Front End Support > MaLa Frontend
Mala now has LEDWiz support! (No mod chip required)
edge:
I think I understand now, squirrelly. Thanks for clarifying. Sounds like a cool addition. We have the 2 Mala plugins working seperately (LEDWiz and Speech). Now we have to get them to talk to each other. Shouldn't be that bad. :dizzy: hehe.
squirrellydw:
great look forward to it. My cocktail table should be done by March and I should be able to start testing it by February.
rockin_rick:
--- Quote from: squirrellydw on January 03, 2007, 04:26:42 pm ---
--- Quote from: edge on January 03, 2007, 03:49:42 pm ---- When you are in Mala, as you scroll through the game lists, the appropriate buttons are lit for each game.
- When you launch a game, Mala lights the buttons for that game, one by one. As it lights each button, it "speaks" the action for that button (ie, JUMP).
- When playing the game, the appropriate buttons stay lit.
- When you exit the game, you come back to Mala as usual.
--- End quote ---
Yes, but I would change one little thing. When you select the game also have all the buttons for that game light up first, then light each one and have it speak its action.
--- End quote ---
This little change is closer to what (IMHO) I would want it to do, but I would make another small change to:
- When you are in Mala, as you scroll through the game lists, the appropriate buttons are lit for each game.
- When you launch a game, Mala lights all the appropriate buttons for the game - they should already be lit (no change necessary) from scrolling through the list.
- It then, one by one, "speaks" the action for that button (ie, JUMP) while flashing it at about 2-10 Hz. When the one is flashing, the others that the game uses stay lit.
- When playing the game, the appropriate buttons stay lit.
- When you exit the game, you come back to Mala as usual.
This way, all buttons that are being used by the game never all go out, it's more easy to remember/relate the position of each to the others, it's easy to tell just how many are left to speak, and it looks cooler! (to me anyway...)
Perhaps the flash rate could be a user setting.
Maybe there could be some way to make it repeat speaking each button before starting the game. For instance, if for some reason you missed what the first button said and would like it to repeat speaking all of them, (maybe) you could push a button or move a control to make it loop through each button again. Alternatively, perhaps there could also be a skip button assigned.
The more I think about it, the more I think that it would be nice to have a way that it doesn't always speak the functions. I can imagine that you will have some games that you play a lot and know what the buttons do, and don't want to waste time listening to it speak. Perhaps when selecting the game, you can do something to indicate if you want to hear the speaking or not. Maybe 2 different "enter/select game" methods? Maybe have the FE remember how many times you've played a game, and if that amount is above a user set value, not speak? That way, games you don't play much get the commands spoken, while games that you play more (and thus know the functions) don't waste time speaking. This method falls through if you consider that while you play a certain game(s) a lot, perhaps you have someone else visiting who doesn't know the functions. Maybe some way to take care of this, like a selection to "speak all" or to "speak not often played". (This assumes that stats on play frequency are kept.) Then you can just change that to "speak not often played" when only you are playing, and change it to "speak all" when you have friends over who probably don't know what the buttons do. I suppose that if these options were implemented it would make sense to add a third option: "speak never".
Just brainstorming.... ideas?
Rick
headkaze:
--- Quote from: rockin_rick on January 03, 2007, 11:45:04 pm ---
--- Quote from: squirrellydw on January 03, 2007, 04:26:42 pm ---
--- Quote from: edge on January 03, 2007, 03:49:42 pm ---- When you are in Mala, as you scroll through the game lists, the appropriate buttons are lit for each game.
- When you launch a game, Mala lights the buttons for that game, one by one. As it lights each button, it "speaks" the action for that button (ie, JUMP).
- When playing the game, the appropriate buttons stay lit.
- When you exit the game, you come back to Mala as usual.
--- End quote ---
Yes, but I would change one little thing. When you select the game also have all the buttons for that game light up first, then light each one and have it speak its action.
--- End quote ---
This little change is closer to what (IMHO) I would want it to do, but I would make another small change to:
- When you are in Mala, as you scroll through the game lists, the appropriate buttons are lit for each game.
- When you launch a game, Mala lights all the appropriate buttons for the game - they should already be lit (no change necessary) from scrolling through the list.
- It then, one by one, "speaks" the action for that button (ie, JUMP) while flashing it at about 2-10 Hz. When the one is flashing, the others that the game uses stay lit.
- When playing the game, the appropriate buttons stay lit.
- When you exit the game, you come back to Mala as usual.
This way, all buttons that are being used by the game never all go out, it's more easy to remember/relate the position of each to the others, it's easy to tell just how many are left to speak, and it looks cooler! (to me anyway...)
Perhaps the flash rate could be a user setting.
Maybe there could be some way to make it repeat speaking each button before starting the game. For instance, if for some reason you missed what the first button said and would like it to repeat speaking all of them, (maybe) you could push a button or move a control to make it loop through each button again. Alternatively, perhaps there could also be a skip button assigned.
The more I think about it, the more I think that it would be nice to have a way that it doesn't always speak the functions. I can imagine that you will have some games that you play a lot and know what the buttons do, and don't want to waste time listening to it speak. Perhaps when selecting the game, you can do something to indicate if you want to hear the speaking or not. Maybe 2 different "enter/select game" methods? Maybe have the FE remember how many times you've played a game, and if that amount is above a user set value, not speak? That way, games you don't play much get the commands spoken, while games that you play more (and thus know the functions) don't waste time speaking. This method falls through if you consider that while you play a certain game(s) a lot, perhaps you have someone else visiting who doesn't know the functions. Maybe some way to take care of this, like a selection to "speak all" or to "speak not often played". (This assumes that stats on play frequency are kept.) Then you can just change that to "speak not often played" when only you are playing, and change it to "speak all" when you have friends over who probably don't know what the buttons do. I suppose that if these options were implemented it would make sense to add a third option: "speak never".
Just brainstorming.... ideas?
Rick
--- End quote ---
I like your idea about having the button being spoken as flashing leaving each one lit as it goes through.
I think to solve the problem when you don't want to hear all the buttons being spoken, just have a button press to skip it.
I've got the basic function working in my plugin test program (for another FE) so here are some of my tips for loadman..
Speak(action, 0) means that the thread will not continue to the next line until the word has finished being spoken. This is problematic (from my experience helping Tom write the Speech plugin for GameEx) since it was pausing the whole FE while the word is spoken, even when it's a dll and supposidly a separate thread. So we added SVSFPurgeBeforeSpeak and SVSFlagsAsync flags to the second parameter (ie Speak(ROMName, SVSFPurgeBeforeSpeak | SVSFlagsAsync) so that it would allow you to select another game even if it's already speaking a game.
For this plugin I put the whole loop of hilighting and speaking the action in a thread, but I have a feeling this may still cause a pause in the FE. The good thing about using Speak(action, 0) means you can hilight the button and move onto the next only until after the action has finished being spoken. I have a feeling it may need to be changed to run Asyncronously and have a timer delay between speaking each action.
loadman:
adding speech to the plug-in (0r anything) is very easy ....and I like the ideas being put forward.... ;D
rockin_rick seems thinks the way I do. Nice Brainstorm action ;)
They seem practical and fun.... Just like me :laugh2:
Thanks Guys.. I will check out Headkaze tip to implement effectively
Just thinking out loud
* I will use the built in flash/ramp function in the ledwiz as that way there is less code involved and the flash/ramp rate will be user set by the ledwiz GPS
I will submit an application to the wife to get some quality coding time soon to work on this.
But I think this is going to happen. The ideas are too cool to ignore.
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