This actually appears to be one of those times i was talking about where different people's ideas compensate for each other, sinse I can certainly think of a way to wrender original Marrio bross in audio, whereas Bomberman does have me stumped (we philosophers are very good at over complicating matters).
As far as Marrio goes, there are actually only four different types of collectable items in the game, thus replicating them in audio wouldn't be too hard, mushrooms (which make Marrio larger and have an extra hit), Fire flowers, extra lives and coins. What requires the thought in marrio is the spacial aspects of the game, and how to represent objects vertically, I do think however, it'd be quite possible. (beware, long explanation ahead). Taking Superliam as a baseline, representing the charactor's footsteps, pits, walking or bouncing monsters and power ups lying on the floor is all fine. sinse Marrio's main attack is to jump on his enemies heads, there would need to be an added "On targit" sound for when Marrio was in the air above a potential victim, so that the audio gamer could calculate their jumps correctly, but I don't think this would be too hard to do (Marrio always had quite a lot of air time on his jumps anyway). then, sinse in Marrio gaps are of variable distance, there would need to be a system to represent gap length. However sinse Marrio is structured almost as a board game with descrete steps and tiles, and distances you can calculate precisely, I don't believe this would present too much trouble. For example, you could have a low humming pulse like the shades turn sound), to indicate when a pit was deadly, overlayed by either a high, or low pitched wind sound to indicate the length of the gap and whether a normal or dashing jump was required to cross it. You would also need an alarm signal noise or different step sound to represent when Marrio was on the edge of a pit. Well, there's the horizontal plane taken care of! As to the vertical, when a block was close over marrio's head, the step sounds could be muffled (think small rooms in shades of doom). Optionally, there could be drecrease decreased muffling for blocks that were further away but stil directly overhead, though I don't believe this would be necessary. Also optionally, when the block overhead contained an item, as well as the muffled step there could be an indicator sound such as a continuous ring, (though sinse headbutting blocks in search of items wouldn't actually be a problem, I don't believe this would be absolutely crucial either). Combine this with an "oof!" sound every time Marrio walks into a wall, and maybe a check distance key to see how many steps through the level Marrio is, and Vuala! I hope this explanation is clear enough, but iff not, I'm quite willing to write up an example of how a game of audio Marrio under these circumstances would work, however I think if I make this mail any longer I'll have trouble posting it. all the best, Dark. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Ward" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Gamers Discussion list" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 7:00 PM Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Forcing accessibility > Hi Dark, > Well, obviously some games are going to be harder to translate in to > audio than others. > I think bomberman would be possible, and you could be over complicating > it some. I haven't thought it totally through as well as you have, but > having played the original eons ago I think an audio version could be > possible. > What I am thinking would be difficult is games where there are no audio > equals for the items in the game. For example take a classic game like > Mario brothers. > I have been doing allot of thinking about it, and honestly some of the > things has me baffled how to represent the same things in audio. Take > the blocks Mario has to break to get items. How would you represent > them, and not sound corny in the process. > Then, there are special flowers in Mario that shrink Mario, restore > Mario, make Mario Super Mario, and one that gives Mario fire ability, > etc... > You have to have some auditory way of making the different flowers and > items apparent to a blind gamer as they would to a sighted gamer, but > not dumb or silly in the process. > One way I can imagine it being done is a looping item indicater that > says fire flower, fire flower, fire flower, over and over until you > take it. > That is how Phil did the fruit in Packman and while being different it > was a pretty good solution for that interesting problem. > However, for a sighted gamer that would be exceedingly annoying. > > _______________________________________________ Gamers mailing list .. [email protected] To unsubscribe send E-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.
