For what it's worth, a friend of mine, who was a developer for Worlds of
War Craft and designed some levels for Quake 1 as well, uses a mouse with
one hand and keyboard with the other. She uses the mouse to fire, switch
weapons, and look in various directions, while using the keyboard to strafe
and move.
I say this to make the point that this can also be done by someone
playing Audio Quake as well, and also to note that sighted people also
still do use the keyboard at least for Quake and such style of game, and
lastly to say that just because someone can use a mouse, may not
necessarily make the game play easier or make one a better player.
For myself, I'm definitely an advocate for use of the mouse, but some of
what people are complaining about here, is actually more a function of the
way AQ itself is designed to work. The idea of turning 22.5 degrees or
some preset turn radius is there to help people always be able to tell
their direction. In Quake, people can also look up and down, as well as
left or right while moving in one continuous direction. As I'm aware of it
now, this is not currently possible in AQ, at least using only the keyboard.
I'm not sure how effectively this could be implemented in AQ, in a way
that most people might find useful in my opinion, but anything is possible,
and where there's a will there's a way. :)
I think that the game as it is now, at the level of play that we all
enjoy, is quite an amazing achievement. I'm certainly not saying it can't
be taken further, :) but I do think it may also come down a bit to what
each person can bring to it: I.E. visualization of one's environment,
localization skills, fluency with a mouse or joystick etc. As it is now,
if you look up and fire, but then move and forget you're looking up, the
amount of info you're getting from the game about your environment isn't
enough to adequately tell you that, whereas a sighted player can see that
they are looking at the ceiling, all we'd hear would be that we're looking
at some kind of slope or wall. Another thing to consider is the idea of a
frame or refresh rate. What I mean is this; when someone is watching a
screen, it refreshes at a very fast rate, and graphics are drawn and
redrawn quickly enough to appear to move. So one's eye usually can't see
the process.
With AQ, we can hear a similar process in the repetition of the sonic
representations of the walls, corners, etc. Since this refresh rate is so
slow, When one turns more quickly I.E. using a mouse or such, the info we
get about the environment will be limited to the speed at which it can
refresh to create our new view. Does this make sense?...
You can see this in action now, with the standard ESR vs the Enhanced one,
and how much more able you are to see someone moving across your view, as
well as closer and further from you.
So, in essence, the resolution of the sonic environment isn't nearly as
good as the visual one.
So until this improves, to use a mouse or joystick will take some skill and
practice.
But as I said above, it certainly is doable.
Anyway, I hope this makes sense and check in witcha' y'all laters!...
Smiles,
Cara
At 01:18 PM 11/2/2006 -0500, you wrote:
Doing the joystick thing is gonna be nearly impossible. After I read the
ZQuake manual and found nothing about joysticks in it I decided to try
mapping the different functions to existing key bindings. I think that
actions that require a single key press such as switching weapons are
possible. As far as movement goes, so far, I've only tried to map the x-axis
(moving the joystick from side to side) to the keys for strafing since it is
one of the hardest things to get done. Unfortunately, the game doesn't act
as if the alt key is pressed down which makes one turn instead of strafe.
Other things may be possible, such as continuous turning by mapping the
joystick's twisting motion to the arrow keys. But without Strafing and
running, which require modifiers (alt and shift respectively), what's the
point of mapping a whole bunch of stuff if one has to go back to the
keyboard?
BAT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark BurningHawk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Ken the Crazy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "AGRIP User and Developer
discussion list" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2006 11:19
Subject: Re: [AGRIP-discuss] Joystick support?
I too am coming up against the limits of what you can do with key bindings.
As it is right now each hand controls eight or nine keys in a roughly
telephone-keypad type arrangement centered around navigational keys or fire
control keys. I don't see how it can get much faster than this while using
the keyboard, and I would actually buy a USB joystick or game controller if
it was supported. As in my last post, continuous turning with the arrow
keys would go a long way toward making game play more fluid. Anyone
interested in comparing key bindings and different strategies for rapidly
accessing weapons and motion/direction changes, I"d be happy to.
Keep herding nerfs. Nerfi? Nerf? Hmmm.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken the Crazy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "AGRIP User and Developer discussion list"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2006 10:55 PM
Subject: Re: [AGRIP-discuss] Joystick support?
>I tried using a joystick and a mouse but I can't get neither to work. This
>business about sighted people having advantage because they can use a
>mouse--well, either the blind AQ community needs to learn to use one or we
>need to gain some advantages over the sighted to make it fair, because soon
>we will be playing against them I have no doubt. Personally, I would love
>to see mouse and joystick support. With just a few more navigational cues
>we could really make it work--and anywhere you read about Quake people
>laugh at anyone who uses a keyboard to play.
> Ken Downey
> President
> DreamTechInteractive!
>
> And,
> Coming soon,
> Blind Comfort!
> The pleasant way to get a massage--no staring, just caring.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Andy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[email protected]>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2006 9:45 AM
> Subject: [AGRIP-discuss] Joystick support?
>
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Is there joystick support in the ZQuake engine or will i need to map
>> everything? I just got one for free and I'd like to try it out. Has
>> anyone
>> use a joystick in the game before?
>>
>> BAT
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> AGRIP-discuss mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> http://lists.agrip.org.uk/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/agrip-discuss
>>
>>
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>>
>
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