2007-05-02 20:57:01

The mouse is an accurate and versatile input device and it is used in many mainstream games as a pointing device to direct soldiers to specific spots, aim at enemies and turn the camera. These are things visually impaired gamers won't need to do often in games. Audio games hardly use the mouse as an input device. In this article Brian Bors discusses why and examines why the use of the mouse might make audio games more fun, backing up his arguments with small downloadable examples.

You can find the article on Game-Accessibility.com through the following link:

http://www.game-accessibility.com/index … AudioGames

2007-05-04 07:33:37 (edited by ambro 2007-05-04 07:36:06)

Hi, I have tried the examples and I think it is a very fantastic idea! With the mouse playing games is more funny! The mouse increase the accuration of movements. I think for example in Dark Destroyer, with if you play the game your fingers go KO because of speed of game!
I have only some problems to play the example gestures.. but I liked very much the others.
Thanks for your work!
Ambro

2007-05-04 10:07:57

Yes, the gestures game is quite tricky, but you will get the hang of it eventually. I am going to improve it though, it will have a scoring system and an in-game tutorial in the near future (voice acting is being done as I type this). Could you tell me what problems you have? I could try and fix them in the update. Read the tips in the help file if you keep having problems blasting ogres and imps.
I will update this topic once I upload the new version.

2007-05-04 13:46:42

Hi, I don't know exactly but sometime i make the movements but the cast doesn't work. In addition I don't know how to make the movements of Magic Missile Cast. The indication is: up-right, down-right. So does it means that I don't have to do separately up, right, down and right? And how I have to do? In addition I am confused to make this movement in others direction (turning it 90 degrees). I have no problems with the cast Cause Wound because is intuitive to turn it 90 degrees. Infact I often have succes defeating Ogre monsters but I can't defeat the others.
Thanks for your hints!
Ambro

2007-05-04 16:46:37

I will explain it in detail to you ambro.

Spoiler warning! - if you want to find this out for yourself, don't read this. Exploration of the system is part of the game.
There are 8 directions you can point your mouse.
Up.
Up and right at the same time.
right.
right and down at the same time.
down.
down and left at the same time.
left.
left and up at the same time.

You cast magic missile by making an arrow shape with 2 parts.

First, make sure you don't have any magic left in your body by pressing the right mouse button and thus resetting your personal magic field.

Next, you need to move your mouse up and right at the same time, until you hear a tone. At that moment you start moving downwards and right until you hear the second tone. At that moment you will have cast the spell forward. (you will hear fire and if there is an imp in that direction he will die.)

Try to visualize the gesture, up and right, than down and right. It will form an arrow in your mind pointing forward. Now turn that image to the left or right. Can you guess wich two directions you need to move your mouse to cast the spell to your right or left? Do you think there is a different way to cast the spell forward?
I could just tell to exactly what to do, but you would not learn from it. You need to understand to system to beat it. The rest is timing, and a steady hand. Good luck. smile
End of spoiler!

2007-05-17 21:07:16

Will the new version of the game have more sounds, too? That would be cool.

2007-05-18 18:27:19

i've noticed that the stereo doesn't work in the jestures game it seems. i just hear them in the centre but i get hit.

2007-05-19 03:18:50

Well aaron, I've just downloaded the games and have been trying them out, and personally am having no trouble with the Jestures game, ----- well no trouble in terms of sound anyway.

As regards the games in general and the mouse in particular, well i crtainly agree about the Fireman and Sword games with what's siad in the artical. In fact, sinse my mouse is one of the infra red ones with no wires at all, the sword game was particularly fun (on my fourth go I got up to 20 men killed), and i can deffinately see that expantions to games in this genre will be a good thing.

Quite a long while ago, che martin of Blind adrenaline mentioned considdering an audio mouse based beat em up when he's finished with rale racer, which would certainly be good.

while I deffinately see the point of the jestures game (I certainly like the music and D&D references), I am however having a couple of problems in actually playing the thing. Mostly I think these are due to the fact that I'm not exactly used to handling a mouse, ------ and more generally am not the most spacially coordinated person in the world anyway.

The first problem I have is one of direction. going up, down left and right with the mouse is all fine, however, like a couple of other people I'm having trouble with the diagonal motions required for the magic missile. More specifically, sinse I've got no points of reference on my desk or anywhere else, I'm not precisely sure whether the motion I'm doing is being tracked as up, right, or the diagonal. You mention in the readme that there are tones for the components of each jesture. perhaps tones for direction might help to give a precise idea of what motions are being performed.

More generally, maybe some kind of mouse motion tracker which gives the player audio feedback on what direction they're pointing the mouse might be a good thing in general, so that life time keyboard users like myself can get used to it. This could just simply be a test program, or an actual game such as audio simon, with the numbers or tones or whatever activated by the directions of mouse movement (1 streight north, 2 northeast, 3 east etc).

Also, I'm finding it slightly difficult in the jestures game to adjust to how far or fast your supposed to push the mouse to activate the various motions. quite often I've performed the cause serious wounds spell (whey is a mage performing priest spells anywa? ;D), but been too slow to hit the targit.

Obviously this is part of the game, but some sort of speed vs movement indicating test program might help me practice. in game terms this could be a golf game, or multiple move beat em up, ------- with you requiring different speeds of mouse movement to correspond to light, medium and heavy attacks and parries.

Of course a couple of these issues will probably be taken care of in the Jestures tutorial, so I'll deffinately be looking out for the next version of the game.

In general I stil think using the mouse in audio games is a good idea, but perhaps it's not precisely as intuative to long time keyboard users such as myself as it would be to others, stil, if applications are created that give the oppertunity to practice mouse use I really don't see this as a problem.

Btw, sorry for the very late response here, I've been in the process of moving into my new flat, and had multiple and painful shinanigans with setting up a broardband account here. Everything fixed now though. Also, (quite appropriately), I was at a conference last week in manchester on Disability and disadvantage regarding my Phd, and actually some of the discussion there had quite a lot of bearing on accessible games, but I'd better stop here before this goes severely Ot.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2007-05-21 16:04:41 (edited by Brian Bors 2007-05-21 16:05:08)

The new version of Gestures is online!

Stuff that has been added:
-More Imp and Ogre voices
-Footsteps.
-Some sounds have been modified.
-And of course... a tutorial!

A word of warning; Goolof, your teacher in the arts of magic, is not a nice guy.

Thank you for your feedback Dark, as a matter a fact, I was once working on a mouse based beat him up called "Sightless", but this project won't make it out of the freezer before I finish my study, sadly. I hope Martin creates something like this. I would like to see it happen.

The tutorial should fix most of the problems mentioned here. It should... if it dos not than I am prepared to admit defeat, for now, and submit to the fact the blind gamers are not yet used to using the mouse enough to play it.

And a big "Oops!" for the Mage VS Priest D&D spell list mistake. Thank you for pointing that out. I am too lazy to change it though.

I might create the program you

2007-05-21 19:18:40 (edited by dark empathy 2007-05-22 15:34:53)

Well I've just re-tried out the gestures game. goolof is most amusing, in that he seems to be a mixture of Draal from Babylon 5 and my old music teacher (who used to yell "no! no! no! no!!" in a very similar fashion).

But to get back to the game, several goes through the tutorial certainly clarified things, particularly in terms of which way to cast the magic missile. I admit, I'm not the most spacially aware person in the world and rotational type exercises are things I've always been extremely bad at. But I was stil having trouble, that was until I tried a suggestion from thom Ward of the Audeasy list and lowered the sensativity of my mouse.

It might just be because it's one of those infra red cordless mice, but I found dropping the sensativity down from %50 to %20 helped no end, ----- after about half an hour of playing I'm up to a score about 15 monsters (though i stil need practice). but lowering the sensativity let me make more definite motions, and decrese the chances of accidentally making a gesture I didn't initially want to make.

I've also found picking up the mouse after the first diagonal of a magic misile helpful, sinse it lets me mentally separate the two parts of the gesture more easily (though hopefully with practice this is a habbit I can get out of, sinse it does take a small amount of extra time).

Certainly, don't give up on the mouse stuff, I'll be interested to see what else can be done with it. In fact, getting used to analogue control might be a good idea, sinse it seems to be becoming quite common, with the wii remote etc.

Btw, I was only joking about the spell lists, it doesn't exactly matter that much, ----- you could be multiclass anyway. sinse I've finally located an Ad&d group here in Durham, I've been checking up on the rules etc, as it's quite a long time sinse I've actively played the game.

this doesn't excuse me from being an Ad&D saddo though.

back when I was about 18 I actually read through the entire monster's manual, just for fun sinse I found the descriptions of the various beasties interesting.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)