Oooooh, new game good, me like. As Cx2 said, please keep us posted about the developement of the game, ---- do you have a website?
Appologies to everyone for randomly barging into this topic, but as I finally had the time to read it it looked fun.
I certainly understand the overview problem in audio games, and I do agree that stratogy games are probably the worst effected. Because of this, I actually wonder if it might be better for audio stratogy games to be developed independently, so that techniques for scanning the map and working out the locations of things can be develped.
where as in a first person shooter or turn based rpg style game, it would be possible to adapt the game relatively easily, ------ adding 3D sound and spoken messages etc, perhaps because of the extra area scanning and navigational features, stratogy games need to be more specifically developed.
also, perhaps this is a case of working out how to walk before we try running, developing stratogy games which match up to earlier and simpler main stream stratogies, rather than starting off with trying to adapt something like one of the war craft games or the recent command and conquer.
One game that comes to mind for me in this context is Dune 2 on the Amigar. This had a centralized base ala Galaxy ranger, all the units were mobile, and sinse the point of the game was mining and harvisting spice as much as destroying the enemy, a lot of it revolved around defence as much as attack and ganing teretory.
Also, the game worked on a mission basis, where you'd get a comparatively small map, have your base dropped in and were required to mine a certain amount of spice, ----- or occasionally disrupt an enemy mining operation to progress.
I also think techniques in audio scanning and navigation haven't been really explored fully yet. One idea that occurs to me for example, might be to have a grid of the map, and give you a curser to move around and see what's in each square, ----- battleship style. combine this with a message system and some good shortcuts, and I think you have the basis for a navigation system, provided that the game was slowed down to compensate, and that the player wasn't overloaded with information.
One aspect of Dune 2 that would be particularly handy from an accessibility point of view, was that you couldn't see all of the map, only those bits that your scounts had explored (the rest was black). A friend of mine said a similar system was used in red allert as will to illustrate the fact that in a real war, quite often one side doesn't know what the other is doing.
This would be handy from an accessibility point of view sinse the player could familiarize themselves with the immediate teretory around the base and go on from there (again, dune 2 being handy as it had a single, centralized base).
Personally, I really liked Galaxy ranger as a start, but I think that a lot more could be done as far as audio stratogy goes, ----- whether what could be done would ever equal what's possible in a modern stratogy game, is simply something we won't know until a good bit of developement has been done.
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.)