Spoken WAR is an audible card game offering sound effects, leaderboard point scoring, military rank based on the number of wars won, quick game (half deck), and crazy sounds when there's a war. Spoken War uses a shuffling algorithm that attempts to prevent cat (tie) games. The game is accessible and can be enjoyed by both sight and visually impaired players.
A single screen tap will play the game and a double tap with one finger will say the current game statistics.
For each winning hand. points equal to the difference between the cards (ie, King and a 4 (four) is K=13 and a four=4 or 9 (nine) points is added to your score. These are added to your high score and posted to the leaderboard at the end of each game. Points are not deducted for loses but no new high scores are posted either.
A settings screen is called using the upper right button. Settings switches for Quick Game (half deck), background sound, speaking of card names during play, and crazy war sounds can be turned on and off. Below the buttons are written instructions and a button to return to the game. This will keep the game progress.
Use the upper left button to call Game Center with achievements and leaderboard.
An enjoyable and fun time for everyone playing the old time game of War.
Thanks to all. It's a free download available now. Hope you enjoy. Please leave comments and remarks.
Comments
Wonderful, I can't wait to
Wonderful, I can't wait to try it!
Good to see another game
Hi Norm, glad this is out, I'll go get it. If you ever need any help again please let me kow.
my views on spoken war game
hello norm thanks for yet another awesome game:) keep up the good work on new ones and updating.
Where do you get it at?
Where do you get it at and how much is it?
Apple Appstore
Its free. Get it by typing in Spoken War in the search box of the appstore. Hope that helps.
App crashes.
Hi Norm. The app crashes whenI launch it. i'm using an iPhone five. I hear the opening sound, welcome to the battle private then the app closes. Hope an update may fix that, would love to play.
So Sorry
I will certainly investigate. Please tell me the IOS version you are using. I am sorry you experienced trouble. We will fix it. Thanks for the feed back. Is anyone else experiencing crashes?
Hi Norm, for me as well,
Hi Norm, for me as well, Just after I launch it. I am using an iPhone 6s running iOS 9.2.
IOS version
Hi Norm I'm also running 9.2 no betas or anything like that. Glad to know someone else has this weird bug too. Don't worry Norm that's why you ask us for help :) I'll be moving down to Dunedin florida or thereabouts, soon. I know that's on the other side of the state.
the app War also crashes for me
I am running IOS 9.2 on my iPad mini and the app also crashes on me when I launch it.
Crash Logs
I have turned on the crash logs feature of iTunes Connect. Please continue to play and as you encounter crashes they will be recorded. This will help me to locate the problem.
You should know that at least three people have not had any problems or crashes. I will find the problem with your help.
Thank you.
Norm
My email : spokengames@technologyministries.org
It crashes for me as well
Hi Norm. The game crashes for me as well. I launch the app, and there is a trumpet sound, followed by a voice saying welcome to the battle private. Then it crashes. I am running iOS 9.2.
Crashes with internet access
iPhone 6, iOS 9.2. The app is crashing for me also, but only if I have an active internet connection. If I go into the game with airplane mode turned on, then things work, so for anyone who wants to try it out this is a good enough workaround.
That out of the way, I have one small suggestion. I'd love to be able to change the speaking voice, I use the US english Alex voice for VOiceOver, but the game is using Samantha which I'm not too big a fan of. You also have to wait for it to finish speaking before you can press play again which makes things somewhat slow. Perhaps the game could just speak through VOiceOver which would solve most of those problems :)
Way to go Piotr - Airplane Mode
Thanks for your help. Try Airplane Mode and see if the app still crashes.
Also please on your device go to Settings->Privacy->Diagnostic & Usage->Share With App Developer and turn the switch ON. This will allow Apple to collect crash information and for me to read what is causing these crashes.
A big shout out!!! to Piotr Machaz. Thanks so much for your feedback!
Norm
workaround works, but
I tried the work around. It works! owever, I don't wnt to go into Airplane Mode because it kicks my braille display out so I have to paiit again. Maybe, once I get into a place where there is no internet connection, I'll try the game.
Airplane mode does work
Hi Nrom. yes airplane mode does work. I have already eanbled the share with app developers, the only strange thing is now as I play say five of clubs four of hearts, Voiceover either seems to be cut off, I mean the game voice, as well as the sound effects that are supposed to be "crazy" don't seem to play. Hope this info helps a little bit. I didn't get far in the game as I can't play in game center unless I have a net connection. Here's hoping you get a fix soon with so many others crashing. One more note, remember those ofus on older devices can't use Alex, so maybe it can use the voice over voice of the person's system as I have mine set to the male siri voice. Good luck identifying these pesky bugs.
Siobhan
Crashes for me too
Hello,
The app also crashes for me. I have an IPhone six with iOS version 9.2
Thanks
This is extremely strange I was playing and
This is extremely strange. I was playing, and one. Just for testing, I close the app, but first I turned off airplane mode. Then I close the app, open it again with airplane mode disabled, and it didn't crash. It seems that you only have to enable airplane mode only the one time.
Changes
I would like to test a new alpha version while I can still make changes. If some of you who have had crashes are willing to be testers then please send me your email and name. You will need to download TestFlight from the appstore. I will send you an invitation when the new build is ready.
Thanks so much for helping. I really like hearing your feedback and comments. I will do my best to listen and act on any suggestions or discoveries made.
Norm
Would be glad to help
. I would be glad to help. My email is ignatriay@gmail.com
I would also love to help out
I would also love to help out. My email can be found in the applevis contact forum that appears when you click my name then contact.
Take care.
Sorry
I can't access your email address. Please send it to me at spokengames@technologyministries.org if you are still interested.
Thanks,
Norm
Would be happy to help
Hi,
I'd be happy to help.
I will email you directly; my email address in the AppleVis forum is different from the one I use for Apple related stuff.
Thanks
To access my email go to my
To access my email go to my profile and click contact. There you will be presented with a form that will go direct to my email address, at least the one I use the most. Lol!
Happy Wednesday
Email
I don't need to email you. Apple wants your email address in order to email you an invitation.
Thanks,
Norm
Apple Approval
Apple has to review and approve my updated alpha version. I changed some of the code that deals with logging into Game Center. I am not sure this will solve the problem but this is what you will be testing.
Approval should be quick. Maybe tomorrow.
Thanks to all,
Norm
Oh duh! Ok, I've been out of
Oh duh! Ok, I've been out of it all day. I'm in the middle of a scientific study which I cannot discuss here. I'll fire you an email through your applevis contact form as I need to remember which I used for test flight several years ago.
Hth.
Alex
Apple does not open the API inside of VoiceOver to developers. Alex voice is very popular but there is currently no way for me to access it.
Best Regards,
Norm
Just letting you know I
Just letting you know I emailed you privately through your applevis contact form with the email address for my test flight thing. I now have the app on ios and it looks easy enough to use. Better then the website used to look anyway. I'll have to see when it comes time to test eh?
Blessings and happy Thursday
Alex is available in iOS 9
Hi,
Alex is available in iOS 9 for debs to use with apps. You can also get VoiceOver to speak text in your app automatically.
I would want to though if I
I would want to though if I were an app dev make the app cross compatible so I don't kick out any older operating systems, so if Alex has to be sacrificed, then not much I would or could do there.
Take care.
Enlighten me
My apps do not use VoiceOver and to my knowledge there is no way to use Alex with the AVSpeechSynthesizer as a voice. So far only the female voice is available for language "en-US". There is a way to specify Alex as the voice you want to use but it does not instantiate in Xcode.
Any detailed info or code that you have or can point me to would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Norm
I am not a programmer but
I am not a programmer, but I know this voice is available for debs. For an example, look at the Blindfold games. You may want to ask the dev of those games about it. All I know is that it's now possible to use Alex for TTS output in your own apps as of iOS 9. This wasn't possible in 8.
Actually what they did was
Actually what they did was record the prompt and that's what you hear, unless I'm missing it.
Take care and be blessed.
Ah...
I have thought about doing that for my games. You can use Verbalize and get Alex to speak all the prompts. But the games I've written are fluid and would require quite a bit of code to be able to say all the card names. I have tried to use the synthesizer that Apple provides. Thanks for the tips.
Norm
Beta Approval
Those that sent me their email and interest can now download and test the updated app. I believe the crash problem has been solved and I have resubmitted an update to Apple for approval.
I appreciate the good suggestions from several of you. I do so appreciate all of the suggestions and insight you have given me. Thank you all again. Expect an update for Spoken War soon.
Norm
Re: blindfold games and alex
The blindfold games definitely don't use pre-recorded prompts. Well, they do for things like numbers when playing a game like breakout or bowling, but you can switch to the alex voice in all games, including card names and it generates the speech on the device. You should be able to use the new functions in iOS 9 to set the voice by name. If that's what's failing in xCode, the voice normally has to be downloaded manually via the settings app, IE by adding it to the VOiceOver language rotor. It's also available on 64-bit devices, iPhone 5S and newer, iPad air/iPad mini 2 and newer, and iPod touch 6. If you're testing inside a simulator, I'm not sure if you can do this there, or if you're testing on a physical iOS device which is older than the ones i mentioned above, this could explain the problem.
Or, you could avoid this problem of using only 1 voice just by speaking with VOiceOver if it's on, and yes, this can be done. The function you need is UIAccessibilityPostNotification. THere's also this piece of code that someone wrote that lets you queue them up so nothing is lost which is probably a better way to go.
https://github.com/spanage/AccessibilityAnnouncer
VoiceOver
I should make it clear that the games I released so far may work with VoiceOver but I have not designed them with that in mind. All of the Spoken Games have been designed to speak the scores, play-by-play, and general speech in the games are spoken by the method associated with AVSpeechSynthesizer with is available with the Swift coding language. The API that is used internally for the iPhone is not available to Swift developers. You can with VoiceOver use Alex for these games but I am not sure if I have provided all the labels necessary for VoiceOver to speak the card names nor have I made it possible for it to know the winning or losing cards in a war. The spoken card values during each battle can be turned off as can the background sound.
I originally started writing audio games because of my uncle. He loved to play computer games but has macular degeneration. My background was in engineering and programming. So when I retired I took up IOS programming to write a few games. My uncle had difficulty learning and using VoiceOver so I tried to write games that did not have to use VoiceOver. As I can see now he is in a minority and most blind or visually impaired people use VoiceOver.
This may explain why I didn't use Alex since I have yet to find a way to use Apple's Swift AVSpeechSynthesizer to produce the Alex voice. I hope this explains some of the misunderstandings I may have caused.
It might be an interesting exercise to rewrite the War game with the main objective being to only use VoiceOver. In which case the Alex voice could be used by the player. Any way the Spoken War app does not need or rely on VoiceOver with the possible exception of the instructions.
I continue to highly value this conversation and any other comments you may have about this game or any others you might like to see come to reality.
Thanks again for your insight!
Norm
bonuses and sound effects
hi. Just a couple of things.
I've turned off the crazy sound effects switch but there still appears to be the occasional crazy sound effect whenever war is declared.
Also, I was wondering how the bonuses work? I find myself occasionally getting bonuses when I win wars but not all the time.
I have also noticed that when ever I move up a rank this does not take effect until I restart the app.
Keep up the good work.
Some Answers
First let me thank you for sending me this note. It lets me know that someone is playing the game and in fact has noted some things that need explaining. Thank you.
Not sure why you are occasionally getting a crazy sound even when you have changed the setting to OFF. I will investigate.
Bonuses are random and should occur about half of the time.
The rank system has been updated to reflect promotions immediately and will appear in the next update. Thanks for catching this bug.
Let me know any other improvements or suggestions. Thanks so much for playing!
Norm
thank you
thanks so much forgetting back to me. :-)
while I'm at it…
first correction. The sound effect that I hear seems to equate to the bonuses that I receive. Sorry about the mistake.
also, I believe it will be helpful for the instruction to be more specific. Although it lays out the rules of the game well it does not state that the object of the game is to collect the cards from the enemy. Just a suggestion. :-)