I'm still thinking about my project idea, and hope to have some sort of concrete design document or something soon--some sort of goal, and the like. That or I might start smaller.
The first question today is this. How much complexity would you be willing to put up with? Do you read the manuals? If I were to have 3 or four different navigational aids instead of just one, would you be willing to learn it? How much would introducing them slowly help? What about a tutorial level?
The other question is this. I'm considering a camera. In most audiogames that aren't side-scrollers, it's effectively first-person you see what your character sees. But I'm considering a 3d platformer engine, and that means that one has to sacrifice smooth turning. Read: you can face north, south, east, or west and that's it. To me, first-person seems like a really bad way of doing this, so I'm considering possible camera controls (above, for example, or 3 units out) and controls that move the character, that is left arrow moves left based on the direction the camera is facing, etc. I don't see this being a problem, but prototyping is the key, of course, and simply trying it. Does anyone have thoughts on how horrible/awesome this could be? My thought here is that if one is using an actual 3d audio library instead of the usual pitch/pan only, being able to control the camera separately might be helpful.
And I apologize if the bit about the camera came off as nonsense, as I'm having trouble thinking of a way to explain it to someone who has never actually seen what a game for the sighted looks like. To use techno-programmer jargon, the listener's position would be separate from the character, with a varying up and forward vector. But that probably only helps a few people get what I'm getting at here.
Twitter: @ajhicks1992