Over at kat’s side I’ve find a very interesting news about game accessibility for everyone:
Games accessibility for all
Please follow the links in this article.
Makes me think of how W:ET or even ET:QW could be made more accessible.
Would be very hard because these are very complex games.
May be should be posted in the mod forum.
Or better also at the community page.
although i have no problem with disabled gamers i do disagree with some of the suggestions for more accessible game. one of the key things seemed to be on simplifying the game play and controllers and for me when playing a game like W:ET a lot of the fun comes from the complexity and tactical possibilities it present because of it. simplifying it would imo create a similar effect to nerfing
i can also sympathies with comercial companies as its not a quick process to create a game and the more accesability features are added the more time its going to take to release a game, the more it cost, the longer time it takes to get onto the next project
the possibility of create games with the intention of being accessible for disabled people is an interesting idea and possibly a profitable niche market. I could also see how disabled gamers would have more success and fun playing a game designed for disabled gamers than trying to play a ordinary game that has been awkwardly twisted to try and make it more suitable for a purpose that it wasn’t relay designer for
the doom3 subtitles mod shows a good way that games can be made more suitable for disabled people without treading on the toes of regualr games, i also like the innovative thinking of using different font color to displayed different types of sounds e.g. threats to the player
My intention was to mod a given game (in this case W;ET / ET:QW) to make it more accessible (like the doom3CC).
That’s why I thought to post it in the mod forum.
Actually all the sounds have to be represented graphically (in the case of pgamers that can’t hear very well).
Idea for now:
To enhance the HUD / make the complete HUD the compass (may be only the border of a rectangular / square) with the crosshair representing the player.
The different sounds would be represented by icons (seems to be better than reading).
For the weapons this could be the weapon icons.
So this would be the representation of the direction and the source of sound.
Not sure about the distance.
I know it can be represented by the distance to the crosshair.
But if the sound is very near it might be impossible to concentrate whats happening in front of the crosshair.
In the case of gamers that can’t see very well it would be the other way around.
Representing all visual effects with sounds.
Distance could be represented by the size of the icons.
Very interesting nUllSkillZ ta for the links.
I think improving the HUD would be a good idea including showing
hits to other players either by a subtle red glow around the edge
of the screen or maybe just a central indicator. And anything that
happens should be indicated through the HUD or on screen text.
Also if there was a way of giving feedback through the controller.
There must be some feedback controllers out there for PC and
shouldn’t be to hard to set up for existing games that don’t already have the support.
Also remember that there are different disabilities which make gaming difficult.
Including partially sighted people and for them improved feedback through sound is more important.
The unfortunate thing is that there are various kinds of disabilities and I don’t believe a game can really be made accessible for everyone without lowering its original complexity. That video shows how a quadriplegic manages to play an FPS with a custom controller, but what about blind people? Or people with muscular dystrophy who can’t move at all?
The solution, in my opinion, is to put more effort into researching technology which could help people regaining part of their abilities (playing videogames included).
Something is going on about brain-computer interfaces, retinal and cochlear implants. Check these:
It’s encouraging to see that physical disabilities can be overcome by technology, even though these devices are in their early development and it will probably take another 10 or 20 years before completion.
Just had the ideas to use the botfiles that are available for some maps for people that can’t see very well (“navigation system”).
Seems to be better than the idea that I have before to use some kind of “sonar”.
Representing the visual environment by sound is pretty hard I guess.
A nice name for modding efforts would be “AVE” (audio visual effects) (allthough it should be something like advanced or enhanced audio visual effects - but AVE is more suited).
Ave @ wikipedia.org
(here in the meaning of Greeting)
Ideas over ideas.
May be pure servers should allow certain in the config specified modpacks.
So if a client with the specified modpack connects it isn’t refused to play.
So for example it would be possible to create monochromatic texture packs that simplify the level design.
i could see something working for players that are deaf or have impaired hearing but poorly sighted players even with some navigation system might find it difficult to take part in combat and actuality track targets
one idea i have for poorly sighted player could be re texturing players and vehicles with unique and high contrast colors. so if they see a large blue spot running across the screen they know its a GDF infantryman, if they see bright red they can be sure its strogg. then perhaps you can do something like make GDF vehicles green and strogg yellow
as it might be very difficult for a poorly sighted person to differentiate between classes on a team etc if they place the cross hair over a player or vehicle you could trigger an audio file that says “engineer” or “hornet”
iv actually got quite a few idea for sight impaired players ill try get them all down
Behold! The one-handed config. Best used when a) gaming while holding a beer, b) gaming while holding a squirming child, or c) one arm is otherwise incapacitated.
http://4newbies.planetwolfenstein.gamespy.com/onehand-config.zip
Also, don’t forget configurable color options for those people who are color blind. Most games seem to use a lot of red and green to differentiate teams, which not everyone can see.
hmm i tried 1 handed playing in ET but its hard, my mouse has like a billion buttons, used left-right scroll for strafe and thumb buttons for foward/backward then scroll button to jump and below it another extra button to duck, then i had the other two buttons for their original use, and all my buttons were used(except up/down scroll cuz it is not a button like others and cannot be used for foward/backward). had fun with it but trickjumping like that… rofl took me 3 hrs to even make 1 good jump
This a fascinating and excellent area of research. To be honest, I’m not sure there’s a huge amount of extra revenue to be made for the publishers in making their products more accessible, it’s just obviously the right thing to do. Anything that drives awareness, and makes “Abled” folks more considerate is a good thing, but obviously the main drive is that we all want as many people as possible to be able to enjoy games. We love games and we want other people to be able to share that enjoyment and passion.
Quite how we can do that, and how we can integrate the solutions with vanilla/“abled” gamers is a tough one. And like BrightSoul says, there are so many different kinds of disability/handicap, it’s very hard to treat such a various bunch of people as a single category.
I have to confess to an unkind thought: there’s a slight cognitive dissonance for me regarding how the PC games community talk about accessibility for disabled gamers, and their attitude towards console gamers. I’ve yet to meet anyone who thought that making games more accessible was a bad idea per se, but so many PC gamers seem to regard console gamers with pity, for living a reduced life, for being incapable to experience all that the world has to offer. But do they want to allow console gamers auto-aim? Noooohhhh.
Anyhow, good bump!
I have to confess to an unkind thought: there’s a slight cognitive dissonance for me regarding how the PC games community talk about accessibility for disabled gamers, and their attitude towards console gamers. I’ve yet to meet anyone who thought that making games more accessible was a bad idea per se, but so many PC gamers seem to regard console gamers with pity, for living a reduced life, for being incapable to experience all that the world has to offer. But do they want to allow console gamers auto-aim? Noooohhhh.
wtf :?
One area of accessibility that is often neglected is color blindness. Something as simple as letting users pick their crosshair and friend/enemy colors can make a big difference.
Of course, there are limits. Making a primarily visual medium work for people who can’t see at all is going to be troublesome.
The difference is console gamers are crippled themselves by choice 
We’ve started looking into this at work, due to the disability and accessibility laws becoming more stringent over the next year or so.
Our Usability expert is hot on getting this sorted for all our applications at the moment.
This is quite interesting, haven’t tried it with any games though.
A visual impairment simulator for windows.
I did turn my PC into treacle, but I think that may be due to the dual monitors and basic GFX card combo on my work PC.
Cool idea. I actually develop 508 compliant projects as my career so it’s nice to see some of this coming into the gaming realm.
My idea ATM is to use ET-Pro’s LUA capabilities.
Not exactly sure if it could be done in LUA (just opened a thread in bani’s forum - hopefully he and his team isn’t too busy with QW :D).
a cool idea. I’ve been developing websites for years and only in the last couple of years company’s are demanding accessible websites for everyone (at least here in Portugal). this social awareness is growing in every aspect and that’s really cool.
in games, well i think that saying “oh there’s too many different disabilities” and “we’ll have to make games simpler” a bit off. i think that the solution would be something like working with organizations that deal with different kind of disabilities and trying to work out a middle term, and then just shipping a patch or an add on with the CD with a prompt at the install runtime where you could choose to install it or not.
from voice activated commands (for those who can only play with a joystick and that can use voice commands - even for a simple menu/options navigation), to visual icons replacing incoming sounds (a little “footsteps” icon maybe, running around 360º on screen, where it could enlarge accordingly to distance - sound volume is calculated by distance right?), so many different options…
a friend of mine is deaf/mute and he’s one of the best players i know (and most fun to play with), and you can only frag him from behind.
it’s a sensible topic and I’m glad that someone brought it up 
J
a friend of mine is deaf/mute and he’s one of the best players i know (and most fun to play with), and you can only frag him from behind.
with a similar mod to the doom3 sub captions mod he might even be able to stop you doing that
The answer from bani’s forum is that it (a HUD sound radar) can’t be done via LUA scripting.
LUA seems to be only for server side changes.
with the sounds radar are you planning to add the exact location of where the sound originated from or the general direction similar to other games when you receive damage. If your not careful with this you could end up giving disabled player an advantage over other players where imo you should try to give each player equal opatunites