Blind leading the blind
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Midnight_Carnival
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Blind leading the blind
I have an idea for a game which I'd like to see made, or even help to make.
Before I tell you about it though, it would require a device which as far as I know does not exist, and so I may have invented it. Before I tell you about the device, I want to say that the idea behind this game and the device (especially) is for the empowerment of the visually handicapped. I want you to be my witnesses in case some souless corporation tries to patent it so that other people can't produce it or use it. I have no problem with people making money off my brilliant and original ideas if I'm too lazy to do so myself, I do have a problem with people stopping others from enjoying their benefits becase of greed. I don't care if I get no credit for this, I just don't want to see it monopolised.
Ok, I have know some blind people and soem severely visually impaired people in my time. They can use computers (there is a Steven Hawkin sounding voice thing), but they can't really have too much fun. I mean let's face it, if you are blind you can virtually forget computer games.
Untill me.
I have invented the braillemonitor (well, I think I invented it, if I didn't then I'm not trying to make money out of it, so I probably won't get into trouble for saying I did). Basically, it is a flat surface it a number of tiny rods, closely packed, at regular intervals. There will be three types of rods (maybe more): steel rods, rubber rods and bunches of bristly hairs. They will be extended and retracted into the board by means of minute servos, or electro magnets. There must also be sensors within the board which detect heat and pressure, they must be able to tell the difference between a soft touch and a tap. I have not exactly designed this thing, but I have spoken to my brother who is an engineer, and he says that it is not impossible with today's technology. The idea behind the monitor is not to make images, unfortunately you will not be able to play Halflife on it, it is to probvide visually handicapped people with a convenient interface for computers. The rods need not extend more than a milimeter of two from the surface, the idea is not to make little sculptures or anything, but combinations of differnt types of rods will produce different textures. Only steel will be hard (and possibly uncomfortable to touch, well, slightly) only rubber will be -um rubbery, only bristles will be bristly, but also soft. These can be combined in different proportions to give users different impressions. It will provide a more intimate relationship with the computer than just staring at a screen. and of course it can also display text in braille (is that even how you spell it? - I'm dyslexic and having a bad day + kind of in a hurry). You could have them in a number of different sizes, but you'd want a quite big one, especially if you are playing games on it.
You are smart enough to work the rest out for yourselves.
Now onto the game:
There are several possibilites for games, but the one I want to cause to come into being would be like a mixture of Nethack, Black and White, Abe's Odysee and Lemmings. The player would start with a number of monsters, they would start off simple and quite helpless, but gain skills as the game progresses. They would also be able to pick up items and use them. The player would have to guide them through the maze, riddled with traps and hostile monsters and also find food for them. Each level would fill a `screen', so there would be no scrolling. Certain things would make noises if you touched them, appart from this, there would be an info box probably at the bottom of the screen, you can touch something with one hand and read about it in the info box with the other, if you want to get cute, it can even have a face to feel in the box. If you touch something and it elevates itself slightly and purrs, you can tell that it is friendly without looking at the info box, similarly, if it hisses and moves away from you hand (oh yes, the player's hand would be an element in the game, kind of like a mouse cursor), or if it gets spiky and growls, the you can assume it is not too friendly. Your monsters would move towards somewhere you tap, while other mosters would try to move away, hence you can protect you mosters to a degree. Problem is the monsters are blind. They don't automatically know that there's a wall or a trap between where they are and where you want them. You have to guide them through the maze. They become more intelligent as the game advances though, and search arround, and navigate edges of walls, ect... better, they might also find nearbye food and items share it between them without being told to do so, if you have trained them properly that is. As with Nethack, you would not want really detailed graphics -um no, ok, feelics? Also, the game play would be fairly, well not slow, but it would be semi-turnbased, like if you give instructions throught the board, or the keyboard the mosters will follow your istructions, but if you don't, just feeling around, then the game pauses. I think that blind people would not apreciate fast and frantic actions in a large maze. Although many people would be able to play it at the same time, we are dealing with a finite number of hands. The first few levels must be fairly easy, but get progressively harder. New monsters will want to join the party, some of them will be worse than useless, being untrained, they might be a liability, especially if they are greedy or selfish, or too agressive without being strong enough to back it up. There will be some really big nasty level bosses who don't care where you tap, they just come after your mosters and they don't want to talk either. The player must keep their more advanced monsters alive so that they don't end up with a whole host of noobs. This could provide blind kids with an insentive to learn braille faster, as well as developing skills they might otherwise not get to use, it could also help them feel empowered, teach them responsibility and encourage them, I hope the monsters will be something they can associate with, and when they get a monster who gets really hardcore it might make them think they could become hardcore too. If not then, well it should at least be more fun than making baskets. I don't mean that in a patronising way, I'm not very good at being inofenssive. It should aslo be fun and challanging enough that visually handicapped adults will want to play it; hell, I'll turn off the lights and play it myself!
Anyway, that is way more than I have actually written on the assignement I have to hand in for maks, tell me what you think, also, I have worked a lot of stuff out, some of it in detail, if you have any questions I will answer them. Thinking of posting this on slashdot, but I want to see if it is not so offensive, or so impractical that the geexors will tear me to pieces.
It is for fun
Before I tell you about it though, it would require a device which as far as I know does not exist, and so I may have invented it. Before I tell you about the device, I want to say that the idea behind this game and the device (especially) is for the empowerment of the visually handicapped. I want you to be my witnesses in case some souless corporation tries to patent it so that other people can't produce it or use it. I have no problem with people making money off my brilliant and original ideas if I'm too lazy to do so myself, I do have a problem with people stopping others from enjoying their benefits becase of greed. I don't care if I get no credit for this, I just don't want to see it monopolised.
Ok, I have know some blind people and soem severely visually impaired people in my time. They can use computers (there is a Steven Hawkin sounding voice thing), but they can't really have too much fun. I mean let's face it, if you are blind you can virtually forget computer games.
Untill me.
I have invented the braillemonitor (well, I think I invented it, if I didn't then I'm not trying to make money out of it, so I probably won't get into trouble for saying I did). Basically, it is a flat surface it a number of tiny rods, closely packed, at regular intervals. There will be three types of rods (maybe more): steel rods, rubber rods and bunches of bristly hairs. They will be extended and retracted into the board by means of minute servos, or electro magnets. There must also be sensors within the board which detect heat and pressure, they must be able to tell the difference between a soft touch and a tap. I have not exactly designed this thing, but I have spoken to my brother who is an engineer, and he says that it is not impossible with today's technology. The idea behind the monitor is not to make images, unfortunately you will not be able to play Halflife on it, it is to probvide visually handicapped people with a convenient interface for computers. The rods need not extend more than a milimeter of two from the surface, the idea is not to make little sculptures or anything, but combinations of differnt types of rods will produce different textures. Only steel will be hard (and possibly uncomfortable to touch, well, slightly) only rubber will be -um rubbery, only bristles will be bristly, but also soft. These can be combined in different proportions to give users different impressions. It will provide a more intimate relationship with the computer than just staring at a screen. and of course it can also display text in braille (is that even how you spell it? - I'm dyslexic and having a bad day + kind of in a hurry). You could have them in a number of different sizes, but you'd want a quite big one, especially if you are playing games on it.
You are smart enough to work the rest out for yourselves.
Now onto the game:
There are several possibilites for games, but the one I want to cause to come into being would be like a mixture of Nethack, Black and White, Abe's Odysee and Lemmings. The player would start with a number of monsters, they would start off simple and quite helpless, but gain skills as the game progresses. They would also be able to pick up items and use them. The player would have to guide them through the maze, riddled with traps and hostile monsters and also find food for them. Each level would fill a `screen', so there would be no scrolling. Certain things would make noises if you touched them, appart from this, there would be an info box probably at the bottom of the screen, you can touch something with one hand and read about it in the info box with the other, if you want to get cute, it can even have a face to feel in the box. If you touch something and it elevates itself slightly and purrs, you can tell that it is friendly without looking at the info box, similarly, if it hisses and moves away from you hand (oh yes, the player's hand would be an element in the game, kind of like a mouse cursor), or if it gets spiky and growls, the you can assume it is not too friendly. Your monsters would move towards somewhere you tap, while other mosters would try to move away, hence you can protect you mosters to a degree. Problem is the monsters are blind. They don't automatically know that there's a wall or a trap between where they are and where you want them. You have to guide them through the maze. They become more intelligent as the game advances though, and search arround, and navigate edges of walls, ect... better, they might also find nearbye food and items share it between them without being told to do so, if you have trained them properly that is. As with Nethack, you would not want really detailed graphics -um no, ok, feelics? Also, the game play would be fairly, well not slow, but it would be semi-turnbased, like if you give instructions throught the board, or the keyboard the mosters will follow your istructions, but if you don't, just feeling around, then the game pauses. I think that blind people would not apreciate fast and frantic actions in a large maze. Although many people would be able to play it at the same time, we are dealing with a finite number of hands. The first few levels must be fairly easy, but get progressively harder. New monsters will want to join the party, some of them will be worse than useless, being untrained, they might be a liability, especially if they are greedy or selfish, or too agressive without being strong enough to back it up. There will be some really big nasty level bosses who don't care where you tap, they just come after your mosters and they don't want to talk either. The player must keep their more advanced monsters alive so that they don't end up with a whole host of noobs. This could provide blind kids with an insentive to learn braille faster, as well as developing skills they might otherwise not get to use, it could also help them feel empowered, teach them responsibility and encourage them, I hope the monsters will be something they can associate with, and when they get a monster who gets really hardcore it might make them think they could become hardcore too. If not then, well it should at least be more fun than making baskets. I don't mean that in a patronising way, I'm not very good at being inofenssive. It should aslo be fun and challanging enough that visually handicapped adults will want to play it; hell, I'll turn off the lights and play it myself!
Anyway, that is way more than I have actually written on the assignement I have to hand in for maks, tell me what you think, also, I have worked a lot of stuff out, some of it in detail, if you have any questions I will answer them. Thinking of posting this on slashdot, but I want to see if it is not so offensive, or so impractical that the geexors will tear me to pieces.
It is for fun
...apparenly we can't go with it or something.
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thespaceinvader
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Re: Blind leading the blind
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Back to work. Current projects: Catching up on commits. Picking Meridia back up. Sprite animations, many and varied.
Back to work. Current projects: Catching up on commits. Picking Meridia back up. Sprite animations, many and varied.
Re: Blind leading the blind
Mainline Maintainer: AOI, DM, NR, TB and THoT.
UMC Maintainer: Forward They Cried, A Few Logs, A Few More Logs, Start of the War, and Battle Against Time
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Sgt. Groovy
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Re: Blind leading the blind
Not quite, I bet old-style text-based adventure and "interactive novel" kind of games are just as playable with a braille display or speech syntheziser as with an visual display. Also, I'm sure completely abstract games where the player gives feedback to patterns of sounds could be made (and probably has been made, there must be whole bunch of visually impaired coders out there).I mean let's face it, if you are blind you can virtually forget computer games.
Otherwise, your idea doesn't sound all that bad. One thing to remember, though, is that if you want to present spatial information on the screen, a blind person never "sees" the whole screen at a time, because they are reading it with their fingertips. It is analogous to a seeing person looking at the screen through a keyhole. In practice this means that when something changes on the screen, the player doesn't know this until one of their fingertips hits that particular spot.
ETA: Oh, and a good way to avoid being patronising and offensive is to get feedback from visually impaired people themselves and recruit some of them to design the system with you. They are the best authority to say what would work and what would not.
Tiedäthän kuinka pelataan.
Tiedäthän, vihtahousua vastaan.
Tiedäthän, solmu kravatin, se kantaa niin synnit
kuin syntien tekijätkin.
Tiedäthän, vihtahousua vastaan.
Tiedäthän, solmu kravatin, se kantaa niin synnit
kuin syntien tekijätkin.
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Midnight_Carnival
- Posts: 836
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Re: Blind leading the blind
ha ha, I am known for inventing things, getting really worked up about them and then finding out that someone else with a time machine plagerised me again! I hope the monitors are as fun as my proposed one, also, hope the game is worth making despite the fact that I didn't invent the special monitor.
That thing about the blind person never seeing the whole screen at a time was sort of the cornerstone of the game concept design. I used to spend large portions of my childhood blindfolded (and sometimes tied up) for fun, that's how I roll, I invented ways to amuse myslef while blind.
I can't get feedback from blind people, because I am too scared that if I talk to them I will seem patronising and offensive, it's a vicious cycle!
-Pity though
That thing about the blind person never seeing the whole screen at a time was sort of the cornerstone of the game concept design. I used to spend large portions of my childhood blindfolded (and sometimes tied up) for fun, that's how I roll, I invented ways to amuse myslef while blind.
I can't get feedback from blind people, because I am too scared that if I talk to them I will seem patronising and offensive, it's a vicious cycle!
-Pity though
...apparenly we can't go with it or something.
Re: Blind leading the blind
It's a sign of ingenuity or something else, that's for sure.Midnight_Carnival wrote:I used to spend large portions of my childhood blindfolded (and sometimes tied up) for fun, that's how I roll, I invented ways to amuse myslef while blind.
True, but if you truly want to help make their world easier or open more possibilities for them and you explain that, I am sure they will understand what you are getting at and will not seem offended.Midnight_Carnival wrote:I can't get feedback from blind people, because I am too scared that if I talk to them I will seem patronising and offensive, it's a vicious cycle!
Mainline Maintainer: AOI, DM, NR, TB and THoT.
UMC Maintainer: Forward They Cried, A Few Logs, A Few More Logs, Start of the War, and Battle Against Time
UMC Maintainer: Forward They Cried, A Few Logs, A Few More Logs, Start of the War, and Battle Against Time
Re: Blind leading the blind
Connect a digital camera to the blind person's optic nerve, and then have a decoder in between to turn digital camera signals into optical nerve signals. How about that, huh? 
I can see this happening some time in the next 50 years.
I can see this happening some time in the next 50 years.Why did the fish laugh? Because the sea weed.
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thespaceinvader
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Re: Blind leading the blind
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Back to work. Current projects: Catching up on commits. Picking Meridia back up. Sprite animations, many and varied.
Back to work. Current projects: Catching up on commits. Picking Meridia back up. Sprite animations, many and varied.
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Midnight_Carnival
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Re: Blind leading the blind
Would it be possible to make a version of Wesnoth which blind people could play? I mean if the technology exists...
...apparenly we can't go with it or something.
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thespaceinvader
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Re: Blind leading the blind
Highly doubtful. Wesnoth is an extremely visual game, and I doubt very much that someone without sight could play it successfully.
http://thespaceinvader.co.uk | http://thespaceinvader.deviantart.com
Back to work. Current projects: Catching up on commits. Picking Meridia back up. Sprite animations, many and varied.
Back to work. Current projects: Catching up on commits. Picking Meridia back up. Sprite animations, many and varied.
Re: Blind leading the blind
Guess it's possible 'cause the W is a step-by-step game so it's a plenty of time to make a desicion.Midnight_Carnival wrote:Would it be possible to make a version of Wesnoth which blind people could play? I mean if the technology exists...
Those who will play should warn about, tell so, "special conditions" of game to not read nervous abuse in their address. It'a giant and brave step only to try.
P.S. Btw, you can count on me. I hope I'll not be a 100 years elder when it happens.
Aah... Nothing but a nice, quiet patrol... Boooooooring!
Re: Blind leading the blind
Judo or otherwise grappling/wrestling (ground) is a really great sport for the blind to get out and do. I've done grappling from time to time with my eyes closed and eyesight matters very little when grappling. The benefits are beyond any simple description, especially because many blind people can be very physically in-active.
There was a talk a year or two ago at my university UC Santa Cruz about a screen with feedback on something like an ipod touch for a map program. It helps by giving directions with use of the GPS. The feedback can come in any form:sound, through a connected device, touch screen, whatever.
There was a talk a year or two ago at my university UC Santa Cruz about a screen with feedback on something like an ipod touch for a map program. It helps by giving directions with use of the GPS. The feedback can come in any form:sound, through a connected device, touch screen, whatever.
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Viliam
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Re: Blind leading the blind
The new part is the steel/rubber/hair pixels. It could provide a new experience... maybe like a difference between grayscale and color displays.Turuk wrote:A bit of history.
It's been around for a while, but your intentions were certainly good.
Maybe the device could also contain a sound source below the surface. (Many small sound sources, or one that can silently move across the screen.) In turn-based games, units that move could also make a sound, bringing player's attention to their positions.Sgt. Groovy wrote:One thing to remember, though, is that if you want to present spatial information on the screen, a blind person never "sees" the whole screen at a time, because they are reading it with their fingertips. It is analogous to a seeing person looking at the screen through a keyhole. In practice this means that when something changes on the screen, the player doesn't know this until one of their fingertips hits that particular spot.