So I was testing my new Roku Stick 3600, and in my game I pressed * a few times, and suddenly I hear a computer voice say that the Roku Audio Guide has been activated! That’s pretty annoying and jarring for someone immersed in my game.
How can a developer turn this thing off while in-game?
press the “*” button again,I think three times in a row.
You could try this:
CreateObject("roAppManager").SetAutomaticAudioGuideEnabled(false)
You may or may not want to check that the user is running at least fw7.5 before calling that function though.
Every time I hit * four times I hear “Audio Guide enabled”, then hit it four more times and I hear “Audio Guide disabled”. That is bad, it is terribly immersion breaking in-game to hear that.
Thanks for that tip belltown, but that line didn’t seem to help for me. I tried putting it in a couple different places in my code, and the Roku Stick 3600 I tested on was running fw7.5 but I’m not sure how roAppManager is intended to work, and the description says:
SetAutomaticAudioGuideEnabled(enabled as Boolean) as Void
Available since firmware version 7.5
Enables or disables automatic Audio Guide and override any manifest setting. This is useful for channels that want to temporarily turn off automatic Audio Guide for specific screens.
So I’m not sure what it means by “specific screens”. My whole game is on a roScreen. Is there a manifest setting that can turn it off?
If I can turn this off somehow I would consider it a Roku bug!
“Komag” wrote:
Every time I hit * four times I hear “Audio Guide enabled”, then hit it four more times and I hear “Audio Guide disabled”. That is bad, it is terribly immersion breaking in-game to hear that.Thanks for that tip belltown, but that line didn’t seem to help for me. I tried putting it in a couple different places in my code, and the Roku Stick 3600 I tested on was running fw7.5 but I’m not sure how roAppManager is intended to work, and the description says:
SetAutomaticAudioGuideEnabled(enabled as Boolean) as Void
Available since firmware version 7.5
Enables or disables automatic Audio Guide and override any manifest setting. This is useful for channels that want to temporarily turn off automatic Audio Guide for specific screens.
So I’m not sure what it means by “specific screens”. My whole game is on a roScreen. Is there a manifest setting that can turn it off?If I can turn this off somehow I would consider it a Roku bug!
Sorry that didn’t help. Pressing the * key 4 times is supposed to turn on/off the Audio Guide according to: https://support.roku.com/article/231584647-how-do-i-use-audio-guide-
I’d expect you’d make the roAppManager call at the start of the program, before you create your roScreen, if it were to work at all. It may not even be enabled though for roScreen – or it may be a bug.
The user can disable that functionality on their device by going to Settings > Accessibility > Audio Guide and disabling Shortcut. In the worse case scenario, you could always tell them that the first time they run your game.
There may be a (currently-undocumented) manifest setting to turn off the Audio Guide Shortcut. Hopefully, someone from Roku will chime in with an answer.
Thanks for the input, we’ll see if Roku can shed more light on this
i tested it from the console in RokuTV (7.5) and roAppManager.SetAutomaticAudioGuideEnabled(false) does not seem to work, has no effect.
The “audio guide” is a riot though! A “must hear” for amusement’s sake. Highly recommended. I am mystified as of what the voice accent is - was that India’s submission for Stephen Hawking’s TTS? Also, what is the last word in what it says, “Antenna TV, button. 4 in 67 …” - interbred? integrate? immigrate?
I hacked a way to avoid it - simply detect when * is pressed (rather, when it’s released - id 110), and then do some other benign button press (I’m using “backspace”, id 11, 111) to break the pattern, so it’s impossible to get four * in a row!
FUNCTION doBackspace()
? "doBackspace() running, doing ""Backspace"" keypress"
ipaddrs = CreateObject("roDeviceInfo").GetIPAddrs()
IF ipaddrs.eth0 <> INVALID THEN ipaddr = ipaddrs.eth0
IF ipaddrs.eth1 <> INVALID THEN ipaddr = ipaddrs.eth1
xfer = CreateObject("roURLTransfer")
url = "http://"+ipaddr+":8060/keypress/Backspace"
xfer.SetUrl(url)
xfer.PostFromString("")
END FUNCTION
very clever Komag!! As I started reading this thread I didn’t think there’s a way around it. I’m working on this stuff for the past week or so and EnTerr’s comment gave me a good laugh. There’s a lot of room for improvement on the pronunciation that’s for sure!
@EnTerr i think it’s saying “in a grid” to indicate the user can go any of 4 directions, but it’s pretty unclear!
“joetesta” wrote:
@EnTerr i think it’s saying “in a grid” to indicate the user can go any of 4 directions, but it’s pretty unclear!
Ahh, thank you. Perhaps that was narrated by Austin Power’s villain “BooTone InAGrid” (cue Ivana Humpalot). Neither “button” nor “in a grid” seem appropriate, esp. considering the repetition.
Oh hey, here is a bug in said AudioGuide is turned on:
From home screen navigate to the right-most icon in the current row
Wait for the chant to finish (“… button. 3 of 68 InAGrid”)
Press Right to go to the ad poster. Hear “68 items”.
Huh? Should have said “This is an advertisement”. Conversely, if you don’t wait to completion in step 2, there is a smaller buglet - it says “… button. 3 of 68 InAGrid. This is an advertisement”, the issue being it does not interrupt the chant as is customary when new remote press arrives.
“Komag” wrote:
I hacked a way to avoid it - simply detect when * is pressed (rather, when it’s released - id 110), and then do some other benign button press (I’m using “backspace”, id 11, 111) to break the pattern, so it’s impossible to get four * in a row!
Congrats on thinking outside the box, that is a clever hack!
I am not much of a fan of hacks, since they tend to be fragile. I.e. the Co may unwillingly “find a way” around what you are doing in next version. But an improvement suggestion: use “http://localhost:8060” instead of specific IP (that did not work in 1xxx/2xxx players but they are out of the picture now) - not only will that shorten your code but won’t break if there is no network connection and GetIPAddrs() returns squat.
This seems to be working:
FUNCTION doBackspace()
xfer = CreateObject("roURLTransfer")
url = "http://localhost:8060/keypress/Backspace"
xfer.SetUrl(url)
xfer.PostFromString("")
END FUNCTION
Thanks for the tip
It looks like the manifest has an additional option that may help, unless it does the same thing as roAppManager.SetAutomaticGuideEnabled.
automatic_audio_guide_disabled=1
“ljunkie” wrote:
It looks like the manifest has an additional option that may help, unless it does the same thing as roAppManager.SetAutomaticGuideEnabled.automatic_audio_guide_disabled=1
That completely eluded me. I overlooked the note at the top of the officlal-but-now-deprecated manifest file documentation, https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/Manifest+File that referenced the “work in progress” GitHub docs. They might as well just remove the outdated documentation completely, leaving just the link to the updated documentation if they’re not going to keep the sdkdocs.roku.com docs updated.
“belltown” wrote:
That completely eluded me. I overlooked the note at the top of the officlal-but-now-deprecated manifest file documentation, https://sdkdocs.roku.com/display/sdkdoc/Manifest+File that referenced the “work in progress” GitHub docs. They might as well just remove the outdated documentation completely, leaving just the link to the updated documentation if they’re not going to keep the sdkdocs.roku.com docs updated.
I don’t like that schism. There should be a Single Source of Truth on the platform^. What’s the benefit of writing docs on GitHub vs Confluence Wiki? I am not persuaded GH has advantage. Examples - yes, definitely better to have them on GH - but pre-existing documentation? Has the doco writer run out of things to do but will waste effort to convert from working format A to another format B?!
(^) fineprint mumble: bugs and omissions excluded.
“ljunkie” wrote:
It looks like the manifest has an additional option that may help, unless it does the same thing as roAppManager.SetAutomaticGuideEnabled.automatic_audio_guide_disabled=1
I just tried it, doesn’t stop from turning on and off the audio guide in-game, so I’m still going to use my hack. I’m guessing it turns off any “guidance” while in the channel, but doesn’t turn off the person’s ability to enable/disable the audio guide overall.
Thanks for this hack Komag! I’ve implemented it in to the core of my framework 
https://github.com/Romans-I-XVI/Roku-ga … 94b4eb94a0
One thing to note. I noticed if you post the backspace event after the info button press (code 10) you might receive a double button press for info if you keep holding it. Along with that I was also having issues with the info button release event not happening as it should. The easy solution was to just send the backspace event after the release of the info button, personally I’m doing it only if the button had been pressed 3 times in a row.
Thanks again, this was a very annoying issue, I always had to consider where/when/if I want to use the info button just because if somebody presses it multiple times they’ll accidentally turn on the audio guide (which serves no purpose in game).
The CVAA law that mandated audio guide (https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/21 … y-act-cvaa) says there always has to be a key shortcut to enable it by default. We provide a setting to disable the shortcut, but alas, we have to default to that being enabled to be compliant.
Ah, thank you for the additional info RokuBen
Tried all your directions to turn off audio guide. NOTHING shuts her up. Please don’t give me code type talk, I’m technologically impaired, but not visually impaired. HELP!
