Hi Nolan,
I found that my Super Dogs Bone Hunt had a similar problem when all the
bones made the same sound
as your Asteroids do.
I came up with ten variations on the bell sound at different pitches and
rates and saved each as a sound file then had the game pick one at random
for each bone.
Then I determined the distance to each from you and turned off the sound of
those beyond a certain distance.
Hope this helps,
Phil
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Original Message -
From: Nolan Darilek [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Gamers Discussion list gamers@audyssey.org
Sent: Sunday, October 29, 2006 5:20 PM
Subject: [Audyssey] Accessible Asteroids (was Game programming
educationproject.)
On Oct 29, 2006, at 3:35 PM, AudioGames.net wrote:
Programming an accessible Asteroids game is one thing, but I'm
wondering
about the *design* of an accessible Asteroids game? Did you already
think
about that or are you still considering another 'classic' game
instead? The
reason I ask is because I'm extremely interested in your project
*IF* you
decide to somehow document all design decisions that would make an
otherwise
inaccessible video game accessible for the blind (assuming that is
what you
mean with 'accessible' of course * ;)
Barring any unforseen disasters, I'm very close to releasing
soundclips of my accessible Asteroids-like shooter. I was working on
it last year, but getting a job pulled me away, then I ran into some
limitations that a 2-D trig-based engine couldn't resolve, so I went
fully 3-D with semi-realistic physics. I don't want to get too
technical, but here's basically how the design works:
All objects emit sounds, and to aim at/navigate toward asteroids one
need only follow their positional, dopplering whoosh. To shoot an
asteroid, the player aims at the sound and the targeting system
begins to ping, with different tonal qualities conveying different
meanings. High C means that the target is ahead but not in range, an
ascending tone indicates that the ship is closing, a descending tone
indicates evasion, etc. So, to successfully shoot an asteroid, the
player lines up with it and begins accelerating until the targeting
system indicates that weapon range has been reached.
There were a few considerations that complicated the design. At
higher levels (or even at lower levels at insane difficulty :)
there may be 30 or more targets in the playing field. As such, the
asteroid whooshes tended to blend together into one long string of
white noise. I resolved this partially by implementing what I called
the audio HUD. Objects attenuate over distance, but it was often
difficult to pick the most significant targets (I.e. the closest)
from the noise. The HUD highlights closer objects by increasing what
OpenAL calls their reference distance, the distance at which an
object's volume is decreased by half, when they're within a
configurable range. This made nearer objects become more noticeable,
but it still posed a problem when there were many near objects. I
resolved this further by implementing HUD modes, renaming the former
mode panoramic and adding a second mode, seek and destroy, which
only highlights the closest object, regardless of range. The result
was rather interesting--a wall of white noise that shifted and became
audibly louder in the direction of the closest target. Sounds like it
might not be much of an improvement, but I found myself able to
orient and fire onto closer targets by simply paying attention to the
shifting field and noting louder areas. And this effect was only an
issue when the ship was in the center of a thick cluster of
asteroids--not exactly a desirable position in which to find
yourself. :) Itt'd lessen as I'd shoot my way clear, or as asteroids
bounced/floated free of the cluster.
Today I'm working on a collision alert system. Asteroids were zipping
in and smashing me at extremely high speeds, and taking evasive
action was proving to be incredibly difficult. My current system adds
an extra sound to the oncoming target which informs the player of
both the nature and direction of the threat. Seems to be working
reasonably well, though I'm not entirely certain that it's as
accurate as it could be.
I need to add a few more cues into the sound index, purchase new
music and figure out the best way to record gameplay on a mac (yes,
it's cross-platform and OS X is the primary development platform :)
but with any luck there'll be something up in the next week or two.
___
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