game accessibility

Pointer Variations

2008-04-24T08:50:00.000-07:00

Today i've made a couple of variations on the pointer system. In addition to the systems that i have made earlier I made a variation where the user can use the pointer to select an attack to execute.

So now I have 3 variations on the Pointer System:
(press to download)

My own tests and tests with roommates suggest that the hotspots don't really work that well. However I'm awaiting results from disabled users to confirm this.

Between option 1 and 3 the difference is that option 1 keeps a better pace with the game. On the other end option 3 gives more control to the player wich also adds to the gameplay experience.

There is also the latest keyboard version for download here

Try it out and leave a comment!

Pointer System

2008-04-23T02:29:00.000-07:00

I've created a new Pointer System that uses hot spots on the screen to control the character. There are 6 hotspots:

two for walking left and right;
three for jumping up, jumping left and jumping right;
and one large one for blocking;

At first i made the hotspots move together with the main character but this made it almost impossible to use since you had to always move the mouse along with the character. So finally i made the hotspots static on the screen.

At first the system was still pretty tough to use for me compared to using keys because when using keys you're able to press multiple directions at once and therefore have a more precice control. But eventually i was able to control the character pretty well with these hotspots.

However there are some platforms in my testlevel that are very hard for me to reach with the Pointer System due to lack of precision control. So either i need to take the lack of precision into account when building my levels or I need to come up with a more precise variant of the system.

Anyone who wants to test the system please feel free to download my prototype and do so. Feedback is much appriciated.

Picture below: screenshot of my prototype using the Pointer System.

Neglected

2008-04-22T00:25:00.000-07:00

I've been brutally neglecting this blog for almost a month now. The reason for this was that i've hit a wall with my code. Since my code was not very structured it had become almost impossible for me to either debug it or expand it without creating new bugs.

For this reason i've decided to start my prototype again from scratch. Since this had set me back more than a month i've been programming only and did not really feel in the mood to write on my weblog.

But now I'm actually happy that I did start over because i've learned a lot about programming and also i now have a more robust system without bugs:) that performs a lot better.

So i have finished the coregameplay of fighting and jumping for my game. But now i'm just trying to figure out some kind of goal that has to motivate the player to play the game.

Download the new core gameplay and play it download the latest version of the prototype here.

Cursor Control

2008-03-25T04:15:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-20T17:52:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-16T01:13:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-15T01:38:00.001-07:00

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

2008-03-11T01:09:00.000-07:00

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

A reason why game accessibility should be considered?...

2008-02-14T15:36:00.000-08:00

...

Accessibility through Inaccessibility

2008-02-14T14:10:00.000-08:00

Today a very interesting game had come to my attention through an article on gamasutra about game accessibility. This game called "game over" has been made as inaccessible as possible for any user. So by playing this game I could finally get a taste of what frustration disabled gamers have to deal with normally.

The developper of game over had a very interesting aproach on developing this game. In order to make this game as inaccessible as possible, they first made a similar game which was as universally accessible as possible.

This kind of reminded me of one of my first year's project at my game design course. Which was codenamed "annoying". The objective of this project was to create a system and interface which would be very hard and annoying to use for any user. This assignment sounded great at the start while we all thought we would just create something that wouldn't do what it was supposed to. But the catch however was that all the functionallity of this system and interface needed to be designed with a positive usefull outcome in mind. So just creating a big barrier to prevent normal use of the system was out of the question. We finally came up with a futuristic supermarket with lots of promising features badly implemented. So for instance we had colored lighting in different sections of the supermarket to represent the types of products that could be found there. Among other this resulted in the fact that our red lighting in the meat section made all the meat look grey and not so tasty anylonger. Furthermore we had come up with an automated payment system where articles would be automatically payed for when put into the shopping kart. This resulted in the customer's inabillity to change his mind about buying a product once it was put inside the cart.

At the time this project didn't seem very relevant to me nor my other project members despite the fact that we had lots of fun doing it. We did endless brainstorming and finally we had set up this theater piece that had to demonstrate our system. Since passing that project 3 years ago I had never thought about it anymore. But when I played game over I finally got it! This geniusly fun way to design things that don't work enables you to see the thin line between that which doesn't and that which does work.

This leaves me with a very interesing option for my own design approach for the creation of my "as universally accessible as possible game demo". Which I will be creating this final semester. I'm thinking pirates.

Virtual Zoo

2008-02-12T07:19:00.000-08:00

Today I've started doing programming exercises with Action Script 3 since I will eventually want to build a game prototype in order to test game accessibility features.

I'm using Essential Action Script 3.0 By Colin Moock.

I've had some experience in building games with action script 2 so hopefully It won't take too long to get the hang of Action script 3.

Hopefully tonight I will have my first virtual zoo running.

Research into Game Accessibility

2008-02-11T08:12:00.000-08:00

For my final semester of my Game Design & Development course at the HKU I will do research into the field of game accessibility.

For this research will do an interview with among others Robert Florio, a game designer himself, who has a special interest in the field of game accessibility due to his own phisical disabillity.

The main question for my research is:
"What are the most effective game accessibility solutions for disabled gamers and how can they be implemented without compromising the quality of video games and the efficiency of the development process?"

Also I've been trying to find literature about the subject wich has unfortunately been whithout success. Probably since the subject is a relatively new one. A very usefull source of information I have found at game-accessibility.com