Re: soundStrider: Exploration game and relaxation tool
Hi,
I have a few more suggestions as well.
I'm wondering if there could be a solution which could also help, providing an audio cue glossery might not be such a bad idea, maybe from the misc menu. The general sound of a waypoint, the sound of the compasss at maximum pitch meaning you are the wrong way, the sound of a breadcrumb trail. I can't see this being too much of an issue, particularly as for a sighted gamer they can see the general idea of something, they know it's a gun or a thing to jump over or whatever, but for us, each game makes it's own sounds. It's not about having every sound available to listen to, but it's about learning to identify the most important ones for, say, completing a quest.
When you highlight an item, it could say: Waypoint, the sound of a waypoint that must be picked up. Pressing spacebar plays the noise.
Compass, the sound that indicates you're going the wrong way. Make sure this is quiet.
My next suggestion here could actually make the audio cue point mute depending at which level it's implemented. At it's most basic, a sort of "you are here" screen, which tells you what pallet you're in, and what type of quest you've started if any. A bit like a HUD. Not too detailed though. But I've always wondered which pallet I'm in, particularly as there's identifyable pallets such as beach or city, but I can't quite figure out which one I am go into at what time.
In the audiogame Bokurano Daiboukenn 3, there's a button which brigns up a menu with all the objects on screen and their position.
So when you initially go into this screen, it'll say your pallet and what kind of quest you're on. There could then be a nearby button. This is where the audio learning could come in as it's more intuitive. It could say, breadcrumb, in front, 20 meters, or whatever. Alternatively, to make this even more intuitive,could the slash key be used to report this directly, assuming it's not being used as an instrument button? With shift plus slash reporting pallet and other info, and this info always being available somewhere in the pause menu for those using controllers. It's important that the info does not go into too much detail. "Storm Pallet, escort quest in progress". Pressing shift slash when near waypoint: "waypoint, 3 meters in front"
At it's most advanced level, a coordinate system, saying you are at <coord>, with a sort of journal telling you what you've discovered. This way if you wanted to go back to the factory you could look for past coordinates. Of course the issue with this is the list would jsut get bigger and bigger as you discover more factories and escort more things, so maybe this option might not be the best idea. I think one of the other levels of implementation could be cool though. It still needs to leave enough room for the user to imagine, though, so it would have to be basic and not super detailed.
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