Post by Doug T in ABAS jam comments

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First, I LOVE that you are doing an audio only game. there need to be more games out there for blind gamers.

I have a couple of questions that I would love clarification on.
What is the overall structure I am in? a maze, forest, square room? Is there cover?
Lots of times I thought I was attacking the creature, but the co-pilot insulted me about shooting a rock, so I was thinking maybe it is behind a wall? I would like more context.

For the moving and looking, do A and D strife? I did a lot of turning with left and right, and walking forward with W. I didn't use the other buttons hardly at all.

For the sonar, what are the response pings? I thought it was leading me toward an objective, then I thought it might be the monster, but now i think it is possibly the center of a wall. either way, I couldn't get much good info from it, and would instead shoot and listen for the timing (and listen to the robot complain about my waste of ammunition)

Speaking of objectives, Could you make it clearer that the objective is to defeat the single creature in the room? The line about my gun not having much of an effect on the creature made me confused on how to defeat it.

The sound effects are spot on! and the effects to the voice are nice too.

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Mastergammler112 days ago

Thanks for your feedback, there are so many things i’m not aware of the player would not know (or assume right away).

The structure of the Room is a circle while you’re starting in the middle. It has a few circular obstacles (rocks) scattered around it that you need to dodge. These obstacles are also what the ping responses are. In general the idea of the sonar was, that the response are all kinds of objects that would reflect sound. So currently these are the obstacles (their center, they vary a bit in size) , and the enemy with a different sound. (I wanted to do something for the walls as well, but didn’t get to it yet).

The movement is equivalent to a FPS, minus vertical movement. Not 100% what you mean with strafe, there is no lock-on mechanic that keeps your look direction to a certain point. But WASD don’t change your look direction, it is retained when you move. Only the turning will change your look direction, and movement will be relative to your forward direction. So yes, mainly you will use W + arrow keys for movement, but A and S are usefull for dodging bullets :P.

Regarding the objective, i kind of wanted to keep a exploratory vibe in a way, that’s way i kept it a bit ambiguous, but i can see how this makes it too unclear what you are supposed to do. I also had some doubts about the first hit line for the enemy, i just was running out of time at that point so this was the best i came up in the moment😅

The sound when hitting the monster is a bit different from the rocks + when a rock is hit ABAS will give you a response (in comparison to hitting the outer wall for example). The thing that is confusing here, is probably that there is a rock next to the enemy. I did this because it gives you the opportunity to hide behind it, and you can even find a angle where you can shoot around it without beeing hit.

So, where you able to defeat the enemy in the end? How difficult would you say it was?

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Doug T112 days ago(+1)

so yes, I was able to defeat the enemy. In some of my exploratory shooting, the AI indicated that i hit the monster, and I spammed both shifts really fast. ( It took me a while to realize the shoot rate is a lot higher than I thought)

Also I thought the enemy was a melee type. lol, all the things that should be obvious. Does it move?

I wish there were more points of reference. The openness makes me feel lost. I like hugging the wall for the feedback of where it is. I also wish turning wasn't a gradual thing, like I wish everything was squares, and turning turned you 90 degrees. But that just sounds like a different game.

This is really getting my brain churning on how to best navigate in a video game blind.

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Mastergammler112 days ago(+1)

Well, I decided to not restrict the fire rate for now, since firing bullets is alot of fun, the enemy has a bit more health therefore. You are also not quite incorrect with your assumption that the enemy is meele. While it is not and also shoots bullets, it has detection radius in which you need to be in order for it to activate. And currently it doesn’t move yet, even thou i did have it planned.

But it was kind of intended, that you could “snipe” the enemy from far away, if you where able to find the right angle.

The 90 degrees rotation has a big problem if you use 3d audio, which is, when you are diagonal to a sound source and you turn by 90 degrees, it will jump from one ear to the other, which is very odd, and it doesn’t really reflect how humans move (or at least head movement). I believe this is a concept that makes only much sense visually. I played another little jam game which did that, and this was exactly what i found very odd. You can check it out in case you’re interested, it’s another little jam game: The Audionaut

The way I imagined players navigating was by centering the sound of your destination in the stereo field and then walking towards that. Especially also because it is also where you’re aiming at.

I find it interesting that you would prefer it all to be squares, can you explain why? What do you think, makes squares so much better?

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Doug T112 days ago(+1)

I can mental map! (again this is a completely different game at this point)
but because I'm never exactly sure what angle I am facing, it makes it really hard to walk around the rocks. If everything was square, I could do things like sidestep with A or D and maintain my orientation.
I am now imagining a roguelike where you are on a square tile, and can remember how many steps you moved in a straight line till you bump against a wall, and you can build a spacial picture in your head of where you've been.

My blind friend is better at navigating and directions than his wife who is sighted. Anywhere in town he can walk and know where he is. In a car, he has a mental map of which roads connect to which where. If you are moving around in a 3D space you need enough landmarks to build a mental map. (You do have some - the rocks that work with the sonar)

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Mastergammler111 days ago(+1)

Ah yes, the point about a mental map is very important, i didn’t consider this. I just thought, but a few small obstacles in the way, so it’s not too hard to run past it. But paradoxically doing that i probably made it harder, since all of these are very insignificant and “look” the same. It’s probably a good idea, to have at least 1 big landmark, which is very different from the rest, so you can gain a sense of orientation based on that.

The point with the sidestep i don’t quite get, you can do this also when the obstacle is round? In fact, that is what i’m doing as well, just side stepping it when i found it. I mean the important thing would be, that it’s uniform right?

Btw, also one of my first ideas was to do something based on step count, sound very logical.

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Necron111 days ago

Mastergammler might referring to a different type of game if it was grid based. Then strafing left or right one "Unit" would be helping if obstacles and walls took up one zone. Then you are sort of playing minesweeper with sound. Right now, the player does not know how much forward, sideward or turning amounts they do. So it's difficult to build a mental map when we don't know the units. You can try to count footsteps but I bet that takes a ton of practice.

Maybe if your left/right sounds added a hum to them instead. Then you might have a constant source to tell you if you are an obstacle or not. Then you could use sonar for longer distances while the humming sonar would be more for obstacle avoidance.

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Mastergammler111 days ago(+1)

Well yes, the counting of footsteps was another game idea, this wouldn’t work here, because the footsteps sounds are not consistent with distance. A major challenge i found is, that evaluating distances with audio only is incredibly hard, just due to the nature of how sound is scaling, because it is not linear. The volume ramps up when something is really close and then fades slowly. So i don’t think a mental map based on specific unit works. But what i do think is, that you still need the ability to give relative information to a player. Like, there is a big rock to the right of the enemy etc. which is also a way to build a mental map, just relative.

And it is in fact possible to know how much you turn, or how much you strafe etc. If you’re in front of an obstacle the ping will be dead center. Once you walk sideways it will gradually move to the right or left side. That way you can gauge how far you have walked, relative to that obstacle. And now you can try to walk forward an see if you are already past the obstacle (because the size of the thing is another challenge to communicate) and will get an directional bump sound if you hit it. And that sound then tells you how much more you need to walk to the side. If the bump is still in front, it means you need to walk way more sideways, if its to the sides, it means you’re almost past it. Thats btw a good reason for the obstacles beeing circular, because this allows for this gradual directional response.

And the degree of turning btw works the same. You can center yourself towards an obstacle ping. And now you can turn gradually, untily the ping appears completely to one side. Now you know, that you turned 90 degrees, relative to that obstacle.

Btw, that idea with an additional kind of proximity sensor also crossed my mind, but dunno if that gets to crowded too fast. Plus, the enemy actually has a hum, that you can better locate him when close.

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