SLJ wrote:Hi.
I don't like the idea of having a world just for blind people. Does it really matter if people are blind or not when the game is accessible?
I think, the way the world is written, and how its "laws of physics" work, do matter. For example, the old DikuMUD worlds are vision-centric right down to the code. "Look" is the only sense command, there's no "Listen", "Touch", "Smell" or "Taste". Vision-impairment is crippling: entering a dark room without a light source leaves you incapable of finding the exits. There are pejoratives written into the code: "If only you weren't so blind" is the response the server generates when you try to do something inside that dark room. "Blindness" is a curse/spell that can be used as an offensive weapon.
By contrast, the TriadCity server platform has the ability to make all senses co-equal. All of its Rooms, Items and NPCs *can* have highly detailed sense descriptions. It's up to world authors to choose to provide them, or not. Most of our writers do - but the reality is they're not at the same level of completeness as visual descriptions. There's authorial bias in that. And, as some of y'all have pointed out to us, there are still examples of vision-bias within the code. We'll have those removed soon.
So for us the practical question is: do we want to go through the TriadCity world enriching its non-visual sense descriptions - or would the effort be better spent writing a new world from the ground up in which vision is not privileged? Or, perhaps, doesn't exist at all? We haven't made up our minds, but, the concept of a new world is really growing on us. It would be *very* different to anything out there.
Sorry to be so long-winded - thinking out loud.
--Mark