quote:
Original post by m_wherrett Being blind is not fun, hence making a game about being blind fun is forcing a bad idea. I''d say don''t bother.
Being trapped in a base that has been overrun with demons while having only a pistol to protect you is not fun, hence making such a game is a bad idea. I''d say don''t bother.
I suppose you had a smug grin on your face when you posted that.
Regardless of what everyone else has said, I kinda like this idea. The way I envision it is the following:
Its a first person game. The screen is black with whatever interface. The blind character "feels" the surroundings with their hands and feet. If they feel an object, an image of it appears on screen, if you move away from the object, the image fades. I f the characters hands feel something, the image appears in the center of the screen, if its their feet, then the image is somewhat smaller at the bottom of the screen. This way if your walking through a corridoor the ground would be visible without getting in the way of whatever the hands touch. The ground would move in 3D at the bottom of the screen, but only whats directly beneath and in front of the character is drawn (so a small field of vision). If theres an object on the ground, it wouldn''t be very visible to the player because its too small so they''d have to move in and touch it with their hands to get a clear image.
The feet could be controled using the cursor keys (moving around) and the hands with the mouse, clicking could make the character reach forward. This way the player can see whatever is directly in front of the character and be able to move easily enough.
It would be a very dark game though (but then, blind is dark) and combat would have to be somewhat limited (fighting blindly isn''t easy).
Anyway, I think its a cool idea, but it does have a lot of problems which would need sorting out before a commercial blind game would be feasable.
I agree with issch. I think that this sounds very interesting, provided you can pull off the interface dificulties. I can see that you could have very limited "map" of your surroundings (what you could feel with your cane). And I like the idea of being able to feel objects or people's faces and get a limited picture of what you're touching (I think I'd go for black and white or some sort of false color to indicate temperature or texture). Sound would obviously be very important to the experience.
Maybe there could be some sort of meter system for other senses. Maybe if you're near a kitchen you'd smell the turkey that's being cooked (would they cook turkey's in a post-apocalyptic future?) and you see some sort of image of what your charater smells. Or there's a bar to indicate temperature. I think this could be very unique and provide a totally new prospective. It would be a totally abstract way to experience a game world, which is good in my opinion. I think in general that games shoot for too much realism. It won't be easy to pull off well, but I'd think it's well worth some experimenting to see what it would take. If it works, I think you could come up with something new and really great.
[edited by - GrinningGator on August 11, 2003 7:50:22 PM]
1) make a small demo/prototype of the game where you play as a sighted person.
2) if I manage to do that, extend this demo or create a new one where you can play as a blind person.
But my biggest problem right now is that I have to make an engine as I haven''t found one that satisfies my needs. The game would look something like HellCarrier (for a sighted character), and I have looked at the source for that game, but I didn''t learn much from it as I''m going with an OO design and HellCarrier is mostly procedural. Currently I''m working on my own engine with the help of the "Enginuity" series of articles, but I see that I have a long way to go to even get one tiny part of gameplay in there.
I''m currently not focusing on the design until I get a very basic prototype running where I can test some design issues.
It is fully possible to make a game that is fun and relies mostly on sound. You could have some abstract\representational\iconic graphics that represent the use of other senses that most people don''t have devices for (smell, touch, taste.)
One way to handle touch would be to represent different sensations with icons in front of your characters current position. This would almost be like limited sight. In a GTA1 style graphical representation you would "see" your character and what is directly around your character (stuff you can touch), but you wouldn''t see anything else.
You''d have to have a pretty good position sound system if you want to player to rely on sound for gameplay purposes. It may be a better idea to make a kind of sonar that plays a sound and shows you a graphical representation of the general position of that sound and what your character thinks it is, similar to the touch icons.
Humans, even blind people, don''t have that great smell, but smell can be a general indicator of your location and your environments condition. For example, you can tell you''re in a house or restaurant by smelling food, you can tell someone or something in the area is dead (a good reason to run away) if you smell corpses, and perhaps you can smell a particular character (for example a person that wears a certain type of cologne or perfume.)
Computers are largely visual, so I think using rough graphical representation of other senses makes up for that fact that computers have limited capablities when it comes to triggering other senses (even sound) and the fact that blind people have better developed hearing and touch than people who can see (people who are playing the game.)
You can also try to directly appeal to other senses, force feedback is very common on consoles (although vibrators in controllers are pretty limited in the kind of sensation they can produce), and some people have force feedback joysticks or mice, so you could add some of that. There has been at least one device that can produce smells, but there are probably five people in the world that have it.
I think a whole game where you play a blind character would be tiresome. Maybe you could have the first mission or level as blind, then you get a device that converts sound to visual information, and display that as textureless white polygons. It might also be cool to have a part where you''re fighting people and you can turn the lights off, so that you can "see" and they can''t. Also maybe there''s an area or item that disrupts your device, causing false images and hallucinations. And maybe there could be upgrades to your device, making the image better and better.
