Hi Philip, Philip wrote:
Oh Q9 is definitely simplistic, and that was one of my goals when designing it. It was not initially intended to be commercial at all, it was a commission from the institute for the blind over here. My reply: Oh, I see. That makes a lot of sense, and explains a lot of the behind the scenes development of the game. Philip wrote: My upcoming game, while still a sidescroller, is leaps and bounds above Q9 in every respect. My reply: That's nice to hear. I can't wait to check it out. Even though side-scrollers aren't that common any more in the mainstream market I can remember playing Megaman, Mario, Castlevania, Prince of Persia, etc all of which had far more depth and complexity than Q9. Which I'd like to see games of that quality made accessible. It isn't that I have anything against side-scrollers, but more the fact that I can't really get into Hunter, Super Liam, Q9, etc because they just don't live up to my standards. I can't help but compare them to the mainstream games of the 80's and 90's I played and unfortunately there is a lot of things that could make those games better such as more traps, puzzles, moving platforms, perhaps a 2d maze to crawl through, timed locks, whatever. There are hundreds of things I know about that would be simple and easy to add, but haven't been tried in audio games yet.At least not until MOTA which is sort of my testbed for making some of these ideas accessible. Philip wrote: Personally I don't know very much about video games, and since I can't really play them (at least not in the same way a sighted person could), I don't have any particular interest in them. So while the gaming industry might have moved away from platformers, I still very much enjoy them and so I will create them. My reply: Oh, I didn't mean to say I don't like platformers, but more that there is a big difference in game play between a 2d platformer and a big 3d first-person game. One of the big differences is that first-person games generally have more areas to explore, and usually the levels are laid out as one big maze which I always find fun. It is kind of funny alot of the VI gamers here on list say they don't like Shades of Doom and other first-person games because they always get lost. Its like they missed the entire point which is the levels are intentionally laid out as a large maze. You are suppose to get lost and have fun figuring out where to go and what to do. That's where the replay value comes in because you have to work on the maze for several hours perhaps days until you understand the layout of the level and can progress further in the game. Although, from what I gather this is more of a problem for many blind gamers because many of them have spacial orientation difficulties which makes solving the maze more difficult. At any rate one of the reasons I personally became a fan of the Tomb Raider games is because in addition to traps, various treasures to find, puzzles to solve, and enemies to kill the levels themselves were also half the challenge. They were often laid out as a maze and it is easy enough for a sighted person to get lost let alone a blind gamer. With a 2d platformer there is not much you can do in terms of mazes. You can go left, right, up, or down. So even games that have mazes in them generally aren't that complicated and are fairly easy to solve quickly. Which I sort of find disappointing, because the thrill/challenge of figuring out the level isn't there. One other diference made me a big fan of first-person games early on. That has to do with realistic movement. With a first-person game there are litterally a couple dozen movement commands that you can't get in a 2d platformer. If you want to avoid an enemy attack you can simply sidestep left or right out of his or her way. You can jump up, jump foward, or jump backward. You can do a short hop to the left or right. You can walk foward/backward. You can climb up and down on climbable objects. If you are in a room of enemies you can pick a machine gun or something like that and strafe the entire room by holding down the fire key and pressing left/right arrow to turn in place. Basically, there are so many different actions you can do that side-scrollers and other 2d platformers just don't have by design. So when I started playing first-person games in the mid 90's I was pretty amazed at all the extra stuff I could do that no side-scroller offered. Cheers! --- 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.
