Hi Aprone.
I fully agree on the matter of braille displays etc, pricing is insane, just
add the word accessibility and you can pretty much stick on another zero,
heck I've seen a hand held device which does just what your colour
recognition program does which would set you back 150 pounds (about 270
dollars I think). So I fully agree with the developement your doing there.
With games though, I'm afraid I'm not sure whether your methodology here
sutes the circumstances.
For a start, there are actually very few professional standard programmers
making audio games, in fact you could probably count them without taking off
your socks. Subtract those like Justin from bsc and Liam urven who's life
circumstances aren't conducive to making games, and your left with a very
small group of people indeed.
This bunch are rather independent all have their own ideas and styles, all
have knolidge of what they want to make, and won't do something simply
because there is a community idea out there.
to illustrate, look at stratogy games.
Vip gameszone came up with galaxy ranger, which is sort of an action
stratogy hybrid in I believe 2003, yet we didn't see another even vaguely
stratogy audio game (not counting battleships), until 2007 with sound rts.
Sound rts was amazingly well recieved and enjoyed by many people and you
would've expected a huge wave of that style of game, yet (not counting
castaways), the only thing to follow was time of conflict from Gma, which
I'm pretty sure was in developement when sound rts was released anyway.
This isn't to say there aren't trends in audio games, only that they have
far less impact, sinse the more complex the game type and genre, the more
difficult producing games with that concept and idea is, and the fewer
people will attempt it, ---- if indeed anyone will at all!
Look at entombed. possibly the most successful audio game of all time, and
produced in less than two years. Yet have we seen any similar rpgs? ----
heck no!
While I agree we have had many arcade games, I don't think this is entirely
the fault of fashion.
As Philip's example games show, left right sterrio targiting is sort of the
default baseline in audio games, one reason why there are so many example
and practice games like that now, especially from those who are working with
bgt for the first time, which is indeed why it's only been now that we've
had to introduce the database submission guidelines for audiogames.net to
say what counts as a game and what counts as a programming practice.
I think therefore that the reason there are so many arcade games is as much
a consequence of programming skill, than deliberate choice, indeed there has
been a major desire for more complex audio games right from when i first
started playing them myself in 2006.
Thus, I'm afraid your approach of introducing concept demos and then hoping
people will pick up the idea and run with it just doesn't seem as logical to
me given the circumstances, and given that so many people (including me),
really! want more complex and interesting audio games to play, in one sense
it actually feels a litle dissatisfying.
Personally, I'd say there are two ways you could change the situation. One
of them, is as Jason Alan did with entombed, write a complex game yourself
and thus contribute something to posterity with audio games, which might not
change the face of what people develope, but is certainly one! example out
there of a complex game.
The second, is to acknolidge that your writing a concept demo in an example
game, and thus create some sort of open source affair (possibly in bgt), to
hopefully give some of the programmers who are making arcade games a bit of
a leg up into something more complex, and thus show how it could be done.
Suppose for instance you created a cut down version of castaways with three
people, a random map and five jobs, hunter, gatherer, tool maker
lumberjack, cook.
the hunter needs tools, the gatherer does not but only gathers a small
amount of food, and the tool maker needs wood to make the tools.
You could use this setup to show most of the castaways mechanics of ai that
seaks resources and brings them back, changing conditions over time,
tracking activities etc, and thus put someone in a far better position to
create a stratogy game once they've seen the code.
No, it might not be fun to play, but such is not the point of an example
game.
In fact, sinse all the bgt example games thus far are either basic puzles or
space invaders types, this might actually be a good thing all round.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
---
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