Now this is something I find quite strange, which coincidentally may have had a great impact on what I want to do with my career. I find it incredibly sad that we're at a point in time where games will soon look and sound like real life, where countless dollars are spent on game development, yet accessibility features are almost non-existant.
Lets start with the most basic thing of all -- subtitles. Now, ideally games would have closed captions even for important sound cues, but even proper subtitles for speech would be a good first step. Realistically, if you sink millions of dollars into the development of a game, how much extra would it cost to subtitle the speech? Well, lets consider that there's a script for the game dialogue in virtually every case, most likely with copy in digital form. Associating each speech file with a section of text is fairly trivial. There are indie game developers who can do this properly, really, so what is the excuse for large companies not do it?
I suspect it's just a matter of not caring, and partly not being aware of the problem.
Halo 3 subtitles cut scenes, and that's it. Any dialogue spoken by other characters while actually playing, a deaf player will be completely unaware of. Many games have this same behavior, and I would not attribute it to malice but rather lack of interest. Some games of course are worse, like the atrocious subtitles of 2K Games' Bioshock which at times come up 20 seconds or so out of sync. That combined with lack of any indication of WHO says what makes it almost pointless at times. Playtesting? What's that?
The biggest exception to the rule seems to be Valve, who seem to have an option for closed captions in all their games now. I just use the subtitles, though, so I'm not sure how thorough they are. Still, considering that and also how Half Life 2 Episode 3 will have both a character and a robot using sign language, even if it's used as a story device, I think it's safe to say they are aware of accessibility issues for the hearing impaired. Very nice. I hope they decide to include large font and hight contrast modes as standard for future games, to help out the visually impaired gamers as well.
In any case, there seem to be more eyes open nowadays when it comes to accessibility problems, but it's clearly far from ideal. There are many improvements that can be made to visual cues in games, and straight-up accessibility features that are there ONLY for people who have hearing problems. Developing a reusable framework for this seems like a good idea.
Now something that really fascinates me is audio gaming for blind people, I think there's an abundance of untapped potential there, and that's something I'm very excited about, and something I would love to work with professionally. Right now I really hate that I have to study Swedish lit. instead of trying to work on this, but in two months I can spend more time on it.
A lot more on this in the future.
fredag 4 december 2009
onsdag 4 november 2009
Not really using this much, so here's what I think of Mandriva 2010.0
Well, first of all the first positive note is that Mandriva 2009.1 had programs for a live update. When 2010.0 came out, a message flashed asking me if I wanted to upgrade. Very nice, just a few clicks and an hour or two later it had downloaded and installed everything.
2010.0 has some fairly big changes done over 2009.1, of course the new Mozilla 3.5 is now the standard browser, and it's very fast. In fact, it seems that speed is the key word for 2010, the bootup sequence is quicker, though not by as much as the shutdown, which is less than 10 seconds. No, that's not sleep or hibernation, and it really is that quick for me. The KDE4 apps start up incredibly quickly as well, but I'm not sure that's entirely new considering they've always been pretty fast. Amarok get the gold star for improvement, starting up in less than a second.
I've wanted to say this for a while, and now I can: Finally a mature KDE4 release! The only thing I still find myself missing still is the "tiled maxpect" of KDE3.5, how much code would it take to bring back? There are some really cool plasma modules for the desktop, so you can have things like a spinning globe, animated in real time, as your wallpaper or the Mandelbrot set rendered with whatever colors you wish. The amount of new eye candy is borderline ridiculous, to be honest, but the polish is apparent in every part of the distro.
There were some problems with the system tray in 2009.1, but they've been completely taken care of, it seems. The system tray, has taken a lot of inspiration from the Windows tray, and I'd consider that to its benefit. There's still no obscene amount of tray icons in Linux in general, but it's nice to be able to set up which tray icons you'd like hidden and which ones to always show.
Actually every problem thus far I had with 2009.1 have been fixed, the notification piling is gone, all the hickups I'd noticed with Plasma such as handles getting stuck seem to have been fixed in one way or another, and so on.
The only thing I can think of that I haven't tested yet is PulseAudio, and I really don't want to try to start it up while already playing audio. In any case the distro runs fine without it, so it's not a big problem if it's still not ready for prime time.
I'm by no means a professional reviewer, and I don't really have time to go point by point on every new feature. I haven't looked into the network sharing or user administration at all, for example, so I really can't say anything about it. Suffice it to say that Mandriva 2010.0 is quite an improvement on 2009.1 for a casual user like me, and well worth the time it takes to update.
Update: PulseAudio is VERY cool, it sometimes spazzes out when running Wine for some reason (about 1 in 10, I'd guess), though pausing audio while starting up Wine seems to fix any issues. It's certainly showing its potential here, per-program volume and balance settings are quite handy and work perfectly. The only thing I haven't been able to test is mic input, so that's a potential worry, but considering how well everything else works it probably does, too.
2010.0 has some fairly big changes done over 2009.1, of course the new Mozilla 3.5 is now the standard browser, and it's very fast. In fact, it seems that speed is the key word for 2010, the bootup sequence is quicker, though not by as much as the shutdown, which is less than 10 seconds. No, that's not sleep or hibernation, and it really is that quick for me. The KDE4 apps start up incredibly quickly as well, but I'm not sure that's entirely new considering they've always been pretty fast. Amarok get the gold star for improvement, starting up in less than a second.
I've wanted to say this for a while, and now I can: Finally a mature KDE4 release! The only thing I still find myself missing still is the "tiled maxpect" of KDE3.5, how much code would it take to bring back? There are some really cool plasma modules for the desktop, so you can have things like a spinning globe, animated in real time, as your wallpaper or the Mandelbrot set rendered with whatever colors you wish. The amount of new eye candy is borderline ridiculous, to be honest, but the polish is apparent in every part of the distro.
There were some problems with the system tray in 2009.1, but they've been completely taken care of, it seems. The system tray, has taken a lot of inspiration from the Windows tray, and I'd consider that to its benefit. There's still no obscene amount of tray icons in Linux in general, but it's nice to be able to set up which tray icons you'd like hidden and which ones to always show.
Actually every problem thus far I had with 2009.1 have been fixed, the notification piling is gone, all the hickups I'd noticed with Plasma such as handles getting stuck seem to have been fixed in one way or another, and so on.
The only thing I can think of that I haven't tested yet is PulseAudio, and I really don't want to try to start it up while already playing audio. In any case the distro runs fine without it, so it's not a big problem if it's still not ready for prime time.
I'm by no means a professional reviewer, and I don't really have time to go point by point on every new feature. I haven't looked into the network sharing or user administration at all, for example, so I really can't say anything about it. Suffice it to say that Mandriva 2010.0 is quite an improvement on 2009.1 for a casual user like me, and well worth the time it takes to update.
Update: PulseAudio is VERY cool, it sometimes spazzes out when running Wine for some reason (about 1 in 10, I'd guess), though pausing audio while starting up Wine seems to fix any issues. It's certainly showing its potential here, per-program volume and balance settings are quite handy and work perfectly. The only thing I haven't been able to test is mic input, so that's a potential worry, but considering how well everything else works it probably does, too.
tisdag 18 augusti 2009
Halo 3 rant
Thought I'd do something with this blog, I don't write much in it so I'll just start sharing some thoughts on various things here. So here are some thoughts on Halo 3. Don't expect it to be well thought out or edited, I'm just typing what comes to mind.
The gameplay hasn't changed much since Halo 2, the control ramps are very well calibrated, the slightly sticky camera that helps you aim better is still there and still feels just right. The vehicles still control well enough, with the Ghost being the highlight as always, it just plain kicks ass. Unless you're in a Scorpion tank, you'll want to jump out of whatever vehicle you're in and switch to the Ghost as soon as you see one.
So where's the problem? It looks great apart from the character models and it controls really well. Indeed, Halo 3 would be the best FPS on any console if you just went by those criteria. However, it's really badly balanced. Some battles right at the beginning of the game will kick your ass six ways till Sunday, and as Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame put it, the closest thing to a final boss battle is you with a BFG9000 against a cross-eyed hobbit in a wheelchair.
The level design isn't just a bit dodgy, some levels have you navigating a maze while under attack from an endless stream of enemies, and it takes several minutes of running around without a clue before the game decides to point you in the general direction you need to go. Unfortunately that rarely helps in the more maze-like levels of the game as the path TO the guide arrow is often anything but straightforward. I didn't really have much problems surviving at this point or actually finishing the levels, but it felt like a chore and it just wasn't fun to play.
Now the worst part of the game is the AI. It is without a doubt the most annoying friendly AI in any recent game that I've played. Two of the times when I was manning the turret of a Warthog (because space marines can't aim for shit), the AI drove me right off a cliff just when I got to a checkpoint, forcing me into an endless loop of watching Master Chief plummet to his death.
This isn't just a minor flaw, when the AI doesn't drive you off cliffs, it will drive into walls or rocks and then just stay there and not even try to go anywhere. The "friendly" AI kills you almost as often as the enemy AI, and that's not a good thing.
The AI is not a problem if you play co-op, obviously, but I really don't think that's a good excuse. It shouldn't drive off cliffs, and if it does do that all the time, don't make 90% of the driving levels take place on the edge of a damn cliff. I mean what the hell kind of game design is that?
I hate to rag on people who work hard to do their job, I really do, but in this case I can't help myself. They allegedly spent millions of dollars play-testing and balancing this game, so what gives? I realize how hard it is to write good AI, but if you can't manage to do it well enough in time, why the hell the constant cliff edges you can drive off?
I guess that's my rant for the day. Halo 3 is a pretty good game, but it has some major flaws that make it a lot less enjoyable than it should have been.
The gameplay hasn't changed much since Halo 2, the control ramps are very well calibrated, the slightly sticky camera that helps you aim better is still there and still feels just right. The vehicles still control well enough, with the Ghost being the highlight as always, it just plain kicks ass. Unless you're in a Scorpion tank, you'll want to jump out of whatever vehicle you're in and switch to the Ghost as soon as you see one.
So where's the problem? It looks great apart from the character models and it controls really well. Indeed, Halo 3 would be the best FPS on any console if you just went by those criteria. However, it's really badly balanced. Some battles right at the beginning of the game will kick your ass six ways till Sunday, and as Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame put it, the closest thing to a final boss battle is you with a BFG9000 against a cross-eyed hobbit in a wheelchair.
The level design isn't just a bit dodgy, some levels have you navigating a maze while under attack from an endless stream of enemies, and it takes several minutes of running around without a clue before the game decides to point you in the general direction you need to go. Unfortunately that rarely helps in the more maze-like levels of the game as the path TO the guide arrow is often anything but straightforward. I didn't really have much problems surviving at this point or actually finishing the levels, but it felt like a chore and it just wasn't fun to play.
Now the worst part of the game is the AI. It is without a doubt the most annoying friendly AI in any recent game that I've played. Two of the times when I was manning the turret of a Warthog (because space marines can't aim for shit), the AI drove me right off a cliff just when I got to a checkpoint, forcing me into an endless loop of watching Master Chief plummet to his death.
This isn't just a minor flaw, when the AI doesn't drive you off cliffs, it will drive into walls or rocks and then just stay there and not even try to go anywhere. The "friendly" AI kills you almost as often as the enemy AI, and that's not a good thing.
The AI is not a problem if you play co-op, obviously, but I really don't think that's a good excuse. It shouldn't drive off cliffs, and if it does do that all the time, don't make 90% of the driving levels take place on the edge of a damn cliff. I mean what the hell kind of game design is that?
I hate to rag on people who work hard to do their job, I really do, but in this case I can't help myself. They allegedly spent millions of dollars play-testing and balancing this game, so what gives? I realize how hard it is to write good AI, but if you can't manage to do it well enough in time, why the hell the constant cliff edges you can drive off?
I guess that's my rant for the day. Halo 3 is a pretty good game, but it has some major flaws that make it a lot less enjoyable than it should have been.
torsdag 12 mars 2009
Welcome to your doom! </altered beast>
I am a 28 year old guy from Sweden, and I'm going to blog here about my studies and eventually about work, if it works out alright. I also have some ideas for concepts that might be interesting or even helpful to others. I've had a break from studying quite a few years now, but with everything I've learned during that time I feel I'm more ready than ever to tackle any challenges that may come up. I imagine most people who read this blog will already know me, but who knows?
It's hard to know where to start, but I don't really think I need to type out all the details here. For now it'll have to suffice that I'm mostly autodidact when it comes to computers, but I'm willing to swallow my pride to increase career opportunities. I have quite a bit of knowledge of programming already, so it does feel a bit silly having to take basic programming classes. Thankfully the classes are pretty flexible, now that it's not a formal school that I actually have to attend, so the studies take the whole focus. From what I understand I'll be able to skip ahead fairly quickly to more advanced classes in subjects I'm good at.
The programming classes will be using Java to teach OOP, but I can complement with C++ later on. I already have pretty extensive knowledge of Python and OOP in that context and some previous knowledge of Pascal and C to help me out. I'm by no means a full-fledged programming guru, but I can fix bugs, clean up code as long as it's not too advanced and write simpler programs without too much hassle. By the end of my studies I expect to be better by at least an order of magnitude, so well, by then I might actually start calling myself a programmer instead of a sloppy coder.
In any case, I will post more about my ideas and thoughts with updates on how my studies are going over the next couple of years. Hopefully someone will find it entertaining or perhaps even useful.
It's hard to know where to start, but I don't really think I need to type out all the details here. For now it'll have to suffice that I'm mostly autodidact when it comes to computers, but I'm willing to swallow my pride to increase career opportunities. I have quite a bit of knowledge of programming already, so it does feel a bit silly having to take basic programming classes. Thankfully the classes are pretty flexible, now that it's not a formal school that I actually have to attend, so the studies take the whole focus. From what I understand I'll be able to skip ahead fairly quickly to more advanced classes in subjects I'm good at.
The programming classes will be using Java to teach OOP, but I can complement with C++ later on. I already have pretty extensive knowledge of Python and OOP in that context and some previous knowledge of Pascal and C to help me out. I'm by no means a full-fledged programming guru, but I can fix bugs, clean up code as long as it's not too advanced and write simpler programs without too much hassle. By the end of my studies I expect to be better by at least an order of magnitude, so well, by then I might actually start calling myself a programmer instead of a sloppy coder.
In any case, I will post more about my ideas and thoughts with updates on how my studies are going over the next couple of years. Hopefully someone will find it entertaining or perhaps even useful.
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