Re: Doom: Toby Accessibility Mod V3.0
So... I listened to this video from Illegally Sighted. In addition, I did some basic research on older versions of the accessibility mod, and read about Doom on Wikipedia as sort of a crash course. I have never played Doom before and have only heard it maybe once, so I am completely new to the Doom universe. But ever since I heard Doom and its 90s sounds and fast action on Youtube videos, I've wanted to play it. It's perhaps why I got hugely into FPS audio games like Shades of Doom, Technoshock and Monkey Business, once I developed sufficient orientation skills to navigate through them. I haven't actually played the accessibility mod though, I've only read and watched videos. I really like where this is going. For those who haven't heard the video or the mod, I'll summarize it below:
Many things in the game make a repeating sound when you get close to them. Doors have a high chirpy sound, switches sound like alarms, barrels make a weird bubbly sound. Health, ammo and armor all have their own sounds. In addition, you can now check direction facing, and I think? there's a snap function, but I'm not sure how it works. I'm not sure precisely how many sounds there are, for instance the original Doom games have toxic waste which in previous versions of the mod didn't seem to make sound, but in the example level in the 3.0 version of the mod, I don't think there was any toxic waste to show off, so maybe it makes sound now. We can hope anyway.
A few things seem pretty frustrating though if you actually want to enjoy Doom solely with audio.
Menus do not yet speak. I hope they can in the future, but it's not a dealbreaker.
From what it looks like, the most accessible map is a custom one you have to import. Standard doom maps break as some sound beacons, such as doors and switches, won't be audible. This shows the mod is a work-in-progress, it won't really make the game fully playable yet.
Enemies don't make enough sound to reliably kill them from a distance. Most of the time, you don't hear them until they are either ready to attack you or have begun attacking you directly. You pretty much have to play with God mode if you're not sighted.
inability to hear items from a distance. Some items in the game do seem to be audible from a distance and change volume depending on how close you are to them, but others seem to be sensitive, only making sound if you're right next to them. Maybe I'm being too picky, but I feel like everything should be audible from at least a couple steps away.
It doesn't seem like you get a good indication of whether doors are standard, locked, unlocked or open, although the navigation voice will tell you if a door requires a key, and which keys you collect and use. Still, I found myself confused since I couldn't tell where the locked doors were without the voice.
Inability to check health, armor, ammo etc. Of course, whether any of this can be done or not will depend on the capabilities of the Doom engine to convey numeral information.
The ability to hear sounds through doors and walls is really distracting for me. I'm not really sure at the moment how one is meant to know the difference between objects in a room and objects somewhere else in the map when playing with sound alone. If nothing else, I'd say just don't play sounds that aren't in the same room/hallway as yourself.
I've heard that Doom has climbing up/dropping down. I admit this is a dimension that's hard to convey with audio though, and I haven't really played many audio games which attempt it without having extensive spoken or guided feedback. I also don't know of course how much the Doom engine could be pushed to convey with audio. If nothing else, I guess play a short ascending rise sound when your character climbs, or a short descending sound when he falls, so at least you can use your memory of your previous attempts to map out the vertical structure of a level when needed.
At the end of the day I'm a bit lost when trying to follow the level layout, but it does sound really cool. I'm very hesitant to say I dislike any aspects of this. I really, really want to like this, but I can't quite justify putting the time in, as I would find it frustrating at the current time. I would constantly be comparing myself to sighted gamers who have no trouble. Illegally sighted is really amazing though at conveying stuff in a way that mostly makes sense to me as an audioonly gamer who has no experience with mainstream, and at the same time he seems to cater well to what mainstream people relate to, so if you're still curious, I'd check out that video I linked to at the beginning of this post.
For now, I'm going to be giving this a pass, but I'm still very open to other perspectives and am keeping a close eye on this.
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