I know that Apple hasn't given access to voice recognition, but do we have access to voice synthesis. If they haven't given us an API, would it be possible to hack the accessibility APIs to work even for people with VoiceOver turned off?
The last time i checked, the API's required for voice synthesis (NSSynthesis) are only available on Mac OS. The API's have not yet been ported to iphone.
I have heard a lot from this company:
http://www.acapela-group.com/acapela-for-iphone-multilingual-speech-synthesis-available-for-iphone-applications--2028-speech-synthesis.html
Their product is supposed to work quite well, although their licensing scheme is a bit steep.
The license is a bit steep, but the text-to-speech is excellent. At the end of the day, unless you can write your own tts engine, you are over a barrel if you app requires that feature. I have looked at some of the free implementations and they are just not ready for prime time. I guess question is "Is the profit left after that percentage worth writing the application?"
Related
I have a pretty basic challenge-based iPhone game, and I wanted to know what my options are for player discovery & matchmaking. I may end up rolling my own server, but if I don't have to, even better.
So far, I've found OpenFeint and Scoreloop, but I don't really care about the social part or discovering other games, I just want a simple system with matchmaking, win/loss, and global rankings. CocosLive has the global ranking part, but not the matchmaking.
Also just found RakNet.
Thanks.
Check out the Google App Engine for a free to cheap alternative to setting up your own server. It also has the added benefit of being Google, which to me spells reliability.
I expect that RakNet and similar companies will want a bunch of money for this solution - one of their clients is Sony Online Entertainment which to me spells money.
Also as you search around for solutions I would focus more on searching for open source code to put on your Google App Engine rather than a service. Online services require bandwith, which costs money. Information is free.
Good luck!
Are there any libraries / frameworks that facilitate 2D game programming in Lua on the iPhone?
It looks like http://anscamobile.com/ and http://sio2interactive.com/GAMES.html are the only reasonable options at this point. Someone should create a simple Lua binding for OpenGL, AL and iPhone Events for the iPhone!
#richcollins: Actually, as of late last year you CAN test on the physical device using Corona (anscamobile.com).
If you want to check this out, download the free trial at developer.anscamobile.com, and it'll let you make developer builds for your phone.
The full version will also make App Store builds -- feel free to email support (at) anscamobile.com if you have further questions.
I'm trying out SIO2 as it apparently supports lua.
http://sio2interactive.com/GAMES.html
While it is for 3D and may be overkill for 2d it looks pretty powerful. Just make your models in 2d and fix your camera position.
--jdkoftinoff
There has been a fair amount of discussion of Lua on the iPhone on the Lua list. It appears that Apple is touchy about allowing user-supplied scripts, but has approved apps that used Lua internally as an implementation language.
I know I've seen reference to several approaches to wrapping iPhone goodies mentioned, but since I'm not personally an iPhone developer (or even user) I haven't paid attention to the details.
I need to develop an iPhone application which recognizes speech, and based on the result it performs further tasks.
I know iPhone 3.0 doesn't support speech recognition and I need to implement speech recognition software on the server side. I know this thing only, since I am newbie I don't know how to deal with that.
Mean Which software i need to buy and implement it at server side, and how to use that Service ??
The best open source speech recognition package I know of is Sphinx.
http://cmusphinx.sourceforge.net/
Otherwise, I would suggest looking into Nuance software.
Current speech recognition does well with a limited grammar set (if you know what they are going to say). Open dictation still doesn't quite work well enough to be used reliably for many applications. Keep that in mind while developing your application. I'm hoping now that Google is getting into the transcription game (with Google Voice) that should start improving. I'm thinking they will probably have something in the future.
I don't think there are many server side speech recognition software suites. Open source versions seem virtually non-existent. You might want to take a look at this SDK though:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/17247334/Creaceed-Releases-iPhone-Speech-Recognition-SDK
http://www.creaceed.com/weblog/ceedvocalsdk.html
It might allow you to do what you want on the iPhone itself.
Getting speech recognition right is very tricky and an active research area.
There are a few open-source solutions out there, though, see here. An additional, new one is SCARF, but I don't know if that is ready to use or rather just a proof of concept.
Check out the Nuance Mobile Developer program. We've got libraries for various platforms (including iOS) and an HTTP service if necessary.
I'm looking to get into (as everyone else) the iPhone game development business. I've been programming for a while but have only recently forayed into the Mac development world, although since I've been working with Java for a while learning Objective-C wasn't that big of a deal other than learning memory allocation.
From this, you can safely assume I am not looking for a "teach me basic programming" engine, I want a fully fleshed out engine that can create commercial quality games.
Some of the things I'm interested in:
Good documentation - tutorials and demos - APIs a must
Good support - responses in 3-4 days, not likely to shut down tomorrow, English speaking reps
Extensionable engine - reasonably easy to add new bits to the engine or heavily modify it without having to change 1000 different classes
Working engine - especially since I'm doing iPhone apps which aren't that complicated, I expect most features (animation, networking code, basic collision detection, etc.) to be built in
Reasonable cost - this is somewhat subjective so I'll define: I expect not to have to pay more than $1000 a year for upgrades. The initial cost may be up to $1500 (all required packs included), but if it's more than $1000, I don't expect upgrades to cost more than $500. Upgrades are defined as full version releases, not "content" or "add-ons".
Likely to continue regular updates - I appreciate some companies quality test their code, but I also appreciate companies that release code more than once every 3 years. I expect an upgrade or update (free or pay) every 6 months to a year
Integration with XCode - running the engine with XCode or a full featured IDE is a huge plus. Ease of importing libraries factors in here.
I appreciate all responses, especially those from the voice of experience that would impact iPhone development with a specific engine or experiences with support. If you have a comment about why something is bad (like documentation) please explain what makes it bad and also what a "good" example would be and why that is a better choice.
I will of course be developing on a Mac, so compatability is a must.
Update: It seems the two engines that offer the most are the Unity and Torque engine. Aside from price differences, can someone explain the ease of use of the engines in comparison?
I did a mini-survey of what was out there back in January and wrote up a post about it. Not much has changed since then so I'll just refer you to that post:
http://ramin.firoozye.com/2009/01/02/building-games-for-the-iphone-and-other-platforms/
I think the only real option at the moment is the Unity game engine.
http://unity3d.com/unity/features/iphone-publishing
The downside is it's probably outside of your budget. It would run $1,400 for the Pro Engine plus $1,499 for the iPhone stuff.
You could go with an indi license and the basic iPhone which would run you about $399.
I don't use Unity, yet, but at some point hope to be able to justify the cost.
You might be interested in cocos2d iPhone. It was originally written as a python 2d engine, then was ported to the iPhone. Although it may not hit every bullet point you mentioned, it is worth consideration. There is plenty of documentation on the site, as well as several examples that come with the download.
Constantly updated list of tools, engines and so forth: http://iphonedevdepot.com/
Does anyone have any suggestions for a site that potentially has some inspirational user interfaces for building my own iPhone Apps. It's straight forward to continually build out applications with the conventional UIKit widgets, but it does not set you apart from the competition. Some resources on how to build attractive interfaces is highly desired for inspiration. This is for someone with minimal Photoshop/Illustrator skills, but doesn't mind using sites such as iStockPhoto and working with custom views.
Apple is historically well-known for the user interfaces of its products and programs written for them, but in recent years it has come under fire for seemingly allowing its Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) to lapse. Some of the best Mac and iPhone applications are actually those that deviate from the HIG, but not so much that usability (or acceptance into the App Store) is sacrificed (see link text).
Examples of such innovative iPhone applications can be found in the iPhone app and web app showcases of Apple Design Award winners. These apps have been judged by Apple itself to be creative, inspiring, and exemplary of the iPhone platform's potential as a mobile computing device.
Go to your local best buy, game stop, or any other store with xbox360s, wiis and playstation 3s lying around. Play every single demo on these machines and rate them solely on UI experience. Triple A console games still lead the interface world in my opinion. Soft synths are a close second and also often have beautiful UIs (as Chris Schreiner pointed out). A quick trip through logic will give you a glimpse of apple's own work in that direction.
You might want to check out this article by Matt Gemmell about his process in designing the UI for his Favorites app.
10 Gorgeously Designed iPhone Applications has some very nicely designed apps.
I spent a long time getting this one together, it's a full list of every single ios inspiration / mobile css gallery I could find on the internet. Let me know if you find any others so I can add them!
http://www.kintek.com.au/web-design-blog/iphone-mobile-css-gallery-listing-ios-inspiration/
Maybe this will help: My source of inspiration comes from the software-synth domain. Circle from FAW comes to mind. Ableton Live is (in my book) something to look at.
Heres a good article about designing the Convertbot application. A very simple app that stands out because of its UI.
I hate to burst your bubble, but great design is not something you will get from finding a "site" to look at. Major universities have graduate design programs, that's the kind of place where some people learn to be great designers. Multiple courses and textbooks on design and all the related areas (art, architecture, psychology, biomechanics, etc., etc.) I've seen too many engineers, without at least some of this training, routinely suggest some really bad UI design ideas. Don't be another one of them.
Treat learning great design as something far bigger than finding a site (or learning another programming language, etc.), more like a multi-year endeavor, and you might have a chance.
Or find and team up with someone who's already an experienced designer.