Hi Philip, Philip wrote:
I don't have much trouble navigating in a game such as Monkey Business or Shades of Doom. I just don't find them very interesting, because I spend more time trying to figure out where I am going than actually doing things. In my mind, figuring out a maze is not enjoyable. My reply: Yeah, I understand. This is purely a matter of personal preference. I happen to like maze games so obviously that genre of game is apealing to me where you aren't into mazes so it is less enjoyable for you. Philip wrote: As for audio games not being as developed as mainstream ones, I think the reasons behind that are fairly obvious to both of us. Time, number of programmers, and money. My reply: Yeah, I know. Writing accessible games is a thankless job with too much work, too little time, and not enough money to do it proper. I know just creating Mysteries of the Ancients I'm working myself to the bone trying to create the kind of side-scroller I want to play and it is not easy. There is just too much work to do with too little time to do it in. Add to that I'm working on a very slim budget so certain sounds, voice acting, whatever has to slide until I have the money to add them. That said, there are small things we can do to make our games more like the mainstream counterparts that would greatly improve the game play in my personal opinion. For example, in a lot of classic Nintendo adventure games there might be a treasure chest on the floor. It is locked, and you can't open it without unlocking it. Well, as you look around the room there might be a button, switch, or pressure plate on the floor that unlocks the chest. If you jump and land on the button/pressure plate the chest pops open revealing a bunch of jewls. You know, something like that doesn't take a lot to program, but I haven't found really any accessible games begin to explore these types of game play elements. Which probably brings me to one more reason why accessible games aren't as advanced as mainstream games. Most of the VI game developers have been blind from birth and have no experience playing mainstream games. They are creating games from a limited background with games in general. It may not have occurred to them to add in little puzzles like jump on this or that switch to open the tresure chest or pull this lever to unlock a door in the next room etc. Yet these kinds of puzzle elements have been around for years in mainstream games. I believe this is because most blind game developers hasn't had any prior experience with mainstream games before they started writing this or that game. Philip wrote: If we had a team of perhaps 30 or 50 programmers working for a full 6 or 12 months on a title with a few million dollar budget, I am positive that we would certainly catch up. My reply: No doubt. If I had that kind of time and money I could hire the best sound engineers, programmers, musicians, and produce something on par witht he mainstream market. However, like you say that isn't going to happen so we have to make do with what we got. Philip wrote: Until the development stops being a hobby and becomes the full time activity of a semi large company dedicated to audio games, we will be standing on pretty much the same spot. Sure there will be advances every now and then, but I'm guessing we're still roughly 20 years behind the mainstream industry. My reply: Probably. Its hard to gage where we are in terms of the mainstream developers, because not every accessible game developer is aiming for high tech or advanced gaming. I know with Mysteries of the Ancients I'm aming for a game more or less on par with the Tomb Raider side-scrollers produced in the late 90's for the Nintendo Gameboy. In fact I've been using Tomb Raider Nightmare Stone and Tomb Raider Prophecy for ideas here and there as both are side-scrollers and much of what is in them can be made accessible. So perhaps 15 years behind the mainstream for a game like MOTA. Shades of Doom is quite a lot like Dom I and Doom II. The original doom game came out in 1993 and Doom II came out in 1995. If we use that as the beginnings of first-person action games for the mainstream market Shades of Doom puts us at roughly 15 to 18 years behind the mainstream market in terms of first-person based games alone. So saying we are about 15 to 20 years behind is probably about right. 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.
