Did I hear someone say, Voice Commands?!

It's true, we've made Green-Ear uh.... awesomer.

With our 2.2 release, available for download now at www.garagegames.com/products/greenear, we've added some kickin' new features, a couple of fixes and a whole lot of charm.

First up: Voice Commands

These voice commands are connected to a library of your own making, just decide on the words/phrases/actions that you would like to illicit a response for and upload them to our site (under downloads/tools) and you will then be able to download a Library file and a Dictionary file to put into the Voice Command folder in your root directory. Easy Breezy. You are not limited to just voice commands, click of a mouse, keystroke, they can all provide the same function with this nifty new tool.

You may have noticed that several days prior to the 2.2 release, last week sometime, there was a 2.1 version up on the site. The difference between the two lies solely in the voice command feature. Instead of trying to guess the beginning and the end of a phrase, we’ve added VoiceCommBeginPhrase() and VoiceCommEndPhrase() functions, so that a phrase is defined explicitly. This reduces the number of false-positive recognitions and allows the function to recognize more complex phrases. Yay! So, if you had already downloaded the 2.1 and plan on using the Voice Command feature, you should get the latest version.

Here are some screen shots of what the upload section of our site looks like with some sample commands:



Also in the 2.1+2.2 Releases: Out of Game Calling

Out of Game Calling, or PSTN connectivity, allows developers to make it possible for end users to call out of the game to ANY landline or mobile phone. Some popular uses for this would be something like a ‘Phone-a-Friend’ feature in a trivia game, or simply to add people to your clan for a big raid. We provide the tech, the unlimited uses are up to you. I would like to publicly state one caveat on the Out of Game calling, although the feature is readily available in the latest release, its payment model has yet to be decided. Pricing for out of game calls should be available soon. A likely scenario is that it would be similar to Voice Slots in that you could by a bulk number of minutes, like a calling card, or that it could be a micro-transaction inside the game. It is also possible that we will have to do custom pricing for the various uses, if a game lends itself to high minutes of usage, it may make sense to have a different model than a game that makes one 30 second domestic call per session. I’d love to hear the community’s thoughts on pricing for such a feature as well, we are open to the possibilities.

Those are the new big features, now for the nitty gritty changes and fixes:

The library is now distributed as a DLL with a matching .lib file, instead of a static library. That means that an appropriate GearPlatformLib_VSx_xx.dll needs to be distributed to the end user with a game or application. Not a big deal, just important to note.

We have removed the C++ STL dependency from the SDK which allows it to be used in Torque without having to disable the Torque memory manager. I know a few of you who will be stoked about this one. As a result of that change, the API functions that were using STL vectors and strings are now using char pointers- FYI.

The init() function has been added to the TorqueGear class. It has to be called after constructing the object. We found that Torque is calling constructors of all SimObject-derived objects internally several times, so we've moved the initialization functions from the constructor and that should solve that.

On logon, the password is no longer sent as clear text. A hash is now used instead.

Those are the biggies and the smallies.

And below is a simulation of what someone might look like if someone called them with Out of Game Calling!

Sure the term PSTN Connectivity SOUNDS nerdy, but see how exhilarating and exciting it is?! (This is merely simulated excitement, actual results may vary. Don’t try this at home, well, I mean DO try Green-Ear, don’t try simulated excitement….;)

Peace out.
Leba