I can't do that. I remember my mobility teacher trying to teach me that
skill, and it was the only one I failed to learn--and it was the one I tried
my best to master too. I remember I had a small handheld video game back in
1983. There was a pattern to beating the each level, and it was the same
every time, so I beat the game many times, yet if I try to make an actual
visual map in my head of what it would look like I just can't do it.
I think it's related to that blind guy who can paint. Give him a coffee
cup, a dinner plate, a cigar box, a shoe--doesn't matter, he can paint it.
I can picture exactly what the coffee cup feels like, but I would have no
way to draw it, and if I felt a Braille picture of a coffee cup I wouldn't
have a clue as to what it was supposed to be unless someone pointed it out.
Okay, we've established that I'm spacially retarded. Oh well.
Ken Downey
President
DreamTechInteractive!
And,
Blind Comfort!
The pleasant way to experience massage!
It's the Caring
without the Staring!
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Ward" <thomasward1...@gmail.com>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Monday, February 07, 2011 4:48 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] my frustration with the blind gaming comunity.
Hi Damien,
Smile. Oh, I never suggested you were loony, stupid, or any of those
things. However, your point of thinking of a route as a list of
instructions rather than a mental map is a great point I was trying to
illistrate to Yohandy. Not all of us have the same skills and/or
abilities which makes playing certain genres of games more difficult
than others.
I, for example, have excellent sspacial orientation. I've been told by
a number of o&m instructers that I have a very sharp mind when it
comes to remembering routes etc in my head. The reason for that is I
can picture a mental map of the route, remember everything in proper
context, and can use that information to pretty much plot my course. I
can even use that skill for quickly assessing where I am in a strange
place I've never been in before. It is like I have a mental mapping
feature in my head that draws and redraws the route in my head as I
go. Understandably not everyone, such as yourself, is able to do this.
Obviously, this skill is a huge advantage for me in accessible games.
Any game like Sarah, Shades of Doom, Pacman Talks, Monkey Business,
etc that requires figuring things out in a realistic spacial context
is fairly easy for me. I simply form a map in my head of the level, as
best that I can, and then begin moving around in that mental map until
I figure it out. Once I played the game a couple of times I never get
lost again. That gives me a huge advantage.
Coming back to my point though there are games like Tomb Raider with
far less accessibility than Shades of Doom or Sarah. Unlike Shades of
Doom there is a third axis of movement up/down that makes the levels
far more complex to navigate. There are ropes, ladders, staircases
that have to be navigated to reach certain rooms above the one you are
in. You really have to have extremely good spacial orientation to
figure this out if you are blind because you will have to use your
ears and memory to get around the levels. If you reduce it to a simple
list of left, right, up, down, foward, and backward type things it
just won't cut it. You litterally have to keep a memory of the map,
the level's exact layout, in your head at all times.
Cheers!
On 2/7/11, Damien Pendleton <dam...@x-sight-interactive.net> wrote:
Hi Thomas,
In my experience I know some other blind people, who have been blind
since
birth, who struggle with spacial awareness. I, for example, can learn a
route somewhere but find it hard to reverse the rules when finding my way
back. I can't conceptualise it as a map in my head, but rather have to
construct it as a list of instructions that I have to remember.
If I find that concept hard in real life, goodness knows how hard it will
be
in a game where you don't physically have the landmarks there instead of
as
sounds. Granted, I have some small mental difficulties that make it
harder
for me than maybe other blind people, but I don't like to get into that
any
more since I used to be ridiculed a lot for it. I'm not a loony though,
trust me. *Grin*
Regards,
Damien.
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