Well I kind of figured that, and that makes sense. I do agree that having a
key tell you what everything is would slow down the gameplay. But could you,
say, have an option for sound descriptions in the main menu or something,
like most other accessible games. But in a less expensive way.. though this
would result in a game sounding a bit weird, could you, say, raise the pitch
of something? not to the point where it sounds distorted, just enough for a
noticeable difference.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Ward" <thomasward1...@gmail.com>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Monday, September 07, 2009 9:24 AM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] a thought for all game makers out there
Hi,
Well, there are a number of solutions for that particular problem. Let's
use a real world example here fordemonstration.
In Tomb Raider The Prophecy there are a number of enemy wolves Lara Croft
has to kill or avoid. The color of the wolf determines how deadly it is. A
gray wolf is relatively easy to beat, does little damage, etc where the
black wolves are the most difficult. One solution is to create a specific
growel sound for each color of wolf so that someone can audably tell them
apart. However, unless you know in advance that growel sound x is for a
gray or black wolf it isn't of much use until you play the game a while.
The other way is to have a hot key that announces the nearest enemy in the
room like Shades of Doom. However, the problem with that method is that
slows down the game play, because you constantly have to press the key,
button, whatever to find out what you are fighting. That might be critical
in a game that requires quick reflexes and decision making. Such as the
various priests in the game that tosses different colored fireballs that
range from slightly harmful to instant death. You have to see the color of
the fireball and decide right away if you are going to avoid it or take
the hit. There is no time in a game like that to press a key and see if
the fireball is red, yellow, or purple. You have to act right away or you
are in trouble.
What most accessible game developers try to do is include both different
sounds for enemies as well as speak the type of enemy whenand where
possible. Still that is slightly more expensive. A mainstream developer
can buy one sound for fireballs and use it regardless of color since they
assume the person can see it on his/her screen. A blind accessible
developer has to come up with a unique sound for each color of fireball in
the hope of making it easier for the blind player to determine the color
of the fireball being tossed at him/her. It isn't complicated to fix, but
takes much more effort to translate the same information that a person
sees on screen to someone using audio only.
Clement Chou wrote:
Well, if it's a different color of enemy one would think we could do
something like have voices varying as a substitute for colors... but that
would be expensive too, wouldn't it?
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