2017-11-21 20:18:44

Hello! I'm Edward Hager and I'm a student at the University of Baltimore currently enrolled in an Audio Only games class. This is my prototype for my audio only capture the flag game. It's fairly simple and straightforward, you used WASD to move around and use the mouse to look left and right. There is a 19 second intro once you play but after that you can begin. Your objective is to grab the flag before the other team does and bring it back to your start space/goal before time runs out. You will hear a chime sound once you start the game, that is the flag indicator and what you must head towards. Once you hear a small "ding" noise it means you have grabbed the flag and must proceed to the next objective. If you hear a knocking sound it means you're colliding with a tree, squeaky door is for a building, and leaves rustling means it's a wall.

I am aware of a few issues that currently exist in the game and not all of the sounds I wish to include are in the game yet. Eventually there will be more instructional and ambient sound. One thing not present that I want to add is when the player collides with a wall, for all of their sounds and movement to stop. A UI is also in the works, as well as sounds to indicate when the timer runs out and the level restarts itself. If you get a game over the game should restart itself but might be difficult to indicate. When finished, currently the only option is to alt + f4 since the last level will just restart once you finish.

Feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated! Specifically on how I could improve the sounds or maybe what I could add? If you run into any issues let me know, as stated this is a prototype but thanks for trying it out!

zip file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1aRr9l … r0yGxG-j_2

2017-11-21 22:54:08

Hi.
Interesting concept but I couldn't figure out navigation after I entered the house I found a clock and several doors and just walls.

2017-11-22 10:20:20 (edited by defender 2017-11-22 10:30:48)

I would suggest that you use alternative keyboard keys for viewing as well, as many blind people don't really use a mouse.
Over the last few years it's gotten much more common do to a particular game (Swamp) but most people still don't bust it out much, especially after that game became subscription based and lost allot of it's playerbase.
Their are people who really do like it, and appreciate any game with mouse support, but even they often must use a laptop mousepad and rarely are those any good.
If it's not possible than don't sweat it though, the more serious gamers usually have one anyway, though that is a small (yet important) portion of the community, the kind of people who might stream your game, for instance.


If you are willing to put it in though, I'd suggest just making it the left right arrow keys, with a modifier like shift, alt, or control if you want, and speak it out with sapi slash human voice over, or print to screen in a screen reader usable format) the list of objects with the closest first and the farthest last.
By the way, I'm basing that keyset on the fact that you said you can only view the x axis, so I'm assuming left and right, otherwise you would just use all four arrow keys instead, unless it's not a coordinate/tile based map system, in which case the mouse is the only option anyway.


Another way to do this (if it's easier) would be just to let you use the arrow keys to preemptively explore the map without actually moving your character.
So you might use a high pitched version of the normal step sound for each floor type you arrow over, and a series of distinct sounds for when the cursor touches different types of objects, e.g. one for doors, 1 for objects you can pick up, etc, like a beep, a buzz, a chirp, a click, etc, it doesn't have to be fancy, just functional.
Both of these systems have been used very successfully in audio games, both current and past, so they are time tested.
But again, if it would take too much time and detract from more important things, then just don't worry about it, we can suck it up (though you will have fewer casual players) I must admit.