Sounds, text readers and speech recognition

I am not blind, but I have a fascination with MUDs. The problem is I hate to read. ^^! I start falling asleep when I do. Be it Interactive Fiction, a MUD or even just a good book, my eyes start to droop.

I have heard there are sound packs for blind users. If you open or closed a door a sound from Star Trek plays from the bridge. If there is a gun battle, laser fire from Star Wars. If you walk into a pub, a crowd of people are gossiping, maybe a light bit of lute is playing in the back ground from Lord of the Rings. (Or generic sound files, but same type of sounds.)

I've tried to go back to the MUD (May of been a MUSH, I am not certain, as I classify them all as MUDs.) in question, but they no longer seem to be active. I've tried others and some act like they have no idea what I am referring to or they call it Ambient Sounds. I've searched online and on YouTube and am not finding what I am looking for, not sure of the key words I am using or what. I'd assume there would be quite a bit on this subject, as I've heard a LOT of blind users play MUDs. I'm not sure if the sources I got the information from were exaggerating or I took it that way and they meant something much more simple.

Is there a starter pack that has everything one would need to get started? Does it have be used by a screen reader or can it be played from any Windows computer? Does text to speech sound really robotic like from the typical Windows computer or it sounds more life like? Is everything basically automatic or I have to teach the game to produce these sounds room to room, situation to situation and only when I go back to the same room or situation it plays the appropriate sound files? Does me talking into the microphone than allow my character to move from room to room and interact with things, so basically I could be playing while doing things around the house?

Thank you.

Why do you care what they call it?


Some MUDs may have them, but it's going to be specific to each game. Any "sound pack" is basically just a long list of triggers that play some sound file when the trigger fires. Since every MUD has different things going on, every MUD would have a different set of sounds and a different list of triggers.


Any computer can play sounds.


I don't understand why you're now talking about text to speech. Sound packs have nothing to do with text to speech. In any case, the answer to that depends on what voice engine you use.


It's not magic. You need triggers that look for certain messages.

This is again an entirely unrelated subject to either of the previous subjects.

I'm sorry. Are you attempting to help?

You seem to be asking about two (or more) different things as Fiendish was pointing out.

Text-to-speech is for reading out the text on the screen, mainly used by vision-impaired people. It can be slow, so if you can read, I think most people would rather just read off the screen.

This is especially so if you are revisiting existing rooms, you can tell at a glance that the room (which might have a lengthy description) is the same as the one you were in a minute ago, and wouldn't want to wait for the whole description to be read to you.

As for other sounds, some MUDs build them in - you download a sound pack with dozens if not hundreds of small files that the MUD commands you client to play at the appropriate moment.

You could probably grab one from a MUD that has them (I'm not sure which ones do) and then arrange, somehow, for the appropriate sound file to be played when required. For example if you can detect you are in a forest, play a forest sound.

I think you can also get quite a few sound effects from various places (eg. packaged with iMovie as an example) which may or may not suit your needs.

As for recognizing your own speech, that is a whole new ball game. Conceivably you could dictate into a voice recognition device, and have it turned into MUD commands, but that might be quite complex to set up.

The latest mobile phones do quite a creditable job of doing that, but I don't know about any MUD integration at this time.

Yes. I put another question in there, not seeing it as a problem at the time considering it was regarding a MUD and may of been handled by the same system. If the forum allows I will switch the title so there is no more confusion. My apologies and thank you for your reply. I will look into if the game I play has it's own sound packs, but I doubt it from the last conversation I had with them.

On to the other question I had raised, I know you can shorten descriptions for rooms, either automatically after the first time you have entered it or from the start. Every time you revisit it you get a line or two of the most important things in the room- like people, an odd object laying around and exits, instead of a description of the room itself.

Do you mean they read the text slowly like a robot or that they just have to get through reading it all? I assume one could interrupt the reading by saying STOP and tell it to do something else, like Go North (or simply North) or Look at Wall or Glance Ways/Exits.

I can not check my phone at the moment due to it's connection, but there is one app that does just that, although I think one of the criticisms was that it looped itself over other commands due to speech being spoken to it or "hearing" it's own voice replying back. A headset I would assume would fix that, unless there was an underlying issue.

I had assumed there would already be a program(s) that when spoken to it did your commands. All first words spoken would be the key words typed in the game, so GO EAST. LOOK WEST. TALK TO JODY. LOOK AT TABLE. BUY 24 FROM TABLE. REPEAT (for what ever was last read to you.) SHORTEN (To shorten the description of the room), etc. EXAMINE would have to be said fully and not just EX as that sounds like X. In fact everything would basically have to be said completely and clearly.

I had assumed this type of device or software was common for blind people, unless again I got the wrong info or I misunderstood it. And if this is not common, (Not common as in everyone uses it, but it is out there.) why not? Wouldn't that help the blind and other users in general? Kind of like virtual reality in a way, but with it plugged solely into your ears instead of your eyes. You could essentially do house work or lean back in your chair and not even have to touch the key board.

Yes, the text-to-speech usually comes with a way of stopping a particular read-out.

Quite possibly what you want can be achieved, you could look into dictation software. I personally don't know of any such (that I have working today) apart from on my phone.