Hi Dark,
Some very good points there.
I pretty much agree with all of them.
We both agree there are still some games that benefit from the extra keys.
Your example of a first person RPG was a good one.
It lacked strafing and moving backward, but those are not a requirement
if the RPG is slower paced such as for a Final Fantasy game where
battles are handled in a separate combat mode.
I might miss them if I were playing for instance, Morrowind, Oblivion,
or Skyrim.
And maybe it wouldn't be too difficult to include them as well.
But the more maneuvering and aiming quickly matters then the more the
extra physical keys of a keyboard can help.
I also appreciate your extra explanation of how targetting and moving is
done for Secret of Mana on IOS.
I had actually imagined an on screen SNES controller, lol.
I can imagine Secret of Mana done in audio from a first person
perspective as well.
I actually feel first person lends itself better to audio games than top
down games like Secret of Mana or platformers like Donkey Kong Country.
I still miss those specific game mechanics though and wish there were a
nice way to do them in audio.
Specifically I mean playing Donkey Kong Country in audio without
changing levels, the speed of the game, or turning it into first person.
Just adding audio queues, TTS, and any extra keyboard inputs to make it
magically accessible.
But I'm not sure that's enough due to the bandwidth difference in the
amount of information you get from audio compared with video.
Ian Reed
On 12/15/2013 4:46 PM, dark wrote:
Well secret of Mana I know very well. As a teenager I combined playing
cooperatively and watching a sighted friend of mine, (since I could
see most of the characters providing they weren't in a zone with low
contrast). There are several interesting points about the mobile
version of secret of Mana however. For example, the combat mechanics
while exactly the same as the snes use the touch screen capability to
target a given monster for physical attacks just as with spells. So
you move your character around with one finger, and use a second to
target a monster for your character and for the other two to attack.
I could actually imagine an accessible game similar to secret of mana
from a first person perspective with your allies Ai controled, though
of course the enviornments, sounds for all the monsters and massive
massive massive! amount of area programming would be the big problem
since just on a basic walking level Secret of Mana makes Shades of
Doom look like wandering around a student bedsit!
In terms of health and mana however, while I agree with you that a
game like a mud with a huge amount of statistics to monitor, health,
mana, staminer, experience split between many levels, number of
practices etc would be a problem, since a game like Secret of Mana
just has essentially two basic statistics I don't think a single on
screen button or specific gesture to read mana and health would be
too tortuous. papasangre 2 if not using the gyroscope has five
separate on screen controls, two feet and hands and the cumpass
slider, and that causes no trouble.
I could imagine an rpg game with a walk forward button bottom center
(no need for the two feet mechanics of Papasangre), a cumpass for
turning above it, an attack button in the bottom right corner, a spell
casting button just above it in the middle right, a speak status
buttton in the bottom left hand corner and a status menue in the top
left corner for changing out currently active spell etc.
Heck, you could even reduce this down by having a control with
different interaction methods, ---- say tapping the status button once
spoke your health and mana, while tapping and holding bought up the
pause menue to change spells and weapons etc.
While I do takee your point about limited keys, ---- it'd after all be
nearly impossible to do something like swamp without a pc keyboard (I
think Swamp uses every keyboard key there is), if the games interface
is designed correctly for it I wouldn't say the Iphone is specifically
limited by laack of controls, it's just different and needs a
different design approach, eg, having both mana and hp spoken on one
key rather than having two separate ones as you would on a pc.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
---
Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org
If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org.
You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at
http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org.
All messages are archived and can be searched and read at
http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list,
please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.