How to make an grapichal adventure available for blind people?

Started by Peder 🚀, Fri 21/09/2007 13:36:29

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Peder 🚀

I am a part of a team that are currently working on a game inspired by a Norwegian "tv series".
And in the team there is also a blind person working on the story and that person contacted me today asking me this question:

I been thinking about the game and I know alot of other blind Brødrene Dal fans (the "tv series" the game is based on) and it is difficult for us playing these kind of games. Is there a way to make it so we could play it aswell?

I remember seeing a post about someone making a game where you only have to use one key.
So I was thinking when she asked me that, there just have to be somehow to make the game so blind people also can play it.

Do any of you have any ideas of how to make a game playable for blind people and still keep the point & click system for seeing people?


Thanks,
Peder Johnsen.

Mazoliin

It's has to be an talkie, obviously, and maby you can play a sound when the cursor is over an hotspot/object/character. My mainly idea is to play with sounds, have sound effects when different things happens and so on. Maby it isn't to any help but it's the only thing I can think of.
To keep the point & click feeling, you can use the arrow keys. I think it's a bit hard to use the mouse, and if you remove the possibility to move the cursor free, I belive you lose the feeling.

Neil Dnuma

Yeah, I'd add an optional voice-over for every room too, describing it as the player enters. Like the old text-adventures really.

Lionmonkey

,

radiowaves

Voice telling to press this or this button to pick up that or that item. Ofcourse there is a short description of the room first. And to make things little more interesting, add some extra items.
I am just a shallow stereotype, so you should take into consideration that my opinion has no great value to you.

Tracks

macon

Hi.

I was the creator of the one button game, Invincible Island.

Interesting idea. Here is what I would do.

1. There needs to be a game option to choose normal play or visually impaired play.
2. On entering a room give the player a full verbal description of everything there is to see. A brief description can be given on later visits to the same room but there needs to be a way to get the full description back, like pressing the 'Return' key. I would avoid using large scrolling rooms.
3. Use a left click for action and a right click for cycle cursor. The cursor would cycle between walk, look, use, talk and current held inventory item. This is the default setup anyway.
4. When the mouse is over a hotspot, object, exit, character etc. its name is spoken to the player.
5. To make these hotspots etc. easier to find they could be cycled through by pressing the spacebar. For example if you press space the mouse cursor would jump to the door and if you pressed it again it would jump to 'Dave the butcher'. Clicking the left button would carry out the desired action on this hotspot.
6. Tab could be used to open the inventory like it does in a lot of games. The right mouse button would cycle between look and use. The left button would select. The inventory would be scrolled through using the arrow keys with each name being spoken to the player. Tab closes the inventory window. The selected inventory will be the cursor and it will became the held inventory in the right click cycle.
7. I would recomend using a simpler conversation tree if you have visually impaired switched on. Instead of giving the player a set of questions or replies used forced conversation instead. ie. the player has no control of what is being said.

These are just a few ideas, There is a lot of room for improvement.

Good luck.

Andy Mason

Peder 🚀

I really like your idea macon, though I would probably decide to use keys instead of left and right mouse click. Otherwise I think alot of what you said is a really great idea!

Thanks, and to everyone else to and if anyone else have more ideas please let me know.


Thanks,
Peder Johnsen.

Lionmonkey

I meant, that microphone can be used, so these guys don't have to move mouse in random order to find a hotspot.
,

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires

#8
A graphical adventure for blind people is useless, because they won't see the graphics, so why bother go "graphic adventure". Go IF.

http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/StoryHarp/

Check it out. Probably not the ultimate solution, but a step in the right direction.

EDTI - By "they won't see the graphics" I mean they won't be able to point - c'mon, you know how frustrating it is to try and move the mouse when you can't see where the cursor is, it must have happened to you at least once. ANd that plus no graphics equals a need to re-structure gameplay, because the gameplay of what we know as "graphical adventures" simply won't do. Therefore, a new ngameplay scheme is necessary. The IF scheme happens to fit.

BTW, there's a version of DOOM flying around. A DOOM for blind people. Wish I could find the link, it relied heavily on sounds and 3D sound effects.
Reach for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.

Kneel. Now.

Never throw chicken at a Leprechaun.

LimpingFish

Quote from: Rui "Trovatore" Pires on Sat 22/09/2007 00:32:15
BTW, there's a version of DOOM flying around. A DOOM for blind people. Wish I could find the link, it relied heavily on sounds and 3D sound effects.

Indeed, I've played it. Shades of Doom, or something like that. Pretty weird, but also cool.

As for point-and-click games for blind people, a cursor could be used with sound. Imagine as you move your cursor close to an object on-screen, a particular sound for that object would get louder and more focused.

Moving the cursor "past" the object (ie.to the left or right of it's position on-screen) would cause the sound to move between each speaker/earphone, thus allowing the player to determine the object's position in relation to the sound. Clicking the object could then trigger an interaction or some such.

It would take a fairly complicated system to enable a game designed as such to function in a coherent fashion, of course.
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macon

I don't think Peder meant actually creating a graphic adventure for blind people, what he was asking how can you make a graphic adventure available to blind people as well as normal sighted people. This is why I suggested using a key to skip through the various hotspots to avoid the problems you mentioned.

Andy

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires

Fish, that's allright if you only have an X axis, or a Y axis. But when you get them both together, a steady hand is needed - that and an unhealthy dose of patience. In which case the arrow keys would work...

...but we're, once again, thinking like people who can see. Point-n-click is to be intuitive - you see it, you click it. You remove the "see it" bit, you have to make a major workaround, therefore ruining the intuitive bit of it, therefore ruining the point-n-click part. Whether or not ruining point-n-click ruins the adventure game is debatable, and I for one don't think it does... but it's hardly the best tool.

Macon - if that's what he meant, then what I said in this post pretty much stands. Computer games are a visual medium - Shades of Doom (thanks, Fish!) and such are exceptions for a specific target-audience, and they are *very* specific, they have their own schemes, codes, whatever. Making a game work in both worlds is an insane amount of work - better to make it in one or the other.
Reach for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.

Kneel. Now.

Never throw chicken at a Leprechaun.

LimpingFish

Quote from: Rui "Trovatore" Pires on Sat 22/09/2007 00:59:49
Fish, that's allright if you only have an X axis, or a Y axis. But when you get them both together, a steady hand is needed - that and an unhealthy dose of patience. In which case the arrow keys would work...

Oh sure. You'd have to specifically tailor a game to accommodate such a system, working it in a way so as to avoid aural confusion and such. Simply applying it to a graphic adventure also meant to be played by sighted people would be a nightmare.

Indeed, I fail to see how such a game could be made to equally accommodate both sighted and sight-impaired players.

The beauty of Shades of Doom is that it's intended to be played by blind people and, designed as such, presents the sighted player with a blank screen. Sighted people can play it, of course, but their experience within the game is no different to that of sight-impaired players.
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

mouthuvmine

I understand this may be considered slightly offtopic, but what about a game created ground up to tailor to both. It wouldn't be point and click, but maybe being sightless could be a theme of the game, with some graphics, but nothing nessicary. I'm not going to think too hard about it yet, but it sounds like good idea to me. Something for everybody, right?

Tuomas

How about giving the main character one of those sticks so he could feel the ground ;)

Lionmonkey

Guys, I've got a great idea:

Text adventure!!!

When a player enters a room, he/she hears a voice narration, maybe some ambient sounds.
Then the person says in his/her microphone, what he/she wants to do!
Voice narration again.

How about that?

,

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires

Quote from: Rui "Trovatore" Pires on Sat 22/09/2007 00:32:15
A graphical adventure for blind people is useless, because they won't see the graphics, so why bother go "graphic adventure". Go IF.

http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/StoryHarp/

Check it out. Probably not the ultimate solution, but a step in the right direction.
Quote from: Lionmonkey on Sat 22/09/2007 11:08:02
Guys, I've got a great idea:

Text adventure!!!

When a player enters a room, he/she hears a voice narration, maybe some ambient sounds.
Then the person says in his/her microphone, what he/she wants to do!
Voice narration again.

How about that?

I did have the suspicion no one had paid the link the least attention. Now I know for sure. :P
Reach for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.

Kneel. Now.

Never throw chicken at a Leprechaun.

Lionmonkey

Quote from: Rui "Trovatore" Pires on Sat 22/09/2007 11:33:10
Quote from: Rui "Trovatore" Pires on Sat 22/09/2007 00:32:15
A graphical adventure for blind people is useless, because they won't see the graphics, so why bother go "graphic adventure". Go IF.

http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/StoryHarp/

Check it out. Probably not the ultimate solution, but a step in the right direction.
Quote from: Lionmonkey on Sat 22/09/2007 11:08:02
Guys, I've got a great idea:

Text adventure!!!

When a player enters a room, he/she hears a voice narration, maybe some ambient sounds.
Then the person says in his/her microphone, what he/she wants to do!
Voice narration again.

How about that?

I did have the suspicion no one had paid the link the least attention. Now I know for sure. :P

Oh, sorry for inventing the bicycle again.
,

radiowaves

But this made me think. What about dialogs? Ofcourse the dialog options will be red to the player, but hearing same stuff over and over again could get quite boring imho.
One solution may be that the dialog options are shortened sentences. Instead of full sentence player hears only something like: "Ask roger about that stuff", and when he chooses it, totally different full sentence is played, creating the point of surprise.
And I still don't think that cursor is the best idea, it would be something like pixel hunting and really messy. Better with tablet though...
So I think the game should be buttons only, since buttons are easier to find on keyboard... There could be set of buttons which represent certain actions and set of buttons which represent items in the room - suggestion numpad. And to add more items than 9, you qould make it like this: push an action button, then object button(s) (ie 12) and then hit enter.
I don't see the point of cursor because mostly the objects are seen anyway when person enters the room, so why search for it blindly? And some objects may still be hidden, so you have to do certain actions first to find them, like moving a curtain.
Or the main player character is blind in the game too? That would add a lot and tuirn things even more upside down XD

Anyway, this game sounds like lots of voice acting :D
I am just a shallow stereotype, so you should take into consideration that my opinion has no great value to you.

Tracks

Rui 'Trovatore' Pires

Maybe a keywork-based conversation? Maybe the player could *say* the words. It would need voice-recognization software, but it would be interesting. You'd say,

"robbery"

and the game would then verbalise your question, or a question based upon the keyword or a ynonim (theft, etc).
Reach for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.

Kneel. Now.

Never throw chicken at a Leprechaun.

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