2014-04-30 23:36:46 (edited by stewie 2014-04-30 23:37:10)

Any reference to assuming people were stupid was not meant by any comment about the manual in any way, shape or form.
If you are using NVDA you could try nvda>preferences>keyboard settings>simple review mode and unchecking that.
Make sure that you aren't using an addon or script such as kill windowless flash for that website.
Also make sure the focus is set to the correct flash object, as the site can weirdly change the focus ocasionally.

I am using NVDA 2014.1, with the latest firefox and probably latest adobe flash with windows 7.

I agree though flash objects are pure evil for screenreader users.

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.

2014-05-01 02:28:42

Yes, I have simple review off.  I am also on Windows 7, with Nightly NVDA and Beta Firefox. I tried both with and without Kill Windowless Flash.  I know I am on the correct object, because I can get the opening game story, and even press the skip button. But once the main menu loads, no matter what I do, that flash object is always and forever blank to NVDA.  The only way to do it is to check play audio coordinates when mouse moves, and memorize the note and position of the various menu buttons, making sure to maximize Firefox first, of course. But even after all that effort, I find the length and timing of all of the attacks are so completely random that I can't get anywhere with the game.  So the only review I can give the game is 100% unplayable.

2014-05-01 07:06:24

huh don't know what I did differently this time but its working now, just started story mode
my only complaint so far that there are no hit sounds for when you catch your opponent, tongue at least not that I could hear, they just yell something at you and run away

"You know nothing of death... allow me to teach you!" Dreadlich Tamsin
Download the latest version of my Bokura no Daibouken 3 guide here.

2014-05-01 07:29:19 (edited by Shadowcat 2014-05-01 08:13:08)

okay ignore my last post, I failed to realize that for that first guy you actually have to attack slightly before he does, lol I thought it was supposed to be a pary then strike
edit: okay never mind again! finally see how this game worked, as I just finished it
the warlock at the end actually follows quite a simple teleportation pattern, you just have to be able to think fast

"You know nothing of death... allow me to teach you!" Dreadlich Tamsin
Download the latest version of my Bokura no Daibouken 3 guide here.

2014-05-01 12:08:23

Hi,
A question for warlock again
s
p
e
c
u
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a
t
i
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It seems you have to hit him when he teleports. I'll give this a shot and let everyone know if I can succeed.

2014-05-02 07:03:02

Well, how can i change the mode from 180 to 360? it's unlocked after beating the story first time or what?

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2014-05-02 16:41:58

I've had no luck starting this one at all.

When I click the flash object below where it says "blind swordsman" II get to a page asking me for logue in information and something about some game called league of angels. When I click the link above I get very loud music and a flash panel.

I will look more later when I have some time, but given the amount of people that seem to have trouble with this stupid thing Might I suggest someone contact the developers and asks for some propper lables to start the game and maybe some shortcut keys for the menue buttons so people are no longer having to scrabble around an unlabeled flash pane having to click and hope.

It's actually quite ironic that the one group of people who are having the most trouble playing a game called blind swords man are blind people. Then again, I saw an Ios game clled blind adventurer that was entirely graphical big_smile.

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.)

2014-05-03 03:55:29

how do I restart at level 1?
is there a way to start the game over from the very beginning of the game?

2014-05-03 09:03:19

how do i advance to level two? i cant find the button

:D happy to help out with games and the like... maybe :D

2014-05-04 12:50:49

does this game have cheats? I try holding down down arrow or S to block, but the blocking doesn't stay up for long.

2014-05-04 15:51:31

hi
please help I m go to
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/636785
but what I have to do?
thanks

2014-05-04 16:37:20

Hi!
Evil-Dog here, I developed the game and have just learned about this site and that the game was being used here, with terrible results haha
So I will be adapting the game for you guys in the coming weeks, with keyboard controls and voice-over tutorials

I had a few questions for you guys
1) Do you find the game offensive when he calls his blindness a plight and wants to get his sight back and when enemies insult him for being blind? The game not made FOR blind people and when I thought about marketing it to blind people, it hit me that it could totally be seen as insulting and of bad taste. Let me know.

2) Are there other sites like this one? Where do you get your games for the blind?

3) What's your favorite game for blind people?

4) What kind of game is lacking for you guys?

Let me know smile

2014-05-04 18:12:46

I think at the moment most people are having issues navigating the buttons in the flash object.  There's a way to navigate it but it's a bit obscure for most people, and has had varying results. 

     On the blindness insult things, normally some people would find offense to something like this, but we have to look at this at the context of the game:

  1.  The main Character is attempting to regain something he finds as a handicap, yet is his greatest strength in the story and...well if anyone's made it to the ending, well you'll find out.    But yes, him calling it a plight is perfectly fine as this is a person who hates the fact he lost his sight, and there has been many of people who try to find ways to see again after going blind. 

   2.  The enemies thing is actually also easy to understand.  they see a disabled foe and of course will think little of him.  This is mirrored in reality in indirect ways as many of us have found out.  As well, this sounds like it takes place in the past and I imagine there was a low expectation for people with disabilities, especially sword fighting blind.  So enemies mocking the main character was going to happen.  it is not like we've been called out for trying something blind and made fun for it, we've experienced that, even better when we somehow manage to do a better job.  or, in the game, parry an enemies attack to their surprised before they get cut down.

    Comically enough, what we are lacking is an RPG.  We only have one, and that's more semi-roguelike then an actual RPG.  Hell, we have 2 or 3 shooters already.  We have plenty of platformers in 2d  (anyone for an accessible 3-D platformer?)  and a few racing games.  However, I noticed a demand for more strategy games, and a demand for RPG's that aren't muds. 

   By the way, great game as it did take a bit to figure out when to exactly parry.  however, for survival mode, any chance of making the enemies charge faster and faster, along with doing what some of the eneies did in story and include multiple people circling around to start causing confusion after a while.  I'm guessing also include the dodging enemies and a slightly less blocky version of the horseman. 

    Other then that, great job.

2014-05-04 21:20:19

Yeah, I understand, because it's flash, screen readers don't catch it and the interface is totally not made for blind people.
Having the game for blind people was an after thought, it was more for non-blind people to feel blind in the game.  The game was originally an april fool's game but we decided to make it something complete and playable.  I later looked for places to share it for blind people but I realized the content could be considered offensive and that the interface would need work.

But Brad, from this forum, contacted me so now I know of this site and I can work with you guys to adapt the game.

Yeah it's true the game's content is relevant to blind people's situation even in modern days. Glad you see it that way.  One of the few blind heros hehehe

Yeah the survival could have circling enemies and dodging enemies but I figure it would get weird if you have one guy on the left and one guy on the right,   I could experiment with that.  They could start coming faster and faster though, that's a good idea.

Also thinking about doing the mobile version for blind people.

2014-05-05 00:05:31

I bet you need a thick skin, people are so stupid. Kudos to you. I've started adapting the game.

2014-05-05 14:13:23

Hi,

hey, thanks for coming to the forum, that's great!

I actually managed to play the game, but it's a bit of a painfull process to get it working. So I'm glad you found this site and are willing to adapt the game for us, thanks for that!

I don't think the game is offensive at all, it's just realistic. There are enough sighted people out there who think that blind people can't do anything. And that blindness is a curse for the main character is just so understandable. For me it is too, I've learned to live with it but would get rid of it as soon as a way was there.

Well, like the others said, RPGs for us are really lacking. I play the japanese ones too and it works, but it is always great to have more games to play, and to have a great RPG with a good story in english.

2014-05-05 16:16:19

So for RPGs, can you give me some exemples of RPGs you've been able to play?
Are they RPGs that work with NVDA where you can hear what all the buttons and texts are saying? I have NVDA, I could try some. See how it works.

2014-05-05 18:48:58 (edited by Evil-Dog 2014-05-05 19:08:59)

Yeah a Final Fantasy style RPG would be really neat! Especially if it's all voiced! Would be epic!

Like I was telling Brad, who introduced me to this forum, if I would want to make a quality blind game with voices and a good story and programming all the mechanics and everything, I would probably want to use kickstarter or something like that fund it, because the blind market is rather limited sadly. So revenues from the game is probably not viable but funding it through kickstarter would work.

2014-05-05 18:56:25

Yeah, what I am missing personally is action RPGs or scrolling beat em ups / medroidvania style of games. These are my favourite from my past. Audio games aren't so good sadly, and The blnd swordsman is something fresh. It's easy but challenging and I think we need more and more games like that. I am so sad I'll never play a games like The witcher, or great Dark souls probably. What is most painfull is we haven't any games where we can say, "I need 80 Hours to get everything, level up to max stats and beat the game once" many games need atleast 10-20 hours to complete wth full campaign / story mode and if audio game is for one hour it's really good. This is why I enjoyed japanese audio games like Bladestorm360 wrote about shadow line, it is something new and fresh but nothing what I want still. I am trying to play video games but it's not possible most of the times. In my steam's library I have few great examples of playable games but these are fighters or beat em ups mainly so... missing bigger and complex titles.

What about Blind swordsman, I feel like shinobi, or a blind samurai which isn't bad lol bad assmeans epic sometimes! haha
BTW this reminds me bushido blade a bit in terms of the atmosphere of the audio. It was my favourite fighter for PSX and square enix goes in wrong way discontinuing the series. And second BTW, searching for "audio games" through the google is great sometimes, this is how I found your game and shared it here!

I wrote to you on twitter anyway few days ago. smile

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2014-05-05 20:07:16

Yeah that's the thing, for the same reason that revenues with blind games are not really possible, the same applies with funding not being possible.  The audience is just too small. 

Anyhow, I'll start by adapting the flash version of The Blind Swordsman and export it as an exe file so you guys can play it.
Then I'll check how much work would be involved in making it on iphone/android.

I read some stuff about integrating SAPI in Unity3D so that could be nice to build a RPG without the need to record a million lines with the voice actors.

2014-05-05 20:17:16

Hi,

another problem with kickstarter is, that you need a credit card to help the campaign. That may be fine for people living in the US, but in Europe for example it's not so common that everyone has a credit card. I live in Germany and don't have one myself. So I wanted to help the audiodeffence project, but couldn't because of this very problem. So you'll also exclude many people living outside the US when you use kickstarter to found anything.

2014-05-05 20:23:32 (edited by Evil-Dog 2014-05-05 20:31:22)

Yeah that's very true!

And there's 2 things I wanna make clear, I don't mean no offense when I say blind games, audio games seems too general a term when I'm talking about games specifically made for blind people haha
Also I don't wanna sound like a money hungry douchebag when I speak with you guys about how to monetize any big project that I would do, but I do have to make money with what I do, it's my job and I have mouths to feed and bills to pay smile  So don't be offended if I talk about kickstarter, funding, sales, ad revenues, etc   It's that much more important when talking about a small audience or a niche project.

Cheers

2014-05-05 23:06:38

Hi there. Just wanted to say welcome to the forum and that I've been one of the ones trying to get the game up and running with little success. As a bit of a different color... I just want to say that not all blind people would have the desire to think of their blindness as a curse or do anything to get their sight back. Some of us are very happy with the way life is... and in my own personal case, I've come to see blindness as an occasional hastle, even a blessing at times. But that's a discussion for another topic! Regarding games I agree with bladestorm and seal, though I'd personally like to see more beat em ups in the style of classics like Double dragon or Final Fight. There have been a few half-hearted attempts here and there, but one with good sound design and a good story would be great to see. If I can help in any way with this game or any other projects you might have, I'd be glad to! Would also love to see more rpgs similar to Shadow Line and would definitely recommend it as a bridging game for someone who's interested to see how blind people play games but wants some graphics at the same time.

Discord: clemchowder633

2014-05-05 23:29:44 (edited by Evil-Dog 2014-05-05 23:37:18)

I saw sidescrollers and beat em ups mentioned many times, how do blind people play those?  What elements must the games have to allow you to play it?

EDIT: And hi, thanks and yeah, I wouldn't think every blind person, or any blind person, would think it as a curse.  In the case of the blind swordsman, he lost his sight in the past, so it's more normal that he would want it back.  He was badass with sight and is still badass without sight haha

2014-05-06 01:36:03

Yeah when I think about how I'd do blind games, it would rely heavily on audio production, like the blind swordsman, sound cues for the various things you can do even in a more complex platformers, audio cues could help you understand the layout, especially progressive sounds like an increasingly loud sound that lets you know that you're running toward a jump point or toward something you must slide under.  And of course yeah SAPI can work but voice acting is so much better when you can have it in a game.  But it's harder to produce.

For now I won't add more content to The Blind Swordsman, I mostly wanna make it adapted to audio navigation.  And see if i can port it to mobile for you guys.
But we have a sequel in mind, if you've beaten the blind swordsman I can tell you that the sequel would be called The Blind Warlock hehehe it would be more open world and you'd walk around in that virtual world and fight stuff on the way and have a more open quest to do.

What kind of new content did you have in mind for The Blind Swordsman