> desire to make a version for the pi, but until we can find a better 
> soundsystem for the pi, basic audio games are all we'll be able to make, 
> since things are constrained by the pi sound at the moment.  Of course, this 
> doesn't mean we can't build up a nice collection of things to play anyway, 
> things that don't depend on positional audio will work just fine.  I've 
> written to RSG games asking for a pi version of their client, since python is 
> one of the major languages for the pi, I expect that porting the rsg client 
> would simply be a matter of including a proper version of their compiled 
> python code, and poof, it's all done. Unfortunately, I received no response 
> to my inquiry, so no ide
 a if that's due to lack of interest, lack of knowledge, lack of message 
receipt, or some other reason.  However, I'll continue porting things I can get 
my hands on, and perhaps, even without a great sound architecture, the pi could 
still be used as a basic gaming rig by some.
>
>
> On Sun, 15 Nov 2015, Cara Quinn wrote:
>
>> Hi Travis,
>>
>> I have been thinking about a Raspberry Pie for a while. You answered many of 
>> my questions with this post but one that I have is how easy is it to set up 
>> with a visual impairment?
>>
>> Also, you had mentioned that the sound is not great. I assume you can plug a 
>> headset into one?
>>
>> Considering the headset idea, would it then be possible to install a 
>> third-party audio library such as OpenAL?
>>
>> You can see where I am going here. I am wondering what would need to be done 
>> here to bring this closer to an audio gaming environment.
>>
>> Thanks for any feedback or insights you may have.
>>
>> Have a  great day!
>>
>> Cheers!
>>
>> Cara
>> ---
>> iOS design and development - LookTel.com
>> ---
>> View my Online Portfolio at:
>>
>> http://www.onemodelplace.com/models/Cara-Quinn
>>
>> Follow me on Twitter!
>>
>> https://twitter.com/ModelCara
>>
>> On Nov 15, 2015, at 12:34 PM, Travis Siegel  wrote:
>>
>> I bought a raspberry pi, case, power adapter, and pre-installed raspbian 
>> system (never did get the sd card with the raspbian installed on it though) 
>> and the entire bill including shipping was around the 85-90 dollar mark.  
>> It's an excellent little unit.  It has 4 cpus in it, and runs at 1GHZ, with 
>> 1GB of ram.  It uses standard micro sd cards, up to 32GB (if I remember 
>> correctly) though some of the 32 gb cards don't behave properly, so there is 
>> that to look out for,
>> but otherwise, it is truly an excellent system.  I'm actually using it as my 
>> main pc at the moment, since my imac went belly up a few months ago, and the 
>> only other machine I have is an old xp machine that has some serious dll 
>> issues, so it doesn't like to run for more than an hour or so at a time, 
>> depending on when/how windows decides to do things.  I've never managed to 
>> fix it, because my xp pro disk is unreadable, and I've not found another xp 
>> pro hd I could copy the dlls from to repair my system.
>> I have 

[Audyssey] The Game of "Say What"

[Sharon Hooley]

Hi,

Has anyone played the game "Say what?"  It's a stand-alone portable device in 
which you put parts of proverbs together.  Is it kind of like a madlib, where 
you can mix the parts and have it announce the results, or does it just say 
something like, "Oops, that doesn't match."?  Or is it being produced anymore?

Thanks,



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Re: [Audyssey] got my new solid state drive in

[Shaun Everiss]

Hmmm I had a nec which had the same issues didn't last that long.
I had a system hp to maintain that overheated.
As long as you can get passed their malware asus stuff is generally 
stable and rock solid.
I havn't used their laptops but their desktop graphics and main boards 
are and I have had no issue with either from a hardware standpoint.
Some del units seem good to though I still go toshiba just because of 
the accessible bios alone and a few other tweaks.

They also use standard hardware,  for sound etc these days.
On the hp front their website is quite unfriendly driver site, eprint, etc.
However their printers especially their web enabled ones are quite good.



On 16/11/2015 11:44 p.m., Thomas Ward wrote:

Hi,

I have similar experiences. I now avoid HP like the plague myself
because their systems tend to be very below the par on average, and I
know others with similar experiences. My dad, for instance, had a HP
laptop for about six months, very barely used, and it died. So I don't
generally buy HP anything if I can help it these days.


On 11/16/15, englishride...@gmail.com  wrote:

Ah. I avoid HP like the plague now. The first and only laptop I got from
them kept having issue after issue, where both of my Dells, except for one
problem, have run for years before giving up the ghost. One lasted for six
years, and The other lasted for five years and seven months. Technically the
one that lasted for six years still works, since I put Vinux onto it after I
couldn't find my XP disc's after reformatting the system after I got a
rather nasty virus that I was having a ton of trouble removing.

I can't wait to have a solid-state drive in the new laptop that I'm getting
soon. It's going to be awesome! It'll be my first system with eight gigs of
RAM and a 2.9 Core i5 processor; it's the architecture that's one generation
behind the new Skylake processors, but that's fine for me. The model I'll be
getting is a Lenovo ThinkPad T450S.


Thanks,
Ari


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.



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Re: [Audyssey] The Game of "Say What"

[Marty Schultz]

Can someone find out if there is an accessible version of a game like 
that for the iphone.

If not, I can add it to my list of games to build.



On 11/16/2015 6:18 PM, Sharon Hooley wrote:


Hi,

Has anyone played the game "Say what?"  It's a stand-alone portable device in which you 
put parts of proverbs together.  Is it kind of like a madlib, where you can mix the parts and have 
it announce the results, or does it just say something like, "Oops, that doesn't match."? 
 Or is it being produced anymore?

Thanks,



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--
*Marty Schultz*
ma...@kidfriendlysoftware.com 

Blindfold Racer - free iPhone/iPad app where you drive with your ears, 
not your eyes www.BlindfoldRacer.com 


Learn about how we built it for blind & visually impaired kids, teens & 
adults as a STEM project.

Follow the blog: BlindfoldGames.org 
Follow us: @BlindfoldGames 

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Re: [Audyssey] got my new solid state drive in

[Thomas Ward]

Hi,

I have similar experiences. I now avoid HP like the plague myself
because their systems tend to be very below the par on average, and I
know others with similar experiences. My dad, for instance, had a HP
laptop for about six months, very barely used, and it died. So I don't
generally buy HP anything if I can help it these days.


On 11/16/15, englishride...@gmail.com  wrote:
> Ah. I avoid HP like the plague now. The first and only laptop I got from
> them kept having issue after issue, where both of my Dells, except for one
> problem, have run for years before giving up the ghost. One lasted for six
> years, and The other lasted for five years and seven months. Technically the
> one that lasted for six years still works, since I put Vinux onto it after I
> couldn't find my XP disc's after reformatting the system after I got a
> rather nasty virus that I was having a ton of trouble removing.
>
> I can't wait to have a solid-state drive in the new laptop that I'm getting
> soon. It's going to be awesome! It'll be my first system with eight gigs of
> RAM and a 2.9 Core i5 processor; it's the architecture that's one generation
> behind the new Skylake processors, but that's fine for me. The model I'll be
> getting is a Lenovo ThinkPad T450S.
>
>
> Thanks,
> Ari

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Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing device/unit

[Jacob Kruger]

No idea if it includes orca, etc., but, here's a sort of announcement page 
for the raspberry pi version of ubuntu mate, including both a torrent 
download link for the image, as well as, I think, a direct download link - 
they actually ask you to use the bittorrent, and offer seeding afterwards:

https://ubuntu-mate.org/raspberry-pi/

Also seems like you'd definitely need sighted help for initial boot-up, for 
the setup wizard, but anyway.


Stay well

Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlindZA
"Roger Wilco wants to welcome you...to the space janitor's closet..."

- Original Message - 
From: "Josh K" 

To: "Gamers Discussion list" 
Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2015 5:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing 
device/unit



and I also read the latest ubuntu mate 15.10 has a version for the 
raspberry pie.


follow me on twitter @joshknnd1982

On 11/13/2015 11:20 PM, Jacob Kruger wrote:
Thomas, it's way more than just an interactive fiction gaming unit, but 
that was my sort of context-specific posting to this list.


It's a full debian linux PC that literally fits in the palm of your hand, 
and in terms of portability, biggest issue would be needing to use it 
with an external keyboard.


My primary reason for actually getting hold of one was since want to try 
using it as a small, portable, low-end web server, and have got 80% of 
that process sorted - apache is installed, along with PHP script 
processing, and now just need to still get MySQL support installed, and 
good to go.


Check out the mainstream documentation page:
http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianDocumentation

And, the less than complete VI specific usage website:
http://www.raspberryvi.org/

Did also try out frotz interpreter, with wumpus.z5 yesterday, via SSH 
terminal, working on unit, and worked pretty much perfectly though.


Stay well

Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlindZA
"Roger Wilco wants to welcome you...to the space janitor's closet..."

- Original Message - From: "Thomas Ward" 


To: "Gamers Discussion list" 
Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2015 3:56 AM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing 
device/unit




Hi Jacob,

Cool. Sounds like a nifty little gaming device you got there. The only
thing is while I do like interactive fiction games I'm not sure I'd
want to pay out the investment for something like this myself since I
only play interactive fiction  games occasionally. If the /Raspberry
device had a broader spectrum of games I might actually consider the
investment in something like it since it would come in handy in times
like now when I may be in the hospital for an extended amount of time
with little to nothing to do. Dragging around a laptop isn't really an
option in my case and I don't have a smartphone so I could see
something like your Raspberry Pie being a nice little device between
those extremes.



On 11/12/15, Jacob Kruger  wrote:

Am currently playing around with a raspberry pi unit/device, which is
effectively a low-level full linux/debian operating system PC 
implemented on

a piece of hardware roundabout the size of a box of cigarettes.

It took a little bit of effort to get it up and running/cooperating, 
and
don't seem to be able to use orca screen reader with it's version of a 
GUI,
which is x-windows, but, after installing speakUp console screen 
reader, you
can switch between the multiple console windows, and thanks to Thomas 
having

helped me out with the relevant commands a while ago, to install frotz
interpreter on a linux system - sudo apt-get install frotz - I now have 
the
frotz interpreter installed on this unit, and since it runs off 
micro-USB
cable for power - the same thing most modern smart phones use for 
charging
their batteries - if I plug it into the portable cellphone charging 
unit
have here, and plug in my earphones, then I could literally play most 
IF
games anywhere/everywhere, without having to drain my phone's battery, 
etc.


Does require connecting a USB keyboard, but, still - besides full-size
keyboard, it's a PC-in-your-pocket.

There's also at least one other raspberry-specific game I know of, but, 
am
also planning to play around with python code on this unit, etc. etc., 
so

let's see...

Overall, while it wasn't all that simple to get it up and running,
accessibly on my own, the total cost of what have here now is 
roundabout

ZAR700 = +-$55, or thereabouts, but anyway.

Stay well

Jacob Kruger
Blind Biker
Skype: BlindZA
"Roger Wilco wants to welcome you...to the space janitor's closet..."
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Re: [Audyssey] Portable interactive fiction game playing device/unit

[Cara Quinn]

Hi Dennis et al;

Not sure if your comment was directed to me or not. I was simply responding to 
the stereo comment.

To clarify this, OpenAL does simulate 3D positional audio using two speakers. 
It certainly can also take advantage of more speakers if more are available to 
it but it does a great job with only two as well.

For those who may not know, OpenAL is the default 3D audio library for iOS 
devices and the Mac so many of the games on iOS which use positional audio take 
advantage of at least some part of OpenAL.

However, to the comments that sampling rate has nothing to do with the quality 
of audio, perhaps I am misunderstanding y’all here, but it most certainly does. 
:)

Now, I am not saying that higher sample rates are better, but I am saying that 
they do matter when it comes to audio converters and such so yes, they can 
definitely affect the quality of audio.

As you say though, they do not have anything to do with 3D sound positioning..

Have a great night!

Cheers!

Cara
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iOS design and development - LookTel.com
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On Nov 16, 2015, at 3:03 PM, Dennis Towne  wrote:

A 48 khz sampling rate has nothing to do with audio quality.  Lack of
surround sound is probably pretty big though.

Dennis Towne

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 10:48 AM, Cara Quinn  wrote:
> Hi Travis,
> 
> Actually OpenAL does support positional audio in software with a stereo setup.
> 
> So if OpenAL can run on the Pie, (which I am assuming it can) we could have 
> 3D audio.
> 
> Just a thought for now.
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> Cara
> ---
> iOS design and development - LookTel.com
> ---
> View my Online Portfolio at:
> 
> http://www.onemodelplace.com/models/Cara-Quinn
> 
> Follow me on Twitter!
> 
> https://twitter.com/ModelCara
> 
> On Nov 16, 2015, at 8:54 AM, Travis Siegel  wrote:
> 
> The pi doesn't have a very good sound chip in it.  It is only capable of 
> stero at 48KHZ.  It can't do surround sound, and all the tests I've done on 
> it seem to indicate even front/rear speakers make no difference, there's only 
> left/right on the pi.
> I did go hunting for sound cards that will work on the pi, and have found 3 
> of them, though detailed specs on the various cards were not available, so I 
> have yet to determine of any of those usb sound cards could be used to render 
> full audio required for the kinds of games the vi community would like to 
> see.  I'm going to purchase one of the cards in a couple weeks, and begin 
> experimenting.  Hopefully I can find something that will work for us as a 
> whole, but of course, having more folks looking/playing with the pi would of 
> course speed any and all progress towards the goal of build our own gaming 
> machine.
> I would love to port anything of interest to the pi, but since I don't know 
> what is of interest, I'm kind of just nibling around the edges (so to speak) 
> and porting things I've already ported to the mac or linux from before.  I'm 
> of course perfectly willing to help anyone port anything if they have the 
> desire to make a version for the pi, but until we can find a better 
> soundsystem for the pi, basic audio games are all we'll be able to make, 
> since things are constrained by the pi sound at the moment.  Of course, this 
> doesn't mean we can't build up a nice collection of things to play anyway, 
> things that don't depend on positional audio will work just fine.  I've 
> written to RSG games asking for a pi version of their client, since python is 
> one of the major languages for the pi, I expect that porting the rsg client 
> would simply be a matter of including a proper version of their compiled 
> python code, and poof, it's all done. Unfortunately, I received no response 
> to my inquiry, so no idea if that's due to lack of interest, lack of 
> knowledge, lack of message receipt, or some other reason.  However, I'll 
> continue porting things I can get my hands on, and perhaps, even without a 
> great sound architecture, the pi could still be used as a basic gaming rig by 
> some.
> 
> 
> On Sun, 15 Nov 2015, Cara Quinn wrote:
> 
>> Hi Travis,
>> 
>> I have been thinking about a Raspberry Pie for a while. You answered many of 
>> my questions with this post but one that I have is how easy is it to set up 
>> with a visual impairment?
>> 
>> Also, you had mentioned that the sound is not great. I assume you can plug a 
>> headset into one?
>> 
>> Considering the headset idea, would it then be possible to install a 
>> third-party audio library such as OpenAL?
>> 
>> You can see where I am going here. I am wondering what would need to be done 
>> here to bring this closer to an audio gaming environment.
>> 
>> Thanks for any feedback or insights you may have.
>> 
>> Have a  great day!
>> 
>> Cheers!
>> 
>> Cara
>> ---
>> iOS design and development -