2014-09-04 21:34:21

Hi, I'm starting the investigation part of my computing project. My game is similar to the one described by Haqeirah in her thread, in that I want to combine text with audio and am using python and pygame. In fact, I found out about accessible_output very useful. Anyway, as you probably guessed from the topic subject, I've put together a short questionaire. It would really help if you could answer it. It really isn't that long and the more results I get, the better my analysis will be.

Here's a bit are my current ideas about the game:
Every time you enter a new room, your screen reader will read out the room description. I can't remember which screen readers are supported, but I think the main ones are, and I'm pretty sure NVDA is so that's an option if your main screen reader isn't. I'll have to check up on that though.
You can scroll through the text using the up and down arrows to read line by line' and the left and right arrows to read word by word. If you want a word spelled out, find the word with the arrows and press s.
The game will be real-time and you can move in all 8 compass directions and up and down. I'm not sure what keys to use for moving though. Maybe e for north, r for north-east, f for east, v for south-east, c for south, x for south-west, s for west and w for north-west?
I'm thinking of having a folder with text files with room descriptions and have a room description picked at random for each room. This should also allow people to add their own rooms to the game. I don't know how well this will work or if it would be worth doing, so I'll have to try it out first.
I want to have sound effects to indicate exits, items and NPCs, and maybe optional background music, but it depends on whether I can find any good ones.
The player will have stats and skills to use in combat.
For actions other than moving, you can press the spacebar to bring up a command line where you can type commands like in a mud. If possible, I might add a way to set aliases, but I'll have to check if my idea works out.

I think that's all of it, on to the questionaire!

1. Have you ever played an accessible rpg before?
2. If so, what features did you like, and what do you think should be improved upon?
3. Are there any features you've heard of in mainstream games that you think should be implemented in this accessible rpg?
4. Are there any new features you can think of that you would like to see?
5. Are there any of my ideas that you disagree with or wish to comment on? If so, please do.

Any answers and feedback will be greatly appreciated. Thanks. I promise not to make such a long post next time.

2014-09-06 10:56:33

Moderation!

du dreyma kona has requested this topic be moved to general game discussion sinse it's more about gameplay than coding as she/he wants responses from players.

I agree so this topic is being moved.

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.)

2014-09-06 11:33:37

1:

Yes I have played all current accessible rpgs in English, plus various muds and a lot of browser mmmorpgs as well as older Dos style rpgs such as Fallthru and Eamon.

2:

Where a lot of browser games and muds leaned heavily on minimaxing equipment and then had fairly dull press button and watch stats style combat, Entombed took a "Get what your given and deal with it approach" I find it far more interesting to deal with dynamic enemy attacks that encourage me to change combat stratogies, or rethink how I distribute my characters. While Entombed had it's problems that was definitely a plus.
I also like the fact that in older dos style games like Eamon, even though the combat and mechanics were very simple, descriptions of objects, enemies and items were always present. There is nothing I dislike more than a game where "you encounter mega lizard" and are told nothing about it, sinse that transforms a propper enemy into something dull and stale with no interest or atmosphere at all. The same goes for npcs.

In the recently released Paladin of the sky, I love the exploring system in audio and the huge area and plot, but really wish there was more by way of descriptions.

3: I would love to see dynamic fights and tactics such as those employed by games like final fantasy and granddia, not to mention a really epic story ala Xenogears with characters you care about. Far too many browser games particularly lack hugely in atmosphere or tactics and become basic grinders.

I also would love to see exploring the environment be made part of the game with objects to find and tasks to perform outside of combat. A diablow style randomly generating wilderness or battlefield bonuses would be nice, but I'd settle happily for just a good amount of teretory to explore along with environmental factors that play a part in combat. Indeed for me the more complex the actual combat system is the better, though I would prefer if this complexity could come just as much in the tactical need for decisions during the fight, ie what to target, when to retreat, what sort of spell effects to use, matching weakness element spells to changing monster tactics, when to use buffs and debuffs etc. Far too many games have very dull combat, which really ought to change.

4: Given that text is the medium for the game, being able to add extra content would be nice. You mention adding room descriptions, but being able to add monsters on a basic fill in form basis would be great. The Eamon system for the apple Ii computer used a very basic system of combat and filling in fields to create some quite unique adventures, and there are plenty of people in the community who have always wanted to design an rpg but don't have the tools (including myself).

5: You do not mention supporting Microsoft Sapi. This can be a major advantage in several ways sinse firstly it lets people without an installed screen reader play, and also works if a person doesn't use any of the supported screen readers. I myself use Supernova which (due to dolphin only recently releasing the Api), has rarely been supported by programs and I'd rather not have to download an entire other program just to play one game, ---- especially sinse I'd be running nvda through sapi anyway.
using sapi also has the advantage that you can calibrate the voice speaking in real time as well as several games have already done.

I am also not sure about your idea of real time combat combined with textual descriptions. One of the problems in a mud is that the game moves so quickly players either have to set the voice speed to ridiculous levels to hear the text or just react quickly and ignore the text, indeed I confess I do not enjoy muds as much as turn based rpg games for this reason sinse I want to experience everything the game has to offer. If a wizard throws lightning at me, I first wants to know what the evil wizard looks like, and want a propper description of what the lightning is, rather than just hearing "lightning!" and having to react. If the combat is to be real time I suggest that some code needs adding to make sure that the clock is sinked with the screen reader's speech so that it is possible to hear everything of what is happening in the combat, especially if the lion's share of the output is going to be textual rather than sound based.

You might even considder simply ditching the real time idea and going turn based instead, sinse unless the real time combat is to play some sort of part in an action or timing test for the player, I am not sure how much good it will serve given the need to hear textual descriptions of events. Even if you were say thinking of a timing based system, say of different attacks taking different amounts of cool down time before being reused thus forcing the player to caculate their actions, this is quite possible in a turn based system by creative use of speed an initiative stats, for example, giving weapons plus or minus stats to indicate the number of turns they take, for example if an assassin with a dagger with speed 2 is fighting a swordsman with speed zero and a barbarian with a great axe with speed minus 2, the assassin will get in twice as many attacks as the swordsman and four times as many as the barbarian. You thus have a quite workable speed system which allows for multiple attacks and care to be taken but can still be run in a turn based game and allow the player enough time to hear all of the text and the descriptions.

I really hope this project gets off the ground and ends up doing well. While the rpg system has improved significantly in the past few years, it's still by no means perfect, sinse rpgs are manifestly  complex games to rwrite and there aren't many people working on accessible games, and I'd love to see something fully featured and workable, especially if it were possible for none programmers to expand.

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.)

2014-09-06 15:20:58

@dark
Wow! That's a lot of detail. Thanks.

I should have been making notes of all your points so I could address all of them, because now I can't remember all the things I was going to write. I'll answer the points I can remember, and if there's something I forgot that you want addressed, just remind me and I'bl get to it.

About the NPCs: While I can make NPCs wander around, follow you, and fight, I'm not sure I could really make characters you care about. If I was writing a choicescript game or something similar with a stricter plot, it would be easier to handle things like conversation. Since I'm not, I feel like if I tried to give the main character a talking companion, they would be mostly silent apart from when there was an event like entering a new area or finding something. Even then, what would you say back? It just seems to unrealistic to me. I'm a bit picky about things like that, I wouldn't mind making talking NPCs like shopkeepers and enemies because you don't really need to say much anyway. But I don't really feel confident enough to try making a friend. I was considering a kind of animal guide to help during the game though.
I'll need to think a bit and try some stuff out before deciding whether I can let people add NPCs. I have a few ideas, but I need to change my NPCs a bit anyway to add body parts and more stats for combat. The thing is that the more complicated the combat, the more complicated the NPCs need to be. I'll get back to you on that when I've had some time to program.

Mechanics:
I think the more important aspects of the game will be exploration and learning skills. Combat is important because enemies will attack you, and there will be a part of the game where you will be tested on your combat ability, but it's not about killing as many monsters as you can or beating the boss or anything like that. I want the combat to be complex because it does add a lot to the game and I get put off a game if all they have is a random dice roll. But don't worry, it definitely won't turn into a grinder or a "find the best weapon possible" game. I'm looking for as many sound effects as I can to give it more atmosphere. I'm not sure I can add an adventure creation system, for a reason I will go into more later. Basically, adding rooms and probably items and NPCs would be fine, the actual storyline will most likely be fixed.

Combat:
You raise some good questions. I was actually planning on making the combat more sound based, but actually that has its own problems. I have a few solutions which may work:

1. The combat is real-time and mostly sound based, with short messages from the screen-reader, but at the start of the fight, the game pauses and allows you to read a description of the enemy and you can unpause the game when you want to start combat.
2. Same as above, but the game is also paused whenever the enemy makes a previously unseen move. You c

2014-09-06 15:46:13

Either my previous post was too long, or my braillenote just got stuck. I hope you'll forgive me for double posting.

Combat option 2. The game pauses when a new move is made so you can read its description and know the sound for next time. This could also allow you to learn new skills, either by seeing a skill used a certain amount of times, or possibly trying to mimic your opponents actions. It depends on whether people would find it irritating, but I think it could fit in with the tactics idea if you could learn skills from observation.
3. I go turn-based with full textual descriptions every turn. The reason I prefer the idea of real-time combat is that it is more realistic. In a real fight, you and your opponent are hardly going to take it in turns to stand there and bet pommeled. You're not likely to take time to look at them or the specifics of their attacks either, but if you were sighted and in a real fight or playing a graphical game you would see all that, it makes sence to add it.
4. Some combination of the above I haven't considered.
5. Some new idea.

I have an idea for a way to make fighting easier depending on your character's priorities, but I'd prefer not to go into that until I know it works.

The reason I'm not sure I can implement everything is that I don't know exactly when this project needs to be finished and handed in, but it's definitely before the end of the school year. I need to do quite an extensive write up on it, which is what this questionaire is for, and I have two other a-levels to do at the same time. This means that as much as I would like to focus on the project for the year and get every awesome feature implemented, the truth is I can't. I will get as many things as I can working. The basics like exploration and some form of combat will definitely get done, but more complex things like adventure creation systems won't really be a priority until the other stuff is as good as I can make it.

If anyone reads this who is interested in RPGs, please answer the questions? Even one word answers and short bullet points are fine, I just need a good selection of results to put in my write up.

2014-09-06 16:22:25

Hi.

When i speak of caring about characters I wasn't thinking a full on novel or gamebook, just some reason for why your doing what your doing and an actual plot with progression and events in the world, not just "you are insert name the insert class, go into the dungeon and slay lots of things"

On a basic level look at something like Legend of Zelda.  Link never actually speaks, yet people grow attached to him just because of the various things he's asked to do and what he goes through from being chucked into the dark world to being catapulted through time. For something even more so look at secret of mana (one rpg I'd give my back teeth to play). You pretty much just wander around from area to area, all npcs just have one peace of dialogue in each area, (occasionally two, pre and post dungeon objective complete), but still the plot has huge amounts of prominance and your characters actually have personality.

There isn't a need for anything too complex for this, just npcs who speak, and the odd text description of an event when you wander around the map. For example, (to take something very rough just out of my head), you begin the game and are told to go and fetch water from the well in the wood, kew first dungeon and explorable area. You get back to the village and find everyone is worried about the evil empire invading (buy your first weapons and get your first gear), and that the high priest at the temple wants to see you. when you meet the priest he tells you about magic and how the tiny island they're on is protected from attack by a magic forcefield, but that the forcefield is old and needs renewing, and that the power source for the forcefield is in the old mine.

kew second dungeon. Finishing the old mine you meet a spirit that explains it was trapped by the villagers long ago to power the magic force field and keep the village safe, but that it wants to leave. Your character decides to free the spirit and let it go, however when you come out the village has been attacked by the empire and lies in ruins (it's not a propper rpg plot if your little peasant village doesn't get destroyed at the start of the game is it).

All this is possible with npcs on the map you can talk to with just one peace of dialogue, no need for choices etc, however already in my littel miniplot I've established your character as a nice person, if a bit of a dope, run through two dungeons and introduced some bad guys.

As regards additional content, I didn't realize you were planning on creating an actual rpg with plot, rather than something more similar to a rogluelike. In that case, then probably your best off with not allowing people to add to it sinse manifestly it's your own world you are creating and you don't want too many different people flavouring the game differently. Though you might hav say an extra game plus mode or some zones specifically for people to add additional content away from the main plot and areas of the game.

As to combat, one of the general problems with audio games is that they can too easily turn into a boppit game, where the player just reacts to specific sounds rather than making judgements about a set of game factors, for example if your typing "dodge" everytime you hear the enemy swing their weapon. I also wonder how easy it will be to check your health, mana etc if your having to type in commands mid battle.

I like the idea of pausing things to read descriptions both of the enemies and of any specifically nasty attacks, however I do wonder if this should be something the player controls, for example if the game could track when sapi or the screen reader was speaking and pause combat accordingly, then the player could just hit control to skip what descriptions he/she didn't want.

Thinking about it, one thing you might considder is to separate out physical combat and magical combat, and have one be real time, and one not, rather the way combat in secret of mana worked.

So, physical attacks all have standard sounds as the enemy targets different bits and you have to parry, repost or wind up attacks beatemup style with correct key presses, say r then up arrow to repost high, p then right arrow to parry an attack on your right etc. When magic or other special attacks are used however you hit tab to bring up the console and type in "Cast fireball" or "giant slash" or whatever, then you cannot attack physically for say half a second as your big attack happens (though the enemy obviously can), and there is an escalating rising tone, when that tone hits the top, the action pauses and you get the sounds and description of the magic/special hitting.

Ditto with your enemies, if they use a magic or special attack, they stop attacking physically and you hear the wind up sound where you get some free shots in, then the wind up stops and you get the description of what they do along with the sound.

By having tab as the pause and bring up console key, you get the best of both worlds, an intense physical action affair where your needing to use real time fast maneuvers agaisnt the enemy, and as much magic or specials as you want, but ones which must be used sparingly.

Edit: to answer your final question, turn based combat is based on the idea of slowing things down enough for you to take significant actions, it is not supposed to be realistic in temporal terms.

Think of a fencing match. You swing your sword, your opponent blocks and goes for a parry, you dodge the parry and repost. Turn based combat is based on this idea, that your actions in a fight are a direct responde to what your opponent does and visa versa, it's just that in a game the turns are slowed down enough to discuss and considder with reference to the game's tactics, where as in reality they would be much quicker, and only a highly trained person would be cool enough to sit and considder tactics in a real life or death fight.

The advantage is that you can both include atmospheric descriptions and deep  combat tactics, which is why games like final fantasy have gone on for years being turn based, rather than turning into beatemups.

Unfortunately many representations of turn based combat do indeed just become "you ihit it" "it hits you" which is both dull and unrealistic, but  if you get it done properly it can work very well.

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.)

2014-09-06 20:31:57

Moderation!

I took the liberty of changing the topics' title sinse your more likely to get people answering the questions if people know your making an rpg.

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.)

2014-09-07 08:22:31 (edited by cx2 2014-09-07 08:23:36)

1: I've played muds, played entombed a long time ago, and back in a previous life before I lost my sight played both Diablo 1 and 2.

2: Like Dark I get burned out worrying about upgrading my equipment. I'd be quite happy with armour as a single piece of equipment personally since I get tired of the aspect of some muds where you have to optimise everything down to boots, gloves, greaves and so on. A Diablo style system of body, head, boots and maybe gloves plus a couple bits of jewellery might be a good compromise for me.

3: Crafting might be nice but I don't know how well it could be implemented. Also it's probably way beyond this kind of project but a strong story would be fantastic and in a perfect world a free roaming world akin to Elder Scrolls games would just blow me away. Oh and if you were to include overland areas a mount would be fun. Improving skills with use like in the Elder Scrolls games would be fun too, Skyrim for example has trainers available who can give you a small boost in a skill of your choice every level but your skills are otherwise only increased randomly as you use them and your level is based on the total number of points you've earned across all skills.

4: Can't think of anything off hand.

5: Maybe consider using the numpad for movement if you weren't intending to use it for something else, with the movement controls you suggest available in the settings as an alternative for laptop users. Some of us still use desktops with full size keyboards smile

cx2
-----
To live by honour and to honour life, these are our greatest strengths and our best hopes.

2014-09-11 12:56:49

Hi, thanks dark and cx2 for your feedback. I haven't got much time now, but I'll post more later.

As always, any more answers would be greatly appreciated.