Post by ilikegoodfood in Accessibility or is it just me?

Viewing post in Accessibility or is it just me?

Glad to hear that you're working on accessability features. I got this game as part of the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality and am loving it. It's a very pretty, smooth (on my high-end PC) game with solid gameplay and plenty of cool things to find and explore.

As for accessability features, I've been thinking about the things that I find to be difficult or annoying and thought I might contribute to this thread with some suggstions:

Subtitles are an obvious one.
Separate audio sliders for music, background noises, sound effects (such as gunfire and enemy actions), and the voice-acting would all be good to have.
Enemy readability, as you're alredy working on, could indeed do with some improvement. As an additional accesability option, I was wondering about having a highlight for them, probbaly in the form of a slight glow effect on them.
An option to always show health bars on enemies could be useful. It would also double up as a way for them to stand out.
An option to have a highly-visible base-plate under the player character would be great. Especially once you've got drones orbiting yourself, which are larger than the player, it's easy to loose track of yourself.
An option to remove the particle effects from the foreground fog would be great. They're very visually noisy in the Waste Disposal level and harm verall readability.
An option to remove the fore-ground fog entirely would also make the scenes much visually cleaner. This would especially help those with imperfect eyesight, myself included.
An option to have the first-time pick-up notifications for passive items always activate, or a stat-only notification on repeat pickup. Currently it can be difficult to work out what my build actually contains.
An option to have the first-time pick-up notifications for weapons and slotted items (the ones on 'q' and 'c' by default) always show up, or a stat-only notification on repeat pickup.

This last one isn't an accessability feature, but while I'm here:
When reaching a new waypoint. having a 'Save & Quit' or 'Continue' verification before loading would also be fantastic. It'd save having to wait for it to load a new zone only to then quit. It'd also act as a more natural break-point. You also don't make it clear that each waypoint saves the game automatically. I only found out for sure by testing it.

I hope these suggestions are useful to you, and that they include something you hadn't thought of.

Thanks for this fantastic game, and thank you for putting it in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. I may never have discovered it else.

monothetic4 years ago(+2)

Thanks for the thorough list of feedback! We'll go through it and add them to the upcoming tasks. Here's a couple of notes I had based on your feedback:

-Is there anything specifically you were hoping would have subtitles? The Tutorial VO is the first obvious answer, but in game there are rarely VO lines that we expected to require subtitles outside of a few Arena announcements.

-We can consider adding something to notify the player position more clearly as an option, it isn't something we considered that much before because the player is always in the same position in the center of the screen. I thought the recent ammo wheel addition along with the aiming lines help make the player more obvious, but if you're requesting it I'm sure other players would appreciate the option to make it even more obvious.

-I agree with the option to disable weather particles, but disabling the fog entirely would cause the background to look broken with the way the levels are constructed and also remove most of the individual identity of the different weather types.

-I definitely agree with the item pickup screen showing up being an option. You can always check the Index to see the items you currently have equipped but sometimes it would be simpler to just pick up the item and read it then even if you've looted it before.

-We can consider changing the order of saving at the Beacon Locators but I'm not sure if it's possible for us to save for the following level before it's been generated. At the very least we can add a UI animation to show that the game has been saved once you load into the next level.

ilikegoodfood4 years ago (1 edit)

You are correct that there aren't many voice lines, and therefore that there won't be many subtitles. On a side note, I don't know if you'd be interested in the idea, or if it would be within your developement scope, but Valve's half-life 2 has full closed captions that include noises as well as speech. Things like gunshots, enemy chatter, explosions and so forth.

I had honesatly not noticed that the player's positioon relative to the camera is fixed, and even now that you've said it, my brain is telling me it's not true. This may be because of the differing zoom-levels between areas, complex vertical environments or it may just be me, but I personally wouldn't consider position relative to camera to be a concrete and easy discernable enough guide for everyone.

As for saving, I had mistakenly assumed that you were saving the player's stats, loadout and a simple level ID, with the level being generated on load. I made this assumption based on the load times seeming similar to the level-transition times, and the fact that crates, enemies and pickups change when you quit out and re-load. As that is not the case, your choice to go with the current system makes a lot more sense.

EDIT:

I'm editing this with something that I literrally just noticed. Beacon doesn't have that many instances of flashing lights. Of the few instances that there are, the only to bother me personally is the intensly bright white flashes that accompany the lightning cell storm. This particulart instance definately needs toning down.

Furthermore, with a little careful examination of the game's lighting content, it may be possible to remove all regular or overly bright flashing lights, potentially making it safe for those who suffer from photosensetive epilepsy.

CyberneticSusurrus4 years ago(+1)

I would also add that some areas in certain levels are very bright and have poor contrast.
Bright enough that it becomes uncomfortable to look at and difficult to discern anything in.

I've noticed it primarily in the goo/lava/energy zones, so perhaps the solution is dialing down the intensity of the effects on those.
Relevant UI options might also help.

itch.io

Viewing post in Accessibility or is it just me?