2016-09-08 01:44:21

Hello everybody, long time watcher but first time poster here!

Over the past few months my partner and I have been working on developing an audio game for iOS and Android devices called Sound Stomp. It's a call-and-response game not entirely unlike Oroiol Gomez's awesome game Rhythm Rage but featuring a few different means of input.

We were wondering in terms of accessibility if there any things you folks encounter in some of the apps you've used or games you've played that make them irritating, cumbersome or unpleasant to use? On the flip side, are there any features you've encountered on apps or games you use that you wish more games incorporated or tried to do better at?

Thanks in advance folks! smile

2016-09-08 09:01:09

Hello and welcome to the forum.
A rythm action game for Ios would be awesome (and I'm not just saying that given the amount of time I've spent on rythm rage), so I definitely like the sound of this, especially if it encoorporates the ability to use the Iphone gyro to make gestures as well as touching the screen, physical movement in a rythm action game would certainly be a new mechanic, particularly since despite Smackme and Zany touch experimenting a little with the formula neither really took it too far.

As regards irritations or access niggles with Aps though, it depends upon how things work. The first and most major question is what roll is Voiceover playing in the game? Since concerns of ap design worries will change according to whether Voiceover is used for things like starting a new game, checking your score, choosing game options etc.

If voiceover is! to be used then most requirements are fairly logical, ie, that vo speaks all elements correctly and can navigate to them easily, (either by simple left right flicks or by directly running a finger across the screen), none of those irritating partial image controls with squiffy lables, buttons with indefinite position or uncertain properties, and none of those ultra fast popups that appear and vanish before vo has a chance to read them. This also goes for any in ap purchices if the game has them, since there's nothing quite as annoying as a game which it's impossible to buy or donate to (I can actually think of one game, which is very! accessible with vo, and completely impossible to actually pay for due to bad lables in it's in ap upgrades store).

The major thing about using Vo however is making sure that voiceover behaves itself when the arcade game portion actually starts, since it can be a little irritating, and rather confusing to start an arcade game and have to turn vo off just after you've hit the "start game button" especially if say for example you press the home button an extra time or take yourself out of the running ap and back onto the home screen, leaving the arcade game running.

If you want an example of an arcade audio game which extensively uses the phone to it's advantage, uses vo for it's controls and reading of in game text but stops vo every time you need to get into the action, check out Audio defense zombie arena from somethinelse.

On the other hand, if your planning self voicing menus and for the player to turn vo off when the ap is run, that's not necessarily a problem but has it's own requirements.
The first of these is an efficient sound interface with speech interupt that can get to the controls. There is nothing so annoying as having to listen to a game say "Press with one finger to move through the options and then press with two fingers to select one" each and every time you run the game without interuption. Obviously you need that information the first time you run the game but not every! time.
Similarly, hearing "Start game, starts a new game"  with no interupt can get rather irritating.

Of self voiced menus, there are two main types I've seen. those that let you scroll through the options with a gesture, effectively using a system similar to Voiceover's left/right flicks, and those that work by using the corners of the screen as buttons, eg "Touch the top left corner of the screen to start a new game, the top right to replay your score, the bottom left to change options"

I personally prefer the scrolling menus method myself,though that could be a personal preference thing. This is because by using the corners as buttons method you are limited to only a few choices, effectively four corners that can be found easily within the game menu, thus you tend to have to hear the menu explanation more frequently since it's not usually possible to remember specifically what each button does, especially for functions you only need intermitantly.

Also, the onscreen buttons method has the problem that if your not sure of the menu choices or options, you need to replay all of them each time, which can get complex especially if you have a number of sub menus, where as menus that have more of a single flick and scroll method can be gone through much more quickly to find the option you want.

One other thing to bare in mind if the game is using self voiced menus, is how vo intigrates with options like viewing game center, in ap upgrades etc. Turning vo on isn't a problem, but certain gestures due to screen sensativity can be somewhat more of a pest without vo, for example one game I can think of needs vo turned off to play, but then instructs the player to slide a finger up the screen to access game center and turn vo back on. Often I've found myself exiting the screen, or turning on the game center then toggling back to the original ap window, or even turning on game center and hitting something I don't want because my slide went too far.

Of course, if it was just a self voiced option that said "click here for game center and turn vo back on" that wouldn't be a problem,

A blind legend does this with it's in ap upgrades.
but extra gestures without vo, particularly when accessing other parts of the Iphone can be somewhat urcsome.

Hope some of this information makes sence and is of use, and I look forward to the game.

Feel free to let us know how the game is going, and when you have some demos or public info we'd be glad to post some news, and of course add the game to the database when it's ready.

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.)

2016-10-19 05:40:17

I realize this is a very late reply and I am so sorry about that! I can't believe I didn't respond, I'm absolutely kicking myself

All this information will be very useful still since we're currently working to redo our menu system once again.

We've actually had many suggestion to use gyros and we're actually considering it as we develop more! Our primary concern with that is accuracy since our time with accelerometers haven't been very accurate but perhaps it would be much better with a gyroscope. We will definitely be considering it in our design since we also see how fun that could be too

We will be using voice acting for menu systems and interfaces. We're developing in Unity and neither one of us have much experience with coding in xcode. Unfortunately Unity's support for accessibility is very lacking and unreliable, so we've mulled over our design time and time again.

Your points about menu systems is very informative as well! We considered a few of these things such as the flick system already, but we completely overlooked being able to skip little tutorials, something we'll be sure to fix soon.

Thank you very much for the references too! We will be taking a look at those and studying them very closely.

Thanks so much for the input. These are all elements we are going to look at very carefully over the next few months as we continue development and I'm so sorry for responding so late. You've been super helpful!

2016-10-19 07:12:03

Hi.

Well it's true that the gyroscope does make for very fun gameplay in ios titles since it lets games use types of analogue movement not usually possible on a pc game, and if your still planning something in terms of a rhythm action game the gyros could actually rock since moving the phone around when instructed could make for some very fun challenges, eg, imagine a flamenco themeed level where you had to shake the phone like maracas, or a hard rock level where you had to raise the phone to do an air guitar big_smile.

Unity I confess has had problems with access before. it's actually a shame since the Ios interface in itself has so much assistance for vo that other systems lack, even properties of on screen elements to speak information to vo when the "speak hints" for vo is turned on (as it always is), which can be used for everything from explanations of mechanics to showing statistics.

Then however we have people creating game engines which are down right terrible with access, unity being a prime contender, indeed a recently funded kickstarter campaign for a game ended up having to pay all their blind customers money back since the engine they're using can't be made accessible.

Unity has been used to create accessible games in the past, but I don't think it's been an easy process and has required some rather specialist intigration, still, good luck, and as I said we'll be glad to post some news about the game when things get rolling.

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.)

2016-10-19 13:28:59

devonwiersma,
Welcome to the forum.
I suggest checking out Kid Friendly Software, Blindfold Games by Marty Schultz.
He has created over 30 accessible games for the blind.
If using Voice over for menu choice I suggest using lower case letters rather than capitol letters as in some games Voice over says,
Cap A, Cap B, and Cap C instead of
a, b, and c.
When going through menu choices, I prefer flicking through the choices and tapping the one I want.
If the game uses stereo I suggest having the game say something like "This sound is on the left."

2016-10-19 16:55:31

Phil,

We've been looking at Blindfold games a lot, especially early on in our development. We're pretty big fans of Marty's games. Thank you for your suggestions, your feedback is very helpful!