Musings on audio navigation
It occurs to me that the main advantage that sighted players of games have is the ability to align themselves with anything at a distance.
In the real world, we only have that luxury when the distant things make well-spatialized sound (the flow of traffic, for example, or an extremely nice echoscape but we can't do that with this world's computers). But it's usually easy enough to align one's self when in tactile range, if the soundscape is merciless.
And I'm not sure that the radars we use in audio games are so great at that.
True, for now, everything is axis-aligned. So the ability to snap to the compass, or just step directionally in general is sufficient.
I suppose the question is some combination of realism Vs. playability, complexity Vs. likely/practical, and that lofty idea of making game accessibility less alien.
If, say, one wants a game without radars or compass-snapping or tile-by-tile viewings or verbose descriptions,
then one runs into the problem of potentially leaving players taking a while to stop stumbling into the same section of wall as they look around. Navigating a rectangular room with imperfect soundscaping (and we cannot do perfect soundskaping) is more interesting (and frustrating) when one's hands and feet are no longer available for guidance. Perhaps imagine something like a wheelchair, with one's hands and feet firmly secured, only just enough freedom of motion as to operate the controls. And you cannot sense walls and openings; you can only bump into them, and occasionally hear drafts or creeking doors.
This could be left alone for sake of the challenge. It could be dealt with via radars or compass alignment or tile viewings.
Or, perhaps, something more life-like? Reach out and touch the wall, and suddenly that bump-based, slow orientation is cut, and one can run around not too unlike in an actual house. Change it from arm's reach to cane's reach, a
nd you get your radar and tile-probes and orientation all in the same tool.
Maybe even allow the targeting of objects in the viewable field, within earshot and in front of the player? This would approximate visual navigation, and it isn't too different from the various target locks and other highlights and colorings and radars sighted games sometimes have. It wouldn't make sense in all games (It'd be out of place in an FPS, for example), but I find the concept at least interesting.
(About the FPS case. Swamp gives us a cane-like radar and compass-alignment, but most paths are compass-aligned as it is, so this actually seems like a reasonably realistic compromise. Players can effectively snap to walls without getting to target-lock zombies, and what's more, there isn't a need to focus on each individual wall or piece of furniture. Actually, I'm not sure on how this proposed target-tracing system would work, control-wise. A short-range version is easy: just grab whatever is in arm's reach, possibly aiming your hands, and it can be Swamp-simple easily enough. The long-range version, though, would involve more target selection and looking around, and since most objects would be silent this would make sound design... interesting. Mostly, I'm interested in whether or not the concept can work, and if it really would be as advantageous as all that.)
(A decent, easy-to-use cane substitute would probably be nice. It'd give us the probing and the radar and the trailing all in one package. But how to make such a thing simple, yet viable, given the limits of possible game controls? It's easy enough on a Playstation--there are 3 sets of directional controls already!--but who's going to be making a game with canes for the PS3/4? Meditate on this, I must.)
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