This topic contains spoilers, for which reason it's going to be here. It's going to be quite long too, and English is not my native language.

I'm visually impaired - not completely blind, but very low vision. I like adventure games much, have played many titles created by Sierra, LucasArts, some Cryo titles and more. From the Myst realm, I have played Myst V, Uru:cc and recently RealMyst. Uru:cc was the reason I came here in MO:ULagain as soon as I heard about it's worldwide availability for fre - region restrictions prevented me to come earlier. I'm going to point out some of my impressions of Uru and Myst games in general.

Myst games appear to me as really artistic, not paying attantion to accessibility for people with vision or hearing impairments. Even the very first Myst game wasn't solvable without a soundcard, and it continued through several sequels. For me, as a visually impaired player, is the greatest obstacle complete lack of captions - cursor just changes its shape over things responding to clicking/dragging, but no description is given. And the main problem of me is spotting and identifying things. that's why I appreciate commented "let's play"s on YouTube, where time is devoted to describing surroundings upon first arrival - that allowed me to enjoy RealMyst, BTW. But still, I follow walkthroughs while playing adventure games in general, since there is still enough challenge for me left ...

And now to Uru. I'll start with things I enjoyed about it. The most important is - there are mostly no time constraints for solving things. Yes, there are some exceptions, but generally it's true. The most difficult time-critical puzzles for me were in Gahreeesen - powering up the building, jumping to and from the island on moving bridges. I never minded being forced to walk with fireflies in Kemo/Gira.

The next great topic about Uru is the community and interaction with it. Revealing people's names by hovering my cursor over them is a feature I would greatly appreciate in real life. People here helped me to overcome my difficulties with gameplay.

For me, the greatest problem in gaming in general is spotting and identifying things. Cursor appearance changes were not much help for me either - they are so subtle I noticed them after two months in cavern. And identifying cryptic symbols and pictures simply "goes over my head" as a bot here sometimes says. That's especially true about the Kadish Gallery, where I'm unable to properly see the top image of the telescope setting for Tolesa. Darnkess of Au'gura is another problem for me, luckily I'm able to raise gamma either in game or via tools provided with a graphics driver. Minkata is completely unsolvable for me, since I can't see constellations - I just see dots scattered on my screen. I'm also missing captioning of active spots - just simple captions like "pedal", "button", "dial" etc. would be great for me. And finally - I can't read handwriting at all, rendering great part of in-game documents unreadable. But the solution for this is on it's way to public, I suppose.

And now I'm going to suggest some ways new contents can be made more accessible with means already available in the game.

As I said earlier, the most difficult part for me is spotting and identifying things. KI already has a location-sensitive command ready to remedy this - yes, I mean the /look command. By providing good textual descriptions of surroundings, somehow mentioning important things responding to interaction, and even describing machinery when one just zooms out of its close-up could help greatly. It also helps making important thing somehow contrast to their surroundings - doesn't need to be necessarily ugly, I think good artists can cope with that. Quabs in Ahmonay are the good example of things which are hard to find for me because of their color being similar to the ground. Puzzles requiring only ears to successfully solve them should be avoided - there should be always some visual feedback too so that people with hearing difficulties (either caused by their ears or sound related problems of their computers) could be able to solve them.

Looks like that's all from me for now, I may remember something later.

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KI#: 02331712

If there is anything I can do to help in any way, please feel free to PM me anytime.

I want to thank you for bringing this up. It's an important thing to remember when designing games and puzzles, but it's easy for those of us without sensory impairments to forget. That means it needs to be brought up periodically, so that people remember. When the time comes that I design my own Ages, I will remember this post.


Incidentally, you may be interested in interactive fiction (text adventures). The modern hobbyist community is mostly making adventure games, and the form is naturally friendly to those with vision or hearing problems. The genre does have a bit of a learning curve (the text parser can be fairly nonintuitive to those not yet initiated), but I personally feel that the quality of work being produced is worth it.

If you're interested, I'd recommend starting by reading this introduction to the form (PDF), followed by playing The Dreamhold or City of Secrets (for the latter, you will also need an interpreter; I recommend Gargoyle). After that, Baf's Guide and the Interactive Fiction Database are good places to find more games.

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Have Ages, and link to them without bindings.

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Ian A. Pertwee in Cavern - KI# 374362
Ahnotahm - Il quartiere
Not talking as a mod unless I say so

Thanks for your viewpoint. It is difficult for me to imagine how things look or the problems for those with motor skill challenges. On the other hand, I'm sure the impaired have problems understanding how and why hobbyist and game designers so resist handling the color challenges...

We can proto-type things quickly in SL and have them out where people can play with them. So, I'm thinking of writing a simple help system using LOOK and HELP in chat to trigger the system response.

Then there is color and contrast. For beginning modelers and artists adding another criteria, especially to color, is a rather large obstacle. We do have script control over color, bright, and glow as well as particles. So, it may be easier to have objects flash for a few seconds.

Since this is proto-typing in SL I put that thread on OpenUru.org. Ideas for the proto-type are welcome there.

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Nalates - GoC - 418 - MOULagain: Nal KI#00 083 543, Nalates 111451 - Second Life: Nalates Urriah
Guild of Cartographers

Excellent post TomVal!

Being older, I also have a couple of problems when playing games:

1. My hearing is no longer 100%, especially with regards to sounds in the high range. So, I now wear hearing aids when playing games. I also turn up all of the sound options all the way, which helps me to hear the ambient sounds, and turn off the music (which drowns out everything else when on). I also use headphones.

2. With regards to colour, fortunately I have no problems there. However, there are many areas in Uru that are quite dark, and consequently have very little contrast. Try adjusting the gamma capability - this can be done both by your monitor and in the game itself - click on the drawing of the wrench in the lower righthand corner of your monitor. I did this to "brighten" up the game and to be able to see the dark areas.

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the journey begins again . . .

Thanks for your opinions. I'm about to address some issues mentioned in previous replies.

To get a rough idea about what can I see, imagine you can see anything in 160x120 pixels with 64 color fixed color palette. Yes , I can see more colors, but can't tell them apart unless they're next to each other.

SecondLife was mentioned here. I entered its open clone, OpenSim, using Hippo viewer. And I realized I really appreciate 1st person view here in Uru. SL doesn't have it, only mouselook, but it's not good for me. I even love Uru's "Always stay in 1st person" - helps with staying oriented while climbing ladders.

I would love if even completely blind people could taste something from Myst universe. I can even imagine first Myst re-created as a text adventure with sounds from original Myst and timed puzzles reworked to measure time in turns instead of seconds (tree lift).

More information about how handicapped people perceive gaming can be found on http://www.gameaccessibility.com/index.php?pagefile=games

And last but not least - I'm trying to find ways Uru experience can be improved without program changes. If I wanted some program changes, I would definitely appreciate text captions for active spots, more distinctive cursor change, and of course, active spot highlighting as employed in many current point-and-click adventure games. Also direct TTS support for KI chat and ability to have documents read aloud by TTS engine would be great, and there are definitely missiong subtitles for speeches.

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KI#: 02331712

While Uru first person and SL mouseview are similar they are different, controls and clicking on things...

What part of mouseview didn't work for you?

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Nalates - GoC - 418 - MOULagain: Nal KI#00 083 543, Nalates 111451 - Second Life: Nalates Urriah
Guild of Cartographers

In SL's mouseview, I can't access UI elements when it's engaged. In 3rd person view, I have to care about aviews direction of sight, and this is sometimes a problem for me. And it's unpleasant surprise if I hit forward arrow and I'm moving at unwanted direction.

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KI#: 02331712

TomVal ... That was good that you posted this. A few things that came to my mind when I read your post were these:
1) some of the subtle little details are missed by me too, AND many of the people who have helped me can attest to the fact that some of the less subtle details are missed by me too
2) regarding Minkata, I have trouble with it because of lag, I plot the constellation and attempt to find it using a timer, but usually don't get to the Kiva ... BUT if you run into Tanshin (hope you don't mind me mentioning you Tan) or anyone who has his marker missions for your KI, they will lead you to and from the kivas, so you can accomplish the age with a good bit of help. And it's not the kind of mission that you would have to register in the Great Zero. Not to be condescending, but did you try to plot the constellations on graph paper (I made my own graph paper on a drawing program)? MAYBE you could make sense of all the dots afterall.
I'm glad you can still enjoy the artistry of Myst. I hope that as time goes on maybe some really good technical people can make adjustments to accomodate the hearing and visually impaired, could it be possible to create an "add on", additional options to improve the problems that people with challenges like this face? I suppose it will take people with the challenges, to do as you did and let everyone know the trouble they are having.

Hope this helped.

FloCat

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KI #439554

For unique pottery and other creative work (custom included), see my website at www.fircreations.com

I have already completed everything in MOUL several times. I got a marker game for Minkata from some generous explorers. I understand that settings of this game imply some sort of inaccessibility - we're exploring remnants of an old civilization. But I noticed some aspects Myst series as a whole left unaddressed, and it's necessary to say some accessibility features could be spoilers for others as well - but it can be managed. This is why they need to be treated specially (maybe by special icon in KI - there's a place with no icon, which could be conveniently used). And I might say it before - D'ni had visual issues too, so I think they had more technological solutions for that than just glasses.

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KI#: 02331712