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Audyssey;

Games Accessible to the Blind

Issue :  51 2nd quarter, 2007

Edited by Ron & Sylvia Schamerhorn

 

Fun, Friendship, Knowledge, Charity

 

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Welcome

Welcome to the  51st issue of Audyssey. This magazine is dedicated to the discussion of games which, through accident or design,

are accessible to the blind either with or without sighted assistance. In this publication I've attempted to pack in a whole bunch of great 
information about gaming and the ongoing developments that are taking place.  So read on!

Note: This magazine uses plus-signs as navigation markers. Three plus-signs are placed above any articles or sections. Within these

sections, two plus-signs denote the start of a new sub-section. Smaller divisions are marked by a single plus-sign. This allows people to use

their search capabilities to go quickly to the next division they are interested in. For instance, the "Letters" section is preceded by three

plus-signs. Each letter within it has two plus-signs before it. Answers to letters have a single plus-sign before them.

 

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Contents:

Welcome

>From The Editor

Letters

Beyond Scrabble

Word Puzzle  only great minds can read this

Vista Game Compatibility Chart

Phil's Funnies

Developing Accessible Games

News From Game Developers

Game Announcements and Reviews

Contacting Us

Distribution Information and Submission Policies

 

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>From the editor

 

  I hope everyone is having an enjoyable summertime.  Here in the great 
white north I must say it's been more the humidity the last while that's 
hard rather then the actual temperatures we've been having.  Life's been 
keeping me busy, as I'm just over two months married,  and Things have been 
going great!

  This particular second issue of 2007 is more on the late side, however as 
I hope you, my readers, will not only notice but appreciate significant 
things have taken place in the accessible gaming realms.

  As a few examples the game Sound RTS, extensive news in both the developer 
and reviews sections of the mag, and the long awaited Audio Game Maker is 
now on the scene!

  So be sure to give this issue a complete reading.  Many of the items might 
be short but I have attempted to cram useful tips, tricks, and links 
throughout these pages of this issue.

 

As always my inbox is always open for comments suggestions and whatever

Ron

editor@audyssey.org

 

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Letters

  In this section the content is taken from the list primarily, but may also 
include something I receive directly.  Generally these are of course game 
related, but perhaps not in all cases.  A review or announcement as such. 
Sometimes it might just be someone's thought's about a game or genre of 
game.  I hope these prove interesting and informative.

 

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Hi all,

 

I work for the San Francisco Chronicle and am planning to produce an

audio podcast about audio games. I'm hoping to find folks in the San

Francisco Bay Area to interview who are either avid audio gamers or 
developers. Is there anyone on this list who fits that description or

who might be able to point me toward someone who does? I'd be very grateful 
for any help they could provide.

 

Thanks for your time,

Justin Beck

 

Justin Beck

Podcast Producer

San Francisco Chronicle

901 Mission St., San Francisco, CA. 94103

Office:  (415)777-8713; Cell:  (510)332-3719

AIM:  podcasterjustin

Email:

jbeck@sfchronicle.com

 

Check out Chronicle Podcasts at sfgate.com/podcasts

<

http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/podcasts>

 

++

Lucky us!

 

Hey all non devs like me!

Is this not awesome? IN the past 6 months, we've had judgement day, rail 
racer,  a demo of monty me thinks, and now Sound RTS? I've dreamed of 
playing games like this and for a beta, this is clean! Not one hang up or 
anything. Really good year this year, and the quality I'd say has gotten 
drasticly better...

Yay devs! Love you long time! *grins*

Seriously, thanks. We all appreciate it! Rock! Back to wimpy peasants

Everett

 

++

Below is an email I got earlier this week.  I'm putting it here in hopes 
that someone here can assist me in helping a friend out with this hand-held 
game.

 

Message

Hi there, in case ya don't know who I am, it's Kim's mom!

Anyway I have a question for you and since I remember that you know about 
games, maybe you can help me with this one even  though it's not totally 
computer

gameish!

One of my friends lucked out and found one of the Henry games I don't know 
if you heard of them, they were put out maybe in the 80's very similar to 
the

old Simon game where you repeat what the tones are that you hear and if you 
do it correctly in the same sequence, well you either win or go to the next

level.  Anyway when I was at dog school last fall that was when I found out 
that this game called Henry existed.  I've been looking for one cause it was

so much fun to play it but one of my friends did snag one for themselves but 
of course the game did not come with the instructions to set it up or 
instructions

for use.  Would you or any of your game playing people happen to have those 
sought after instructions?  If they had the actual game I'd really be 
interested

as well but I'd like to help in the search for those elusive instructions 
for my friend if they are available.  Any suggestions or help would really 
be

appreciated.

I can't remember who made the game but she did call and of course they said 
"we no longer make that".

bye for now.

Laurie and LD Weston

 

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Hello all,

 

Here's an opportunity that might be right up your

alley, for one of you out here.  We got any programmers

here who might be interested in developing an

educational, accessible game that is health-based?  My

first thought was a video/computer game that teaches

one how to better, or properly, take care of their

Diabetes.  Or maybe something about the various health

aspects of blindness and vision loss?  Got any ideas?

Why not go with it, and give it a try?  Details on the

competition are below.

 

Please forward this funding opportunity for game

developers and programmers, to people you think would

be interested.

 

Thanks,

Everett

www.everettgavel.com

 

New Competition Seeks Innovative Ideas for How Video

and Computer Games Can Improve Health and Health Care

 

Deadline: September 25, 2007

 

A new competition seeks novel ways in which video and

computer games can be used to help people manage their

health and improve how their care is provided. The

online competition, "Why Games Matter: A Prescription

for Improving Health and Health Care," is sponsored by

the Pioneer Portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson

Foundation (

http://www.rwjf.org/ )

and uses a unique,

Open source competition model developed by Changemakers

(

http://www.changemakers.net/ ),

an initiative of

Ashoka: Innovators for the Public (

http://www.ashoka.org/ ),

that promotes enterprising

solutions to social problems.

 

"Why Games Matter" is the third in a series of idea

competitions co-sponsored by RWJF and Changemakers. The

collaborative competition model attracts solutions from

social entrepreneurs from the U.S. and around the

globe. Innovators submit their ideas online and the

Changemakers community provides feedback on the problem

and proposed solutions throughout the life of the

competition.

 

Through this competition, RWJF's Pioneer Portfolio and

Change-makers hope to challenge game developers,

researchers, health organizations, and others to

demonstrate new and therapeutic ways in which games can

help improve health and health care. The open source

structure of the competition also will further build

and energize the community of people who see the

potential of connecting games and health.

 

An expert panel of judges will select approximately

twelve finalists. The Changemakers global online

community then will vote on the competition Web site

for three winners, each of whom will receive a $5,000

cash prize from Changemakers. All finalists will win

the opportunity to attend the "Why Games Matter" Change

Summit at the 2008 Games for Health conference, the

premier event for game developers, researchers,

funders, and other leaders in this growing field.

 

The online application can be found at the Changemakers

Web site.

RFP Link:

http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/10008206/changemakers

 

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The Role Of The Mouse In Audio Games

from AudioGames.net

 

New Article: The Role Of The Mouse In Audio Games

 

The mouse is an accurate and versatile input device and it is used in many

mainstream games as a pointing device to direct soldiers to specific spots,

aim at enemies and turn the camera. These are things visually impaired

gamers won't need to do often in games. Audio games hardly use the mouse as

an input device. In this article Brian Bors discusses and examines why

the use of the mouse might make audio games more fun, backing up his

arguments with small downloadable examples.

 

You can find the article on Game-Accessibility.com through the following

link:

 

http://www.game-accessibility.com/index.php?pagefile=roleMouseAudioGames

 

Greets,

Richard

http://www.audiogames.net

 

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Just curious about something, and I thought other list members could put

their input into a discussion:  Firstly, how long has this game been 
available to gamers?  Now, having asked that question, here is my point and

a thought for discussion:  Recordings are already surfacing that will show 
you how to beat the game if you are stuck?  While I appreciate these being

made available, I have to ask:  So soon??  And at least 1 request has been 
made for them?  My thoughts are that if you are shown how to beat the game

this soon after it has been released, this will take away from the replay

value of the game.  You just get a game and are already giving up after just 
a few days??  Work at the game for a good long while before you have the

method of winning given to you.  I wouldn't even think of asking until I 
have worked at it for at a minimum of 2 months.  A good example is Grizly

Gulch.  Once you beat that game, there's nothing left to do.  Their second

game was, from what I understand, a bit harder to beat, but the same thing 
happens once you beat the game.  Now that I can beat it because I know the

solutions to the puzzles, what do I do with the game?  If Liam's game has 
surprises that weren't there the last time you played, or if things are

randomized, that would give the game replay value, and if you're always 
trying to play better, and you can do so to attain a higher score, that's 
replay value--improve from your high score.  But isn't part of the fun of

playing a game the challenge of figuring out, on your own, how to beat it 
the first time?

 

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Hi.

 

As people will probably know, I'm a huge fan of the Chronicals of Arborell, 
http://www.arborell.com/

 

A site which contains several extremely well written gamebooks and stories, 
with a full rpg and other game things in development.

Wain Densely, the Gm is absolutely fantastic about accessibility, and at the 
moment is trying to make the site more accessible with text versions of maps 
etc, as well as producing an html version of the card game. He's requested 
that people please send him in put with comments and suggestions about 
screen reader accessibility, so that he can improve things in the future.

As I said, these are probably my favourite gamebooks on the net, and the 
fiction is extremely great as well. also, i've rarely come across a gm of an 
online game esque thing who's so good about accessibility, so comments and 
support for him would deffinately be a good thing all round, so I hope 
people will take the time to check the chronicals out.

 

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This was sent in regarding a blind mudders list starting up.

 

Hi all,

 

Support admins emailed me today saying that the issue with the audio has 
been sent to the dev team to be worked on. In the meantime, however, he

said so that I can get subscribers now he said that you can email them at

support-admin@jiglu.com

to get yourselves activated and subscribed to

the list.

 

I'd just tell them that you're blind and want to subscribe to the TBMIC 
because of the audio capcha not working on the invite page for the list.

 

Thanks and lets hope this gets resolved.

 

+

Hi all,

 

To subscribe to the group via email:

 

Send an email to:

tmic-request@jiglu.com

with the following command in the body.

subscribe [your email address]. If the brackets don't work, try without 
them.

 

Then send it off. Then when you get it back you should be able to reply to 
it and you're on.

 

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For game music

 

Hi there.

 

The link in Yohandy's signature leads to a site that does not seem to be in 
English, however, if you just go to

http://gh.ffshrine.org

it presents the English version of the site.

 

Hope that helps.

Jal

For more SNES music, plus other formats such as .gbs for Gameboy Color, and 
.USB for n64 music, you can check out:

http://zophar.net/music.html

And for "all-complete" music tracks of Sega Gen games, check out:

http://www.project2612.org/

The plug-in for "Winamp" can be found there as well. However I don't know if 
Mareo Brothers was ever on the Sega at all or not.

http://www.zophar.net./music.html

This was also recommended by another lister.

 

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Beyond Scrabble

By Nancy Feldman

 

Years ago I realized that I was no longer satisfied with the board game 
choices I had available in Braille.  There was only so much Scrabble, 
backgammon, checkers or parcheesi one could play before throwing up one's 
hands and begging for mercy.

 

Then one day a creative friend asked, "Why can't we just modify the games we 
buy at game stores?  I'll help you Braille them."

And with those few words, I was immersed in a hobby that has kept me 
entertained for the past twenty-five years.  I have hundreds of games 
sitting in my closet, and I buy more every month.  Some only get played a 
few times, because they're boring, or need just the right group of people, 
or were fad games that got played while the fad was hot (Harry Potter 
Trivia, for instance), but lost their appeal as time went on.

 

There are games that stand the test of time, however, and I thought I would 
mention two of them, because they're easy to adapt, and fun to play.

 

One of my fascinations is word games.  I love Scrabble, but sometimes you 
want a quick pick-up game that can fit in your purse, and the Brailled 
scrabble game just doesn't qualify.  Two card games satisfy this requirement 
quite nicely, however:  Palabra and Quiddler.

 

As games go, I prefer Palabra.  There are 120 cards in the deck, each with a 
letter, a point value, and a number of stars ranging from zero to three. 
Each card also has a color.  This information was easily transcribed on each 
card, using a slate and stylus.

 

At the start of the game, each player is dealt seven cards.  There are lots 
of ways to score.  You can build a word using cards of any color, but if you 
use cards all of the same color, the value of the word is doubled.  If you 
manage to use letter cards with stars on them as well, then the final score 
for the word is multiplied by the number of stars on the card.  You can also 
score for runs of three or more letters, for laying down six or seven 
vowels, for putting down five letters of the same color, or by building on 
the words of your opponents.  And just when you think you've managed to 
score for some fabulous 200 point play, there are two nasty jokers that can 
be played to cancel your score, so watch out.

 

The game takes about thirty minutes to play, and is simply a lot of fun. 
The rules are on-line, but also come in the box in print, and scanned fairly 
well.

 

An alternative to this is Quiddler.  These cards are also easy to Braille, 
with only one or two letters and a point value.  The game is played in eight 
hands.  In the first hand, you're dealt three cards, in the next four, and 
so on until the final hand is played with ten cards.  The game plays like 
rummy, where you can draw from the face-up discard pile, or from the face 
down deck.  When a player can use all of his cards to form words except one 
that he must discard, he can go out.  Each remaining player then gets one 
more turn to lay down as many words as he can, and his remaining points 
subtract from his score.  At the end of each hand, the player with the most 
words, and the player with the longest word each receive ten additional 
points.

 

This game is also fairly quick, taking from 30to 45 minutes to play. 
Sometimes we change it up by saying you can only use words related to a 
certain topic:  animals, fantasy novels, etc. or by saying that words have 
to be at least four letters long and so forth.

 

Both games can be purchased on-line.  I found Quiddler at Amazon.com for 
$8.99, while Palabra retails for about $19.99.  These games can also be 
purchased at your local game store.  I'd strongly advise taking a trip to 
your game store because there's a world of entertainment available at your 
fingertips if you're willing to be a little creative in finding ways to make 
the games accessible.

 

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Word Puzzle -     Only great minds can read this

 

      This is weird, but interesting! Below is an unusual puzzle, if your 
screen reader sounds odd it's just part of the below puzzle.  Are you able 
to figure it out?

 

      fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too

      Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.

      i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. 
The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at 
Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod 
are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the 
rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit 
a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by 
istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot 
slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it

 

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Vista Game Compatibility Chart

By Thomas Ward

6/29/2007

 

Introduction

 

Before you read the chart below I feel it necessary to point out a few 
things.  First, to get most of these games to operate properly under Windows 
Vista you must have a recent copy of the Microsoft dx7vb.dll and dx8vb.dll 
files. These  files cann be found on any Windows XP system  located in the 
c:\windows\system32 directory. They do not ship with Windows Vista so must 
be manually  copied from a Windows XP computer to the new Windows Vista 
computer, and  placed in Vista's

c:\windows\system32 directory.

Some games such as Sarah will install these files for you, but in most 
cases there is no other way to obtain these necessary files other than to 
copy them

from a Windows XP computer to your Windows Vista computer.

Second, some games such as Rail Racer require the very latest DirectX 
updates from

http://www.microsoft.com/directx

and the .Net framework to run. So be sure to have the required system 
requirements installed.

Finally, I do mention some games require full administration rights to 
install. To do this arrow to the games installation file, press the Windows 
context

menu key, arrow to run as administrator, and press enter. This will  allow 
you to install the game as administrator.

 

Blind Adrenaline Simulations

Name: Rail Racer

Version: 1.0

Results: Passed

  Description: Requires .Net 1.1 and DirectX 9.0C latest.

 

BSC Games

Name: Bobby's Revenge

Version: 1.0

Results: Passed

Description: No issues.

 

Name: Chopper Command

Version: 1.0

Results: Passed

Description: No issues.

 

Name: Hunter

Results: Failed

Description:  Unable to initialize.

 

Name: Pipe

Version: 2.0

Results: Failed

Description:  Unable to initialize.

 

Name: Troopenum

Version: 2.0

Results: Failed

Description: Unable to initialize.

 

Draconis Entertainment

Name: Aliens in the Outback

Version: 2.02

Results: Passed

Description: No issues

 

Name:Dynaman

Version: 2.2.5

Results: Passed

Description: No issues

 

Name: ESP Pinball Classic

Results: Passed

Description: No issues

 

Name: ESP Pinball Extreme

Results: Passed

Description: No issues

 

Name: Monkey Business

Results: Passed

Description: No issues.

 

GMA Games

Name: GMA Dice

Results: Passed

Description: No issues.

 

Name: GMA Mine Buster

Results: Passed

Description: No issues.

 

Name: GMA Solitaire

Results: Passed

Description: No issues.

 

Name: GMA Tank Commander

Version: 1.2

Results: Passed

Description: No issues.

 

Name: Lonewolf

Version: 3.5.5

Results: Passed with errors

Description: Unable to use screen reader support with Window Eyes 6.1,,

but could be used with Sapi 5 tts engines.

 

Name: Shades of Doom

Version: 1.2

Results: Passed

Description: No issues.

 

Name: Trek 2000

Version: 5.0

Results: Passed

Description: No issues.

 

Kitchens Inc

Name: Baseball

Results: Passed with errors

Description: Must be installed using full administration rights.

 

Name: Battleship

Results: Passed with errors

Description: Must be installed using full administration rights.

 

Name: Golf

Results: Passed with errors

Description: Must be installed using full administration rights.

 

Name: Life

Results: Passed with errors

Description: Must be installed using full administration rights.

 

Name: Monopoly]

Results: Passed with errors

Description: Must be installed using full administration rights.

 

Name: NFL

Results: Passed with errors

Description: Must be installed using full administration rights.

 

Name: Snakes And Ladders

Results: Passed with errors

Description: Must be installed using full administration rights.

 

Name: Spanker

Results: Passed with errors

Description: Must be installed using full administration rights.

 

Name: Trivia

Results: Passed with errors

Description: Must be installed using full administration rights.

 

L-Works

Name: Judgment Day

Version: 1.0

Results: Passed

Description: No issues.

 

Name: Super Liam

Version: 1.0

Results: Passed

Description: No issues.

 

PB Games

Name: Dark Destroyer

Version: 1.0

Results: Passed

Description: No issues.

 

Name: Duck Blaster

Version: 1.0

Results: Passed

Description: No issues.

 

PCS Games

Name: Packman Talks

Version: 1.0

Results: Passed

Description: No issues.

 

Name: Sarah and the Castle of Which craft and Wizardry

Version: 1.0

Results: Passed

Description: No issues.

 

Name: Super Dog Bone Hunt

Version: 1.0

Results: Passed

Description: No Issues.

 

USA Games

Name: Final Conflict

Version: 1.0

Results: Passed

Description: Requires .Net 2.0 and DirectX 9.0C latest.

 

Name: Montezuma's Revenge

Version: Beta 1

Results: Passed

Description: Requires .Net 2.0 and DirectX 9.0C latest.

 

Name: USA Raceway

Version: Not Available

Results: Passed

Description: Requires .Net 2.0 and DirectX 9.0C latest.

 

+++

Phil's Funnies

Games We'd Like to Play,

by Phil Vlasak

 

Montezuma's Revenge  side stroller game

Do you wonder how it will be playing a game with little kids in tow? Now you 
can with this new Side stroller game,

Imagine exploring the temples of Montezuma's  with a little baby in a

stroller or baby carriage!

Here it cry and cry until you give it a bottle.

Imagine stopping every twenty minutes to change its diaper!

  The game comes complete with a full range of baby products, bottles, 
diapers, baby powder, booster and car seats. And wait until your kid gets 
hold of those door keys, gulp!

The game is perfect for Moms, Dads and caregivers of all kinds!

And when you complete the game on the single stroller level, try the 
stroller in double and triple styles.

 

smiles,

Phil

 

+

More of Phil's Funnnies

Games we'd like to play.

by Phil Vlasak

 

Montezuma's Raceway.

 

Start your engines and stop your bitching, its,

Montezuma's Raceway.

 a new and exciting fast action game from USA Games Entertainment. In this 
high speed action treasure hunting adventure you are Panama Joe, racing at

215 MPH through several eerie and mysterious underground Aztec temples

searching for gold, gems, and other lost treasures.

 

Such traps as burning fire, pits filled with boiling lava, electric force 
fields, vanishing platforms, and burning ropes are no challenge to your

realistic stock car racer.

 

You can hear your wheels crush deadly creatures including giant hairy black 
spiders, rattle snakes, and rolling skulls. Along the way you can gather 
such treasures as gold coins, gems, swords, colored keys with your hood 
mounted vacuum cleaner and your headlights will light your way.

Find out if you have what it takes to play this game!

smiles,

Phil

 

+++

Developing Accessible Games

by Thomas D. Ward

 

When I began losing my sight in the late 1980's I dreamed of the day I 
could write my own accessible games. Games which a totally blind gamer 
could play, driven by sound, and that were the same quality as those my 
friends were playing on the NES, Sega, etc.

 Not surprisingly in 1997 when I began college at Wright State  University I 
decided I wanted to be a computer programmer. Writing  databases in SQL, web 
pages in html, CGI scripts in perl, etc was fine,

but what I wanted most was to write my own accessible computer games. In 
2004

I started USA Games Entertainment.

Since starting USA Games I have been asked several questions about how  to 
write accessible computer games by the general VI community. I have

always tried my best to answer questions, give helpful hints, but never 
seamed to put all of my experience into one location. In this article I

would like to banish some of the myths and preconceived ideas about 
accessible game programming you may have, and replace it with some 
informative information about the process of writing your own accessible

games. Weather you plan to ever write your own accessible games or not I

hope this is an interesting read.

One mistake that most new programmers often make is they get some idea  they 
can take a programming course or two, read a couple of programming

books, and then begin writing complex computer software. More often than

not many  inexperienced computer programmers want to start out by 
programming computer games. However, the reality is that computer games

are one of the most complicated pieces of software to program. Writing 
computer games is much more than programming alone.

When a computer programmer decides to write a game of any serious 
complexity he or she should have aduquit math skills, some knowledge of 
physics, understanding of artificial intelligence, and should have

aduquit skills in a programming language. The one thing that really  helps 
above all else is good programming experience. I can't stress  experience 
enough.

In some ways a game developer's job isn't much different than a building 
engineer when it comes to mathematics. In games where your character or

hero is in some castle, ancient temple, space station, etc you will have  to 
use allot of geometry and trigonometry equations to design the game

world. If a developer is really serious about 3D games then the  developer 
will need to depend on some calculus to design and move  throughout the game 
world.

Another job of the developer is to make the game act in a way that is as 
real as possible. The only way that is possible is by using excepted

laws of physics. For example, we know we can calculate the distance 
traveled by a moving object by multiplying it's velocity times the time

it took to travel from point A to point B. However, real life isn't that 
clean. There may be some forces acting against that object such as water

or wind that slows the objects actual velocity down.

Consider a submarine game. As a submarine moves in deep water it must 
contend with hydrostatic pressures which can damage the hull, destroy

the submarine altogether, or slow it's progress down. Fortunately, a 
developer can create a physics equation in his or her game to handle the

hydrostatic pressures to make the submarine operate more realistically  in a 
virtual ocean environment if he or she wished. When computer programmers 
discuss artificial intelligence, (AI,)  sometimes people think of Sci-Fi 
legends such as: Johnnie V, Commander  Data, Hal, I.G. 88, and so on. 
However, the truth is programming

artificial intelligence for a game  isn't quite that complex, but there  is 
still quite a bit you should know before writing a really serious game.

In some games artificial intelligence can be accomplished by using  simple 
conditional statements such as if, then, else which will instruct  the AI 
characters to act in a certain way. While using if, then, else

statements may allow for some simple intelligence it isn't practical for 
more complex decision making tasks. if a developer really wants to make  his 
or her game characters seam more realistic the developer should

study how to program fuzzy logic into the games major characters. Fuzzy 
logic techniques will allow for much more lifelike decisions on the part  of 
the game's characters.

Finally, a game programmer can't even start writing games unless he or  she 
knows a programming language fairly well. Most professional game 
programmers use C++, but for non-professional game programmers there are

quite a few language choices out there including: Python, C# .Net, Java, 
and Visual Basic.

Personally, for a Windows developer I would highly suggest C# .Net,  (called 
C-Sharp,)for the main reason it is fairly simple to learn, is  widely used 
by professional software developers, is well documented, and

natively supports all the Microsoft technologies you would want for  writing 
accessible games such as: Sapi 5, DirectX, and the .Net  Framework. I've 
used it for quite a while, and I feel it is one of the  best programming 
languages for the Windows platform.

However, for an extremely beginner programming language Python might

have allot to offer. The language is very simple to learn, isn't as  strict 
as other programming languages, and is very handy to know. One of  Python's 
better features is it can be wrapped around Windows core  features such as 
Sapi, DirectX, etc to gain access to those libraries

for some high performance computer games. Since Python is primarily a 
script language a developer could compile the game engine core into a

Windows exicutible but allow for end user custom scripted levels, 
adventures, etc.

In recent years quite a few accessible game developers have turned to 
Visual Basic and Visual Basic .Net for writing games. Both languages  will 
certainly do the job, but I have often found that quality  documentation for 
writing games in Visual Basic and Visual Basic .Net is  extremely lacking. 
The languages have become popular do to the fact  Visual Basic is easy to 
learn and statements and blocks use plane  English statements like Function, 
End Function, Sub, End Sub, While, End

Loop, etc rather than using braces around code blocks as is used in C  style 
languages. If the developer knows how to do it a Visual Basic .Net 
developer can have the same features as C# .Net, but the beginner game

programming documentation for Visual Basic .Net isn't really out there  for 
inexperienced programmers.

Before I leave the topic of Visual Basic I'd like to point out the fact 
that Visual Basic and Visual Basic .Net aren't really the same language.

Visual Basic .Net was largely based on classic Visual Basic, but many  major 
changes were introduced into the language as to make it a new  language in 
it's own right.

Earlier I mentioned experience plays a critical roll in writing computer 
games. When a developer takes a programming course or reads a  programming 
book he or she learns the  fundamentals of computer  programming. Just 
because a developer may know what statements does  what, knows how to 
structure a function, declare a variable, or knows  where to put his or her 
braces does not mean that same developer can put

together a working program let alone one as complex as a computer game.

That is where experience and practice comes in. No amount of book  learning 
can add experience to a programmer. A programmer really begins

learning when he or she actually begins by writing small programs, and 
slowly writes more and more complex applications. The idea a developer

could read the, "Idiots Guide To Language X," and begin writing the next 
Mortal Combat as his or her first project is frankly an impossibility.

Only through practice, trial, and error will a developer gain the 
experience to write really high quality games.

For example, let's assume an inexperienced programmer tries to store a 
floating point value like 9.6 as an integer value. The developer's game 
compiler will give an error to the effect that a floating point value

can not be stored as an integer. After the developer learns his or her

mistake and corrects the problem it is unlikely that same developer will 
make that same mistake again. As a result he or she has just gained some 
experience.

The more a programmer programs he or she will find new ways to structure 
programs, organize code blocks, store functions in files to be used in 
other projects, etc. It is this kind of learn as you go that can't

really be described in a book, but has to be experienced first hand.

Each programmer sooner or later designs his or her own style. A  developer 
finds out over time what works and doesn't work. For most of this article I 
have discussed what skills are required to  write high quality games. the 
one thing I have not mentioned is time.

Programming a game of any real complexity will require quite allot of a 
developer's time. If the game writing is a developer's hobby it will 
naturally have to be balanced between that developer's work schedule, 
family, and other duties he or she may have. As a result it could take

weeks, months, and even years to complete a game title on your own. The 
time it takes to create a game depends on complexity, style of game,  your 
own free time, your own skills, and so on. Plane and simple they

are really works of patient long hours of trial and error.

For all the negative points I have raised about game programming I can  say 
once you have the skills and experience writing accessible games can

be really rewarding. The true fun is creating places you never have  visited 
before, get to use all kinds of weapons, and generally just have  fun after 
months of hard work. You can be a criminal, hero, sub  commander, fighter 
pilot, whatever. It is all up to you.

If you would like to start programming your own accessible games the  best 
place to begin is by subscribing to Safari Books which is located at

http://safari.oreilly.com.

 This internet service sells several programming materials online which  can 
be read in your favorite web browser. They have many exilent books  on 
Visual Basic .Net, C# .Net, Python, Java, C++, and more.

If you wish to download a free Visual C# .Net or Visual Basic .Net  compiler 
you can find a link to them from my web site at

 http://www.usagames.us/faq.html.

 

+++

News from developers

 

++

News from Audio Games

07/18/07

 

from AudioGames.net News

 

"What are you doing hanging around here? Visit the Experimental Audio Games 
Section http://www.audiogames.net/playcenter/index_exp.php

and go play not one, not two, not six but twelve new Experimental Audio 
Games developed by 29 Game Design students of the Utrecht School of the 
Arts! These audio games are the result of an assignment within a Game Audio 
Design seminar. The students are all looking forward to hear your feedback, 
so please tell them what you think of their games in the Experimental Audio 
Games Forum http://forum.audiogames.net/viewforum.php?id=19

 

Have Fun!

Richard

 

+

22/04/07

 

Hi,

One of the students who developed "Nameless" (the untitled RPG audio game)

posted the following on the AudioGames.net forum

(http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?id=1275):

 

*quote*

Hello, I'm one of the designers from that game, I have to admit the room 
discriptions were done last minute, actually in the last 10 minutes before 
we had to hand in the game, so it was rushed. The first room has some small

cracks in the walls which create a draft. Maybe try to cast a spell on that?

The gate is which the innkeeper used to lock you in the dungeon and which 
you have to open to escape. But of course you can't open it right away, so

you have to investigate the rest of the creepy cellar first.

The game is a bit small I guess but the source code is included so people

can make it bigger by adding in more rooms, which is quite easy.  Just copy

one of the room functions and give it a new name and add it to the list of

rooms, then you can modify it all you like. It's also possible to add RPG

aspects to the game like character statistics and include random encounters

and combat and all that. This was the plan originally but we did not have

much time and were quite busy with other projects as well. I have the code

for character stats, experience, gold, monsters, leveling up, and a simple 
combat

system.  So if anyone wants to have that just post it, I still read these

forums every few days.

Actually if anyone has a plan of a game world for me to program I'll do that

for them, but you have to provide the audio files and the ideas of

everything that is in the world.  I'm just going to do programming and the

game mechanics.

*quote end*

 

So here's a great opportunity for those who would like a simple audio RPG

game maker. I suggest those who are interested contact Eva (the developer)

and let her hear your ideas and suggestions.

 

And you can find "Nameless" and the other eleven 2007 Experimental Audio

Games (and the 2006 Experimental Audio Games) here:

http://www.audiogames.net/playcenter/index_exp.php

 

Greets,

Richard

http://www.audiogames.net

 

++

News from Blind Adrenelin

13/06/07

 

Rail Racer   It's alive! Alive!

  enough said.

  Get it here:

  www.blindAdrenaline.com

  Be sure and reed the reed me file included with the zip before installing

or bad things will happen, very evil and bad things.

  Enjoy,

  Che

Blind Adrenaline Simulations

Games by one of us, for all of us

www.blindAdrenaline.com

email: che@blindadrenaline.com

 

+

  Ok, the first RR online tournament is done and it went off with great 
success.

  Kelvin ended up taking the top prize by beating Steady 3 out of 5 on the 
final track, congratulations Kelvin!

  A new tournament has started for players that did not finish in the top 
ten of the last competition, this is to make it more fair for the newer 
players.

  Head over to Blind Adrenaline to sign up if you haven't already, the 
tournament will be open to new registrations for 3 days, ending on Wednesday 
August15.

  Happy racing,

  Che

Blind Adrenaline Simulations

Games by one of us, for all of us

www.blindAdrenaline.com

email:

che@blindadrenaline.com

 

+

   In regards to the competition it is only for those with a full copy of 
Rail Racer, not just the demo.  Ron

 

++

News from Dreamtech Interactive

07/30/07

I tried posting the manual to wrecking ball a few times but it must be too 
big.  Patch one of the game is up for download at

http://dti.us.tt

and I'll put the manual up too.

 

Ken Downey

President

DreamTechInteractive!

 

+

07/28/07

Okay, I just compiled the latest version of Wrecking Ball--hopefully nothing 
weird happened along the way and it *is* the latest version.  Find it at

DTI.us.tt

and have fun.  By the way, I'm still working on the ads situation--hope to 
have it resolved soon.

 

Ken Downey

President

DreamTechInteractive!

 

+

07/23/07

 

Well, folks,

I finally have a webpage.  I'm still using Kara's modgirl ftp site for 
links, because I'm using Geocities for the web page and storage space is 
limited.

 Here is the site and what it contains.

The site:

www.DTI.us.tt

It has World of Darkness, which is now freeware!  See the register.txt file 
for the code.

The Sound RTS soundpack 4 modded from Bryan Smart's previous packs.

Enemy attack, where you shoot down jets, planes, choppers, and bombs

And,

Wrecking ball beta 1

free to download.  Many more levels for this are coming!

 

I also have a site called the Treehouse, which shares a page with DTI.  It 
contains links to Teamtalk and channels on my Teamtalk server which is 
always

up and running, and which should be accessible.

By the way, if you have a good picture of a treehouse, send it my way and 
I'll put it on the site.

Ken Downey

President

DreamTechInteractive!

 

+

  If using the above link exclude the 3 w from the link.

 

++

News from Kitchens Inc

07/20/07

Hi,

 

I have put a new file up on my web site.

File name wintgf6.exe  File size 70k

Three new trivia files, basketball, birds,  States and Capitals

 

TGIF and BFN

     Jim

 

+

04/11/07

Hi,

I have put a new file up on my site.

File name winlife3.exe  file size 283k

In version 3 I have fixed the bug in the beginning of the game that would 
crash some computers.

The file can be found on my free windows sapi5 text to speech games page.

 

BFN

     Jim

jim@kitchensinc.net

http://www.kitchensinc.net

 

++

News from L-works

18/07/07

 

HI gamers:

 

I've rewritten the LWorks website as well as put up an updated version of 
duck hunt.  You can find it on the all new free games page.  New features 
include a pause feature, two ducks, clay pigeons, and bug fixes.  I've also 
made most of the sapi speech interuptable by pressing space.

You can check it out as well as the other games at www.l-works.net

 

Liam

 

+

11/07/07

 

This afternoon I had a spark of creativity and decided to recreate duck hunt 
for nintendo.  For those who have never played it, Duck hunt was a game that 
came bundled with the nintendo.  You had a gun that you would shoot at ducks 
on screen with.  There was also this dog that tended to laugh at you if you 
missed ducks.  Of course he was all smiles if you shot one down.

You can download the game at

www.l-works.net/dhsetup.exe

I hope you find it fun.

 

Liam

 

++

News from PCS Games

07/23/07

 

Hi Folks,

Since I finished reading the last Harry Potter book, I am now adjusting the

Sarah game accordingly.

 

slight

spoiler

space

 

I hope to get Sarah to record the new descriptions and the real name of The

Gray Lady

It will take a few weeks to do this.

I will post the changes as a patch plus update the full game download.

Phil

phil@pcsgames.net

 

++

News from Spoonbill Games

15/04/07

 

Word Target

 DESCRIPTION.

Blind Gamers Word Target is a game of anagrams. Each game consists of a 3 by 
3 grid of nine letters, which are the scrambled letters of a random nine 
letter word. Your task is to find as many words of four letters or more 
using the nine letters in the grid. The letter in the centre of the grid is 
referred to as the target letter. Each word in your list must contain the 
target letter, and there must be at least one nine letter word in the list. 
Plurals ending in 'S' and verb forms ending in 'S' are not allowed.

You cannot use a letter more than once in the same word. That is not to say 
you cannot make a word with two E's for example, but you can only do this if 
at least two E's appear in the Word Target grid.

You cannot make proper names such as London, Robert, or Mozart. You cannot 
make any abbreviations such as E T C or acronyms such as U N E S C O. You 
can make foreign words provided they have been adopted into the English 
language.

At your discretion, you can add any words you find, which are not in the 
Word Target dictionary, and which you deem to be acceptable words, to the 
User dictionary. But you cannot change, add to or delete words from the Word 
Target dictionary.

 

++

News from USA Games Entertainment

Aug. 1, 2007

 

USA Games Entertainment would like to announce the immediate release of

Montezuma's Revenge Patch 2. This patch fixes a number of bugs found in

Public Beta 1. This patch includes such new features as the ability to

get sound descriptions and to test your speaker orientation from the

main menu.

In addition, a number of miner bugs were fixed including the missing

exit game option, mysterious bug where you can jump through walls while

standing on a staircase, and several others. A complete listing is found

in the Changes.txt file that ships with the full patch.

To download this patch visit

http://www.usagames.us

and grab it from our download center.

 

+

USA Games News

July 6, 2007

 

Montezuma's Revenge Beta 1 Released

 

After a year of solid development and hard work USA Games Entertainment

would like to announce the immediate availability of Montezuma's Revenge

public beta 1. This 2 level demo is a breakthrough release for

Montezuma's Revenge.

Montezuma's Revenge is a fast action, classic side-scroller, supporting

Microsoft's DirectX June 2007 technology, has  built in Sapi 5 speech

drivers for the most popular text to speech engines on the market, and

Microsoft's .Net Framework 2.

In this demo you will be able to explore two dark and eerie under ground

temples searching for such treasures as magic healing potions, swords,

torches, gold coins, and gems while you avoid such deadly creatures as

rolling skulls, giant spiders, and slithering rattle snakes. As you

travel the temple passages you will have to climb ropes, jump across

deadly ledges, navigate vanishing platforms, jump over pits of blazing

fire, and more. If you are ready for a fast action adventure join us in

Montezuma's Revenge. You can download Montezuma's Revenge from our web site

http://www.usagames.us.

Before installing Montezuma's Revenge you should download the

Montezuma's Revenge manual from the USA Games downloads center to

familiarize yourself with the proper setup. You also should read our FAQ

page, download and install any and all system requirements before

running the game's setup.

 

Thomas Ward

President of USAGames Entertainment

http://www.usagames.us

 

+++

Game announcements and reviews

 

Below are some of the new games available.  Though an old treasure or

two may be discussed also.  It's noteworthy that in some cases it's only

an announcement of a game, taken from the email list, and may not be a

full review,    or an official notice from the developer.  Reviews of games 
will not  appear in any particular order. The only exception to this will be

when  we have more than one review for a game. In this case, reviews will be 
placed consecutively so that it is easier to compare them.

 

++

Audio Game Maker

Freeware

from http://www.audiogamemaker.com

08/0207

 

Hi,

 

You guys can all go and download audio game maker right now! The download is

up. so go and grab it at www.audiogamemaker.com and hopefully we'll see lots

of new games whatever they may be coming out.

 

+

Hello,

 

Here is an alternative link to download the sound libraries for audio game

maker.

 

http://www.audiogamemaker.com/application/agm_soundlib.zip

 

+

Hi,

 

I made an mp3 of the audio game maker tutorial. then all you'll need open is

the audio game maker, and windows media player to follow along with it.

For  this one I used ibm viavoice outloud which is the same as jaws 
eloquence.

 

http://www.divshare.com/download/1449767-0d0

 

Josh

 

+

Some examples of Audio Game Maker

 

They are popping up on

http://www.audiogamemaker.com/index.php?pagefile=gamelist

 

+

AGM Game

 

Well, I've just released my first sample game, the demo from hell.  Face 
three cowardly drivers who will think nothing of taking you out as soon as 
you hit the wall!  If they back you into a corner, though, they win.  One of 
the opponents is on your side, and he goes for one of the other, faster 
opponents.  It's at http://tbrn.net/modgirl/Ken's%20games

Enjoy!

Ken Downey

 

+

Tool for soundports and AGM

 

Hi,

 

See: http://www.game-accessibility.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=1896#p1896

 

"We have created a small application that helps you select the outport you 
want instead of a trial and error-approach!

 

Sound_helper!

http://audiogamemaker.com/application/sound_helper.exe

 

Put this file in the root of your agm folder or the game you have created. 
When you execute it, it will write a textfile to that directory. It is 
called audioports.txt and it lists the numbers you can enter into the 
soundport.txt in the data folder. The audio engine works best with DS 
(direct sound) drivers. ASIO is also good if you like.

 

Running this application outside the AGM folder is useless, because it needs 
files from the AGM data folders.

Let us know how it works. Remember, if AGM already works, you do not need 
this application."

 

++

Play 20Q Speciality Games

 

Hi Folks,

20 Q just added a Harry potter quiz to its list:

Play 20Q Speciality Games

US Music

UK Music

Television

Movies

Sports

People

Places

Names

Harry Potter 20Q

Project Furry

 

Play 20Q Demo Games

20Q Junior

Pocket Game Flash Demo

Mobile Game Flash Demo

 

Play Other Games

Other Games

Hangman

 - guess the word

Memory Game

 - card matching

Fungus

 - interactive web art

 

20Q game and A.I. related information

Play

F.A.Q.

 - Game FAQ

About

Press

Awards

In The News

Store

Quick Tour

History of 20Q

A few questions for the inventor

 

Now Phil:

It is a little tricky gettin' to the game.

I do the following:

go to,

http://www.20q.net/

then go to the bottom of the page to,

site map and hit enter.

Then I can hit enter on which game I wish to play.

If someone can figure out the exact url to each game I would appreciate it.

Phil

 

++

Hi all,

    This is just a post to say that I've found a game which is derived from 
the first ever mud, which started life at Essex University in England in the

late 70's.

    It is actually quite a bit different from most all modern mud games, and 
is very fun in its own right.  Best of all it's free--despite what the 
account

pages might say.  If anybody's interested, you can check it out.

The website is:

http://www.mud2.com

Hope you like it, and looking forward to bringing this game to life, it's 
really quite amazing.

All the best,

Zack.

 

++

Games comparison - Change Reaction and Jawbreaker

By Charles Rivard

Both games can be played without sighted assistance.

 

Jawbreaker and Change Reaction are the same sort of game.  Jawbreaker comes 
preloaded on a Pac Mate, which is Freedom Scientific's PDA for the blind. 
Change Reaction is a game for the PC.

from

 

www.draconisentertainment.com

 

In Jawbreaker, you work with differently colored jawbreakers, identified to 
you through the use of a JAWS graphics file that you paste into your Windows 
folder.  The file can be obtained, and you can find out all you need to know 
about the game, from the web site for Pac Mate users, which is

 

www.pacmategear.com

 

You break a jawbreaker that touches other jawbreakers of the same color that 
are side by side or consecutively placed in a column of jawbreakers.  Any 
jawbreakers that touch, that are next to one another, will disappear. 
Jawbreakers that are above those that have been popped fall down into the 
empty spaces of their respective columns.  The more you can pop with one 
breakage, the higher your score.  You play until you can break no more 
jawbreakers.

 

In Change Reaction, 5 denominations of coins are used, identified verbally 
through your desktop PC's soundcard.  You left and right arrow across the 
columns of coins, and drop the coin that you have randomly been given onto a 
column.  Any time there are 3 or more of the same denomination of coin you 
drop onto a stack either across or down, those coins will explode, making 
their respective stacks shorter.  If there aren't enough coins to cause an 
explosion, your dropped coin is added to the stack, making it higher.  If 
you discard the coin in your hand, twice the value of that coin is 
subtracted from your accumulated total, and you are given another coin to 
drop or discard.  The object of the game is to race against the clock and 
wipe the board of all coins  before time expires, and rack up higher dollar 
amounts in your jackpot.  You can then send your high score to Draconis to 
see if you can make it to the top 10 list.

 

Each game has different game settings.  The difficulty settings of Change 
Reaction, from the easiest to the most difficult, are 8, 6, 4 and 2 minutes 
to clear the board, respectively.  If you clear the board before time runs 
out, you can choose to play a bonus game to try to double your score.  Only 
2 denominations of coins are used, and you have 2 minutes to clear the 
board.  If you do, you double your score.  If you don't, you get nothing. 
If you find the way to trigger a fun variation of the game, sounds are 
different.

 

You can play different variations of Jawbreaker.  Some will replace popped 
jawbreakers rather than decreasing the columns, so different tactics must be 
used to rack up your score.

 

I find both of these fun little puzzle games a challenge, and hope you'll 
give both a try.  Change Reaction can be downloaded and used as a demo for, 
I think, 15 days, after which you must buy the game and use the registration 
key you are sent to unlock the game into the fully featured version.  All 
info on the game can be found at

 

www.draconisentertainment.com

 

and this is also where you purchase the game.

 

Happy gaming!

 

++

The new GMA Mud client is coming

 

Hi all, thought some on the list would be interested in the below.  I don't

think david greenwood is subscribed to this list so no point asking him

questions here, but feel free to discuss.

 

kevin - (lord l)

----- Original Message ----- 

From: "David Greenwood"

Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Subject: [GMAGamesTalk] The new GMA Mud client is coming

 

 Hi all,

 

 VipMud is a Mud client that we are currently about to alpha test.  For

those of you who do not know what a Mud Client is, it is a communications

 program which allows you to communicate with on-line multi-user games on 
the

 internet.

 

 In the past such clients as the following were used:

 1. GMud.  More or less accessible, but not usually right out of the box.

 Its main weakness was that it had no scripting capabilities, and in my

 opinion not too much better than a Telnet client.

 2. TinTin+ - an Unix text -based client which is an excellent program, but

 it was only available for those accessing the internet through a Unix

 shell.

 3. ZMud - Another excellent program, but almost totally inaccessible.

4. Mush Client - A reportedly good client supported by Jaws scripts, but it

 does not work right out of the box.  Certainly it is not as powerful as

 TinTin+ nor ZMud.

 

 The VipMud client that I always wanted would do the following:

 1. work right out of the box without having to download scripts or make

 Many setup option changes.

 2. Work directly with Jaws, Window Eyes, and MS Sapi.

 3. Be able to use multiple voices concurrently, and be able to mix MS Sapi

 speech with a screen reader voice. Also have different voices assigned to

 different activities such as incoming text, command entry, script editing,

 system messages, and so on.

 4. The gamer should be able to play multiple characters on a single Mud or

 on multiple Muds at one time, and the characters should be able to work

 together using triggers, aliases, macros, and other scripting commands.

 5. Support for.Wav, .OGG, and .MP3 files.  These files should be played as

 background, or when an event is triggered such as when you kill a monster

 or you sustain an injury, or to indicate low stats such as energy, mana, 
hit

 points, and so on.

 6. The scripting commands should be voice oriented.  For example, you may

 want to stop speaking spam, but you may want it still displayed on the

 screen for future use. Or you don't want something displayed on the

 screen, but you want it spoken.

 7. Lots of accessibility aids.  An example of one is let's say a character

 name Xandiavier asks you a question.  It is a painful and time consuming

 experience to first find his name on the output screen, if your client

 allows this, and then cut and copy it to your entry field.  inStead you

 could type: "Tell X", then press control-space to complete the word with

 the client doing the work by finding it in your recent output info, and 
then

 finishing with "how's it going?"  The End result is "Tell Xandiavier How's

 it going?"  Other shortcuts are needed as well, such as quickly finding a

 previously entered command by typing one or more of its leading characters

 and pressing, say Shift-space.  Another helpful tool would allow you to

 extract hard to remember place names, character names, spells, and weapons

 from a built-in list of names and phrases which you maintain with just a

 simple keystroke.

 8. Be able to support powerful scripting capabilities to give you complete

 control of your actions and environment.

 

 VipMud does all of the above and much more.  It is almost completely

 Written and is going into alpha testing.  Beta testing will start in the 
summer

 sometime, and it should be coming out early fall, and so stay tuned.

 

 Regards,

 David Greenwood

 DavidGreenwood@GMAGames.com

 http://www.GMAGames.com

 

++

Two football or socker games that are accessible.

 

hi all.   For any one who likes socker here are two games that are 
accessabel.  They are easier than Free Kick and Hattrick.

 

http://www.footiemanager.com

 

this is a game with real teams, real stadiams, and real leagues, but the 
players are fantacy.

 

http://www.sockermanager.com

 

this is a football game with real teams leagues and players.  But it is 
harder than footie manager.

 

any one who wants more info email me off list and i am willing to help you 
get set up. Even set up your account for you if you give me the details i 
will need.  Although you should not need my help with that as it is very 
accessible forr blind users.  Their is also a chat room and forams to chat 
on. any one who does not really understand socker i can help them.

 

ian and riggs

riggs_mcnamara@yahoo.co.uk

 

++

Harry Potter Wombat Test

 

Hi Folks,

I've been wanting to take the wombat test since the first one came out and

finally J.K.Rowling  has made it accessible on the ,

  accessibility enabled version of her web site.

http://www.jkrowling.com/

Hints:

1. You need flash to make it work.

2. you need to hit enter on the Eraser - question mark

3. next hit enter on the fly.

4. The fly turned into a key that opened the door to the Room of

Requirements.  Through it is a view of my desk from above.  There is a

wombat test paper on it under three paper weights.

a paper weight in the shape of a triangle

a paper weight in the shape of a circle

a paper weight in the shape of a line

 

You need to hit enter on all three paper weights.

You can now take the test but be quick because you only get 35 minutes to

finish.

 

++

Harry Potter Guess the voices

 

Hi Folks,

There is a Harry Potter Guess the Voices Game.

It is flash based and quite accessible.

You need to have read the Harry Potter books thoroughly and even better

listened to Jim Dale reading them.

If You answer 15 out of 15 questions correctly, You are a prefect!

Here is the link to the page,

http://www.randomhouse.com/audio/features/harrypotter/

Then click on the link,

Guess the Voices Game

The 5 multiple choices will be numbered and a button to guess then the

person's name below the button.

Between questions you get your current score with a next button to go to the

next audio question.

 

Have fun!

 

++

Jedi Quake 4.1 qmod

Cara Quinn

 

                                   Hi All, -been a while since I've posted

and I wanted to let y'all know that at long last, update 1 for Jedi Quake

is here!!!

   For those who might be unfamiliar with this, Jedi Quake is a series of

mods or modifications to the game Audio Quake, which, itself, is a mod for

the extremely popular FPS Quake.

   You can download the installation for the game itself, as well as the

latest JQ release / update at:

 

http://tbrn.net/modgirl

 

   The game installations are in the AQ folder, and the JQ releases are in

the root.

For those familiar with the mod, this update contains several bug fixes as

well as many new features, so I've posted it as a self-contained

release.  It's a standard QMOD file for Quake and can also be converted

into a zip file if you'd rather install or work with it that way.

   If you find you have any trouble downloading it, (as Windows sometimes

wants to treat it as a zip file) you can set your browser to download all

File Types in the save as dialogue, and it should save properly, as a QMOD

file.

Then, as long as you already have Audio Quake installed, you can simply

press enter on the JediQuake QMOD file and it will automatically install

into your installation of Audio Quake.

   As always, please feel free to contact me on or off list with any

questions, concerns, or feedback.

 

Enjoy! and have a most wonderful weekend!!!

Smiles,

Cara  :)

 

++

Hi,

    I've just started up my TWGS game server, for anybody interested.  Right 
now, there's just the one game--a 5000 sector universe with a limit of 250

turns per day.  I plan to create a couple more games to suit different 
styles of play and lengths of daily time if this is requested.

    For the interested, you can find my server with your Telnet client or 
helper program at: zkline.dyndns.org, port 2002.

    If anybody has any questions about this, please feel free to contact me 
on list or off.  I'll get back to you guys as soon as I can.

Have fun, and good luck,

Zack.

Z_kline@hotmail.com

 

++

JMC Scripts Now Updated to V3.0

By: Bryan Garaventa

 

Hello, I originally tried signing up for the BlindGamers list, but I guess

it's no longer around. Well, it's been about 4 years since I've checked, so

that's probably it.

This is simply to let people know that I've finally added some new features

to the JMC Scripts at http://gutterstar.net/jmc_scripts.php . I was a bit

surprised to realize that the last build was in 2003, but well, it's been

pretty busy.

Hopefully people will enjoy the new features, they add quite a bit of

advantage for blind MUD gamers, but we can keep that a secret right? Shhhh.

 

Have a great day,

Bryan Garaventa

http://gutterstar.net/

 

++

Judgement Day

Available from L-works.net

By Andy Smith

 

Hi:

In L-work's newest title, called Judgment Day, which was launched December 
12, 2006,  It is quite good; however, you wouldn't know that

from the demo.  I was not sure if I should buy it actually. But once

you unlock the thing, wow! You've got a whole world of fun right at

your fingertips!

 

bonus games

perhaps the most exciting feature is the bonus games. There

are 4 bonus games, plus a little extra bonus game that doesn't do much

of anything but give you a trophy.

 

rocket rage, it's you up against mad rockets dropping faster, Or, itt seems 
that

Way.  At first, your machine gun goes so fast it's a mystery

how you can get only one bullet out at a time. But, my strategy is to

just hold down ctrl the entire game and move from side to side.

The catch is that your gun fires slower. And slower. And slower.

Until... 10 rockets land, oh no!

 

Parachute jump, this one's fun! You're falling out of this parachute

with bags falling to make you fall faster. You've got to avoid these

rocket-enemies, and at the same time, get the bags. They've got to be

exactly in the center; not even a centimeter off.

 

Weapon Search, this one, to me, is kind of similar to super egg hunt

in a number of ways. You move up and down, among the rows and columns,

trying to collect as many weapons as possible within 3 minutes. You've

got to make it to the door before it is known there is an intruder.

 

number guess, in this game, you've got a menu (if that's the propper word), 
with

the numbers 1 to 12. You have to guess the number the computer is thinking

of, however, you only get 4  tries per number.

 

The trophys:

There are 40 of them all combined; even counting bonus games, and

regular game trophys, and also extra trophys. In Judgment Day, you do

certain things to obtain them. For example, to start, once you get

your unlock code you will want to beat it, right? On easy, right?

Well, if you beat it on easy normal hard or even unlockable ultra, you

get trophys. However, in the demo there is no way to tell how good

this is.

 

L-works theater

It's movies! Yeah, and they're being mailed right in your computer!

In this theater there are little unlockable pieces of audio; but

please keep in mind there is no video to watch. They're quite funny,

once you've got the propper amount of trophys!

 

submitting scores:

You can show your fellow gamers how good you are! Get number one and.

 

And finally, the regular game!

In the regular game, you got to shoot down rockets, copters, planes,

and disablers. From personal experience, planes are the hardest to

kill. They love to move around; keep your machine gun, rockets or

nukes on them and you'll stay away from harm.

 

closing thoughts:

While the keyboard interface is good, the mouse input option is much

Better. It gives me the sensation that I am actually shooting stuff

down, rather than pushing buttons.

I also like the trophy system; I became addicted, staying up to 3 am

on weekends to play it to get the trophys. I like the unlockable

system; with the movies, bonus games, and other content; it's just

awesome!

 

++

Playing with the Wii

Reviewed by Che Martin

 

  Hi all,

  I purchased a Nintendo Wii last week, and I'm here to share my impressions

with my fellow blind gamers.

 The Nintendo Wii, pronounced "we" is the latest entry into the video game

console market by Nintendo.

  What makes the Wii unique is the way you interact with the system.

  Instead of punching buttons, you hold a wireless controller in your hand

much like a small TV remote.  This controller, called a Wiimote is

absolutely amazing.

  Instead of pushing up and down arrows to select menus, you just point at

the menu item you want and click the A button.

  I was afraid I wouldn't be able to operate the menus because of this, but

fortunately this is not the case.

  When you move the pointer over a menu selection, the Wiimote vibrates

slightly, and by memorizing where the different menu items are, you can go

right to the menu you want.

  The Wii comes with a sports disk that contains basic versions of baseball,

tennis, golf, bowling and boxing.

  As a blind player, I can compete quite well with my sighted friends and

family with all the games, which is amazing.

This is made possible by the unique control system the Wii remote affords.

  For example, in the bowling game, you hold the remote up in front of you

as if you were holding a bowling ball, hold down the B button, then swing

your arm back then forward just as if you were tossing a real bowling ball.

At the bottom of your swing, release the B key and listen to the pins fall.

  The faster you swing, the faster your ball goes, and you can even put

english on the ball by twisting the remote.

  Baseball allows you to swing the remote like a bat, and this one takes

some good timing, as you need to swing just after hearing the swoosh of the

pitch.

  Tennis can be played the same way, though I had the most trouble getting

the timing down for this one.

  Golf is a real treat, as you hold the remote like a golf club and you

really start to get a feel for how hard to hit the ball after some practice.

This one requires a sighted friend, as the game does not speak your distance

to the pin.

  The best of the lot in my opinion is boxing, which uses an additional

attachment to the remote called the Wii Nunchuck.  By holding the Nunchuck

in one hand and the main remote in the other, you have the ability to throw

punches with either hand, and the system recognizes your glove position at

all times, so you can guard your face or body, lean back, left and right to

avoid punches and so forth.

  It is an amazing gaming experience for the blind, and I have yet to be

defeated by any of my friends or family, which shows you how well the blind

can play these games.

  Additionally, boxing is a great workout, and you will be sweating after a

couple of rounds.

  Overall, I would highly recommend this system to any and all accessible

gamers out there, especially if you have kids in your family, it is a real

blast.

  If anyone has questions, I'd be happy to answer them if I can.

  The Wii is 250 dollars, comes with the sports games and a remote and

Nunchuck.  I bought a second remote and Nunchuck for 50 bucks so I could

play head to head with friends.

  Later all,

  Che

 

++

Mortal Kombat on the Wii First Impressions

By Che Martin

 

  So I rode down to the local Wal Mart to buy MK Armageddon for the Wii

yesterday, since Amazon informed me without explanation that my order would

be delayed 2 weeks.  I hate Wal Mart and all it represents, so you can

imagine how badly I wanted to check this game out.

  My 11 year old nephew was here to check it out with me, which is a good

thing because the menus and so forth don't talk and need to be memorized.

  After finally figuring out we had to register the second controller

through the Wii setup menu, we were on our way.

  After choosing Baraka, my old time favorite from MK, I went into practice

mode.  The game shows a diagram of special moves you can do, one after the

other, and with the Wiimote, the special moves are super easy to pull off

now.

  For example, with Baraka,  you hold down the b button and go back forward

to throw his blade, or up down to wind mill his blades, works almost every

time like a charm.

  I have never played MK blind before, and the things I was afraid would be

a problem with two player are indeed a problem.  I cannot tell when I am

near enough to the opponent to kick or punch, likewise how far away I am to

pull off a projectile move.

  Also, there is no consistent way of telling quickly what side of your

opponent you are on.  You can do a back back and listen for the sliding back

sound, but if you aren't on the side you think you are on, suddenly you have

moved into range of the enemy and you get ppounded.  Maybe with more

experience, I can pick up on more subtle clues and be able to tell where I

am better.

  Punches and kicks are handled by the direction pad on the main remote,

with movement and blocks done on the nunchuck.  It all works quite well.

  Anyway, this is a first impression, I will probably do a podcast of the

game and make it available on my website sometime this week, as well as give

a text file that lays out the menus, as that is very much needed for blind

play.

  More to come...

   Che

 

++

Some stuff about the PS3

Commercial console game

Reviewed by Shadow Dragon

 

Well, just got a little bored, and figured since a review of sorts has been 
done about the WII, might as well throw in my two cents about the ps3. 
Hopefully this hasn't been done yet, to my knowledge it hasn't, so I'm gonna 
do it now.

Basically the PS3 would be worth the 600 dollars you spend on it... if you 
were sighted. Right now in my opinion its basically what you could call a 
glorified ps2, if even that, from a blind gamers prospective. If you're 
sighted, you can browse the net, download games, demos and all kinds of 
things, stream video directly to your ps3, do streaming from ps3 to psp and 
all that stuff if you're interested in movies, and many more things. You can 
play blue ray discs on it, which basically amounts to super high

def video and not much else, so that's pretty much useless to blind players 
as well. The games, I have to admit, are pretty OK. Granted its about all we 
can do on the ps3 is play games, which is what it was made for, but we can't 
use a lot of the other features, and what we can use is basically useless to 
us, high def video has no effect whatsoever on the blind, and it doesn't 
change the sound one bit. Anyway, I'm getting off topic, back to the games.

I bought 3 games with my ps3, or rather, I bought 2 and

my brother bought 1.  Fight Night is, for all intents and purposes, probably 
the best boxing game I've ever played. It has realistic boxing effects, 
nothing's synthasized, its almost like they actually had a couple guys throw 
punches at eachother and go through the motions of boxing, and then recorded 
it in high definition sound. It sounds awesome, and the slow motion KO 
moments just add to the awesomeness. Career mode is pretty sweet , though 
you'll need sighted help to play the training games. The autotrain almost 
never gives max benefit, and all 3 of the minigames you play for training 
involve sight. The weight lifting could probably be a timed thing, but I 
haven't messed around with it much. Anyway yeah, if you're going to spend 
the huge amount of money for a ps3, be sure to throw in an extra 60 bucks 
for this game. Even if you're not a huge fan of boxing, you will be after 
you play this.  Especially if you have some sighted help. The controls are 
quite simple, though I'd recommend having someone help you change

 the control scheme to something easier, it starts out with no buttons to 
throw punches, you have to toss all your punches with the joystick. You can 
switch it though so that your square and triangle buttons are left and right 
jabs and your x and circle buttons are left and right hooks. I personally 
prefer this, but I'm sure there are those of you out there who will like the 
fact that your joystick gives you total punch control, that is to say, you 
can actually wind up your haymaker before tossing it, you can fling stunning 
left and right hooks, jabs, straights, uppercuts and almost any other type 
of boxing punch you can think of.  Just by making the correct motions with 
the joystick.

 

Next up, Virtua Fighter 5. Basically they made this game immensely tough for 
blind players. At least from my experiences. What they've done is advanced 
the AI to the point where its like you're in a real fight. That is to say, 
in the later rounds of the game, you'll never get away with throwing repeat 
attacks. If you throw the same attack more than once, sometimes you can get 
it off twice if you're lucky, but after that the AI knows that attack, and 
it starts countering it, shooting in under it and attacking you before you 
can get another attack off. So if you keep throwing high kick combos, the AI 
will duck, dodge or parry your kick and come in under it with an attack of 
their own. For those of you who have played MK, Tekken, basically any other 
fighting game on the market, you probably know what I'm talking about. I'm 
sure everyone likes to repeat combos sometimes. Well not in this game. 
They've taken it to the next level on the grounds that, if you keep 
repeating the same attack over and over in a real fight, you're going to get 
owned, which is exactly what happens in this game. The controls are easy to 
master. Sadly it doesn't make any use of the 6 way axis controller motion 
censer, its basically got the same control scheme of the old virtua fighter 
games with a much more advanced AI.

 

So that's the PS3 for you. I guess if you've got the cash, go ahead and snag 
one. They're ok, and I have a feeling they're going to get a whole lot 
better, for example, Tekken6, WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2008, etc. So far it 
seems like they're feeling out the capacity of the blue ray discs and seeing 
exactly what they can and can't do with this system. Once again, I say, if 
you're not sighted, its not really worth the 600 bucks you pay for it, its 
probably worth the price of a ps2. But then again, there's not much we can 
do about that. The more realistic sounds make the game a little more fun, 
but that's about all you get out of the system for 600 bucks, is just 
realistic sound. So its up to you, I won't make a decision either way. The 
games are pretty fun, but you could just as easily live without this system 
and stick to your old ps2, games are still coming out for that and getting 
more and more realistic in sound by the year anyway. Basically what it 
amounts to right now in my mind is tossing about 600 bucks into a shiny new 
ps2. My brother loves it, but he can use all of the features, like WWW 
browsing and downloading games. Anyway I think this message may be way too 
long already.  So I'm gonna cut it short so it doesn't get rejected. Feel 
free to ask any questions you may have about the ps3, and I'll try to answer 
them.

 

++

TAFN for golf and mudding

 

Hi all.

We've set up a golf group on Tafn The Accessible Friends Network which is an

organisation and chat site based in the UK.

We also have two Alter eon Mudding sessions for beginners and advanced 
players.

For golf we're using Jim Kitchen's golf game version 10.

 

If your interested come to

www.tafn.org.uk

or contact

bob@tafn.or.uk.

 

>From John Snowling.

 

++

Rail Racer

By Che Martin

Available from http://www.blindadrenalin.com

 

  Hi, this is Che martin, the developer of Rail Racer writing to give a 
brief overview of my new game for the blind.

  Rail Racer is set in a future where 80 percent of the western hemisphere 
has lost there sight due to an explosive comet entering the atmosphere.  In 
this future world, the blind race on rails for fun, and that is where our 
game comes in.

  As the name implies, Rail Racer is run on multiple rails, one Rail per 
racer.  But this isn't your average train rail friends.  Besides having to 
accurately switch gears and keep your RPM up, you will have to deal with 
jumps, loops, nasty curves, and force shields, sometimes 2 or 3 of these at 
once, depending on the track you are racing, it can be quite challenging.

  Every effort has been put into Rail racer to give it as much replay value 
as possible.

  Here is a partial list of features of the full version:

  Multiple control choices, mouse, keyboard and joysticks are supported.

  Career mode, open up new and more difficult tracks as you earn more money 
racing.

  Upgrade your racer as you earn more money, upgrades include supercharger, 
nitros, a gravity puller, six speed transmission and more.

  Post your times to the web for bragging rights.

  Over 20 custom designed tracks included.

  Both lap racing and tag racing modes, where you take turns catching the 
other guy.

  Adjust the gear ratio and wing angle of your racer depending on the type 
of track.

Strategize pit strategy on longer tracks.

  An included track editor so you can make your own tracks and share them 
with friends.

  Track upload and ratings page for uploading and reviewing other tracks.

  Professional voice over in the menu system.

  Extensive Sapi support allows you to adjust all aspects of your Sapi voice 
in game.

    And much more.

  The best feature of all though is the online racing support built into the 
game.

  With Rail Racer, a dedicated server account is provided, so you can select 
to join or create an online race from the game menu and be racing in 
seconds, no need to type in IP addresses or hope your friends server doesn't 
go down.

  The multi player rooms have built in chat support so you can talk some 
trash before or after your online race.

  Also, you can place bets in online mode with your friends, risking some of 
your hard earned career money, just another incentive to do well.

  Multi player mode supports up to 20 players per race.

  Blind Adrenaline also has an exclusive tournament system to manage online 
tournaments, once you register online, you simply join the tournament, 
report who won each match, and the system tracks everything else for you. 
We just finished a tournament, and the competition was very tight, 
especially near the end.

  Rail Racer is a different type of accessible game, few games for the blind 
offer the number of features of RR, and none offer the ease of use or speed 
of its online play.

  Even if you aren't into racing games, I urge you to check out the free 
demo, we have many players who never tried a racing game before that 
absolutely love it because of the multi player competitions and ability to 
talk to the other racers online and make bets.

  You can get the demo here:

http://www.blindAdrenaline.com

  Happy racing, and feel free to email me if you have any questions.

  Che Martin

che@blindadrenaline.com

 

++

Sound RTS

By Che Martin

Available from http://jlpo.free.fr/soundrts/

 

 

  There have been lots of questions on the forums and email lists about 
Sound RTS strategy. Having logged many hours with this excellent game, I'd 
like to provide a few pointers to the new player.

  The biggest mistake I see in online play is players not recruiting enough 
peasants.  Depending on the map you are playing, you should have anywhere 
from 8 to 15 peasants going to gather resources and construct buildings.  If 
you only have 3 or 4 peasants, by the time you have enough gold to outfit a 
decent sized army, your opponent will have amassed a huge force and will 
crush you like a hollow bug.

  One very important keystroke in the game is control alt e, this will pick 
all inactive peasants so they can be put to work on something else.  So if 
you hear "work complete", use this keystroke to re assign these peasants to 
doing something else, every second they stand around is another second you 
are losing the resource race in the game.

  Keep in mind that several peasants can be used at once to accomplish a 
task. 5 peasants assigned to build a barracks will complete the job much 
faster than just 1, and time is of the essence in this game.

  Also use the number keys on the top row to select various amounts of your 
units.  For example if you have 12 peasants, and you want six of them to 
mine gold while the others build a town hall, select all peasants with 
control d, have them start the building, then press control 2 to select half 
these peasants and hit backspace on a gold mine to start them mining, being 
efficient with your unit selection is a key part of the game.

  One last note on peasants, don't worry about using up lots of food slots 
with peasants, once they are no longer needed or if you need the extra food 
slots, simply put them in offensive mode and send them to the enemy to be 
slaughtered, they will go willingly and leave a little tear in your eye. 
Feel free to play taps after giving the order.

  One strategy a lot of players use is to skip right over using footmen, and 
upgrade their town hall to a keep so they can build a stable and therefore 
recruit knights.  Knights are far superior to footmen, they have 45 hit 
points versus 15 for footmen, and they are the fastest units on the board. 
At 15 gold each, they are a bit expensive, but well worth it.

  On map 3 for instance, when I am ready to go to battle, I will often have 
over 10 knights, a few archers and a couple of mages.  This is a hard 
combination to beat.

  Having said all that though, it is important to defend against an opponent 
who tries to launch an early offensive.  If you are up against someone that 
uses this tactic, you should build a barracks fairly early  and produce a 
few footmen in case you are attacked near the beginning of the game.  Losing 
a couple farms at the outset can be devastating, and just 3 footmen can help 
avoid this often.

  Make sure you have the map you are going to play memorized.  you don't 
want to be wandering around wondering where the gold deposits are in the 
middle of a match.  For example, map 3 consists of 4 equal areas on each 
side of a 7 by 7 grid with a very large gold mine in the center at position 
d 4.  It is important to hold d 4 due to this large deposit of gold, but 
don't try to take it too early or you will just get knocked off when your 
opponent comes in with a superior force.

  The best way to do map 3 is to get up to 13 or so peasants, wipe out the 
gold mine that you start on, then set up a town hall on the next gold mine 
closest to the first.  By the time this second gold mine is exhausted, you 
should be in good shape to defend and attack.

 Speaking of town halls, be sure and build one near new gold and wood 
reserves, so your peasants won't have far to travel to drop their goods, 
this is very important.

  Finally, make sure you take advantage of the upgrades to your troops 
afforded by the sawmill, blacksmith and stables for archers, footmen and 
knights respectively.  Having these upgrades can mean the difference between 
victory and defeat.

    If you haven't tried Sound RTS yet, you can get it and read the 
documentation here:

http://jlpo.free.fr/soundrts/

  There are also links to sound packs and tutorials on the site.

  Lastly, I host sound RTS tournaments at my web site

http://www.blindAdrenaline.com

   Sound RTS is currently on version beta 7, with beta 8 coming out soon, 
which will address some online speed issues.  Once that is released, we will 
be starting up a new tournament for anyone interested.

  Hope to see you on the battlefield soon,

  Che martin

 

+

Sound RTS tutorial

By Che Martin

 

  I have created a tutorial for the beginning Sound RTS players, which I 
hope will help get more folks playing this amazing game.

  By the time you finish this tutorial, you should be able to take on the 
computer with no problems.

  You can get it here:

http://blindadrenaline.com/downloadCounter/download.php?x=RT+audio+tutorial

 

  Have fun,

Che

 

+

Further on Sound RTS

By Ken Downey

 

The main things are:

First, hit f10, go up until you hear increase game speed, and hit enter.

This will give you an edge against those who don't know to do this, but it

will cost you the game if you don't speed up and your opponents do.

Build town halls near big gold deposits and forests, gold and wood is

carried back to the nearest town hall before it is counted.

Town halls are hospitals too, so if you're in the thick of it you can send

your wounded back there.  The easiest way to do this is to press w until you

get to the nearest town hall, then control space for first person mode.

This takes you there.  Press escape, then start checking hit points.

Through first person mode, you can go anywhere your people are--just control

them and hit control space and you're there.  Here's the way I work it.

I'm at the battle and I hear someone saying he's almost dead.  I hit w,

control space, and escape and instantly go to the town hall, then I check my

wounded footmen by pressing r for footmen and v for hit points.  If the hit

points are low, hit back space.  This will send the soldier back to the town

hall to be healed and, of course this works with all units.  By the way, 
first

person mode is great for scouting and knowing what might be delaying your

units as each square is announced as they move on, which gives you exact

knowledge of their movements and can tell you how far they have to go to

drop supplies off at the town hall, as well as helping you understand the 
speed

of each unit.  Remember, just because a1 is next to a2, there may be a six

square path that must be taken due to obstacles.  As far as soldiers go, the

footmen and archers don't last long and do little damage, so when you buy

them treat them as expendable resources.

You can't exploit your peasants.  As much as you would like to for whatever

twisted reason, you cannot exploit peasants or soldiers.  I say this because

bad keystrokes cost time, and time can cost the game.

For want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost.

For want of a horseshoe, the horse was lost.

For want of a horse, a knight was lost.

For want of a knight, the army was lost.

For want of an army, the war was lost.

Time is valuable, so when you go to recruit footmen for example, make sure

that it says "barracks," and not "town hall," when you press w.  Also, you

can't choose the path to the west and hit enter--the 'go' to command must be

selected or the backspace key used.  Your peasants like to be lazy--I've

heard them pacing back and forth when I gave them a path without the "go

to" command.

Upgrade--always upgrade.  |Remember that the town hall can be upgraded

immediately after completion of the barracks, and to upgrade to a castle you

have to have a sawmill, blacksmith, and stable.  The workshop is not

necessary.

 Knights are your best soldiers by far until you can get mages, which can

heal other units and cast deadly spells.  Once your stables are built,

upgrade the horses' speed as soon as possible.  This makes any knights you 
have

deadly foes and lightning-footed scouts.

3.  In map 3, d4 is the location to have, and anyone who possesses it will

probably win if he plays his cards right--but Che, who gave me a sound

thrashing not once but twice last night and taught me to respect my betters,

(I'll get you yet Che Martin,) has taught me that this is not the case

unless you have many soldiers right from the start

 Recruit, recruit, recruit!  Ten peasants at the start  of a game will net

you much wood and gold.  But, you ask, what about the population limit!

Well, press control d for all peasants, then 2 to control half of them, and

set their mode to offensive by pressing shift a twice followed by enter.

Then, use them as scouts--that's right, sacrifice them to the dogs of war!

 Speaking of scouting, here's the best way.  Go to a square you've never

visited before, (next to a known square, if possible) control some units and

hit back space.  Then move another square and back space again--there is no

need to hit the keystrokes for controlling units a second time because the

game remembers whom you commanded last, so just arrow around and hit

backspace and soon, much of the board will have been explored.

 This is an etiquette thing, so pay attention.  Don't log in, invite 
everybody

to a game, get no response, log out, log in, invite everybody, log out, log

in, invite everybody, log out and please don't use long names.  Messages of

your doings can be very annoying, and can cost a player a key building

during attacks since your messages prevent them from hearing the attack

coordinates in time.  There really should be a keystroke for announcing

positions of enemy attacks.

 

Hope this helps

Ken Downey

 

+

Sound RTS sound pack

Made by Ken Downey

 

http://tbrn.net/modgirl/Ken's%20games/

 

++

Hi folks

At

http://playball.ws

A new audio promo with some folks you may know from

http://for-the-people.com

 

Second new item:

Updated stats for the 1940Replayed season for strat-o-matic's HRFL League.

Victor Chang aka Hong Kong Champ Grand Prize winner of the

Crash's 3-pointer pool

Has gotten his prize

Strat Computer Baseball game version 12

You can check the final Standings on the playball.ws home page

Vic's nickname is Buffalo Hunter.

Be sure to come back to playball.ws for the upcoming NFL pool the best

Accessible pool on the net.

Lastly, I have submitted the lastest Jaws configurations for the

Strat Baseball game version 12 in the Strat Instructional  Jukebox page.

Those who may want to demo the game there is a demo game and a startup kit 
with its own Jaws configs.

 

Crash

 

++

Baseball Mogul

 

Hi all,

    I just stumbled on this game while I was in a fresh Baseball kinda mood 
from listening to the OSU Beavers squeak by good old UC Fullerton this 
evening.  It seems quite accessible, albeit a little complex and managerial. 
What I'd really like is a game with the old Triple play-style play-by-play 
announcements, which I can fully play without the need for a playstation 
controller.  Heh.  Anyway, here's a link for you guys.  Anybody with a more 
strategic or patient mind willing to check it out?  Has somebody

already?

http://www.sportsmogul.com/baseball2k5/free.htm

 

+

Update on baseball mogul

 

Hi all,

    For anybody interested, I've been doing some playing around with the 
Baseball Mogul game I mentioned a few days back.  It has a fairly useable 
interface, with a few annoyances and things which someone like a Jaws 
scripter might be able to fix.  The principle one is that it uses lots and 
lots of tables and tabular formats for representing statistics.  On the plus 
side, nearly all controls are standardized menus, buttons, etc.  I'm not a 
Jaws user myself, so can't help with the scripting.

If anybody is interested in helping me figure this game out, or scripting it 
or whatever, please do let me know.

Thanks,

Zack.

 

++

Space Empires 3

 

Hi all,

    This is one of those games which is accessible mostly by complete 
surprise.  It's the shareware title Space Empires III, created by Malfador 
Machinations.  This is a turn-based strategist's dream--complete with ship 
design, planets, colonization, AI, etc.

    I have found almost every component of the game to be quite accessible, 
because of the standard and mostly standard Windows controls it uses.  The 
mouse cursor is essential, because you need it to explore dialogues and read 
reports in a meaningful way.  But it works, folks!  Most of it anyway--I've 
asked them about movement and the like, but I really don't see a reason that 
shouldn't work, too.

The URL for download is:

http://www.malfador.com/

>From there, you can find Space Empires III--though I've not looked at the 
>others in the series as extensively yet.

    Anybody have any thoughts on this game?

Thanks much,

Zack.

 

++

It's time to play Scrabble

 

Well, for those of you who don't have a pac mate but do have a PPC with Jaws 
on it, or for those PM owners who haven't been checking their email,  a 
version of Scrabble has been made accessible for Pac mate and can be found 
at

www.pacmategear.com

Hope you like it--and by the way, the game and scripts are free.

 

+++

Contacting Us

 

All material for inclusion  in upcoming issues of Audyssey should be sent

to me at the following snail or email address:

 

Ron Schamerhorn

1180 Dorval Dr. #303

Oakville On L6M 3G1

[905]-842-1933

blindwonder@cogeco.ca

or

editor@audyssey.org

and to chat find me at

rschamerhorn@hotmail.com

for Windows/MSN messenger no email to this one please.

 

+++

Distribution Information and Submission Policies

 

This magazine is published on a quarterly basis, each issue appearing

no earlier than the fifteenth of the publication month for its quarter.

All submissions to be published in an issue must be in my possession a

minimum of two days before the issue is published. I use MS-Word to

produce Audyssey, and can therefore accept submissions in pretty much

any format. They may be sent either on a 3.5-inch floppy disk, or via

e-mail to:

 

blindwonder@cogeco.ca

 

  Please write articles and letters about games or game-related

topics which interest you. They will likely interest me, and your

fellow readers. This magazine should and can be a

highly interesting and qualitative look at accessible gaming. To insure

that high quality is maintained, I'll need your

written contributions. I reserve the right to unilaterally make changes

to submissions if I deem it necessary to improve them grammatically or

enhance their understand ability. I will never make changes which will

alter the spirit of a submission.

All submissions must be in English. However, people need not be great

writers to have their work appear in Audyssey.

Many of our community come from different countries. Others are quite

young. Where possible, I try to preserve their

different styles of expression. The richness that this adds to the

Audyssey experience far outweighs any benefits

gained from having everything in prose so perfect as to be devoid of

life. Audyssey is a community and magazine built

on the need for blind people to have fun. There are no formal

structural requirements for submissions. Within reason,

they may be as long as necessary. Game reviews should all clearly state

who created the game being examined, where it

can be obtained, whether it can be played without sighted assistance,

and any system requirements or other critical

information. Although profanity is by no means banned, it should not be

used gratuitously. Submissions not published

in a current issue will be reserved for possible use in future issues

if appropriate.

 

* Those who are on the Audyssey  discussion list should be aware that I

often put materials from the list in the "Letters" section if I feel

that they warrant it.   Anything posted to this discussion list that in

some way stands out from the common and often lively ongoing  discourse

will be considered fair game for publishing unless it contains the

author's wish that it not be published. From now on, this is official policy 
of the Audyssey community.

This magazine is free in its electronic form, and will always remain

so. I'm writing this magazine as much

for my own interest as for everyone else's. Your articles, reviews, and

letters, as well as any games you might care to  send me, are what I'm

after. Send any games, articles, letters, or reviews via E-mail, or on

a cd or 3.5-inch disk in a self- addressed mailer if you want your

media returned to you. Please only send shareware or freeware games. It

is illegal to send commercial games unless you are their creator or

have obtained permission to do so. By sending me games, you will do

several things: first, and most obviously, you will earn my gratitude.

You will also insure that the games you send me are made available to

my readership as a whole. If you can, I recommend that you send e-mail.

I can send and receive attachments with ease. This way, no money will

be  wasted sending me a game I already have, and you'll get my reply

more quickly. You are responsible for shipping costs. That means,

either use a disk mailer which has your address on it, and is either

free matter for the blind, or is properly stamped. I can and will

gladly spare time to share  games and my knowledge of them, but cannot

currently spare money above what I spend hunting for new games. I

encourage all my readers to give my magazine to whoever they think will

appreciate it. Up-load it onto web pages and  bulletin board systems.

Copy it on disk for people, or print it out for sighted people who may

find it of value. The larger our community gets, the more

self-sustaining it will become.

Those who want to receive issues of Audyssey as they are published

should send a blank E-mail to:

Audysub-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

 

The Audyssey discussion list facilitates discussion about games

accessible to the blind between the publication of issues of Audyssey.

All are welcome as long as they respect their fellow community members

and keep in mind that the topic of the list is supposed to be games.

Other topics are allowed within reason as long as they don't begin to

monopolize the list traffic for too long. Newcomers should be advised

that  traffic is frequently fairly heavy.  Anyone participating in the

discussion list will have issues of Audyssey automatically sent to them

via E-mail. Representatives from all major developers of games for the

blind are actively participating on the list.  There are two moderators

keeping things civil and orderly. Be certain to read the Audyssey

Community Charter as all list members are expected to follow its rules.

If you want an active role in shaping the future of accessible games,

this is where you can dive right in. To subscribe to this discussion

list, send a blank message to:

blindgamers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

 

Stan Bobbitt has made Audyssey Magazine available in HTML format for

easy on-line browsing. To take advantage of this, you are invited to

visit our home-page. People can easily and quickly navigate through the

various articles and reviews, and directly download or visit the sites

of the games that interest them. This will be of especial benefit for

sighted people who wish to make use of Audyssey and/or join the growing

community surrounding it. The Audyssey community thanks Mr. Bobbitt for

his continued efforts on its behalf in this matter.

 

  Darren Duff also provides a home for Audyssey.

 

http://www.angelfire.com/music4/duffstuff/audyssey.html

 

Where the issues can be read, downloaded individually or one zip file

of all the issues.  Thanks Darren!

 

Another location to find Audyssey current and back issues is

 

http://www.audiogames.net/page/audyssey

 

Thanks to Richard and those at Audio-games!

 

We extend our gratitude to Kelly Sapergia who has provided a place for all 
the issues of the magazine. .  You can find them at

 

www.ksapergia.net/audyssey.html

 


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