I investigated the "crash on load" bugs reported, and have posted what I hope is a fix for at least some devices.
There is also a fix for Jellybean devices, which had faulty voice recognition (it would just die out).
--------------------------------------- -- DEVICES THAT I HAVE SEEN FUNCTION -- ---------------------------------------
Droid 3 (The phone in the video, and my primary test device) Transformer TF101 (The original Transformer) Samsung Galaxy SIII (I think that was the model) Transformer TF101 Transformer Prime TF201 Nexus 7
Some older devices with particularly limited resources will have problems with playing multiple audio streams simultaneously.
------------------------ Just to get you started
"Move to", "Head to", or "Go to" all move agents around. So for example, tell Agent 1 to "Go to the Sewer" to get started. Similarly, Agent 2 can "Go to the main hall."
Other phrases such as "What do you have," "What do you see" and "Where are you" will yield answers.
If an agent has an item, they can "Use" it (such as "Use the Noise Maker")
------------------------
You are the commander for two field agents, tasked with espoinage and sabotage of a weapons facility. Call your agents, listen to them describe their surroundings, then speak into your phone to tell them what to do. You can tell them to move to a location, ask them what they have, tell them to use an item, and tell them to search the area. I have uploaded a gameplay video. Will host on google play shortly.
* This was built and tested on a DROID 3.
* I have seen it in action on a Samsung Galaxy S III and it worked, though the recognition was a bit rougher than on the Droid 3
----- Environmental Consideration ------
Some things that I think interfere with the voice recognition:
* If you are in a room with music that has lyrics, those lyrics will screw up your commands to the agents
* If you speak English with a heavy accent, my code might not understand what the device sends along to it
This is some great innovation and a nice interpretation of the theme. The voice recognition is a bit spotty but I'm used to that. Great work, guys! This game sets a great mood.
I really, really wanted to play this, but couldn't get the voice recognition to work on my Nexus 7. The 'speak now' tone plays when the game starts, but after calling the agent, it doesn't seem to hear my commands. I'll keep trying and hope I can find a way around it.
@metadept : I will try this on my nexus 7 later. Thank you for the description of the bug! Honestly I was thinking that people wouldn't bother with this on a tablet since it was mimicking a phone's interface, so it didn't occur to me to test on a tablet. :)
I'm going to tinker with what's on Google Play over time and will keep the untouched LD entry hosted on my own site, but that will be later in the week.
Really really awesome idea! Had some trouble with the voice recognition but I'm not a native english speaker so it may have had some problems with my voice. Hope you guys flesh this out more!
I didn't manage to get this running :-( I downloaded it to my Android phone (SH007), it opens the "phone" screen, but then nothing happens. Trying to call agent 1 and 2 gives no result. Trying to call HQ asks "do you want to restart the mission"? And clicking yes to that gives no results :-(
I'm not sure if that is a problem with the sound on my phone, or if the game is just failing to start. :-(
I was afraid of that caranha. I'm not at all sure how well or widely some of these apis are supported, or how well different phones will handle so much voice acting.
Did you hear anything at all? Ambient sounds? Voices? Or nothing?
Wahou ! What a concept ! I have not any mobile so i can't test your game. But your video is so thrilling that i give you some very good ratings :) Please port your game for PC or navigator !!!
TheCze : You are correct. Because I am a native US english speaker my speech processing very much assumes that it will receive unaccented english input. I have no idea how Android thinks you pronounce words, and I'm not sure I really could make such a prediction... maybe this is possible, but I do not know how I would account for accented english?
The concept is brilliant. It's like a choose your adventure game, only based on sound instead of text... It has its advantages and drawbacks, but it could definitely become a thing!
So perfect concept! I LOVE IT. Still, I can't play on my phone, i talk, i talk, i talk, but nobody answer :\ Will try again tonight. COngrats thougt for the idea!
Pitoum : What phone? What do you say? Where do you live? Is English your native language? Do you hear anything when you call an agent, or is it always silent?
W
wombatica19 Dec 2012, 20:49
wow just wow. Never seen or heard of anything like this before! 10/10
I wish there were more innovation marks I could give. This was *awesome*. I feel like a kid. If you need graphics and incidental music for this one, count me in please. And please, please do develop for iOS as well if at all possible.
As above I have to say that your idea is great! Unfortunaly I could not play the game on my Samsung Galaxy sII. I could start and call the agents but when I tried to give them commands nothing happend. Excellent take on the theme aswell!
I don't have an Android, so I can't test it. However it's really cool. You can play it in public place and the people will think you are talking by phone. Totally super! (...though I can use an Android simulator...)
The idea is really cool, and your gameplay video was great! Tried it on my Galaxy S but couldn't get any of my instructions recognized... Guess I should work on my English skills ;) I'm not rating the game since I couldn't properly experience it, but good concept.
Hey recursive.frog. Answering your question: I hear nothing at all. I can switch between the phone screen and the contact list screen, and the game respond to me clicking on "HQ", but other than that, no sound. I can try to provide you with any extra info you might need.
As for the "accent" issue, you might want to add an option where the game will write back what it understood to the screen. This might break the immersion a bit (thus an option), but might help people identify why they can't be understood by the game.
caranha: The way the speech recognition works, I actually receive a long list of possible candidates for what the device thinks it heard. I'm not sure I could fit 20 lines of text on the screen. ;)
HOWEVER
I have found that the newest phones (those running JellyBean) will be unable to play this game as it is now becasue my game relies on the on-device speech recognition API, but Google has disabled it in Jellybean and instead requires you to send all speech to their servers so they can decode it and send it back. LAAAAAAAME! How can you possibly have a low-latency game control scheme like that?
The game crashes on my Asus Transformer Pad TF300T (Android 4.1.1 Jellybean) on startup. Cool concept though, I remember discussing it briefly with you on IRC.
LPGhatguy : Yep, I get the same thing on TF201. The crash bug I think I have a good solution for, but there's a deeper problem in Jellybean that I'm afraid will break suspension of disbelief for players even once the TF crash bug is solved.
Sad to say but for now the game is best played on Gingerbread and (possibly) ICS.
Sadly my only Android device is an old Galaxy 551 running 2.2 and it 'ended unexpectedly' on startup of the game. Such a great idea, though. I can imagine this type of game as a new genre, for example a game version of The Bone Collector where you play as Denzel Washington's character.
The game wanted to use the Samsung voice recognition in stead of the Google one, and didn't seem to work at all. That was a shame altough now my girlfriend doesn't have to doubt my sanity anymore ('who are you talking to?').
Tried this both on Nexus One (2.3.6) and on Galaxy Nexus (4.2.1), but speech recognition doesn't do much. Often the agents don't respond at all, and if they do, they often just ask me to repeat what I just said. Once or twice they seemed to have interpreted my words as "what do you see" even though I said something quite different. I am not a native (UK) English speaker but I don't have much of an accent. Five stars for innovation though; this could be really cool when these problems have been worked out.
Whoa. Epic game idea and execution. Thanks a lot for the gameplay videos. Helped a lot to get the picture when you don't have an android phone at hand. I'd love to give it a try out here. Really awesome idea and great great work. Finish this and it will become a huge hit.
The original Android build did not work on my Galaxy S3, but the latest build does. It does struggle to understand my South African accent, but it occasionally recognizes my words and works correctly. Brilliant concept!
@voidstar69 : Thank you for giving the game another shot after all this time, and thank you for the confirmation about your Galaxy S3. It's very valuable information!
Oh my oh my oh my, i saw some gameplay videos and i'm so frustrated not being able to play, i'll do so soon but i'll not be able to rate the game, gaaaaaaaaaaaah D:
Comments50
So, it's a voice activated phone game?
A long time ago in a distant life I used to program voxml servers. Lovely to see such a neat twist!
Deep impression left, will affect my games option choices in the next LD!
I'm going to tinker with what's on Google Play over time and will keep the untouched LD entry hosted on my own site, but that will be later in the week.
Hope you guys flesh this out more!
I'm not sure if that is a problem with the sound on my phone, or if the game is just failing to start. :-(
Did you hear anything at all? Ambient sounds? Voices? Or nothing?
10/10
Fangirl love all over the place
(...though I can use an Android simulator...)
Tried it on my Galaxy S but couldn't get any of my instructions recognized... Guess I should work on my English skills ;)
I'm not rating the game since I couldn't properly experience it, but good concept.
Unfortunatly the voice recognition didn't work at all for me but i it was fun to watch the Gameplay-Video.
As for the "accent" issue, you might want to add an option where the game will write back what it understood to the screen. This might break the immersion a bit (thus an option), but might help people identify why they can't be understood by the game.
HOWEVER
I have found that the newest phones (those running JellyBean) will be unable to play this game as it is now becasue my game relies on the on-device speech recognition API, but Google has disabled it in Jellybean and instead requires you to send all speech to their servers so they can decode it and send it back. LAAAAAAAME! How can you possibly have a low-latency game control scheme like that?
Sad to say but for now the game is best played on Gingerbread and (possibly) ICS.
That was a shame altough now my girlfriend doesn't have to doubt my sanity anymore ('who are you talking to?').
Really awesome idea and great great work. Finish this and it will become a huge hit.