Getting the oddest error (Ivona expired and a link that sends me to Amazon Jobs...)

[MaxRavenclaw]

This makes no sense. I haven't played since the patch came out, and now when I try to start Grounded I get an error message that tells me that my trial period for Ivona has ended and if I want to buy a license. If I click no, the game closes. If I click yes, I'm sent to an odd Amazon Jobs site... what in the heavens?

I've uninstalled the game and reinstalled and the problem persists...

[Mav]

Ivona is a text to speech technology, Im assuming that if you have it enabled in the game for whatever reason and the devs don't pay their licensing fees anyone who has text to speech on will get the error when the game tries to initialize it.

Which is interesting because Ivonas EULA prohibits the use of it's service commercially.

[MaxRavenclaw]

I know what Ivona is, but I don't have it "enabled in the game". I don't even know how one would do that. The game worked entirely fine until the last patch. And what's with the Amazon link?

[Mav]

Oh ok, didn't know you knew what it was. Enabling text to speech I think is in the settings. If not, it could also be just a remnant of something that was there before? I don't know. It is odd that something non-game related would pop up in the game and no one else has had this issue, well, that we know of anyways.

[MaxRavenclaw]

I haven't touched any of those settings. Either way, how to even change them if I can't open the game?

[Alvega]

Originally posted by MaxRavenclaw:

I haven't touched any of those settings. Either way, how to even change them if I can't open the game?

If your Ivona trial ended maybe try to uninstall Ivona.

[Mav]

Originally posted by Alvega:

If your Ivona trial ended maybe try to uninstall Ivona.

It's somehow related to the game as thats the only time the popup comes up, and it doesnt allow him to start the game. An external app wouldn't keep him from playing something thats unrelated to it, which is why he posted here.

It could be adware or something, but I dont know why adware would attack a specific game.

[FluffyHDD]

Slight Necro but this is STILL an issue.
I've checked the Task Manager and Grounded definitely hooked into Ivona TTS for some reason, even when it doesn't actually have permission to use TTS's.

This is the weirdest thing as well, it shouldn't do this.
The only thing I can assume is the game has built-in TTS functions and is actively scanning for system-based TTS?
If it's doing that... why?

[Mav]

If the game at any point had TTS functionality then it would probably use a hook into third-party software within the game for it instead of assuming the user might have it and looking for it there. Games aren't typically allowed to look for system applications to use and has to provide it's own internal apps and DLLs to handle things like that.

My guess is that it was added, then removed later(or its still there but disabled), but some of the code still exists thats calling it, its authenticating the game with the service, which it fails, which returns the error.

Im not sure why this is still an issue unless the devs arent paying attention to the discussion posts.

[seven]

The game has TTS functionality. Look under Options/Accessibility. The game probably is coded to use windows built in TTS engine, or a registered 3rd party engine. As for Amazon, it bought up Ivona years ago.

[Mav]

Originally posted by seven:

The game has TTS functionality. Look under Options/Accessibility. The game probably is coded to use windows built in TTS engine, or a registered 3rd party engine. As for Amazon, it bought up Ivona years ago.

I haven't played Grounded in a while so I wasn't sure if it had TTS support or not.

Ivona isn't a windows TTS engine, so its not coded to look for that. Its bad game development practice for a developer to assume a client has a certain app on their computer they can use, thats why devs turn to integrated third party tools, like Ivona, to make sure theres no compatibility issues.

Game developers aren't allowed to use external applications on a clients computer as it breaches privacy laws and such if they can just root around on a clients computer looking for certain files and such.

[seven]

Maybe not anymore, and it wasn't just for windows. It's probably just voices now. The game doesn't have to "root around" on your computer. It says to windows, "talk this bit of text", and windows says, "ok let me check the registry and use the currently registered tts".