Cursor Control

Since there are people out there that have difficulties using a keyboard and instead use a trackball i've created a cursor controlled version of the prototype.

By Moving the cursor any direction away from the character you are able to control all the movement. Attacking is done by pressing the mouse(or trackball) button.

Download the cursor version here

Latest prototype build and style update

This week i've been working hard to get the complete core of my prototype to work. (which is not done quite yet) To prevent my brain from frying due to an overload of programming thoughts, i decided to also spend some time graphically designing my prototype. I'm pretty happy with the result of my new graphics. Abviously there's always room for improvement but i like the dirction the style is going.

Furthermore i've fixed a lot of bugs that have been constantly appearing quite magically:s And also i managed to improve performance quite a bit. The magic word of the day is: "cacheAsBitmap" :)

Check out the playable prototype here and don't forget to post me your comments about it:)

Here's some screenshots of the new style:

Features for blind users

I've come up with some accessibillity features that I will try to implement into my game later. These features are especially designed with blind users in mind.

First there are the "parrot hints". This feature will attach a radar system to the player avatar that will test if certain obstacles, platforms, treasures or enemies are at a certain distance from the player.

These distance units will be measured in steps. I will implement a stepsound into the game that plays every time the player avatar takes a step. players should easily be able to turn this off if they don't need it. This will enable blind users to imagine the distance of various game objects.

To make the feature part of the game experience I've decided to create a parrot that accompanies the player. This parrot will function as an audio interface for the radar output.

When annoyed with this system sighted players should be able to kill this parrot.

Another system is the "auto-aimed jump" this system makes sure that when a player jumps near a new playform or obstacle he will always land on the right spot. This will take away a difficult task from blind players while they retain the freedom to choose if they want to jump.

The system will work with an invisible area. If the player jumps while in the area the jump will always land in the same spot on top of the obstacle or platform or on the other side of a gap.

Prototype progress

In the last week i've had some problems with my prototype. Wednesday and Thursday I had actually desrtoyed more funtionallity than I had created. I guess I had reached my limit of non-stop coding. So after a good nights rest Friday morning I had actually restored my prototype and also did what I was trying to do in the 2 days before, within 5 minutes :). So I wasted 2 days for my project but actually learned a lot.


So I guess I now do have a playable game now. It doesn't have an ending or a storyline but there is actually gameplay. Controls are not yet really accessible for all and also the game variables are not yet really well tweaked to balance the game. But the most important thing that it does have is "fun". Already I must be carefull not to start playing too often and tweak to much of the game since there is still a lot of core coding to do.


so here is another screenshot for you which is hanging on my own desktop now:




















Download the new version of my prototype here
Make sure to leave your comments about the prototype

WIP prototype

I've been working a lot the last month to get to know Action Script 3.0. The last week i've finally been able to create something that actually looks cool and does something:)



So here it is.







I'm still working on it though and not all gameplay elements are yet implemented. I will be working hard on the combat system this week. Hopefully at the end of next week i will be able to do my first usertests.

download the flash executable here: http://student-kmt.hku.nl/~erwin1/gameaccessibility/prototype_110308.rar