Video: tech demo of my next game

Tech demo from Scott Carr on Vimeo.

The next game I'm working on is going to use Microsoft's XNA framework.

The physics engine I'm using is Farseer.

You gotta know when to fold 'em

I've decided to cut my losses and abandon production of "Rap Hero." I think having the player type in rap lyrics then having a robotic voice echo them back is an interesting concept but it'd take a lot of work to get the game to the point where the average user would want to play it.

I still think hearing a robotic speech synthesis voice rap is funny, but it's hard to make a game around it. I was planning on doing something with regular expressions to determine if the player's lyrics rhyme, but I got frustrated before I got around to it.

The most frustrating part is that all the speech synthesis engines I found were for Linux. For me, I have to put a lot more effort into getting what I want than I do on Windows. Having years and years more experience with Windows might be the reason for that.

Here's my code if you're interested in playing that game (you're going to have to compile it yourself [yay linux!]). You need eSpeak and its library installed.

//============================================================================
// Name : eSpeak1.cpp
// Author :
// Version :
// Copyright :
// Description :
//============================================================================

#include
#include "espeak/speak_lib.h"
#include
using namespace std;

int main() {

const int SONG_LENGTH = 2;

string buffer_string;
string song[2];
//string blanks = "________";
string whole_song;
bool quit = false;
//char garabage;

// string myString = "We used poisonous gases. We poisoned their asses.";
//int synth_flags = espeakCHARS_AUTO | espeakPHONEMES;

espeak_Initialize(AUDIO_OUTPUT_SYNCH_PLAYBACK, 100, NULL, 0);

//espeak_SetSynthCallBack(SynthCallback);

//espeak_Synth(myString.c_str(), myString.length(), 0, POS_SENTENCE , 0, 0, NULL, NULL);

espeak_Synchronize();

song[0] = "Yo! Yo! I got a taste for expensive things \n like fast cars and ";

song[1] = "Pull my sleeve to flash my rolex \n all the fly honeys call me ";



cout << "**** Welcome to Rap Hero! *****\n";
cout << "A line of lyrics will appear on the screen. \n";
cout << "You need to type in the end of the next line to make it rhyme with the previous. \n";
cout << "At the end, your rap will be played back so you can hear it. \n \n \n \n";
//cin >> garabage;


for( int i = 0; i < SONG_LENGTH; i++)
{
cout << song[i];
cout << "\n";
getline(cin, buffer_string);
//song[i] += buffer_string;
//cout << song[1];
whole_song += song[i];
whole_song += buffer_string;
whole_song += "\n";
}



cout << whole_song;

espeak_Synth(whole_song.c_str(), whole_song.length(), 0, POS_SENTENCE , 0, 0, NULL, NULL);

//cout << "!!!Hello World!!!" << endl; // prints !!!Hello World!!!
return 0;
}

Teaser

My next game will (hopefully) feature text-to-speech (speech synthesis) technology.

Check out a demo here: http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/onlinedemo.html

Stuck Shmup

I'd like to officially launch my very first game-in-a-week.

Here's a screenshot:



You can direct download the game here. Sadly, it's Windows only. To install just unzip it and launch the EXE.

The game is pretty basic but it's more of a proof of concept, since I spent a lot of my week just getting my compiler and stuff set up.

I learned a lot about how to make games efficiently. The good thing about setting a one week deadline is that instead of trying to go back and fix all my old junk code, I get to start fresh next week.