Audyssey; Games Accessible to the Blind Issue 32: First Quarter, 2002 Edited by Michael Feir and Rebecca Sutton Fun, Friendship, Knowledge, Charity Current members: Audysub list: 56 Blind gamers list: 156 Note: These numbers do not represent total readership. Audyssey can be obtained and given freely, and is posted on numerous sites on the Web. +++ Welcome Welcome to the thirty-second issue of Audyssey. This magazine is dedicated to the discussion of games which, through accident or design, are accessible to the blind either with or without sighted assistance. Gamers are in for a real treat this time around. ESP Softworks has finally released Monkey Business. We have an in-depth interview of James North. Also, people have looked back to the classic games of yesteryear even as new games are emerging. Note: This magazine uses plus-signs as navigation markers. Three plus-signs are placed above any articles or sections. Within these sections, two plus-signs denote the start of a new sub-section. Smaller divisions are marked by a single plus-sign. This allows people to use their search capabilities to go quickly to the next division they are interested in. For instance, the "Letters" section is preceded by three plus-signs. Each letter within it has two plus-signs before it. Answers to letters have a single plus-sign before them. +++ Distribution Information and Submission Policies This magazine is published on a quarterly basis, each issue appearing no earlier than the fifteenth of the publication month for its quarter. All submissions to be published in an issue must be in my possession a minimum of four days before the issue is published. I use MS-Word to produce Audyssey, and can therefore accept submissions in pretty much any format. They may be sent either on a 3.5-inch floppy disk, or via e-mail to my E-mail address. I will give my home address and my E-mail address at the end of the magazine. Please write articles and letters about games or game-related topics which interest you. They will likely interest me, and your fellow readers. This magazine should and can be a highly interesting and qualitative look at accessible gaming. To insure that high quality is maintained, I'll need your written contributions. I reserve the right to unilaterally make changes to submissions if I deem it necessary to improve them grammatically or enhance their understand ability. I will never make changes which will alter the spirit of a submission. All submissions must be in English. However, people need not be great writers to have their work appear in Audyssey. Many of our community come from different countries. Others are quite young. Where possible, I try to preserve their different styles of expression. The richness that this adds to the Audyssey experience far outweighs any benefits gained from having everything in prose so perfect as to be devoid of life. Audyssey is a community and magazine built on the need for blind people to have fun. There are no formal structural requirements for submissions. Within reason, they may be as long as necessary. Game reviews should all clearly state who created the game being examined, where it can be obtained, whether it can be played without sighted assistance, and any system requirements or other critical information. Although profanity is by no means banned, it should not be used gratuitously. Submissions not published in a current issue will be reserved for possible use in future issues if appropriate. Those who are on the Audyssey discussion list should be aware that I often put materials from the list in the "Letters" section if I feel that they warrant it. Anything posted to this discussion list that in some way stands out from the common and often lively ongoing discourse will be considered fair game for publishing unless it contains the author's wish that it not be published. Until now, this practice has been commonly consented to. From now on, it is now officially a policy of the Audyssey community. This magazine is free in its electronic form, and will always remain so. Due to a lack of demand, PCS Games is no longer making Audyssey available on disk. I'm writing this magazine as much for my own interest as for everyone else's. Your articles, reviews, and letters, as well as any games you might care to send me, are what I'm after. Send any games, articles, letters, or reviews via E-mail, or on a 3.5-inch disk in a self- addressed mailer so that I can return your disk or disks to you once I have copied their contents onto my hard drive. Please only send shareware or freeware games. It is illegal to send commercial games unless you are their creator or have obtained permission to do so. By sending me games, you will do several things: first, and most obviously, you will earn my gratitude. You will also insure that the games you send me are made available to my readership as a whole. As a further incentive, I will fill any disks you send me with games from my collection. No disk will be returned empty. If you want specific games, or specific types of games, send a message in ASCII format along. If you have a particular game that you need help with, and you are sending your questions on a disk anyhow, include the game so that I can try and get past your difficulty. If you can, I recommend that you send e-mail. I can send and receive attachments with ease. This way, no money will be wasted sending me a game I already have, and you'll get my reply more quickly. You are responsible for shipping costs. That means, either use a disk mailer which has your address on it, and is either free matter for the blind, or is properly stamped. I can and will gladly spare time to share games and my knowledge of them, but cannot currently spare money above what I spend hunting for new games. I encourage all my readers to give my magazine to whoever they think will appreciate it. Up-load it onto web pages and bulletin board systems. Copy it on disk for people, or print it out for sighted people who may find it of value. The larger our community gets, the more self-sustaining it will become. There are now several ways of obtaining Audyssey. ESP Softworks is no longer directly supporting Audyssey Magazine on its site. As a result, those who want to receive issues of Audyssey as they are published should send a blank E-mail to: Audysub-subscribe@yahoogroups.com The Audyssey discussion list facilitates discussion about games accessible to the blind between the publication of issues of Audyssey. All are welcome as long as they respect their fellow community members and keep in mind that the topic of the list is supposed to be games. Other topics are allowed within reason as long as they don't begin to monopolize the list traffic for too long. Newcomers should be advised that traffic is frequently fairly heavy. To help those who are swamped with E-mail cope with this, there is a digest mode available which sends one large E-mail per day containing the day's traffic. Anyone participating in the discussion list will have issues of Audyssey automatically sent to them via E-mail. Representatives from all major developers of games for the blind are actively participating on the list. All staff members of Audyssey are also participating. If you want an active role in shaping the future of accessible games, this is where you can dive right in. To subscribe to this discussion list, send a blank message to: blindgamers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com To post messages to the list, send them to: blindgamers@yahoogroups.com Should you wish to unsubscribe, send a blank message to: Blindgamers-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com To change your subscription to digest mode so that you only receive one message per day, send a blank message to: Blindgamers-digest@yahoogroups.com To go back to receiving individual messages, send a blank message to: Blindgamers-normal@yahoogroups.com There are more options at your disposal. To find out about them, send a blank message to: Blindgamers-help@yahoogroups.com Stan Bobbitt has made Audyssey Magazine available in HTML format for easy on-line browsing. To take advantage of this, you are invited to visit: http://www.geocities.com/sbobbitt21 People can easily and quickly navigate through the various articles and reviews, and directly download or visit the sites of the games that interest them. This will be of especial benefit for sighted people who wish to make use of Audyssey and/or join the growing community surrounding it. The Audyssey community thanks Mr. Bobbitt for his continued efforts on its behalf in this matter. You can also find all issues of Audyssey on the Internet on Paul Henrichsen's web site at: www.henrichsen.org J.J. Meddaugh has long been famous in the Audyssey community. He has now started his own web-site called The Blind Community. All issues of Audyssey are there in zipped files in the file centre. Kelly Sapergia's site has unfortunately closed down for the moment. We'll hopefully have better news in the next issue of Audyssey regarding this. He can still be contacted via E-mail with the recently changed address you'll find in the Contacting Us section of Audyssey. Another site has recently added Audyssey issues to its resources. We welcome: www.blindhelp.com to the Audyssey community and hope that visitors to this site find our resource to be of value to them. If you have ftp access, all issues are also available at Travis Siegel's ftp site: ftp://ftp.softcon.com Look in the /magazines directory. +++ Contents: Welcome Distribution Information and Submission Policies Contents From The Editor Letters Get Going With Valhalla if you're new! Final results Mach1 world championship 2001 A Disturbing Trend How A Sonic Side-scrolling Game Could Work What's Going On With Accessible Games New List For Game Developers IF Only What "They" Say: James North of ESP Softworks BPCPrograms, Making Games Designed For Blazie Note takers! Friendly Travellers Puzzles AND Games Free Game Winner News From Danssoft News From ESP Softworks News From GMA Games News from MindsEye2 News From PCS An Alternative Game mach 1 race-calendar 2002 Game Announcements and Reviews Answers to Puzzles Contacting Us +++ From The Editor: Greetings, gamers. This issue marks the beginning of our first year as a quarterly publication. Starting off frighteningly slowly with very little happening, it has ended in a rush of exciting announcements and developments. The long anticipated Monkey Business has been released, and Dan Zingaro has come through with a nifty classic arcade game for us. Jim Kitchen has also announced that he's working on an old favourite of the sighted world. I have high confidence that we'll have an event-filled second quarter. This is particularly pleasant since my personal life demands that I entrust the editorship of the next issue to another person. Rebecca and I are going to be married in June, and due to extremely long delays in getting subsidised housing, we have decided that the better course of action is to move into our own apartment in May. This will hopefully give us time to settle in and adjust to independent life together before the wedding. Both moving out for the first time and getting married add up to a whole lot of stress. Re-structuring one's life so drastically is not accomplished without a high amount of painful choices and compromises. I've reached the stage now where I need to put myself entirely to the task of preparation for our new lives. I've been editing this magazine for over five years, and other than the last-minute crunch, I have enjoyed it immensely. Before you jump to the wrong conclusion, I'll make it clear that I'm not resigning as editor. I wouldn't dream of walking away from such a fantastic community after seeing it grow and take shape around me for so long. My intentions are to resume editing Audyssey no later than July and put together the August issue. If all goes well, I won't be out of contact from the community for very long. It's a very hard thing to step away from something which has meant so much to me even on a temporary basis. However, I was fortunate to have the understanding and support of the community. Those letters of congratulations and best wishes mean a lot to me. Also, a relative newcomer to the list, Lynn Williams, has agreed to step in as acting editor while Rebecca and I get settled. She will produce the second quarter issue due out at the end of May. People should send all submitions to her E-mail address at: jaaladog@attbi.com Reading an Audyssey issue that I haven't edited is an experience I'm certainly looking forward to. This is particularly the case after seeing the abundance of support and good will on the Blind gamers list. People are coming forward and making certain Lynn knows she's not alone. Keep it up, folks. All game developers should make a point of contacting Lynn as well. I have every confidence that I'm in for a great read when the end of May comes around. Those of you who are interested in a free game from ESP Softworks should write a submission for the May issue. Thanks to the ongoing generosity of James North at ESP Softworks, I hereby announce that Lynn will have the pleasant task of awarding the author of the most deserving contribution a free game of his/her choosing from ESP Softworks. We are now completely switched over to running on Yahoogroups. You'll want to be certain that you're subscribed to the right list for the level of involvement you want to have with the gaming community. Starting with this issue, I'll post statistics for both the subscription list and the Blind gamers discussion list near the top of the issue to give us all a better sense of how much we're growing or, gasp! Shrinking! Now that we're completely on neutral territory using Yahoogroups for the distribution and discussion lists, I believe we're on as independent a footing as possible. Developers will all now hopefully see that it is to everyone's benefit if they help Audyssey be a better magazine. They can do this by providing content, running contests, and doubtless in other ways that have yet to be thought of. They should realise from the start that helping Audyssey in no way entitles them to special status or privileges. I'll never let people endanger the rights of others to say what they think about the games they play. Personal attacks and outright lies are one thing. Those I will do all in my power to save people from. However, being critical of games is perfectly fair. Developers should expect it and learn what they can from it. Anybody also has the right to respond publicly to anything published in this magazine. This is the footing that we'll move forward with. Joshua Loya deserves a special mention here for taking up the torch and agreeing to start a permanent column in Audyssey called What They Say. This column will feature interviews with important people in the blind gaming community. His first interview is with James North of ESP Softworks. Good luck with this new endeavour, Joshua. You have set sail in very fine fashion indeed. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I was unable to have the surprise I promised ready in time for inclusion in this issue of Audyssey. It will be ready shortly. The surprise was a game I have nearly completed which is a board-game equivalent to a classic side-scrolling video game. Two dice are all that is needed to play. Called Sparkle, the game puts up to six adventurers in a complex of stacked levels full of goblins, ghosts, trophies and other items. Players have to clear all levels of trophies in order to win. Goblins also try to obtain trophies. At the top of the complex are two exits where trophies must be deposited and where a dragon waits to destroy the incautious player. As a sort of consolation, I have written down a proposal on how a side-scrolling game could be made for blind people using stereo sound. Designing Sparkle has re-shaped and clarified my ideas on this so that I am now confident that they are feasible. I hope one or more game developers out there can put them to use, and that readers find my theories to be of interest. This issue is a particularly meaningful one for me since it is the last one I'll write as a single person. Due to the slow beginning of the first quarter, I decided to try to have Sparkle ready to release as part of the issue. This completion of a project I've been thinking about and working at for years would have been a nice capstone to my writing to this point. It will still serve as that since it is the last project I started prior to the radical changes my life has gone through. There won't be time to play-test the game before I release it to the community at large. I'll rely on anyone interested to help with this. Eventually, I hope to release a revised version taking your feedback into account. Other than Audyssey, I won't start any more projects as ambitious without first making certain that there is adequate compensation for Rebecca and I. Recently, we both attended a meeting of a group of parents of blind children where there was interest in learning about computer games accessible to blind people. Thanks to everyone who gave permission for me to include material on the Sounds Like Fun CD which I created. I'll be keeping it updated as new demos and games become available. It was an absolute pleasure to talk with them and open their minds to some of the games around. I'll be on the look-out for more opportunities in the future to speak to interested groups. Parents and seniors are two categories of people who I would be particularly keen on raising awareness of games among. Both groups, I feel, could benefit a lot from such exposure. My thanks to Susan Wolmak for providing such a good speaking opportunity. No matter what happens, I'll always remain a loyal supporter and participant of the gaming community. I hope to be editing Audyssey for life as the rewards have far outweighed the costs in time and energy. As we begin our new lives, I am very honoured and comforted that we have such a fantastic online community behind us. I wish all of you well, and look forward to continuing my duties when circumstances permit. Until we move, I'll still be reachable at my E-mail address that you'll find in the "Contacting Us" section. You can also reach me by phone. However, after the move, I'll have to get a new E-mail address. I won't be publishing the new phone number since it is no longer entirely mine and Rebecca values her privacy. However, I'll certainly let you all know my E-mail address when I know it myself. +++ Letters: ++ From Martin: Hello Michael and all, I'm a fairly new reader of Auddyssey and found it to be a massive help in finding out about accessible games. Please print a big THANK YOU to all who contribute. As a minor contribution of my own I would add that I have enjoyed immensely the GMA games: Trek 2000, Shades of Doom and most particularly Lone Wolf. The area of gaming that I find wanting is accessible strategy games. I have searched widely but the nearest I've come up with to my taste is Utopia, a MUD available from Swirve.com. If anyone knows of an accessible game with a large strategy content I would be grateful. Also I can no longer find Audyssey on the ESP site - how can I access back copies? Cheers, Martin. + Not too long ago, ESP Softworks decided to change its posture in relation to Audyssey in order to avoid any feelings among other game developers that the magazine might be unduly influenced in favour of ESP Softworks. As a result, there is no longer an Audyssey section on the ESP Softworks site and the distribution list formerly managed by James North has now been moved. Both the Audyssey discussion list and the E-mail distribution list are now on Yahoogroups. This makes it easier for everyone and provides a completely neutral forum for discussion. It also gives ESP Softworks more time to put into developing great games for everyone and support the community in different ways. I would certainly rather have avoided the bad feelings and such which this process entailed, but trust that the result arrived at will be worth it all in the long run. A good place to find Audyssey is: www.blindhelp.com ++ David Russel started a thread near the end of 2001 which asked gamers to look back at the year's events and say who made the top contributions to the gaming community over the past year. I have included some of the more explanatory posts on this topic below: Hi All As it is approaching the end of the year, why don't we all get a bit nostalgic and take a moment to consider who has done the most for blind gamers in 2001. For myself, at the start of this year I did not know you could play games on the pc, at least not games specially invented and adapted for blind people, so I am probably not qualified to give an opinion. But that has never stopped me yet, so I will give a few mentions to leading contenders. Free games by Jim Kitchen are where many of us started, and I am no exception. David Greenwood has presented us with Shades, which has been called a landmark in gaming for the blind, and James North has given us Monkey Business *well almost* not to mention Pinball. Also in order to catch up with what I have missed out on, Michael's Audyssey mag has been indispensable. There must be others I have not mentioned but, assuming we all have one vote, where would yours go? I have decided, but will keep my ideas to myself for the moment. I forgot to mention Grizzly Gulch, but that was probably last year. Let's hope for something new from Bavisoft in the New Year. + Nick Adamson wrote: Hi. My thoughts are that any one who makes accessible games is worth a mention but I think GMAGames gets my vote. I'm probably a bit biased because Lone Wolf was the first game I purchased. I also think James at ESPSoftWorks has worked very hard for the community. + Jim Kitchen wrote: Hi Stan, I have to agree with you about Michael Feir spreading the word about accessible games. But there were accessible games long before Michael Feir started the Audyssey magazine. Many early text games worked very well with dos screen readers. Then there was us who in the early 1990's and I'm sure even before that created games specifically designed to work well with screen readers like Richard L. De Steno, PCS and myself. You could find the games as well as all screen reader friendly programs on a BBS run by Willie Wilson in Pittsburgh named Blink-link. Willie Wilson also was the monitor of a Fidonet echo named Blink-Talk that spread the word about accessible games and other programs for the blind. I believe that you can still call into Willie Wilson's BBS. If you are talking about accessible games in the last couple of years yes you have to talk about the people at http://www.gmagames.com http://www.pcsgames.com http://www.espsoftworks.com http://www.gamesfortheblind.com http://www.bavisoft.com http://www.mindseye2.com http://www.blindsoftware.com http://www.codfact.com and hopefully myself at' http://www.kitchensinc.net Now in the last year it may be narrowed down to only a couple of the above. But I just wanted to mention that there was a history of us that were working on accessible games for many, many years before even the Audyssey Magazine came about. ++ I don't usually take a reply without first putting in the question. However, in this case, I think it is appropriate. The question was brought forward by a player of Once And Future. This extremely good text adventure had the player in a sorry plight. Instead of risking learning too much and looking at a walkthrough, the distressed player sent a call for help to the Audyssey list. Thankfully Rian Strunk, a generous and worthy gamer, came to the rescue. Note the use of the words "spoiler space" written in vertical letters each on a separate line. This is a convention adopted by the Audyssey list and other lists when one wants to give aid to those who truly want it, but does not want to ruin the game for others. This is how it is done: From Ryan Strunk: s p o i l e r s p a c e Here's a bit of a hint on the third mountain king puzzle. The puzzle, as you have guessed is a bit cumbersome, but try this out. Take absolutely everything out of everywhere. When that's done, you should have 12 new objects in your inventory. Place one object in the torus, point the vane at one of the intermediate directions, and give the lever several pulls. After each pull, investigate the rooms and trace the path of the object. You should be able to figure it out from there. As for the straw man puzzle ... that one is a bit tougher. Notice that when you look at the maiden the first time, she is enjoying the heat and wants more. Take special note of how increasing and decreasing the number of lit facets changes the heat of the diamond. Give her what she wants. Good luck, and let me know if you have any other questions. ++ From Jamie: HI Listers: I was just reading through the magazine recently, and an idea came to me. It seems to me that there are a number of people who are interested in programming games, and especially accessible games. One of these of course would be myself. As I wrote a while ago I have been working on coding an accessible game in the same genre as a bauldurs gate or ultima etc. I was wondering if some of the more experienced game programmers out there have thought about creating a mentorship program where people who are interested in designing games would be able to ask questions, and get advice on some preferred way of doing things. Like I know for myself I am working to figure the best way of designing and implementing an engine. I know that there are many things to consider before something like this could come to fruition. But I just wanted to put it out there to see if there might be some interest. + As Jamie is on our active discussion list, he has undoubtedly already heard about the list for developers of accessible games which you'll find the announcement for later in this issue. Let us all hope that it serves as a springboard for fresh thinking and a means of increased cooperation. ++ One thing which has increasingly come under discussion lately is how we as a community react to games designed specifically for the blind. There are two basic positions here. On the one hand, some of us feel that any game for the blind should be viewed positively. Since authors have taken time to create games which consider our needs, we should view the results, whatever they might be, in a positive and grateful fashion. Others contend that games should be viewed objectively including their faults and short-comings. This magazine always has been and always will be a forum where people are free to express whatever they wish about accessible games as long as it is within reason and not patently false. Roger Myers presented the list with some interesting thoughts on why all games should be thought of positively. He has given permission to include the following part of his message. I present two letters below concerning this topic: + From Roger Myers: I think there are probably good and bad features in all the games and some times it depends on your point of view as to what is a good feature and what is a bad one. That is why we have reviews to point out what the game is like in an objective way. I mean that any game written for the blind is basically a good thing and should be considered as such. I guess I prefer to be optimistic and look at a glass as being half full not half empty. I think it helps more towards promoting games for the blind that way. If you are putting things on either the side of being good or bad have you found games written for the blind which are bad? Which are they? I would like to try one out. I want to see if I can find any good in it. I do not mean bad like badly written. If a program does not work, has so many bugs no one can play it, and so on it is not really a game at all. So limiting ourselves to real games written just for the blind or at least primarily for the blind can you tell me of one which you consider a bad game? I suppose some may consider a game teaching crime or bad morals a bad game. I really have not found any game for the blind that does anything like that. If not then I contend that they all have at least some good in them even if it just is that it shows the person cares about the blind and is trying to help. So for all the good which is in the games I consider them jewels and the good should be encouraged. Not all jewels have the same value but can all be considered good things to have. If one takes the time to tell a programmer they did well it encourages them to write more games This does not need to be as reviews either. Just a tiny note of one line to let the programmer know you found something you liked about their game will mean a lot and go a long way to promote games for the blind. It need not cost you anything. Just make a practice of every time you play a new game written for the blind take a moment to write the author and let him/her know at least one thing you liked about it. That is it in a nut shell. Programmers seem to mainly only hear from people who did not like something or could not get something working etc. If you want to help out with little time then let a programmer know you liked something about his game when you notice it of course. And try to look for the good in each game. Trust me. It makes a difference. + From David Lant: Hi Roger, I agree with the entire sentiment of your last message. It's a real shame you're not allowing these ideas to appear in Audyssey. They're worth something, believe me. What I think some of us were reacting to, was the implication in your original note, that *all* games for the blind *had* to be received positively. Now, I appreciate that positive feedback is an essential part to development, both personal and technical. However, I don't think we should stray into the educational error of praising for the sake of praise. I was just leaving full time education when the popular movement arrived which indicated that it was not good to correct a child's mistakes, because it was felt this would undermine their self confidence. The problem with this approach was that the child then went on in life never being able to take correction, and never improving either. Psychologically, it probably made sense to someone, but educationally, not to mention socially, it didn't make sense. The same applies to games and their developers. By all means, give praise where praise is due. But no game, no matter how well written, or how much effort went into its production, has a right to be praised. Nor, by the same token, must any game be subjected to unnecessary and indiscriminate barracking. I'm perhaps in a sufficiently secure financial and social position, not to feel that being blind makes me a charity case. Therefore, I refuse to feel gratitude just because someone does something in the name of helping the blind. Now, that sounds worse than it is. The problem starts when people do things because they *think* it will help the blind, without stopping to find out whether it actually will or not. Yes, I have actually had people try to help me across a road I did not want to cross. I'm afraid I will not thank people for that. I think that all of the people I'm currently aware of, who are writing games for the blind, are doing so for the best reasons, and have done their research. As yet, I've not come across any games that I would consider to be demeaning or insulting in their treatment of the abilities of the blind. There are games, however, that I would not feel are very worthy of much note, and others that have been aimed at the wrong audience, in the way of age group and the like. But they all deserve a fair crack of the whip. As long as people realise that occasionally, the whip hurts. In any publication, it is the editor's responsibility to ensure that any articles they publish are reasonable, legal and decent. Provided that a review of a game is an honest appraisal, and does not contain merely a whinge list, then it should be published as is, with no prior interference. If, on the other hand, the reviewer appears to be just slamming the game because they didn't enjoy it, without any attempt at even handedness, then I would think the editor would either ask for the author to make some modifications, or to reject the article outright. Yes, an editor *is* entitled to as a contributor to alter their submissions if he or she wishes. And naturally, the author may refuse, on the understanding that this may result in the article not being published. For my own part, I know Michael will not make people change the spirit or intent of their submissions unnecessarily. What I think we really need, is for many more people out there to write reviews. Rather than make conditions on their creation, let's just have a whole lot more of them, and then we'll get the kind of range and variety that Michael's always wanted. ++ James Peach got everyone started thinking about what they regard as classic games. Here is his original posting and some of the more thought-provoking replies. Hello everyone, I was sitting here, listening to my favourite console game soundtracks, and got to thinking. There are many classic books out there, and even classic movies that we enjoy over and over. Could computer/console gaming be enjoyed in it's classical state as other art forms are? Listening to the Super Mario Brothers theme, and Mario Kart tracks, I was getting a hankering to play those ol' games again! I spent hours as a youth playing such fun an exciting games, and might still enjoy them. I know that we all have different ideas about what a "classic" game is. For some, Galaga or Pac Man is their idea of "classic", while others think of some obscure BBS or Telnet game they played over a decade ago. Thought I would put this sentiment forward to the list, and listen to what everyone has to say about it. + Ron Schammerhorn wrote: Hi James Rather thought provoking! For my bit I would have to consider some of the old Atari 2600 games to be the console classics. A couple that I enjoyed were Berzerk, and Asteroids. Of course there were also the older arcade machines. Karate Champ was one of my favs even though it's not all that old. I was pretty good at it so I guess that would be why *s* + Jim Kitchen wrote: Hi Damon, Yeah I also started on an Atari 2600. My favourite games were Pole Position, bowling, baseball, football, space invaders, star wars, star trek and pong. Next I went to an Atari 800 xl home computer. Some of the above games might have actually been on the 800 xl. + Joshua Loya writes: It's all about The Legend of Zelda!!! I like Mike Tyson's Punch out too. I started with an Atari and still remember Moonwalker, Asteroids, Joust, Defender, Pack Man, Plaque Attack, Dig Dug, Fishing, ET, Midnight Magic, Keystone Capers, Pike's Peak, Pitfall, Barnstorming, and Frogger. Oh wait!!! Don't forget the original Mario Brothers. *grin* How many people realize that it was originally an Atari game? I'm not talking about Super Mario Brothers; I'm talking about *Mario Brothers*. + Steve Cullen pined thusly: Hi Everyone, When I had site Up until about age 13, some of the best games I remember playing are legend of zelda, metroid, Bionic commando, and Ninja Gaden. Boy what I wouldn't give to be able to play those games again. I think that's something the vi community is missing is a good type of adventure game. + Cecilia recalled with tender wistfulness: Ah, but then there are my original classics, like Kidnapped, Smirk, Stoneville manor, Great Escape, Planet of the Robots, Eliza, Space Invaders, and so many other apple games I can't even begin to name them all. I remember one of my friends using a part of Smirk to teach me something about Basic. He taught me how to break the program, find the variable for the information I needed, then get the computer to tell me what the number for the magic powder I had to buy was. I'm ashamed to say how much I used what basic I knew to cheat in some of those games. Then there were the Speak'nSpell and Speak'nMath, the first talking games I ever had. By the way, how were you guys able to play all these Atari games when none of them could speak? ++ Another thread concerned "the changing face of gaming". It was started as follows by a newcomer to the Audyssey community. Hello ladies and gents, I'd like to introduce myself. I'm one of the new members around, FullBurst41, and I have been active in the sighted gaming community for quite some time now. I have been blind for a good 13 years though (I'm 15), however I didn't find out about the games for the VI community until a year or so ago, and back then I messed up -my visual basic and I couldn't play Lone Wolf or Trek 2000, that's to say my DLL files were totally messed up. How I did it I don't know. I would like to bring this to all of you though. I know quite a lot when it comes to "the other" gaming community you probably call it. I follow it quite regularly, especially when it comes to Action and Strategy games. And guess what? The games that are being cranked out are changing radically. Instead of the DOOM-style games, now we see an immense amount of realistic games (or semi-realistic most of the time) pop up. Examples of these are Rainbow Six (1998), Rogue Spear (1999), Ghost Recon (2001), Operation Flashpoint (2001), Delta Force series (1998-2001), SWAT 3 (1999-2001). This is just the land-based shooters I'm giving a few examples of (although Operation Flashpoint is a little more than that). I would just like to ask, do you think you are ready for a change in games for the VI community as well. I ask this because when I played Shades of Doom for example, it was a very innovative idea how to make it accessible, but I found the overall game idea pretty old-school and dull after a few times playing it. I would just like to know the general opinion around here about going to more realistic games, and I say more realistic games because totally realistic games might for the moment be quite hard. I take as examples games like Medal of Honour: Allied Assault. If any of you heard of it, it is a WWII shooter concerning you as a US ranger and your team who needs to go through a campaign, including the landing in Normandy. This game should be released in a week or so, and I'm gladly looking forward to it. Please give me some feedback if you feel like it. Regards, FullBurst41 + Yvonne Smith wrote: Hi all. First thing's first, a quick intro. I've only recently subscribed to this list, and have been watching the discussions with some interest. I'll admit up front that I am not a huge game player. Partly at least because my primary operating system is linux, and most games are for windows. So most of what I play is text adventures. The other reason, of course, is I don't have the kind of money I'd need to throw around to buy the commercial accessible games. I've been reading audyssey a lot longer than I've been subscribed here, and the advance in accessible gaming over the years is amazing. As someone who doesn't really have any sighted people who are even slightly interested in games, things like car races, golf pinball, packman etc etc etc are all new to me, and they're great fun to play. That kind of leads in to what I wanted to say. People have been talking about how games aren't fresh enough, how we're still playing games like doom and that they're boring and we've been there and we've done that. Umm, hello? Help? I've never been able to play Doom in my life. I'm totally blind, I'd almost certainly need a playing partner for that. I've never played packman. I've never played a computer sim of pinball. I'm sure I'm not the only one like that here, am I? I'm amazed when I hear stories of totally blind people figuring out how to play games like this on a console on their own. For some of us, it's not nostalgia, it's a pretty damned amazing view into what sighted people have been playing for years, and incidentally a really great way to hone our audio skills. I think the accessible gaming community's come a long, long way in a few years. We went from almost no action style games and almost entirely text adventures with the occasional golf or baseball game to lone wolf and shades of doom in a handful of years. I think as far as catchup we're doing pretty well, to be honest. It's almost like watching the sighted game world played out at high speed. We'll get to all the things we all want eventually, I'm sure. When more people start creating games, when the people creating games now have bigger and better ideas and want to create different things. When we figure out how to translate all the things you get in a sighted game into audio that someone can actually comprehend. I shouldn't imagine it's a particularly easy thing to do. All this long winded message is trying to point out, is that I doubt all the games are being created like this because of nostalgia. People are trying to start from fairly simple game concepts, and going from that to more and more complex ideas. The fact that that means they're mimicking old standards in the sighted community like doom and pinball is most likely a side effect of the fact that they're the games they used to play and they use the concepts they're trying to figure out how to create. Ya got to walk before ya can run, after all. Enough of this already. As a newby to the community, I'm likely to get flamed out of the water for this message anyway. + Bonnie the crafty crafter replied Hi, I like games of different types from the arcade type to simulations like Lone Wolf to strategy games where you have to take over cities such as the old Dos game Empire. I also like games where you have to go through the mazes killing monsters and fighting your way through dungeons to obtain something requested by the king or the Oracle such as the Dos game Omega. So, I am open to all kinds of games not withstanding the old standby text adventures which make you think. ++ From Zachary Kline: Happy new years! I am writing to tell you about a MUD I love playing on. Its called Achaea, Dreams Of Devine Lands. I first stumbled across it about a year ago. Its amazing! Unique everything! The uniqueness starts out right from the moment you create your character. The 'mud school is gone replaced by an interactive tour that will gain you some levels and exp. The tour is somewhat long, but take it! The description is first rate and the players are friendly enough. Also, the combat system is original! No more Kill this and that no. It might work like this, hack pixie You swing out at a pixie with your short sword but miss. Also, it is huge! 2 thumbs up! Go on! The address for the mud is: Achaea.com port 23 + Ryan Strunk found some drawbacks to Zackary's find. He writes: Zachary has written the positive side of Achaea, dreams of divine lands, but I thought that perhaps I would write the negative side, as I played there for a good time myself. Please note, Zachary, that I am not trying to offend you in any way, but I would like to write about things from my standpoint. First of all, players must deal with a large amount of spam. You might pass someone on the street with a name like brother abara Torshiro, guardian of the west wind. Cool name, yes, but it is always there. Even when you are fighting said brother, his name will show up with every attack he makes and every word he says. Say he lights three pipes, inhales the smoke of one, then throws a kick and two punches (yes, that's how combat works on achaea), you will be cursed with loads of spam. Second, there is the matter of vials and bottles and such. Each is given an identification number, for example an oaken vial containing a salve of mending #28573 a maple vial containing a caloric salve #66983 If you wanted to get the salve of mending from your pack so you could rub it on your broken arm, you would type get 28573 from pack, as opposed to get oak from pack, get vial from pack, get salve from pack, etcetera. In one of the help files, the gods state that unless you have a good client, you will not make it far in the game. This is very true. I found that only with a load of aliases and triggers could one man survive. Fighting against npcs was one thing, but pitting oneself against a sighted individual with the ability to sort through the rubbish he or she saw and pick out the words "you have recovered balance on all limbs," indicating they were free to attack again was nearly impossible, unless of course there is some technical aspects of JAWS or window eyes I am not familiar with. I will give you that the game had great combat--the ability to damage certain limbs, employ all sorts of attacks, etcetera, but I have seen other muds with systems that would cripple it. Take for example After the Plague. You brutally bash the goblin's right hand with your left hand. The goblin's right hand is disabled! The goblin drops his short sword. You sever the goblin's head with your bastard sword. The goblin's head falls to the ground spinning... The goblin drops to the ground, dead. *look You stand in a chamber perhaps eighty feet square. The room is devoid of furnishings save an oaken chest in it's centre. You smell no odd odors. It is somewhat lit here. head of goblin and body of goblin are here. For some, Achaea, Dreams of Divine Lands may hold promise. With a vast player base, and no fewer than 100 players on at any time, it may entice some. However, for me, the spam, the methods of object manipulation, and the fact that it is nearly impossible to advance far without sending the creators a check for credits was enough to drive me from it. ++ There were of course many more threads on the list. Everything from thoughts of mascots for blind gamers to rally around similar to Zelda or Mario to a great deal of discussion on Troopanum from Blind software. There was also a surprise contest issued by ESP Softworks for free copies of Monkey Business. Those who have the time would be well advised to join in the discussion on Blind gamers. Otherwise, you'll have another glimpse into it in the next issue of Audyssey. +++ Get Going With Valhalla, if you're new! Note: This document was written for the ease and use of blind or visually impaired people. Sighted readers may have some difficulty in reading this document. Hi there! My name is Sean, and I've written this little guide for people like you. People who want to play Valhalla, but (a) don't know how to do it, and (b) don't even no what it is! If this guide is written badly, or if you have any problems, I may or may not be able to help. By comparison, I am pretty new on Valhalla myself. If you want to email me though, I will try to help you to the best of my abilities. Lets get all the contact details out of the way first, then we can get down to the good stuff. My email address. You can email me anytime you want, and I check my email on a regular basis. Yeah, I maybe a fourteen year old (kid) but I won't think any different of you if you're a hundred and eight, or eight years old. I'll treat you in the same way as I would anyone. Now my address: shwatscoff@shwatscoff.fsworld.co.uk I live in South Wales, which is in the UK. How will you no if I am on the internet? In all likelihood, if I am connected, I will be on Valhalla somewhere. There maybe occasions when I am online, but not actually playing. In these cases, I will always have my name in the (msn) computer programme. If you don't use msn, you can download it from: www.blindhelp.com this is an instant messaging utility. To add me to you're list, hit the add contact button, found in one of the menus: my msn address is: Shwatscoff@hotmail.com Please don't send email to this address, use the link above for that sort of thing. Why would you need to do this? You probably won't. If you want my help playing the game, I will be happy to give you a hand, but it's unlikely you'll need me there. There are many other players, who will endeavour to help you. If you want me personally, it is not a problem. It's not like I'm in hi demand or anything! Note: on Valhalla, my nickname is Shwatscoff. Because? In short, it's a name of a shampoo. If anyone calls me shampoo now, you'll no why: Grin! What is Valhalla? To tell you the truth, I haven't got a clue what Valhalla means. I think of it as the name of a game. A giant, online, multiplayer, text adventure game! If you've played text games before, you'll understand. If you haven't? A text game is a computer game with no pictures, sounds, animations, or anything other than text. They are quite challenging, and for people who can't see, or can see very little, text games are the perfect things. Besides! They work well with screen readers! But let's get back to Valhalla at large. This uses the Telnet playing platform. For people who've only used Tads, this is something a little different. To use telnet, you haven't got to download anything. If you are using Microsoft Windows, Telnet comes as standard. I personally, use the Jaws screen reader. It is likely therefore, that anyone using Jaws can follow this guide totally without any trouble. Users of other screen readers, please be aware that keystrokes may differ for you. If your going to follow this guide, you should look up the "say all" keystroke feature. The basics. The idea of Valhalla, is for you to (in the early stages at least), gain experience. The more experience points you get, the higher your level. You start on level one, and then you can get points to go up a level again. You do this by killing animals, or (though it is illegal) other players. Then, apart from all the levelling, you must choose your guild. I am using Microsoft word to type this document. I just looked up the word guild, the result being; Professional group. That is really what your guild is. Valhalla has many guilds. Fighters, conjurers, mages, rangers; etc. You must choose three. There are eighty-one combinations, and if your using jaws, you may want to use the jaws Cursor to review the list before you make your choice. But before all that, you have to get started. Oh dear: this could get complicated! Starting up. To load Telnet, and Valhalla, you have to have an active Internet connection. If this isn't automatic for you, just open up the Internet explorer (or your web browser) and close it again, keeping the connection. Then you have to go to the run dialogue box, which you can access from the start menu. When there, enter the following, note: you may want to copy it to your clipboard. Telnet valhalla.com 4242 When it's in the run box, check by reading the line, press enter. You may not hear anything. Check the window title, you should hear: Telnet Valhalla.com If you don't? Use alt+tab until you find it. Now it's time to tern on the Say All feature. For jaws users, this is quite simple. Hold down the (insert) key, then hit the (s) key. If Jaws says (all) release both keys. If not, keep hitting (s) until you hear all. If you use another screen-reading program such as Window eyes, check your hotkeys for say all. Warning! On some computers, the say all feature causes the Jaws programme to say the word (start) and repeat it. If this is the case, do the following: 1. access the start menu. Go into settings, then hit the the t ke, to access the taskbar properties. 2. Insure that the box labelled "always on top" is not checked, and that the one labelled "auto hide" is. 3. Hit the ok button, do not hit the escape key. Use enter, or tab to the ok button. 4. exit, and come back to Valhalla. Now, read the line. If you can't do this, proceed to carry on with the next bit of entering a name for yourself. You can use your name if you want, but remember that personal details are released at your own risk. If you can read the line, you should hear (by what name do they call you?) Continue to enter your name (or nickname.) When you're done, hit enter. Then you can follow the prompts! They are very simple to understand. Note: y n h; which you may hear; means yes, no, or help. You will come across this when being asked if something is correct. To respond, just hit the letter, y; n; or h, and enter. When all the prompts have been followed, your guild has been chosen, and the actual game begins, you may hear a lot of rogue text. You should stick this out, as it will not last for long. When you first start, you will arrive in the (temple of Udgaard) and immediately prey to (odin) the God. He will grant you some basic equipment, like a dagger and shield, for example. As people who have played text games before will no, there is a prompt. This can be anything, a letter; number, or punctuation mark, that tells you when you can type. You will see this at the end of something you have read for instance. Valhalla's prompt is a long series of letters and numbers, which you will want to change immediately! My prompt is the word (dot.) this goes well, as (a) it is short, and (b) many things happen at once, and sometimes things can get confusing. To change your prompt, just type: Prompt dot. If you don't want your prompt to be (dot.) type something else in its place That's: P, r, o, m, p, t. d, o, t, . Communication In Valhalla, if you simply typed (hello) something unexpected could happen. You wouldn't, as you had intended, say the word (hello.) If you wanted to say hello, you would type (say hello.) that is, say; space, hello. By using the (say) command, you can talk to anybody in the room, and everyone will hear. To be more direct, you can tell people things. To tell me hello, you would type (tell Shwatscoff hello.) Warning! Player's names can not, I repeat, cannot be abbreviated. If they're name begins with a capital letter, you must include that letter. If you don't; your sentence will go nowhere. If you want to no who is playing the game at any one time, just type (who.) The (who) command lists all player's names, and you can review they're spellings with the jaws cursor, or the mouse review feature of your screen reader. Movement and items. Any item can be looked at, examined, and in some cases, taken. In Valhalla, you will want to wear or use most items, for example; you would wear a shield, and wield a dagger. If you type (wear all) you will put on, or use all the items applicable in your inventory. Note: items you carry, and items your using or wearing, appear in separate lists. To see what you're carrying, you can type: Inventory I Inv These three commands all do the same things, I is probably the easiest to use. To see what you're using or wearing, you can type: Equipment Eq In this case, eq is probably the quickest. (note for Tads users) the (x) command you would use in Tads is not applicable in Valhalla, you can use (l) which does the same job. The (l) command, if you're not a Tads user, is to look. If you were to type (l dagger) you would look at a dagger. If you typed (look) you would get a description of your surroundings. Now on to movement. You start off in the (temple Of Udgaard.) It is a temple, in the village of Udgaard. (you may want to learn to spell Udgaard.) U d g, double A, rd. If you keep saying it, you will remember easier. (I did, anyway.) Movement commands: S, or, south: go south. N, or, north: go north. E, or, East: go east. W, or, west: go west. Ne, or, northeast: go northeast. Nw, or, northwest: go northwest. Se, or, southeast: go southeast Sw, or, southwest: go southwest. U, or, up: go up. D, Or, down: go down. The one-letter aliases are very helpful! The newbie guide. When you begin, you are a (newbie.) This means you're new to the game. There is a command that you should never forget. When invoked, it summons the (newbie guide!) The guide can: 1. take you on a tour of Udgaard, and show you how to fight; etc. 2. Take you back to Udgaard if you get lost in the woods (or anywhere else.) 3. Give your old body (corpse) to you if you die. This allows you to retrieve your lost items. Note: you should do this if you die. To call the guide, just enter this command: say help me newbie guide Spelt: Say, space; help, space; me, space; newbie (n e w, b; I; e;) space, guide. Remember it: if nothing happens, the guide is busy. Retry it in a few minutes. Other things you may want to do 1. Learn the (who guide) command. This command lets you no which real people who are currently playing can help you, just because you're new. If there aren't any, just ask somebody else, the Udgaard townsfolk are very helpful, and most of them are human too! 2. Add the newbie channel. Channels are a great way to talk to people. To use the newbie channel, replace the (say) command with (newbie) followed by your message. Then, only people in the channel will hear your message, regardless of where they are in the game. Before you can use the (newbie) channel, you must add it. To do this, just type: Com add newbie Sometimes, the newbie channel can get annoying. To delete it, just type: Com delete newbie Note: you should only do this if you are hunting, and are on the alert for animals. If you want to see a little hunt, (which is just an animal kill) you can ask somebody to show you how it's done, or I will be happy to help you! 3. Add the (blind) channel. This is a channel I have set up on Valhalla, for people who have read this document. It works in the same way as the (newbie) channel, to speak to the channel, you would type: (blind hello.) If you didn't want to say hello? Just type something in it's place. There may not be many people in the channel to start off, as this manual will need time to be read. To add the channel, type: Com add blind Other info (please read?) As I have said before, I am by no means good at playing the game yet. However, I like to play, and hope you will too. Please note that Valhalla isn't the only game out there of this type! It is just one game, one in hundreds. Note: if you would like the scripts for "jaws 3.7" which I have written, let me no. They will save you having to turn on say all each time you load up, and give you access to a few of the menu items, straight from you're keyboard. Well, what more do you need? Get going, and I hope I' will see you soon. Enjoy! Sean. On Valhalla, is known as shwatscoff. +++ Final results Mach1 world championship 2001 The first big race is over, and the second is just getting underway as Audyssey is being published. Members of the Blind gamers list were kept updated on the standings in regular bulletins from the race organiser, Hugo Janssens. Here are the final results of this exciting competition for each track: Ohio final results Table with 5 columns and 25 rows Ranking Driver Time Team Country 1 Janssens 78179 Ferrari Belgium 2 Tan 78191 Benneton Singapore 3 Higginbotham 78194 Sauber Great Britain 4 Goh 78197 Benneton Signapore 5 Kochetkov 78213 Toyota Russia 6 Kitchen 78214 Jordan United States 7 Simons 78233 Williams Belgium 8 Hart 78281 Mac Laren Australia 9 Williams 78293 Minardi United States 10 Putteman 78305 Mac Laren Belgium 11 Vermeulen 78359 Ferrari Belgium 12 Hemmings 78381 Sauber Great Britain 13 Canters 78417 Jaguar Belgium 14 Kilgore 78426 Minardi United States 15 Loya 78541 Arrows United States 16 Pallett 78574 Arrows Great Britain 17 Ekis 78597 Bar United States 18 Van Gysel 78631 Jaguar Belgium 19 Russell 78729 Bar Great Britain 20 Neyts 78805 Jordan Belgium 21 Vermeylen 78898 Williams Belgium 22 Larin 78942 Toyota Russia 23 Hermans 79015 Prost Belgium 24 Dewulf 113921 Prost Belgium table end Chardon final results Table with 5 columns and 25 rows Ranking Driver Time Team Country 1 Tan 80116 Benneton Singapore 2 Janssens 80122 Ferrari Belgium 3 Kochetkov 80228 Toyota Russia 4 Kitchen 80247 Jordan United States 5 Hemmings 80318 Sauber Great Britain 6 Goh 80387 Benneton Signapore 7 Higginbotham 80436 Sauber Great Britain 8 Simons 80464 Williams Belgium 9 Vermeulen 80770 Ferrari Belgium 10 Canters 80774 Jaguar Belgium 11 Williams 81380 Minardi Great Britain 12 Hart 81397 Mac Laren Australia 13 Putteman 81694 Mac Laren Belgium 14 Pallett 81751 Arrows Great Britain 15 Larin 81761 Toyota Russia 16 Neyts 81803 Jordan Belgium 17 Loya 81903 Arrows United States 18 Vermeylen 82104 Williams Belgium 19 Kilgore 82116 Minardi United States 20 Ekis 82186 Bar United States 21 Van Gysel 82991 Jaguar Belgium 22 Russell 83040 Bar Great Britain 23 Hermans 84434 Prost Belgium 24 Dewulf 117539 Prost Belgium table end Snake river final results Table with 5 columns and 25 rows Ranking Driver Time Team Country 1 Janssens 61565 Ferrari Belgium 2 Tan 61572 Benneton Singapore 3 Kochetkov 61707 Toyota Russia 4 Kitchen 61711 Jordan United States 5 Higginbotham 61716 Sauber Great Britain 6 Simons 61721 Williams Belgium 7 Goth 61743 Benneton Signapore 8 Hart 61744 Mac Laren Australia 9 Williams 61782 Minardi Great Britain 10 Vermeulen 61868 Ferrari Belgium 11 Kilgore 61875 Minardi United States 12 Ekis 61877 Bar United States 13 Canters 61878 Jaguar Belgium 14 Hemmings 61904 Sauber Great Britain 15 Larin 61983 Toyota Russia 16 Pallett 61986 Arrows Great Britain 17 Russell 62091 Bar Great Britain 18 Loya 62575 Arrows United States 19 Van Gysel 62885 Jaguar Belgium 20 Vermeylen 63236 Williams Belgium 21 Putteman 65094 Mac Laren Belgium 22 Hermans 68423 Prost Belgium 23 Neyts 70115 Jordan Belgium 24 Dewulf 88148 Prost Belgium table end Indy final results Table with 5 columns and 25 rows Ranking Driver Time Team Country 1 Goth 106413 Benneton Signapore 2 Higginbotham 106413 Sauber Great Britain 3 Janssens 106413 Ferrari Belgium 4 Kitchen 106413 Jordan United States 5 Simons 106413 Williams Belgium 6 Tan 106413 Benneton Singapore 7 Kochetkov 106413 Toyota Russia 8 Hart 106414 Mac Laren Australia 9 Pallett 106479 Arrows Great Britain 10 Canters 106519 Jaguar Belgium 11 Vermeulen 106533 Ferrari Belgium 12 Williams 106559 Minardi Great Britain 13 Hemmings 106613 Sauber Australia 14 Hermans 106617 Prost Belgium 15 Neyts 106642 Jordan Belgium 16 Van Gysel 106653 Jaguar Belgium 17 Putteman 106670 Mac Laren Belgium 18 Kilgore 106688 Minardi United States 19 Russell 106824 Bar Great Britain 20 Ekis 106887 Bar United States 21 Larin 106932 Toyota Russia 22 Loya 107048 Arrows United States 23 Vermeylen 109399 Williams Belgium 24 Dewulf - Prost Belgium table end Maple final results Table with 5 columns and 25 rows Ranking Driver Time Team Country 1 Janssens 111189 Ferrari Belgium 2 Tan 111191 Benneton Singapore 3 Kochetkov 111199 Toyota Russia 4 Higginbotham 111202 Sauber Great Britain 5 Goth 111241 Benneton Signapore 6 Kitchen 111241 Jordan United States 7 Simons 111241 Williams Belgium 8 Hart 111245 Mac Laren Australia 9 Hemmings 111309 Sauber Australia 10 Pallett 111329 Arrows Great Britain 11 Vermeulen 111356 Ferrari Belgium 12 Canters 111376 Jaguar Belgium 13 Williams 111404 Minardi Great Britain 14 Van Gysel 111407 Jaguar Belgium 15 Ekis 111504 Bar United States 16 Putteman 111549 Mac Laren Belgium 17 Larin 111573 Toyota Russia 18 Vermeylen 111669 Williams Belgium 19 Hermans 111760 Prost Belgium 20 Neyts 111760 Jordan Belgium 21 Russell 111815 Bar Great Britain 22 Kilgore 112717 Minardi United States 23 Loya 153828 Arrows United States 24 Dewulf - Prost Belgium table end +++ A Disturbing Trend By Allen Maynard I'm beginning to see a disturbing trend in the gaming community. There seems to be two groups forming. One group thinks that any game created by and for the blind must be treated with kid gloves and should not be criticized and should just be appreciated. The second group tells it like they see it whether that be good or bad. The group seems to take great offence when games created for the blind are commented on in what they perceive as a negative and mean-spirited manor. I maintain that this is the right of anyone purchasing anything. You evaluate the item, decide if you'd like to purchase it, then decide if you would like to still purchase it based on the price. To be honest I balked at the price of Troopanum's $25 price tag. I stand by my opinion that when deciding on a price for a game the complexity of the game must be taken into consideration and not just the time and energy involved in creating the game. If you remember I had the same problem with a game created by Mindseye2 last year. I believe the price tag was $35 for a game, whose title eludes me, but it was good but there was not a lot to the game mainly because it was for children. I do understand the time and energy that is necessary to put into creating a game whether for the blind or sighted or both for that matter. I am in the process of creating a game of my own but I do not harbour illusions of becoming rich on the proceeds. Anyway, my earlier point was that when I posted my pricing question to the list just to get a feel for the opinions of others on the list, I received some rather nasty replies such as, "Well, then, you don't have to buy it." To be fair, the responses were mixed but my purpose was not to attack Dan or anyone else. I was fully prepared to do some rethinking if the vast majority thought the price was reasonable. I got the distinct feeling from those who liked the game and from Dan that they were thinking, "How dare you say anything against this great game created by and for the blind." This attitude also disturbs me because it flies in the face of fun and friendship. I am honestly glad that some people love this Troopanum game but the unfriendliness shown with other posts to the list firing back at those of us who say anything other than, "This game is one of the best I've ever played for the blind," really makes me take pause. If questions or comments about games created for the blind are not appreciated because many think only praise and appreciation should be shown toward those who create such games, then maybe some of us should rethink our place in this community. [Editor's comments]: I believe the phenomenon indicated in the above article is the result of a fundamental attitude which has pervaded western society. Blind people have so often been viewed as charity cases that people tend to assume that we'll be grateful for whatever is done on our behalf. A lot of the time, gratefulness is certainly appropriate. I wouldn't be where I am today without the help of others to whom I am very grateful. However, as consumers, we have the same rights and duties as everyone else. Makers of any product for the blind as well as those who provide services must recognise that we are like everyone else and have the ability to appreciate or not as we choose. This magazine and the Blind gamers discussion list will always be forums where people are free to speak their minds about what games are available to them. Developers should understand that we are like any consumer group and that making games for us does not mean that they will be automatically praised. +++ How A Sonic Side-scrolling Game Could Work By Michael Feir To make a game which offers all the challenge that sighted people experience would require a vary careful use of sounds. The basic scenario would take place on a line extending from left to right in front of the player. As the player moved along the line, sounds representing monsters, objects, obstacles, and so-on would pan from left to right or vise versa depending on the direction travelled. The volume of sounds could also be used either to denote the height of objects or make more obvious what is in the immediate vicinity and what is further away on either side. Pitch of sounds could be another height indicator. Each item in the game would generate a sound as long as it was within a certain range. For example, a pit which had to be jumped over might have a vast echoing sound associated with it. As one approached the pit, the sound would move closer to the centre of the line in front of the player. If the player did not jump at the right time, he/she would fall into the pit. Multiple layers of sound would be required for such a game to work. There would probably have to be at least two layers of sound for representing stationary features such as pits, water, raised platforms which could be jumped onto, etc. There would also have to be channels for object sounds. A good example would be a heart beeting as a symbol denoting a healing item which would increase health. A magic sword might have the whisper of its name as a locater, or a sound of a sword being drawn. A chest might have a thumping sound. When it comes to enemies, things don't necessarily get all that much more complicated. Enemies would have their own movement and identification sounds. A monster might breathe heavily or growl. Flying enemies would have flapping sounds and/or different chirps. Combat would work similarly. An attacker would swing at a player from the side where it is located. A monster on the right might attack a player, for instance. The attack approach sound might be a swoosh or fierce roar. The player would have an instant to dodge to the left out of the zone which would be hit by the attack. The player's attacks would similarly extend a certain range at a certain speed. The player would have to learn to judge how far and fast his/her attack moved and make certain that the enemy wouldn't move out of range in time to avoid the attack. A flying projectile could be blocked by moving slightly in its direction so that the player's shield was facing the right way. As a more complex option, different pitched attack approach sounds could represent different heights which could be matched by players using the arrow keys or joystick to raise or lower their shield. Players could attack along a few levels of height represented by pitch and attempt to score a critical hit or shoot at flying enemies represented at higher pitches. These approaches have been used in other games for the sighted, and with modern technology, it should be possible to represent all this sonically. Shades Of Doom and Monkey Business certainly prove that the capability exists. In the case of the game Sparkle which I have almost completed, events might happen on different levels of a multi-level complex. Depicting events outside the level that the player is on would be somewhat problematic. The best approach would likely be to have a voice similar to those in games like Gauntlet. In the case of my game, it would say things like: "The haven on level three is under attack!", or "A goblin on level four has rolled a magic boulder." The number of players would be pretty much limited to two on a single computer. Each could have separate controls on the keyboard or use joysticks. The tricky part would be making certain that there was no confusion and that both had access to information relevant to them. Having a game playable over the Internet simplifies this since each player would be in front of their own computer and speakers and would logically hear things from their character's point of view. It's possible that a static view might work better in a level with two players on the same computer. Each player might have different footsteps denoting their characters. With a non-static view, both players could tell relatively where they were on a given level. An aspect that would present problems would be how to locate obstacles. In the single-player example I gave above, volume and having sound move based on the player's location was used. That is, the pit was stationary but the sound got closer to the centre as the player approached it. If a side-scrolling game was made for two players, the problem would be that without two separate sets of speakers, the viewpoints of both characters couldn't be represented in a non-confusing manner. The player near the pit couldn't hear it coming nearly ahead of him/her if the other player heard the same pit but was far to the right of it. At present, therefore, it would be possible either for a single-player side-scroller or a multi-player Internet-based side-scroller to be made. One could not, however, have a two-player game of this type which needed only one set of speakers. Having a game use two dimensions instead of three in this manner should be pretty straight-forward. It would be less taxing to develop than something like Shades of Doom was. Strangely enough, nobody has attempted it yet. With ever-popular games like Super Mario, Pitfall, and a whole hoast of others for the sighted, I would think such a natural translation to stereo sound would be fairly successful. +++ What's Going On With Accessible Games By Didier Vanoverbeke About six months ago, someone hinted to me that there were games accessible to the blind, so I went over to some websites and quickly got my hands on some game demos. I'm writing this article just to let you all know what I think of all this... To sum it all up, one big mess, although that might sound a bit harsh. I'm not talking about text adventures and DOS driven games, but I'm focussing more on the windows-based games. I quickly became aware of the hype around Shades of Doom, the shooter from GMA Games. I downloaded the package and installed it. The first thing I noticed, is that for some reason on the lowest difficulty level, you can't seem to disable the Training Mode. Not that that really matters. I'll tell you what I thought of it right away, I think the DOOM concept was a total waste of resources and time. Making a 9-level game with a boss level based on the DOOM concept of gaming, and a very close variant of that game, means that you just run around shooting things. GMA chose to make the game more frustrating by forcing you to kill virtually everything you came across, so that you could pick up items like security chips, data wafers, armour, weapons and whatever else. No sneaking in this game, like a good DOOM game asks. But I thought we were finally passed this, weren't we? There are a lot of games out there that are a far half-brother of some sort of DOOM-like game, but what is different in these games, is that you can sneak around, you have a good AI (I wonder if these monsters would be as dumb as they were in DOOM), interesting weaponry (most of the time), and these days, even the DOOM-like shooters have a almost-realistic setting. Not only that. What is wrong with the sound of Shades of Doom? I mean why is it that it just frustrates me to the bone sometimes? I don't really feel the thrill in this game that modern-day shooters do (although SOD does have its moments, ambushes are a good example, the music isn't exactly impressive (understandable), and there is no atmospheric ambient sound except for some nice wind effects. In the end, I think SOD was a bad idea in the first place. So next I went around to ESP Softworks' games. They just released Monkey Business, and I tried that demo as well. While this game is not really my cup of tea, it is one hell of an original concept compared to a DOOM shooter. They also did some nice levels in the demo, pretty sweet design. Now I'm kind of interested in the Raceway project, even though race games aren't my cup of tea either. If ESP Softworks would make a shooter, I'm sure they'll make something equally original. Even their pinball game had some interesting and original tables. I am only saying here, that making games is good and all, but please, oh God please make it original! I won't even start with Danssoft because I'm afraid of what I'd say... but regardless. I'd love to see a good semi-realistic shooter one day, with great ambient sounds, like Medal of Honour: Allied Assault. Not only do these sounds give atmosphere to the game, they are also high-quality, crisp and clear sounds. I must say that the sounds in SOD sound quite unclear, like they were lower quality sound. It may be caused by the compression technology. I'd like to finish by saying, keep making games people, just don't give us things we've heard of/seen before, make the concepts original. Why do you think Return to Castle Wolfenstein wasn't as popular as first expected. [Editor's comment]: While I'm all for originality and always appreciate it, I believe there will always be not only a place for adapting classic games from the sighted world, but a need to do this. Since long before I started Audyssey, I wanted to experience all the games I could only play vicariously through sighted friends interested in those games. I'm very glad to have developers come up with tried and true games which were previously inaccessible. Having said that, there is the danger of a flooding of that kind of thing. Look in the Letters section and you'll find a response by Yvonne Smith which somes this up quite nicely. +++ New List For Game Developers: We'd like to announce the opening of a new list devoted to accessible game development and we would cordially invite all established developers of accessible games, both non-commercial and commercial, as well as those who aspire to be developers or who are just starting out learning to write accessible games, to join the list. The aim of the list is to foster an environment in which game developers can exchange ideas and discuss and solve problems they encounter during development. Playing games and creating them are two distinctly different activities requiring very different modes of thought. The much more difficult of the two, believe it or not, is developing a game. Game development requires both feits of artistry and technical knowledge that are not apparent in a well-designed game. However, there is no real outlet where developers can currently exchange tips and tricks an all aspects of game development without either going off-topic or having the worry of disenchanting players by revealing some of the techniques used for generating the interesting effects that appear in their titles. There is also nowhere, that we know of, where people can get together to discuss issues specific to the development of accessible games. As a result, we have created the Accessible Game Development list (or AGDEV) and we would encourage all established and novice developers to join in and participate. It is our hope that such interaction between the developers of accessible games will lead to even more imaginative, innovative and enjoyable game titles than those we have witnessed in recent years. Suitable topics for discussion will include such things as sourcing and editing of sound bytes, artificial intelligence for games, timing and movement physics, interactive fiction development, programming language specifics, DirectX, development and use of game engines, techniques for making games self-voicing, methods and devices for receiving player input, packaging and distribution methods, and much more. To subscribe to the list, send a blank E-mail to agdev-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. The moderators of the list are Andrew Hart and David Lant. They may be contacted at agdev-owner@yahoogroups.com and DLant@btinternet.com respectively. Regards, The Moderators (AGDEV) +++ IF Only: News About Interactive Fiction This section of Audyssey will feature news about developments in the world of interactive fiction which have a broader scope than new games released. For information about newly released games, you should still look to the Game Announcements and Reviews section. Now that we're operating on a quarterly basis, I hope that more people will submit reviews of interactive fiction games they have played. There should be more time for people to play through a game in order to give it a more in-depth review. Items in this section will be separated by single plus-signs to make navigation easier. To start this section off, I have personally gone to the major sites and searched for new developments. However, I would appreciate it if anyone responsible for websites related to IF or for major projects in the IF community would submit material on these things for my inclusion in Audyssey. The 2002 Xyzzy awards are about to be presented. Voting is almost complete, and will pretty much be wrapped up by the time Audyssey is published. The Xyzzy awards are similar to the Oscars for movies. Games are voted on in categories such as best game, best use of medium, best puzzles, etc. For people wanting a good indicator of the best of last year's new interactive fiction, I could hardly recommend a better place to get it. The awards ceremony will be on March 9 at four PM Eastern. The awards are presented in a ceremony held live on the If mud. The address is: http://ifmud.port4000.com:4001/ All of those interest in interactive fiction and/or these awards should keep checking the Xyzzynews homepage at: www.xyzzynews.com For more news about interactive fiction, I recommend players keep watch on three sites which I have found invaluable. They are the Xyzzynews homepage mentioned above, the Brass Lantern site at: www.brasslantern.org and the Spag homepage which you'll find at: www.sparkynet.com/spag The no frames choice would likely be more appropriate. +++ What "They" Say: James North of ESP Softworks Joshua Loya If you've been involved with accessible gaming for any length of time, you've almost certainly heard of James North, president and founder of ESP Softworks. ESP Softworks has three titles released: ESP Pinball, a fast action arcade pinball game with a twist; Shell Shock, a free artillery game to help burn some time; and, most recently, Monkey Business, a 3D action adventure game in which you are given the task of capturing mischievous monkeys, in order to recover the parts and plans of an invention that have been stolen by a mad scientist. I recently caught up with James via MSN. Here is what he had to say to Audyssey readers: Joshua says: so, What is the meaning of life? James says: is that the first question for real? Joshua says: Only if you want it to be. James says: Do you have enough tape for my answer? Joshua says: Seriously, how did you get involved in accessible gaming, and what made you decide to start making games? James says: Too much alcohol and a lot of boredom.. Joshua says: *grin* James says: Actually, I've always had an interest in writing computer games since I'd gotten my first computer--an Atari--as a teen, but never was a very good artist. Of course, back then, the graphics were so bad that you didn't NEED to be a great artist, but as the graphics improved, my hopes for single-handedly creating commercial computer games dwindled. James says: I'd met a blind friend of mine through some acquaintances and we became good friends. I'd tell him about my own gaming adventures and he told me the one thing he probably missed most about losing his vision was the ability to play video games. James says: He used to love playing them as a teen and always wondered how awesome the games of today must be to play. So, I often shared my own experiences while we were out and about. James says: He said he'd been interested in writing games, but needed to refresh his programming skills first. I offered to help and so that was our intent. To develop games that were accessible. Sooner rather than later, however, his interest went by the wayside over day-to-day activities, but the idea stuck with me and so I set out to develop accessible games. Joshua says: That was what, three years ago? James says: That's right--about three years ago. My first concept project was The Genesis Project, but it was actually quite a bit different beast than many have come to envision it and a lot of people don't know that. Joshua says: How did you come up with the name "ESP Softworks?" James says: Ah, thank you for asking! *grin* The initials E.S.P. were actually the acronym "Extra Sensory Perception". I wanted the accessibility of our games to be that extra sense--the six sense--that would allow blind and visually impaired players to be totally immersed in worlds that they were able to navigate. The 'Softworks' part was just kind of an off-the-cuff hack and it seemed to work together, so it stuck. Joshua says: What have been some of the struggles of starting a company from the ground up, especially one in a field that is only now beginning to blossom noticeably? James says: There have been a lot of different challenges in starting up and running the business. Since I decided to do it as a full-time endeavour, there was the lack of a steady income while the products were being developed. I was lucky in having augmented support until the products actually came to the market. Another challenge was being my own boss. It afforded me a lot of freedom and flexibility, James says: but at the same time demanded discipline which I didn't have a lot of at the time. It's a very different deal than simply showing up for work at some company and doing what you're told. James says: Also, since it's essentially a "one man show" I have to wear and incredible variety of hats and try to juggle every aspect of the company in some sort of sane manner or it all breaks down. James says: I think a lot of people check out the website and are under the impression that ESP Softworks is run by a dozen or so employees. I'm flattered by that, but I often pay the high price that goes along with those impressions. Joshua says: If I didn't know better, I would have thought so too. James says: It can some times cause me grief as so much seems to be expected of ESP and really what it comes down to is all those expectations funnel down to me exclusively. For the most part, everyone is very patient and friendly, but there have been a few incidences where someone will e-mail in kicking and screaming until I explain how things really are. Then, they're usually very understanding about it. James says: The website was very un-updated for quite a while and there was some unhappiness about that, but it was almost a necessity as I turned my efforts toward developing ESP Pinball and Monkey Business. Joshua says: I've enjoyed pinball quite a bit myself. How far into development did you have the idea of the pinball lounge, where players could compete against each other by posting their scores? James says: I seem to recall that it was probably around mid-development of the cycle. The idea of having high scores and posting them for--rather than by--the players on the website and contests had been there from the beginning, but as the development was closing, I decided to spend some time automating the process and embodying it in the ESP Pinball Lounge. Joshua says: Where do you get the inspiration for most of your games, and what might the development cycle look like to an outsider? James says: I've always seemed to have plenty of inspiration and ideas, but lacking in the discipline and mythologies to bring them to life. I have text files and assorted files laying all over my hard drives with ideas of games I'd love--and, can't wait--to do as well as projects that are in some stage of development. I would've loved to have had TGP to had been the first, but economics necessitated that some smaller releases came first. From an outsider's perspective, probably utter chaos! One big disadvantage in working at home is the constant distractions and requests by other members of the household. It's very easy for those around you to view your flexibility in self-employment as an open invitation to make use of you as much as possible. It has really hindered the development processes. James says: In the beginning, I would usually just jump into a project without much thought, but that has changed quite a bit and so now there is much more planning and forethought involved. Joshua says: Is there anything brewing that you can share with Audyssey readers? James says: Well, I think after ESP Raceway is completed and shipping, I'm going to take a short break to get the other aspects of the business in order as well as complete a few other non-ESP related projects. Toward the middle of 2002, I'll be working on a multiplayer action/strategy game that'll play off our own custom game server. I'm really looking forward to that project. It'll be a nice change. Joshua says: Is there any advice you would give to somebody out there who is thinking of creating accessible games? James says: As far as development goes, if you're just getting into programming, really spend the required time reading and playing with the language as much as possible. Don't be afraid to make mistakes because not only are they lessons to learn from, but they also provide the 'jagged edges' that often inspire the creative process. James says: In regards to what to create.. try to create something unique or something that has unique aspects to it. Don't be afraid to embellish and stray from the norm or the standards. Fill your games with personality, humour, and folly.. people will relate to that and feel the game is more personal and *meant* for them. James says: Also, when it comes to potential customers and the community and market at large, become involved. Keep it real. The community is a great source of ideas and inspiration. Joshua says: is flatulence a good ingredient? James says: Well, a man once said--perhaps Edison--that invention is two percent ingenuity and ninety-eight percent hard work.. or, something like that.. well, here at ESP, invention is around ninety-five percent hard work, ten percent ingenuity, forty percent alcohol, and twenty percent flatulence. Okay, so.. I suck at math, but hey!.. I write great games! *grin* Joshua says: heh Joshua says: Is there anything you would want to share about James the man, as opposed to just the mind? behind ESP Softworks? James says: Not really.. I'm actually a pretty boring guy. James says: hmm.. well.. lemme think James says: I think mostly that I'm a very approachable part of the company. I've always felt that it's important to become involved in the community and to listen to what people want to see happen. It's not a luxury that's been as much accessible to commercial game developers, but I personally feel that it's an opportunity that we--as developers--should take advantage of-- to give back by listening to our market. James says: There are a lot of times when James the man and the mind behind ESP are often one in the same as is witnessed in the humour that often creeps into the games I write. Joshua says: How did you first here about Audyssey? James says: I first heard of Audyssey from a gal named Theresa VanEttinger at a national annual NFB convention I was attending in order to demonstrate the Genesis Project concept. She loved the demo and said she would return and pass along Michael's contact information. James says: Once I returned home, I contacted Michael Feir and the rest is history. Joshua says: And partially from that point, you began to do more for accessible gaming than just developing games. You also distributed the magazine, and even hosted the discussion list for a time... James says: I've always been the type to try and lend a hand to worthy causes or individuals if I had the resources. In having the resources, I decided that it would be great to help further the Audyssey community cause by distributing the magazine to subscribers, hosting the discussion list serve, as well as promoting the magazine where ever ESP may have tread. Joshua says: And even now that you know longer host the discussion list, you still host the blind mudder's list which is moderated by Dave Sherman. James says: I've met quite a few people through the business who have become good friends--Dave Sherman being one of those. He asked if I'd be able to host the mudder's list and was glad to do so. In becoming close with many members of the community, I've had a vested interest in much more than just the development aspects. Joshua says: What is the status of accessiblegames.com? Is that still in the works? Perhaps you would want to elaborate what you want to do with that? James says: I originally acquired the AccessibleGames.com domain name in order to prevent it from being used as a catch-all for a particular company's endeavours because I felt it would be more fairly put to use to represent not just one game developer, but every game developer as well as be a hub for the gamers themselves to be kept up-to-date on the latest developments, read reviews, download demos, James says: interact with one another on message boards and chat, and contribute to the site as they'd like to see it evolve. While I own the domain name itself and administrate the site, I've always wanted it to be the communities place to gather and it's destiny shaped by the same community. James says: After all, all of us developers produce 'accessible games' and all the gamers are interested in 'accessible games'. Joshua says: *nod* Are you looking for volunteers to come forward to assist with the site? James says: Most definitely! AG.com is one of the endeavours that I'm looking forward to pushing forward during my development duty break. I'll definitely be inviting everyone to become involved and hope that lots of people do. James says: I would very much like to see the AG.com eventually cover all aspects of accessible gaming whether it's computer games, hand held games, board games, card games and what have you. Also, a place for developers to submit 'behind the scenes' or 'in the making of..' articles to give gamers a glimpse of what's involved in the whole development process or with a particular title. The site could also James says: feature a section for aspiring game developers as well. Joshua says: If somebody is interested in getting involved with the project, what is his or her best line of action? James says: The best line of action at this point is to sit tight until the development queue is clear and the announcement is made. They can always e-mail me directly and I welcome them to do so, but the field will be more clear in the coming months to better deal with and handle a new project and the associated correspondence. Joshua says: Alright. Well, I don't have anything else, unless you have any parting words? James says: uhm.. James says: In closing, I'd just like to say to everyone to try to become as involved as possible whether you're a developer or a game player. We all have such a unique opportunity to shape the future of this market and community and it's a rare opportunity to be had. Many claim that accessible gaming is a niche market and to those, I simply say, "Then, you are not trying hard enough!" Spread the word and get other people excited and involved. This market has been a long time in coming and way overdue and there are so many good things about to come forth that'll make the journey all that much more worthwhile! Joshua says: Thank you for the interview James. I know I'm not the only one looking forward to what is in store for us from ESP Softworks, or James north. James says: Thanks, Joshua. I appreciate you taking the time to help the cause! James says: wait.. was that cause or curse?? If you are interested in learning more about any of the games made by ESP Softworks, or any of the email discussion lists that ESP hosts, you can visit: http://www.espsoftworks.com +++ BPCPrograms, Making Games Designed For Blazie Note takers! BPCPrograms, a small, non-profit company makes games specifically designed for the family of Blazie Note takers. Since Blazie released its Millennium, most of us have been held back from playing games on our Note taker because of a sound chip problem. However, BPC develops games which are accessible on a Millennium, as well as on the regular Blazie Note takers. Our games are also converted to run in DOS Mode under the GWBasic Interpreter. This means that visually impaired users can play the games, as well as sighted users! BPC's founder, Munawar Bijani, is the main developer for the games at BPC. His main goal with BPC is to create games that run on all three systems (BNS/BLT/TNS/BLM/DOS.) Although all games submitted to BPC don't meet this goal, with Munawar's BPC Team, converting these games is not hard at all. BPC has games like Unending Adventures, Trivia, and an exciting tournament game which is currently being tested. This game will be released soon. A BPC Member, Graham Pearce, has submitted a game similar to Star Trek. This game can only run in DOS right now, but converting is taking place to run on a Note taker. To view a list of all current BPC Members, visit http://www.geocities.com/mun00092/welcome.htm Right now, BPC consists of 7 members. You may also sign up to be a part of the BPC team. Or, you may submit a game to BPC. The BPC homepage is located at: http://www.geocities.com/mun00092/programs.htm When you sign up with BPC, you will be requested to join a mailing list which is specifically designed for BPC Members. This list gives you inside scoops of current games being developed. All programs submitted to BPC will be forwarded to this list to Beta test and convert to DOS and other systems. The whole BPC Team is on this list. We hope to see you on the team soon! BPC Founder, Munawar Bijani +++ Friendly Travellers: The Audyssey community has many people in it who have quite diverse interests and backgrounds. In an effort to improve community spirit and bring us all a little closer together, this section was created. In each issue, people interested in being contacted by others who want to get to know them will have their introductory paragraphs placed as they are here. I hope that having this section will serve two purposes. First, it will strengthen the ties within the active part of the community. It will encourage friendship, which is one of those keystones that the community is built upon. Also, I hope that others may choose to contact people whose paragraphs are found here and may become more involved through this. + Nick Adamson: My name is Nick Adamson, I am a student in the UK studying software engineering at De Montford University. I'm 19, I've got a guide dog, "seeing eye dog" called Charlie and one of my main hobbies is playing Goal ball. I'm Fairly new to the blind gaming community, I Joined the mailing list in the middle of august 2001. I love games like loan wolf and mark1. I also love music, I play the drums and trombone. I also read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, my favourite author at the moment is a guy called David Webber. My theory about life is not very original but works for me: "What I'll do I can, What I can't I'll still try." And that's about me. If you want to contact me My address is: nick.adamson@ntlworld.com + Charles Rivard: I'm 1 of those, and I hope there are many, who love computer games but am not good at most of them as of yet, due to lack of time. I work for a major credit card company, troubleshooting merchants' credit card terminals over an 800 phone line. I'm 47, & have been playing guitar since 1968 in rock and country bands. I enjoy most music. Rap is to me an art form, but not music, and this is not a putdown--it takes talent to do it right. I'm a chess player, a bowler, and have shot archery unassisted, among other things such as driven a speedboat at over 100mph (with help, of course). Also bungee jumped and I absolutely LOVE roller coasters. Not a computer guru yet, but sort of working on it because they fascinate me, especially seeing how they've opened up a whole new world of opportunity for totally blind people to become employed successfully as well as accessing the Internet to get all sorts of stuff we never even thought possible at one time. Also love outdoor cooking and I live in Phoenix Arizona where the weather allows lots of that. Email me at wooferess@earthlink.net and my 8 year old female German shepherd guide Johna or I will respond. She's my third guide from Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael, Ca. All have been shepherds. + Mark Hemmings: I don't know how i rate at computer games, but I love games which involve both skill and some kind of strategy, though there's plenty of text adventures which have me stumped. I am 36, single and live in nsw Australia and have a guide dog named laker. my second dog from the guide dogs association. have been using computer since the early eighties, -- well, smile, i gave my age.. and due to study and lack of employment, have become some what of an expert, or so my friends say. being hearing impaired as well as blind does make some games more difficult to play than others, but I intend to learn to developed my own games and who knows... I do have some previous programming experience so gamers be prepared. + Krister Ekstrom: My name is Krister Ekstrom, (or if you want to spell it in Swedish it's Ekström) and i live in Malmo in the southern parts of Sweden. I have a guide dog called Simba and it's my second dog. Apart from gaming i play the guitar, keyboards, bass and drums and i also do some singing. I read books too. Favourite genres are horror and fantasy with names like Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Robert Jordan, Katherine Kerr, Marion zimmer Bradley and many more. Favourite games are Esp pinball, Shades of doom and i also like the win casino. You can contact me at krister@bonetmail.com or if you're into instant messaging, icq 902032, Msn thecount48@hotmail.com. + Graham Pearce: Hi! I'm Graham Pearce, and I'm 13 years old. I've been in to gaming in some form or another for the past 9 years, as my story about games for the blind in audyssey issue 29 will tell you. I like nearly all types of games, especially the classic basic ones, because those are the ones that I had the most fun modifying and playing. Apart from gaming, my hobbies include basic programming, surfing the net, listening to and playing music and reading. My interests in music are nearly as diverse as those in gaming, and I like everything from opera to rock, classical to modern. My favourite genre of books is science fiction because I like the concept of other inhabited planets and space ships. Contact me at: lpp@vianet.net.au + Jim Kitchen: I am a peace loving, old, long hair hippie. I spent many a year smoking up, drinking and listening to rock -n- roll in my painted, postered black light party room. My hobby for 20 some years has been computer programming. (mostly games) I live in a small town very nice HUD apartment complex. My unofficial wife lives just down the hall. Kinky sex is my other favourite hobby. In movies, TV and books I like comedy, sex and science fiction. Not necessarily in that order, but a combination of all of them is all the better. Contact me at: jimkitchen@simcon.net + Allen My name is Allen and I am 31 years old. I am way too single and living in Evanston Illinois, U.S.A. I live with two cats, Nikki and Shelly who have effectively taken over my apartment. I have been playing computer games for 16 years. I programmed in Apple Basic at first and created mainly arcade-type games. I am just diving into the Visual Basic language and when I get a much better grasp of it I will be creating arcade-style sports games, sci-fi games, and other fast-action games for Windows. I have played my share of text adventures but only solved a very few. To be honest, I have grown tired of the text version of interactive fiction and vastly prefer games such as SOD, Lone Wolf and Grizzly Gulch. E-Mail me at: prairiebat@home.com + Justin Ekis: Hi all, My name is Justin Ekis, I'm the magazine's staff writer on online gaming. I am 18 years old, and live in southern California, near Los Angeles in the U.S. I just graduated high school and am preparing for a career somewhere in the technology field such as programming or technical support. My hobbies include jaws scripting although I'm not very good at it lol, amateur radio I'm studying for my license, and listening to sports on the radio my favourites are baseball and American football. My favourite hobby is still gaming though. I like all of the accessible games out there, but my absolute favourites are games you play on BBS systems or on the web. In fact, I've started up my own gaming BBS and it should be up by the time you read this in the magazine. I also might make an announcement in this issue if it is. My favourite kind of books are science fiction although I hardly ever read any books at all. I don't listen to much music either but when I do my absolute favourite is country. If you want to contact me, my e-mail address is: j.ekis@verizon.net You can also add this same address to your msn messenger contact list. If you use yahoo messenger instead, you can find me under the yahoo ID j_ekis but note that I'm not on that one nearly as much as I'm on msn messenger. + Lian Mervan: Hi everyone! I'm Liam Erven. one of the craziest guys around. I'm 16, and am from Des Plaines Illinois. What do I like to do? Well. I love audio production, broadcasting radio shows on the net, and playing these fun games! games are loads of fun! oh yes indeed! I run a cool web site. liamshow.com and if you want to talk to me (yeh right) you can either catch me on msn messenger. liam@liamshow.com or e-mail me. sclass1012@triad.rr.com + Kelly Sapergia: My name is Kelly John Sapergia (also known as The KJS Man). I live near a small town called Mortlach, in Saskatchewan, Canada. My interests include playing computer games, creative writing, composing music, broadcasting, and amateur, or Ham, radio. Speaking of music, I like just about everything except rap and some dance tunes. My personal preferences are classic country, and new age or easy listening music. If you'd like to contact me, my e-mail address is: kelly@acbradio.org. + Darren Hartland: My name is Darren Hartland, known to most online as Hugmaster. I'm 32 years old and started playing accessible games Christmas 2000 while I was drunk one night *grin* and haven't stopped playing since. My other hobbies are Music, I love adding material to my websites http://website.lineone.net/~hugmaster and http://www.bigmix.co.uk I run a mobile disco business in Northamptonshire, England after moving from Birmingham to be with my partner Louise. I run a chat room on the Line one chat server called Hughouse, would love to have you come see us there. Could go on for ages about my other interests but don't want to bore you to death. You can contact me at hugmaster@bigmix.co.uk + J.J. Meddaugh My name is J.J. Meddaugh, also known as J-Squared on Test Pattern Radio. Broadcasting is my biggest hobby, and I host a weekly music and variety show on that station. It's lots of fun to interact with the listeners and discuss just about anything. I got into gaming with my Apple file://E in the late 80s with classics like the Great Escape and Lemonade Stand. I'm mostly interested in sports and card games, and anything with a high replay level. I have a short attention span. I'm also interested in either starting my own game company or working with someone else on a project to get more Internet-based games to the blindness community. I also enjoy goal ball, hanging out with my friends, and plenty of partying. J.J. Meddaugh - Email/MSN to: jj@bestmidi.com + Darren Duff: Hey guys, my name is Darren Duff and I live in Gainesville GA. I'm 22 and have only been on this list for about a year. I'm completely blind and have been cents birth. some of my favourite games are sod, lone wolf, and mach1. the first totally accessible game I ever played was sod. one of my hobbies is music. I've been a drummer for about 12 years, and I've played guitar for as long as I can remember. my favourite kind of music is Christian rock, but I also love some of the old 70's classic rock too and I'm going to school to major in computer networking. I spend allot of time on the computer. you can ketch me on msn, or ftp, or accessible chat if you want to talk. and that's about it. Happy gaming all! audyssey rocks! E-mail me at: dlduff@bellsouth.net + Robert Pires: My name is Robert Pires. I am visually impaired, 29 years old, and live in Rhode Island. (For those of you who do not know, Rhode Island is not part of New York. It is its own state.) *grin* I graduated in May with a double major in Finance and Economics. Unfortunately, I'm still looking for a job. I also have some programming experience, though it was about 9 years ago and limited to quick basic and a little COBOL. My interests include hockey, I am a HUGE hockey fan, music, mostly hard rock/heavy metal and I even play guitar and a little bit on the keyboard, though I don't do much of that anymore, reading, I'll read most anything but my favourites are Stephen King and the Dragonlance series. In addition, I discovered accessible gaming within the last few months. It's an incredible feeling to be able to play games to their fullest enjoyment without my blindness taking anything away from them. Let's keep these games coming and continue supporting their developers. E-mail me at: eclipse@efortress.com + Cecilia: You open the door and step into a very dark room. Apparently the person who lives here doesn't believe in turning on lights. But why should she since they don't do her much good anyway? As you step further into the room, you trip and fall over a huge pile of stuff on the floor. The person who lives here must not believe in cleaning very often either. So who is this mysterious person who doesn't need light and loves a cluttered room? While playing my favourite muds, I'm often known as Dura the quick-tempered warrior or Cristiana the kind-hearted ranger. In the real world I'm called Cecilia. I'm 26 years old. I live in St. Louis, Missouri. I am the director of The St. Louis Christian Outreach Centre For The Blind. Here, I do computer and Braille training, direct a music group, and host a meal of the month which all blind people are welcome to attend. I am the co host of Faith Matters, a weekly program on ACB radio. My favourite type of music is Broadway with my favourite musical being Phantom Of The Opera. I love singing, playing keyboard, and breaking windows with the help of my violin. I also enjoy being on the internet, reading, making new friends, and trying things I haven't tried before. My email address is: hisown@mindspring.com, and I love nothing better than to get personal e-mail. + Jared Stofflett: My name is Jared Stofflett and I am a 15 year old high school student who is teaching him self visual basic and hoping to program games. I also play football, wrestling, shot put and discus, I water ski, downhill ski, and play goal ball. I also sail. I was in a Florida youth tournament and was last on the roster but got to play in a lot of games since we mercied like 3 teams. If anyone knows of a goal ball list or something like blind athletes list please let me know. Contact me at: stofflej@yahoo.com + Nick apostolidis: Hello everybody. I'm 23 years old. I live in Greece and i absolutely love computer games! I'm studying computer science and i hope one day to be able to contribute my own computer game in this community! I like reading science fiction, romance and basically i read any kind of book that comes in handy! I'm good with computers and i try to be productive. I'm also a musician. I write background music for theatre. I like sports but I'm not really good on this subject, (lot of my time i spend sleeping! I like going in parties with my friends and drink until I'm completely elsewhere! I'm not very good in drinking either! I really like our traffic in this list and i hope we continue to grow! If anybody wants to contact me, they can do this via msn or email at: nick_apostolidis@hotmail.com + Lisa Hayes: Hi All, I thought i would write my paragraph as a few of you have been doing lately on list. Well my name is Lisa hayes and i am 33 and live in sydney Australia. I have been using laptops for years and i also have an aria, a little palm top computer. I got a desktop last year and haven't looked back. I was a roar novice at windows, and am still not an expert, but am learning. I love all kinds of games and have played a lot of the Infocom games and now love sod, pinball and monkey business when i get my hands on it. E-mail me at: lhayes1@iprimus.com.au +++ Puzzles AND Games By David Greenwood. These puzzles are for all you armchair physicists. You won't need a pencil and paper or any other materials to figure them out. The best way to solve them is to just sit back in your favourite chair and think about them. 1. A helium-filled balloon is tied to the floor of a car that makes a sharp right turn. Does the balloon tilt while the turn is made? If so, which way? The windows are closed so there is no connection with the outside air. 2. A small boat is floating in a swimming pool. The man in the boat picks up a cannon ball from the bottom of the boat and throws it in the pool. Does the water level of the pool change? 3. You have two bars of iron. One is magnetized along its length, the other is not. Without using any other instrument OR OBJECT, find out which is which. 4. You are just served a hot cup of coffee and want it to be as hot as possible later. If you like milk in your coffee, should you add it when you get the cup or just before you drink it? [Editor's comment]: For new readers who might be gnashing their teeth unable to think of the answers, relax! They are provided later in this issue. Parents, teachers and others should be certain to check out interactive fiction. Otherwise known as text adventures, these games are stories which are full of interesting puzzles including some similar to the ones David Greenwood has set down here. I strongly recommend interactive fiction such as the Zork series from Infocom, Haunted Theatre, Jigsaw, and other games as a great way to improve typing skills, instill an interest in reading, and learn a whole lot. +++ Free Game Winner +++ News From Danssoft Our intergalactic space shooting game Troopanum is ready for download! The entire download is 5.1 MB and includes over 130 stereo sound files! No need to download for hours, you can yank our game in 20 minutes with a regular dial-up modem or in seconds with cable or DSL! We are the first to use/come up with this hyper-nifty technology... compressing sound files and unpacking them after installation! We are certain others will copy this approach so let it be known... we were the first to come up with it! grin. We are a bit proud of this accomplishment so please bare with our childish boast. LOL. For any questions about the game, email Daniel Zingaro at dan@blindsoftware.com. For more details about the game, and for a download link, visit us on the web at: http://www.blindsoftware.com and read the what's new section on our home page. Enjoy! The BSoft team! +++ News From ESP Softworks: What's New @ ESP Softworks -- First Quarter 2002 Greetings, Gamers! This issue of Audyssey will find our update sweet and short, but still bring you gamers good news! Monkey Business has finally been released for shipping and all orders are filled for immediate delivery. It has turned out to be quite a bear of a project, but has finally come into it's own. I think you'll all be very excited with the results. For information about this innovative and wacky completely 3D adventure, point your browsers to http://www.espsoftworks.com and click on the Monkey Business link. Stay tuned for detailed reviews of this title in the next issue of Audyssey. ESP Raceway is still being developed and should be released sometime during beginning of the second quarter of 2002. It promises to be a very, very cool racing game with lots of tracks and great effects. Here are some of the nifty features you can expect: - Wonderfully Realistic Sounds - Accurate Engine & Car Physics - A Dozen Completely Different Tracks - Pit Stop With Full Crew Including A Pit Captain - A Head-Set Radio Link To Your Pit Captain For Real-Time Information - Several Weather Conditions Including: Sunny, Rain, Sleet, and Snow - Manual & Automatic Transmissions - Great Crowd Ambience To Keep You Going - And, much more! Shortly after it's release, we'll be releasing two arcade-style games that should prove to be great fun. More information regarding these will be made available upon their gold release. After the above releases, ESP Softworks will be taking a short development break in order to update our website technologies and begin the initial pre-rollout work on the AccessibleGames.com website. More information about the AG.com site will be forthcoming as well. As always, feel free to visit our website at http://www.espsoftworks.com for current information regarding our products and services. +++ News From GMA Games Shades of Doom is currently in the process of being upgraded and enhanced. It was written using GMA's proprietary game engine, and almost all changes made to the engine are automatically reflected in Shades of Doom. Several new games are currently being developed using this engine, and each has its own unique sound and feel. The new games range from arcade to medieval fantasy to military. All of them entirely unlike Shades of Doom. No dates have been set yet on their release. Development for the next release of Lone Wolf is still on the back burner, but thanks to many suggestions from the users, it looks like the next release has already been scoped out. The major changes will involve two or three reality settings, and a much more powerful mission building system. Stay tuned! David Greenwood, DavidGreenwood@GMAGames.com http://www.GMAGames.com +++ News from MindsEye2 http://www.mindseye2.com --> Distributor inquiries welcome If you own a business and you would like to offer MindsEye2 games in your catalog then please contact us at dealer@mindseye2.com --> FREE! $13 gift while supplies last! This Spring purchase Forest Friends Easter Egg Hunt Adventure and receive a $13 gift from MindsEye2 while supplies last. The gift is The Pooh Very Grand Garden Playcenter. This playcenter includes Pooh, seeds, several pots, tools, carrots and flowers and a tool shed. Your child will enjoy playing with Pooh and also finding the many hidden Easter Eggs in our Forest Friends Easter Egg Hunt Adventure this Spring. This offer is until Easter or until supplies run out so place your order soon to not miss out. --> The full colour MindsEye2 Spring 2002 print catalog is now available MindsEye2 has its full colour Spring 2002 print catalog done so write to catalog@mindseye2.com to request a copy today! The catalog shows several pictures from the games and also describes two games MindsEye2 will be releasing this Spring. It lets you pre-order these two upcoming games at a discount to save! One upcoming game is Barkly Puppy's General Store a money counting game in which you help Barkly Puppy count change for his animal friend customers. It will ship with Jungle Tic Tac Toe a tic tac toe game with a jungle theme. The other upcoming game is Backyard Birds a game in which you learn about common American birds. You match the bird's song/call with its name and in another activity answer trivia questions about the birds. A mini encyclopaedia of the birds in the game lets you learn more details about the birds. --> Accessible toys available on our website soon! MindsEye2 will soon be offering a few toys on our website So come visit to discover these. We have very limited supplies of each toy but will offer each at an attractive price. --> FREE game to download! MindsEye2 now has a FREE game for you to download and play. Christmas Tic Tac Toe is a simple but fun game for children age 4 to 7. In Christmas Tic Tac Toe you are Prancer one of Santa's favourite Reindeer. Have fun playing tic tac toe with Santa. Visit our MindsEye2 website to download this game and discover the fun in all our MindsEye2 games. This is the full version of Christmas Tic Tac Toe 5.7 megabytes to download. http://www.mindseye2.com --> Two new games have been released! MindsEye2 has released two new games. Keyboard Playroom is a play centre for children age 1 to 5. Each keystroke pressed reveals hidden fun. The letters say their names and a sound related to the letter such as "W is for wolf" followed by the sound of a wolf howling. About 30 other keys speak nursery rhymes and several keys read poems. The game includes a jukebox for playing familiar children tunes. Great for children age 1 to 5. The other game recently released is Froggy Hop for children age 3 to 5 or so. Help Jumper Frog hop across her pond by answering preschool age questions. Over 300 questions are included. Also included are 5 adventure stories about Robbie Robot a lovable curious little robot. He goes camping, explores a cave, builds a sand castle on the beach, and has loads of fun. Both Froggy Hop and Keyboard Playroom come with Farm animal Picture Book and Zoo Animal Picture Book. These picture book programs teach about 32 well known animals and include the sound each makes. --> Below are descriptions of all our current MindsEye2 games Currently MindsEye2 has nine accessible games to purchase from our website. Each sells for $40 US + $4 US shipping. You may pay using PayPal on our website or by sending a check to our address after the game descriptions below. ---------------- Forest Friends Easter Egg Hunt Adventure Enjoy lots of Easter fun in the Forest Friends Easter Egg Hunt Adventure. The Windows title is a collection of thrilling, self-speaking Easter-themed games. Search for Easter eggs in 8 fun-filled games (4 for the younger child and 4 slightly harder, more complex games for the older child). Accompanied by Freda Fox and Michael Myna, who sings out clues, roam through the forest, stroll through the field of wild flowers and crawl through a hollow log, searching for eggs. Meet many friendly forest creatures along the way. Oh, and don't forget, to explore the gloomy bat-filled cave and to paddle across the beautiful blue lake in the canoe. Explore many more exciting sound-studded locations as you hunt for that next Easter egg. The Bunny Trail - Let's your child show off his knowledge in a curriculm-based educational quiz game, while he has fun helping the Easter bunny gather jelly beans on the Bunny Trail. (For preschool and kindergarten) Easter Tic Tac Toe - Join Lily Lamb and Quackey Duck in a challenging game of Tic Tac Toe. Includes background music as well as pictures and sounds. Two levels- an easy level that allows the younger child to experience the thrill of winning and a harder level to challenge the thinking skills of the older child as she plots her way to victory. Experience more traditional Easter fun as you enjoy The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter and listen to The Easter Bunny. Relive the exciting adventures of Peter in Mr. McGregor's garden and enjoy the imagery and fun in the poem The Easter Bunny. Educational Benefits: The Easter Egg Hunt provides practice with keyboarding and orientation skills, increases auditory comprehension and memory and provides exposure to screen-reader type voices. The Bunny Trail provides practice with multiple choice questions, reviews preschool and kindergarten level reading, math, vocabulary, social studies and science. Example skills include beginning sounds, opposites, rhyming, and ordering events. Easter Tic Tac Toe promotes logical thinking. All Easter activities above are part of this fun packed game. Suggested age 3 to 7 ---------------- Crossword Fun Have you always wanted to work crosswords or do you love crossword puzzles? Then this game is for you! Have fun working this exciting collection of 70 crosswords. Virtually every kind of crossword under the sun is here - newspaper style, freeform crosswords themed crosswords, crossword anagrams and a unique sound crossword. Requires the use of a screen reader for a visually impaired player. ---------------- Anagram Mania Experience a veritable feast of anagrams. If you like word scramble, you will love Anagram Mania! What's an anagram? An anagram is a word or short phrase where the letters are scrambled into new words, often with interesting and hilarious results. Over 1300 anagrams in 100 interesting themes including Honey Bee Buzz, Sweet Tooth Treat, Passionate About Parrots. Requires the use of a screen reader for a visually impaired player ---------------- Magic Match Enjoy the fun of Magic Match, a self-speaking memory game for one or two players. The computer keeps track of and announces your score as you play solo or in a challenge match with your blind and sighted friends to see who can score the most matches of exciting sounds with accompanying artwork in 9 categories. Blind and sighted children and adults can play together. Everything speaks so no screen reader is required. ---------------- Flies By Night Deep in treacherous Tadpole Swamp lives Prince Pollywog Frog who must gobble up twenty irritating and fast flying bugs before sunset to win the fair Princess Petunia's hand. But the swamp is a dangerous place to live. As the clock ticks off the hours till sunset, wildcats and snakes prowl the shore, the Great Blue Heron swoops in trying to spear a frog for dinner. Swarms of angry hornets, honking geese and leaping fish add to the fun and excitement. Everything speaks so no screen reader is required. ---------------- Crossword Fun for Kids - An exciting new computer game for Windows has 70 crossword puzzles designed especially for blind children. Puzzles include Down on the Farm - Old McDonald never had so much fun! Identify farm sounds from tractors to sheep in this fun crossword puzzle. Trick or Treat! - It's all here - apple bobbing, ghosts, jack o'lanterns and more. This Halloween themed puzzle is complete with spooky sound effects. Under the Sea - You dive into the briny deep. What's that? An octopus or a jellyfish? Learn about sea creatures in this exciting underwater puzzle. Educational Benefits: All the puzzles reinforce spelling and many reinforce facts from the classroom. Many puzzles, while fun with silly, zany and interesting sound effects, are educational. Children will learn the days of the week, holidays, months and seasons, and important time and money facts. Children will also learn about sea creatures, wild animals, dinosaurs, outer space, and Ancient Egypt. They will practice spelling common words, such as shapes and colours, in the crossword spelling bees and to spell the numbers from zero to 20. Children will learn to associate birds with their songs and identify musical instruments. There is a special group of 10 puzzles for the younger child that do not require spelling or reading. Beginning words, grouped by rhyming families, are pronounced then spelled as the child is prompted for each letter. Frequent reinforcement and encouragement is given. Suggested age: 6 to 12 Requires the use of a screen reader for a visually impaired player. ---------------- Christmas Playroom - Age preschool (1 to 5) Christmas Playroom is the Windows game for preschoolers with a Christmas theme. Christmas Playroom is a keyboard activity centre with exciting activities your child will love! These include: Lil' Jukebox - each press of the key plays one of 16 different tunes, from Christmas music to other children's favourites. Nursery Rhyme Time - Each press of a key recites one of over 30 nursery rhymes with accompanying sound effects. Full colour artwork with audible descriptions available for each rhyme. Read-Aloud Stories: "Twas the Night Before Christmas and Robbie Robot and the Christmas Adventure. The Amazing Audio Alphabet- Press a letter and hear the letter and an associated word, such as "B is for bubbles" followed by the sound of bubbles, while the screen shows a picture of Santa in scuba gear among a flurry of bubbles that say, "ho, ho, ho!" Accompanying artwork with audible descriptions available for each letter of the alphabet. Almost all the keys on the keyboard do something. Your child will have fun exploring the keyboard. The game is self-speaking with no screen reader required. It is designed for visually impaired preschool children ages 1-5, but is also great for sighted children. Making it a great choice for preschools and other places where young children come together to play and learn. ---------------- Keyboard Playroom Keyboard Playroom is easy to play even for the youngest child. Press any key on the computer keyboard to hear nursery rhymes, poems, familiar children tunes and learn about the alphabet. There are lots of sounds to listen to and pressing space will tell you what the picture is showing on the screen. Even if the child presses several keys at once the game picks one key and acts on it so the child does not need to be real careful to press only one key at a time. Example: When the letter "A" is pressed a voice speaks "A is for apple" then we hear two crunchy bites and a boy saying "Yum yum!" Keyboard Playroom includes Farm Animal Picture Book and Zoo Animal Picture Book for free. Suggested age 1 to 5 ---------------- Froggy Hop (Including Farm and Zoo Picture Books for FREE) Froggy Hop is a computer game in which Jumper Frog tries to cross her pond by leaping from lily pad to lily pad as you answer preschool age questions. Only ten questions right to reach the far shore for Jumper Frog where she receives her reward a lengthy lively tune which will have your child dancing and wanting to play again. If you miss three questions Jumper hops into the pond with a mighty splash and swims back to shore to start over. There are 317 preschool age questions provided with the game. These are on a wide range of educational topics appropriate for preschool age children. Topics cover areas of learning such as colours, shapes, counting, first/last, rhyming words (Sounds like), biggest/smallest, starting sounds, parts of the body, holidays, recognizing sounds, and many more fun and educational topics. A few typical questions would be like: What do you do first in the morning? Eat breakfast, wake up, go to school What would make a good toy to play with? Matches, A knife, Teddy Bear What animal lives in a zoo? Sound of a horse, Sound of a dog, Sound of an elephant How many sounds can you hear? (Three sounds of a sheep play) Three, One, Two Which animal do you hear first? (Sounds of Cat, Dog, Horse play) Dog, Horse, Cat T makes the T sound. Which word starts with the letter T? Frog, Turtle, River What word sounds like GOAT? Car, Boat, Ring What is the opposite of BAD? Good, Sad, Grandmother What comes after three? Four, One, Two What do you use to open a door? A hammer, A saw, A key There are many questions on quite a range of topics and these are questions your child may well know the answer to or is learning. Froggy Hop is very easy to play using only the four arrow keys and the space bar. You pick an answer with the three lower arrow keys and then choose it by pressing the up-arrow key. Space repeats the question. We include five Robbie Robot stories with Froggy Hop. These are stories about a curious little robot who has lots of fun on his exciting adventures. Robbie Robot Goes Camping Robbie Robot Goes Cave Exploring Robbie Robot on the Beach Robbie Robot Goes Fishing Robbie Robot Christmas Adventure Froggy Hop including both picture books Suggested age: 3 to 5 ---------------- Farm Animal Picture Book Listen to Old McDonald Had A Farm while learning about 12 farm animals. A description of each animal in simple language appropriate for younger children is spoken followed by the sound of that animal. Pressing any key speaks the description of the next animal. Pressing the space bar describes the picture showing on the screen. Included free with both Keyboard Playroom and Froggy Hop Suggested age 1 to 5 ---------------- Zoo Animal Picture Book Similar to Farm Animal Picture Book with 20 well known wild animals being featured. Animals include lion, hippo, rattle snake, skunk, wolf, and many others. Each animal is described and its sound played for extra fun. Included free with both Keyboard Playroom and Froggy Hop Suggested age 1 to 5 ---------------- MindsEye2 can be reached at: MindsEye2 1334 Airport Road Fairmont, WV 26554 http://www.mindseye2.com Email: info@mindseye2.com +++ News From PCS: Congratulations Michael Feir and Rebecca Sutton on your up-coming wedding! Last year with Phil moving to Michigan, getting married and buying a house, and Carl getting a job with IBM and moving to New York, PCS Games had to put game production on hold. Well, that time will soon be over, thanks to David Greenwood of GMA Games, Phil is working on a self-voicing Windows 3D sound version of Pacman. The game will be tentatively called "Pacman Talks". It is built with the same game creating engine from GMA that the Shades of Doom game uses. What is Pacman Talks? Here is a little description of the game: A pie-shaped character named Pac-Man runs along inside a maze, eating dots as it avoids four ghosts. Each ghost has its own unique personality and gobbling one of the four super power dots makes Pac-Man invincible to the ghosts for a given period of time. Here are some features already in the new game: Automatic moving through the maze. Just a touch of the up arrow key starts Pacman zooming down corridors and through openings to gobble those dots and earning points. Turning help. When you near an opening you will get a sound indicator and if you wish, a voice telling you about the turn. All you need to do is hit an arrow key and you will quickly make the turn. You can even anticipate turning by hitting the arrow key early. The game will wait until you're at the opening before turning you. Four talking ghosts Each of the four ghosts has a name, a different speed of moving and personality. As a ghost gets within range, it will say its name and its voice will get louder the closer it gets. The first is Pinky, it's fast but not so bright. The next ghost is Blinky, he's slower but it's hard to shake him. The third ghost is Inky, it's terribly shy and will actually run away from you. And the forth ghost is Clyde, he is the smartest one and will try his best to get you, but he is slow. Talking power Pills. When you near a Super power pill, you hear it, and as you get closer its voice gets louder. A special sound is used to tell you when your super power is almost gone. High score standings. Like the original arcade game, you will be able to save your initials in a high score standings list. Pacman Talks uses all of the original Pacman sounds plus many created just for this game. In addition, The game will have many features and surprises not found in the original arcade game. As Pacman Talks is still under construction, we can't tell you when it will be done, but we will keep you posted on its development and where the demo will be located in future Audyssey magazines. Locations of PCS Games demos: We have game demos in several Internet sites: The Kurzwiel Extras page: http://www.kurzweiledu.com/descriptions.html or Paul Henrichsen's file page: http://home.pacbell.net/paulh52/ftpfiles.htm Phil will be at the NFB Convention in Louisville, Kentucky July 2002. Hope to meet all the Audyssey gamers there! You can contact PCS Games in any format at PCS Games 666 Orchard Street Temperance, MI 48182 phone (734) 850-9502 E-mail Phil Vlasak pcsgames@toltbbs.com Our Web site that is temporarily down while we change hosts: www.pcsgames.com +++ An Alternative Game By Graham Pearce Six years ago, after having my eureka go through a major overhaul, I got some presents, in the form of games disks. On one of the disks, I found the Microsoft Basic interpreter, and about eighty other games. Little did I realize it then, but these games were not just games specifically designed for the eureka and thrown on to a disk for pure pleasure, these were classics of a forgotten chapter in our gaming history. The classic basic era. The reason why I liked these games so much is because they were of a completely different type to those I had encountered before. I believe, for a period of time lasting a year, I had some degree of exposure to every game type accessible to the blind, from interactive fiction to arcade, card games to strategy. Those classic basic games were also a catalyst for my interest in programming. My first successful modification of a program took place when I was only 7 years old. I modified a shopping program, which is reviewed later in this article, so that you could buy some beer without getting syntax errors thrown at you all the time. Although the problem was minor, (it was just incorrect spacing,) it took me about half an hour to fix it so that the program would operate normally again, without the beer glitch. These classics are one of the few games that can run on any computer, from the Braille Lite to pc's, and even, amazingly enough, the Braille Companion, a dos-based note taker using keysoft. I believe the best accessible interpreter to play these games with is gwbasic. It can be obtained from a number of places around the net, including this site: www.geocities.com/mun00092/programs.htm At that site, you can also find examples of some of my work. Note: If, while attempting to load these games, you receive a line buffer overflow error, just load the game into word pad, remembering to set it to wrap to window, and then save the file. Some of the games that I am about to review come from a site called basichome, which is a site dedicated to preserving classic basic games. It's address is at: http://moorecad.com/classicbasic/basic/ A couple weeks into the start of the year, I encountered a collection containing quite a few other basic games which were designed for an operating system called cp/m, which is what the eureka a4 and the apple computers ran on, as well of dozens of other early computers. Wanting to work on many of these games, I set to work modifying them so they would work with the gwbasic interpreter. Some problems were minor, such as a few spotss where the keywords were bundled together like: 10 IFC$="BART"THENGOTO20 and others used very odd commands which were common to find in non-microsoft basics. If the game comes from www.retroarchive.org/cpm, I will try to list the kind of changes I had to make. If the changes are not listed, it usually means I can't remember what I had to do, or they were so minor that they would be easy to fix. Note: To unpack a file with a .ark extension, just replace the k on the end with a c, and then it should be usable with most good archiving programs, like winzip, power archiver and filzip. Acey Ducy available at: http://http://moorecad.com/classicbasic/basic//creative/aceyducy.bas Rating: 5 Acey ducy was the first game I ever played from that disk of Microsoft Basic games, because it was the first alphabetically. The computer deals two cards face up, and you have an option on whether to bet or not depending on whether you feel the next card will have a value between the first two. This game fascinated me at first, because the rules were not outlined at all, and I was wondering why I was losing sometimes and winning at others. Now, I think it is an oversimplistic card game. It can be a good diversion though. Civil War Available at: http://http://moorecad.com/classicbasic/basic//general/civilw.bas Rating: 10 Ah. Civil war. This is a simulation of the American civil war between 1861 and 1864. This game has always fascinated me because of the facts and figures. It has also fascinated me because of the fact that until now, I have never been able to win it. Various factors effect the outcome of the battles, including money, the number of men you have, and how you distribute your money. It's one of the most intriguing basic games around. The only thing it needs is a "press enter to continue" prompt after a screenful of instructions has whizzed by. This can be easily added using the input statement. Drag Race Available at: http://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/cdrom/SIMTEL/CPMUG/cpmug027.ark File name is dragrace.asc rating: 8 Drag race is not at all your typical, run-of-the-mill racing game. It's not real-time at all and has no sound effects or graphics. The difference between this racing game and most others is that the only way to win is by designing your car properly. And no, I don't mean just stealing some money to buy the most powerful engine and then you're all set. The way you design cars in this program is by specifying the horsepower, rear end ratio, tyre width in inches and tyre diameter in feet. You have the option of racing against another car made by a friend, or racing against the computer's dragster. I tried to race that dragster for 4 hours, using a little help from my father to set the parameters. I managed to be beaten by about one and a half metres, but never managed to actually win. One of the cars I designed which was a slight variation of the computer's dragster was beaten by a millimetre. eek. The program does have some shortcomings though. For example, I designed a car with a tyre width of 0 inches and it managed to go about 800 feet at a top speed of no less than 120 miles an hour! Not bad for a car with no wheels, huh? I also managed to design a car with a rear end ratio of -5 to 1, which travelled an incredible -1200 feet, with a bottom speed of -120 miles an hour! I wonder where it was going? lol. Hamurabi Available: I know there are three versions of this game on the site, but neither of them is as good as one I found on ftp.gwbasic.org, which at the moment, is down. You'll have to ask me to send it to you. My e-mail address is at the bottom of this document. Rating: 10 Hamurabi is yet another strategy game that fascinated me for some time. Basically you have to try to get through 10 years of ruling the ancient kingdom of Symeria, but it's not as easy as it sounds. You have to try and feed your people with enough bushels of grain, while exchanging land for bushels and bushels for land. Various other problems can beset you such as a plague that kills half your population, and rats that will eat your grain. You also have to be careful that you don't starve half or more of your population, or you will be impeached. I have only managed to truly win this game once in the 6 years of owning the game. Madlibs Available at: http://http://moorecad.com/classicbasic/basic//general/madlip.bas Rating: 9 Madlibs is a very interesting and funny game where you have to make stories by supplying adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and a few other things like peoples' names. There is no real set goal, except one determined by the user. You could try and make stories that make as much sense as possible, or are as wacky as possible, or somewhere in between. To get very nonsensical stories, try using opposite adjectives together, like good and bad. Other than that, I have no other advice for you about this program except to explore away! Monopoly Available at: www.retroarchive.org/cpm/games/manygame.zip Rating: 6 There were many versions I found of Monopoly written in basic, and this version I'm reviewing was the second, so I may have some bias here. This one plays much like the real game, except there is a free parking jackpot, which increases every time you pay money from a Community Chest or Chance card. One of my main criticisms of this game, which I've heard at least one person openly express, is it's lack of interactivity. Sure, it does the dice rolls and stuff like that, which all computers should do in this kind of game, but because of it's restricted interaction, you can't, for example, auction a property or sell houses that easily. I have seen much better versions of monopoly out there. If you want to bother with this game, you'll need to remember that some of the spacing in the fornext loops is incorrect for gwbasic, e.g. nextj instead of next j. So, if you get a for without next error, it's because of the spacing, not because that the author forgot to put the next statement there! Also see ausopoly, which is a version of monopoly using British property names instead of American. It is available at: http://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/cdrom/SIMTEL/SIGM/VOLS100/VOL142/ausopoly.ba s Shop Available at: http://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/cdrom/SIMTEL/CPMUG/cpmug027.ark filename is shop.asc Rating: 7 Shop is the game which started my programming experience. It was, as mentioned above, the first game I successfully debugged so you could buy beer without getting a syntax error thrown your way. Oddly enough, the error is still in the program, on line 830. Also, you will get a syntax error from gwbasic if you type in special. The only way that I could get around it was to remove the special feature entirely. Well, all it needs besides that is the ability to buy all the things listed on the shopping list, and the ability to buy more cookies, grin! Splat! Available at: http://moorecad.com/classicbasic/basic//creative/splat.bas Rating: 10 Splat is, in my opinion, by far the best classic basic game I have found so far, due to it's sheer replay ability and randomness. You have to parachute on to various planets on the solar system, trying to open your shoot as low as possible without going splat! This would be a good game for physics students, as it teaches the relationship between acceleration and time. It's sheer replay ability comes from the fact that it gives you comments based on how low you opened your shoot at based on your other tries. It also contains some rather humorous comments for when you fall. My best attempt so far was when I opened my shoot at 28.42 feet. If anyone has managed to beat that, please email me. My email address will be given shortly. If you have any comments, suggestions, problems or advice about this article, please send them to: lpp@vianet.net.au Enjoy! +++ mach 1 race-calendar 2002 February 1-28, Series Mach 1 World championship Ohio level 1, 2 laps worldranking points: 12.5, 10, 8, 6.5, 5.5, 5, 4.5 till 0.5 for place 15. march 1-22, Enduro Race 24 Hours of Le Mans Ohio level 2, 4 laps Ohio level 3, 2 laps Ohio level 1, 4 laps world ranking points: for each leg, see points of the series, final classification: 50, 35, 25, 20, 18, 16, 14; 12, 10, 8, 7.5, 7 etc. till 0.5 point for place 25. July, 1-31, 500 Miles of Indianapolis Indy, level 3, 9 laps world ranking points: 25, 20, 16, 13, 11, 10 and 1 point for place 15. october, 1,-december, 31, World championship Mach1 2002 Ohio gp, level 1, 2 laps chardon hill gp, level 1, 2 laps snake river gp, level 1, 2 laps eerie lake gp, level 1, 2 laps mentor road gp, level 1, 2 laps Kirtland gp level 1, 2 laps world ranking points for each gp: 25, 20, 16, 13, 11, 10 till 1 point for place 15. Final classification: 100, 70, 50, 36, 32, 28, 24, 20, 16, 15 till 1 point for place 25 October, 1- December, 31 (only for competitors who do not participe on the world championship) 500 Miles of Maple maple, level 2, 9 laps world ranking points see series. Good Luck, to joint the races send a mail to hugo.j@pi.be +++Game Announcements and Reviews:Above the full reviews which appear in this section, any new games which have not been fully reviewed yet will be announced in the hopes that readers and/or the Audyssey staff will try out and review these games for us. Reviews of games will not appear in any particular order. The only exception to this will be when we have more than one review for a game. In this case, reviews will be placed consecutively so that it is easier to compare them. As with Anchor head a few issues back, I may wish to interject my own thoughts on a game should it provoke significant reaction or otherwise prove itself especially noteworthy. When I choose to do this, you'll find my remarks above the review or reviews for the game in question. Should a game have more than one review, two plus-signs will be placed above the first review and/or my remarks. This policy will hopefully encourage people to try both the latest as well as some older games which may have been overlooked. Just because something isn't hot off the presses doesn't mean that it is any less worthy of a gamer's attention. Also, remember that it doesn't matter if a game has been reviewed before. If you have a different take on the game than has already been published, send in your review and I'll consider it for publication. If a review fails to interest you, simply skip to the next plus-sign. It's that simple, folks. ++ Jim Kitchen has submitted the following news for classic game lovers out there: Coming soon a sound based version of Pong which 30 years ago was the first ever video game. This game will be self voicing with human speech and is a fun game for kids of all ages. + Troopanum has arrived on the scene and been warmly greeted by the Audyssey community. It is similar to Space Invaders and is quite well put together. Dan Zingaro has certainly taken giant strides forward from his first game. As I haven't played the full game, I won't give it a full review in this issue. However, I will say that the demo has certainly impressed me. I would recommend anyone looking for a classic arcade-style game go to: www.blindsoftware.com and check this one out. A few items of note for interactive fiction enthusiasts: There have been several updates to games previously released. These include the following taken from the Recent Additions file at the If-archive: www.ifarchive.org ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/glulx/pytho.blb Pytho's Mask, by Emily Short. Release 4 / Serial number 020223 ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/pc/silver.zip Silver Gauntlet, by Paul Panks. Alpha Version 0.65 ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/tads/ftf.gam First Things First, written by J. Robinson Wheeler. Version 2.0 20020220. ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/cycles.z5 Vicious Cycles, by Mark Simon Release 3 / Serial number 020222 ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/metamorp.z5 Metamorphoses, by Emily Short. Release 4 / Serial number 020222 ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/pytho.z8 Pytho's Mask, by Emily Short. Release 3 / Serial number 020223 ftp://ftp.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/zcode/zchess.z5 Z-Chess, by Eric Schmidt. An abuse of the Z-Machine that allows two people to play chess. + Mach 1 Reviewed by James North Available via the web at http://www.kitchensinc.net Price: Freeware Rating: 7 of 10 A good racing game has been a long time coming in the accessible games market and there have been many requests over the years for just such a title. As an introduction into this genre of accessible games, Jim Kitchen of Kitchen's, Inc. has developed and released the first developed-for-the-blind accessible racing game entitled Mach 1. Self-described as an accessible rendition of the Atari classic Pole Position, take to any of eight unique race tracks in a 200 MPH-capable race car and put the pedal-to-the-metal to place in the best lap times. Once the game is installed, getting started is fairly straightforward as you make your way into the Programs menu of the Start menu and click on the Mach 1 icon. There are fairly detailed instructions provided, but you'll need to hunt around for them in the Mach1 folder as there is no shortcut provided in the Programs sub-menu. An actual Mach1 Programs sub-folder containing shortcuts to the game and instructions would've been splendid. Upon starting the game, you'll hear a short blurb of music and then be presented with the self-voicing main game menu. The menu options are accessed by pressing a number key from zero to nine on the keyboard. The first eight menu options select the various tracks that you're able to race. The ninth menu option allows you to set the rate of speech and the tenth option exits the game completely. There are eight different race tracks in Mach 1 that are listed below with short descriptions: Ohio Motor Speedway - A large, fun track with an odd shape and a tricky S-curve to keep you on your toes. Chardon Hill Top Raceway - A good moderately difficult track once you get comfortable with some of the easier ones with some sharp turns and shaped like a large, broad 'U'. Snake River Speedway - The name says it all--lots and lots of U-turns! Indy Oval - A nice traditional elongated oval track to cut your tires on, the curves are nice and gradual without any surprises. Maple Leaf Tri-Oval - Another oval track, but slightly skewed so a little more challenging. Erie Lake Front Speedway - This track is a definite bear! Don't get too comfortable on the broad U-turns because before you know it, you'll slam right into an on-coming wall as the turn makes an abrupt twist! Mentor Road - More sharp turns--evil! Kirtland Dirt Mile Oval - Another simple oval track with an easy, rounded squarish layout. Once you select the track number you want to play, you'll be prompted to choose a difficulty level between one and three. At difficulty level one, you have the entire track to yourself with no other cars present. At difficulty level two, you share the track with one other car. And, at difficulty level three, there are an unspecified number of other cars on the track. As far as I can tell, these other cars aren't to race, but merely obstacles to avoid as you race around the various tracks. After selecting your difficulty level, you'll be asked to pick how many laps you'd like to race. At this point, the race begins.. There are a few different keystrokes you should be aware of before you zip off from the starting line. Most importantly, you have a low and high gear that are controlled via the up and down arrow keys. Other keys of interest are status keys to tell you your speed, your position on the track, and the lap that you're currently on. Finally, the space bar will be used to apply the car's brakes. Once the race begins, your car will automatically begin moving forward, accelerating on it's own. As it accelerates, your speed is announced in 25 MPH increments until it tops out at 200 MPH. As your car speed approaches 75 MPH, you'll need to shift into high gear using the up arrow key. The track has three lanes that you can steer across by using the left and right arrow keys. If there are other cars on the track, they'll stay in the centre of either the left or right lanes and always go slower than you do. As you approach either the left or right wall, you'll hear what the documentation refers to as an 'echo' of your car as you get closer to it. The sound is more like an airy whoosh versus an engine echo, but it's what you use to tell how close you are to the walls. As you drive down the track, you'll hear a whooshing-type sound on either your left or right side indicating that a left or right turn is approaching. You'll want to begin steering shortly after--and, quickly after if it's a sharp turn--while listening to the wall echo to make sure you're not getting too close to the wall you're turning into or so far away that you can hear your car's echo in the opposite wall. Once you make the turn, you'll hear another unique sound indicating that you're through it. If you get too far toward the edge of the track, you'll hear a thumping sound as your tires roll over the textured edges. After you complete all the laps, you'll hear a 'woohoo!' in the spirit of Homer Simpson and your lap time will be spoken along with whether you've beat the previous lap time or not. My impression of Mach 1 is fairly good overall--it's a highly addictive game with good replay value, great car control, and the game sounds are all used purposefully and effective. Racing around these tracks becomes very intuitive after a very short learning curve. The interface is simple and straightforward. The game is similar in style to Pole Position, but certainly not a recreatio n of the original. This may be a good or bad thing depending on your pre-play expectations. I would prefer that the acceleration is done by the player and perhaps use the auto-acceleration as a player aid option. The wall sounds might be a tad louder as well as they are somewhat quieter than the rest of the sounds. The vocal speed feedback might also be considered as a game option. Scores should be playable from the main menu as well as at the end of each race so they can be heard at-a-glance. It would also have been good to have the ability to actually race against the other cars instead of just trying to avoid them in their lanes. However, their current use does afford a nice way of presenting track obstacles. If you're a racing buff, you may be somewhat disappointed with the overall game design, goals, and sound effects, but I think you're still in for a good time in the spirit of racing. Whether you're a racing fanatic or just a casual gamer, I highly recommend downloading Mach 1 and giving it a try. No matter which way you slice it, it's a good deal! + MYRTHORN & KORIAL'S MUD PICKS 3-Kingdoms Code Base: LP Site: 3k.org 3000 [207.57.64.109] Theme: Fantasy, Science & Chaos A large hexagonally-shaped piece of crystal hovers in midair, its opaque silvery surface as smooth as a quiet pool of water. Without warning, colours and flashes of light begin to struggle within its depths, swirling and twisting in intricate patterns, finally coming together to form the vague outline of a woman. Slowly, the image solidifies, and Korial steps from the mirror blinking in confusion as she becomes accustomed to the glaring light of reality. She shakes the dust from her travel-stained cloak, shifts the pack across her shoulders and then begins to speak. Greetings adventurers! I've come to tell you of a fantastic land called 3-Kingdoms, named so because it is comprised of three realms which include: Chaos, Fantasy and Science. Each Kingdom is filled with innumerable areas to explore, quests and puzzles to solve, monsters to kill, and secrets to be discovered, along with the many joys and frustrations inherent in exploration and adventuring. Upon entering 3-Kingdoms, you will be transported to the newbie Hall where you can get some free equipment and embark on your journey. You will find that you have a companion, a small Brownie who can impart much valuable (or annoying) advice, depending on your level of experience with mudding and with Lpmuds in particular. He is mostly very helpful though and you can rid yourself of him once he has outlived his usefulness. There are many newbie zones, more than enough (something I am seldom able to say about a mud, with approximately ten newbie quests (give or take a few) and more than 75 quests on the entire mud. You are not permitted to join a guild until level five, but believe me there is plenty to do and much to learn and the levels will fly by. The Newbie Academy is actually a quest, and it is quite an original and entertaining way to learn about the mud. The quest info says it's a level three quest, but I suggest doing it as soon as possible since it has much good info to impart and it's fun as well. Be forewarned, it is absolutely unacceptable to share quest hints or info with other players, with harsh penalties for doing so. The entire mud is quite original, from detailed room descriptions and areas, to the wide variety of guilds. The guilds are as follows (with some guilds having subguilds as well): Adventurer, cybercorps, jedi, mage, priest, bard, elemental, juggernaut, monk, warder, breed, fremen, knight, necromancer. I've played this mud as three different characters (seconds are not permitted by the way until you reach a higher level so be careful of this). I tried the necromancer guild but found it too complex for my playing style. It was creative, had interesting skills/spells and required components for spell casting (something I rather enjoyed). For those who like playing an evil-aligned character in a challenging magic-using guild, this one's for you. I next tried the knights, guild. I liked it much better. Knights have subguilds which you can choose at a higher level (based on your preferred alignment). They also have the ability to joust. Jousting involves two players riding horses over a field till one knocks the other off his/her steed by essentially entering the same room/space. Once you've defeated your fellow knight in this harmless manner, you then are challenged by an NPC knight of your level or similar. If you beat him you reap a reward, lose and, um, well, you die (though I never found death in this manner). I'll leave the secrets of this and other guilds for you to discover, I only give this jousting example to demonstrate the unique qualities of the guild system. Help files are extensive and quite good, players are, for the most part very friendly and playerkilling is optional Some downsides of the mud are that equipment isn't saved over quits (though many guilds, maybe all I don't know) have donation rooms or boxes and players of higher levels keep them well stocked. Also, it is quite a noisy mud, much shouting, etc. However, you can screen out shouts under level 50 with the earmuffs command, and for even more soundproofing, you can by earmuffs for a reasonable fee. Additionally, it can be a bit daunting in the beginning, for it is a huge and very original mud, but it is very much worth the time it takes to learn. Read help files, (and don't forget to peruse the rules or you'll get yourself into trouble), ask other players for assistance and make use of the newbie line and you'll be fine. I give this mud a resounding five stars and urge you all to come explore it for yourself. Look me up there as Jezrae and I'll be glad to show you the ropes. With those final words, Korial smiles and waves and drifts slowly back into the crystal mirror to continue her adventuring in 3-Kingdoms. ... Myrthorn attempts one of those fancy moves, like Korial, and trips over his tongue and lands on his face ... I've got a couple of reviews for you this issue, but I will only give a cursory review of the second of the two. It is so large, that I haven't had time to explore all of its realms yet. Core 2651 Site: www.coremud.org 4000 [209.240.96.103] Theme: Science Fiction: Futuristic Space Colony Avg. # of Players: 25 - 49 (more like 10 to 25) Multi-Play: No Quests Available Role-playing Is Encouraged Supports MSP Tired of all those medieval fantasy based muds? Looking for a change? ... perhaps something futuristic, without being Star Wars/ Star Trek related? Well, Core 2651 looks appealing - or so I thought. Reading the homepage for this mud is pretty much a requirement before playing, if you want to have much knowledge of what is going on around you. I found the on-line help files to be mediocre at best. That address is: http://www.coremud.org/ Essentially we are launched about 650 years into the future (2651). You start off in the shuttle bay area of a mining colony on a small planet off in some distant, outlying region of space. Newbie school on Core consists of you skimming through a few documents in that area, and then taking a test before being allowed entrance into the game (basically a way to make sure you understand the underlying rules of the mud). What is there for you to do on a mining colony? Well, mine, naturally (along with hanging out in the pubs, gambling, finding yourself a nympho, getting yourself a part-time job in one of the local shops, and killing mobs). The game time clock runs the same as ours in rl, so 24 hours in rl is a full day on Core 2651. When you decided to come to Core, you signed on with "the Company". So your key source of income on this mud is from mining. There are four different mining shifts you can join, which are designed to fit different players. The shifts run any where from an hour to three hours at a time, and they switch on and off throughout the day, giving the player an opportunity to be down in the mines for eight or nine hours a day (if you have that much rl time to spare). As you mine, and bring in ore, you are paid a percentage of the amount of ore you've hauled in that shift. You are also paid in stocks. You are given a certain amount of stock in the materials you've brought up from the mines, and that's where your main source of income truly lies. So you get to dabble a bit in the stock market also. And you will find yourself selling off some of your stocks, in order to survive. The few credits you are paid for bringing up ore each shift aren't enough to do much with on Core. That's also why most everyone has a part-time job in one of the shops around the colony. You can earn credits from commission off of your sales. The colony is divided into four sectors (one correlating to each of the standard compass directions). As a newbie, you start off in the north mine, and are drilling nickel, iron, and aluminum. These are the cheapest types of ore, and consequently, you get paid less than you do for working in the other mines. Eventually, after having mined a certain amount in the North mine, you get promoted to the East mine, and can start mining some more valuable materials. (BTW - you are housed in the northern quad while you are mining there -- and moved over to the Eastern apartments when you are promoted to that mining area.) You are promoted to the southern and western mines as you progress. Have I forgotten to mention the critters you get to go after? Oh, well, you get to head down into the sewers and hunt down there (what fun!). You'll run across your average rats and snakes and slugs, as well as crocodiles, waste worms, and heptosquids (among others). The one other big part of Core 2651 besides mining, is related to power. Without power, you can't do anything on Core. Your drills require power cells, which you must buy and keep recharged (at a cost, of course). And the cells are only good for five recharges. In order to communicate on Core, you need to use your comm unit, which also takes power cells. You can talk in person to anyone, but if you want to talk to someone not in the room with you - it's going to cost you. OK, so here's where things start to get drab. Why am I writing about a mud that sounds mediocre at best? Well, first off, I spent over a month playing here, trying to find the part of this mud that ideally sounded interesting. Conceptually, it had a lot of potential. I think most of the Newbies saw that, and hence, making friends on Core didn't take long. (Especially when you're stuck down in a mine with a bunch of them for three rl hours at a pop). There were two main cliques on Core - the coders (who were also allowed to be active characters) and their buddies (the Core players that had been around for God knows how long) ... and everyone else. I'll just refer to that first group as "the elite". Core has quite a number of strict (and sometimes absurd) rules. They list themselves as an RP encouraged mud (not RP enforced) - though they tend to rule the mud with the iron fist of an RP enforced mud. They won't boot you off for not staying in character, but the elite jump all over any newbie, every chance they get when someone sends a message on the IC channel which isn't In Character. There is an 'rl' channel set up for such transmissions ... and they harp about making sure that these channels are used correctly. (Of course, "the elite" are exempt from their own chastising and misuse of these channels). And the more the rl channel was used, the more it would cost (in energy) to send a transmission. They even go so far as to require you to prefix any in person conversations with 'ooc' in order to make things perfectly clear that you are talking out of character. You tell me ... if you're down in one of these mines for three hours with a couple of other guys - how much 'in character' conversation do you think you can carry on? Watch out for a few other rules. These guys don't allow the use of triggers - so don't use them. The coders seem to have spent more time on designing algorithms to detect things like triggers than they have on the actual design of the mud itself. Don't set up a trigger to mine automatically for you, they'll detect it -- and you'll get a cave in on your corpse. Also, they have a rule about not going AFK. So don't. Never mind the fact that 'the elite' are AFK 90% of the time. OK, so the room descriptions aren't terribly over flamboyant. I can accept that, I'm on a mining colony (though it could have been done much better). The thing about Core that made me crack was their required quests. You needed to solve a quest to advance beyond levels 8, 12, 16, and 19. They absolutely required that these quests be worked on alone. That wouldn't have been so bad, if the developer of the quests, and the coders, had a clue as to what they were doing. These quests were ridiculously impossible (especially since some of them required you to use skills that your character wasn't able to raise high enough before reaching the barrier point). But the quests themselves would have been wonderful and challenging, if they had been designed by someone such as Andy Phillips. I think Forest Gump may have had a hand in designing *these. What made them so frustrating, is that you would walk into a room, and see, for instance, a shallow pool carved into the floor. There would be a bit more information about it, but nothing outstanding. Being as how it was the only object in the room, I would expect a character to be able to examine the pool further, to get more details. Well, in probably 75% of these instances, the response from "examine " would be - "there is no such object present". I'm not even going to waste your time with the measures they "attempted" in order to help out the visually impaired. They were too insulting (or should I say that 'the elite' were too ignorant?). Essentially, Core 2651 is run by a group of individuals with superiority complexes. As I said earlier, you can have fun with the other Newbies on Core - but expect to be treated as trash by the elite. Because of the poorly designed quests and the requirements placed on you to complete them - along with the attitudes of the coders, I'm only giving Core 2651 a 2 out of 5. Give it a try if you want, but adhere to the rules! -- Here's a brief review of a good medieval mud. Nanvaent Site: nanvaent.org 23 [195.40.6.44] Theme: medieval Location: United Kingdom Player-Kill: Yes Nanvaent is a wonderful mud in which I've only had the time to just barely advance beyond the ranks of newbiehood. So my assessment is going to be from my personal experiences thus far, and from the documentation I've read. First, again, I'd recommend reading the homepage for Nanvaent before spending much time there. http://www.nanvaent.org/ Most of the information can be found within the help files in the game itself - but if you want an understanding of Nanvaent's geographical layout, you'll need to visit the homepage. Everything within the game proper is laid out via ASCII maps. On the homepage, you can get a textual description of the realms of Nanvaent, and their orientation to each other. Nanvaent has been around for over 11 years, so it is not a mud in constant flux, with a group of inexperienced immortals. Like most medieval muds, there are only a few core guilds to choose from: fighters, wizards, clerics, thieves, and bards. But Nanvaent also has many sub-guilds within these core guilds, so it makes playing a bit more exciting and rewarding. When you first develop your character, you just give Nanvaent your name and password -- and you are plopped directly into the welcome room of the game. Once here, then you can take your time and choose your race. Nanvaent currently has over 30 races to choose from! So, unless you are obsessed with being a dwarf or elf or human ... you have plenty of other options. (I chose to be a grey wolf, and am headed for the Wolf Pack sub-guild of the fighter's guild). The help system is extensive and is set up in a menu-style format. And speaking of extensive - for those of you who like quests, Nanvaent is full of them. There's a whole section of the library set up to give hints about the quests -- all you need do is figure out what keyword to use in order to access the file on a particular quest (a quest in itself ). But it's not necessary to read about them first. You basically are tripping over quest hints at every turn. I see Nanvaent is listed as a PK mud, but have yet to encounter any incidents of player killing. (That's not to say that they don't occur). This is a large mud (over 8000 rooms), and has all sorts of obstacles and terrains to tackle and wander around in. Nanvaent is not overcrowded. I've been on when there are as few as 3 other players, and as many as 25 to 30. I've never seen it surpass the 30 player character mark. Even though this mud is located in the UK, I have had no problems with lag here in the States. (Hopefully this location will help out those of you in the UK with lag problems). Well, I'm going to cut off my review here, and not bore you with my details as a newbie. It's a fun and well developed mud - give it a try! I'm giving Nanvaent a 5 out of 5! Korial peeks around the corner and seeing that Myrthorn is finished with his review, decides to add one comment of her own. I wholeheartedly agree with Myrthorn's rating of 5 out of 5. I have actually played even less time on the mud than he, (rl always seems to interfere with my mudding pleasure, smile) but my time there was quite enjoyable. I was especially struck by the friendliness of the other players, always someone willing to assist a newbie in need (from answering questions to showing the ropes to helping to get equipment, etc.). The mud is definitely worth a visit and a prolonged stay. Korial starts to turn away, melting into the shadows and disappearing into a silvery mist. May your adventures be many, your deeds be valorous, and may you return safely to your home port. + Game: popex. Category: online/free. Accessibility: high, no sited assistance needed. Hi all. Well this is the first revue for audisy that I've written, hopefully it won't be my last. The game I'm Reviewing this time is an online game called Popex. I've been playing this game on and off for about 2 years, way before I even new there was a market for accessible games. Popex is a fantasy stocks and shares game with a bit of a twist. You by shares in music artists and groups. You are given an imaginary £5000 and you have to invest in who you think the next big single will come from. There are well over 100 bands to choose from and the great thing is that the system updates it's self about every 5 minutes so the prices that you pay can change very quickly. As with most web based games you have to register but this is really easy. All they need is your name, e-mail address and a couple of personal interests like the last album you purchased. You are then e-mailed your user name, which you create at sign up, and a password that is given to you. All you have to do then is bye bye and sell sell sell. If you really get in to the game you can set up personal team games, some friends and I did this and we had a good laugh. Every user is also on the main leader board and it is a great honour to say you got in to the top 1000. The highest I ever got was 998. There are many good points to the game, the high accessibility factor is one as well as the really easy to use interface. One extra point is the fact that you can set the game up to e-mail you every week to let you know how your shares are doing, so even if you take time out from the game you can keep up to date. There are a couple of bad points though. The game is based in the UK so all prices are in £ and there are some artists that haven't made it on to the international stage yet but most of the time this doesn't really make any difference. One other criticism I have to make is that once you have played it for a couple of months it does get very monotonous but this is where the weekly e-mails really come in useful. Normally when I have one of these stages of low interest in the game I sell all of my shares, get a set of good long term acts and just keep up to date with the e-mails. On the hole the game is a good one, it must be, there are well over 20000 players and you mite as well give it a try, it's free. The web site to play the game is http://www.popex.com Have fun. Nick Adamson. If you have any comments you can e-mail me at nick.adamson@ntlworld.com + Quenzars caverns Introduction: Quenzars caverns is a shareware game, made buy pulse ventures ltd. I had a lot of difficulty in locating they're homepage, and it does contain irrelevant links to a lot of pictures and photographs etc. The thing that interested me, however, was they're title, quenzars caverns. What is this game? In the game, you take on the roll of a hero who must vanquish the evil wizard, quenzar. This, unlike other titles, isn't totally multimedia based, a sort of role-playing text adventure-game. I should warn you that a lot of graphical symbols and other stuff clutter the screen. If you want to play this game, note the following: 1. the room description, items, and monsters will be listed at the very bottom of your screen, in a scrolling form. 2. your room coordinates are at the top of the screen. 3. as well as the coordinates, are your health, points, and other vital info. The basics. Quenzars caverns is just a simple 10x10 map grid, with each room having maybe items, maybe monsters for you to find. You navigate with your cursor keys, in conjunction with the alt key. Also, too attack, the command, alt plus A. to search, alt plus s, so your hands can very easily be positioned. How do I kill quenzar, then? To kill him, you'll need to find his layer. To enter it, you'll need the key. This entails that you journey around the map, looking for objects. You will soon learn that some things are better than others, and which monsters are best to avoid. Keyboard usage. This game, I think, was never meant to be played by the blind/vi community. It does, however, work. Remember that the alt key is invaluable. You will also want to tab around, to various items. There is, for example, A statistics and inventory button. Hitting this would cause a dialog box to come up, listing all your items. If you had, say, a dagger and a sword, you would want to drop the dagger and keep using the sword. That is where this dialog box comes in handy. Where can I get this game? This, is a good question. If you find another source, please inform me!! For now, however, just copy this into your run dialog box in windows, or into your web browser. http://www.dragonridge.com/quenzar/unzip_into_directory_and_run_qunzr15b_to_ install_game.zip when asked, you may like to change the name of the .zip file, that is being downloaded. Contact me: You can do just that, by emailing: shwatscoff@shwatscoff.fsworld .co.uk or, contact me over msn at. shwatscoff@hotmail.com I have played this game somewhat, and forgotten about it since last week, upon when I started to hunt for a place where I can download it. Please remember that this game is shareware, although I am not totally certain of that fact. Just visit http://www.dragonridge.com/cadvision/pulse_shareware.htm and see for yourself. Conclusion. I find that, though I am lazy and do not much else, playing games is a thing I can do just as good as anyone. In Quenzars caverns, nearly each game is different. You enter a number, all be it from 1 to 20000; hence the replay value. Give it a go, What, apart from lots of time, have you got to loos? Sean Randall. + The Game world Bbs: A review By Shannon Heisey The login screen says it all: "Welcome to TnT's Game world. It's Dynamite." It shows lit firecrackers at the edges of the screen. At the bottom of the screen is the email address where anyone logging on can reach the sysops in case they have a question. The sysop of Game world, Tom Klaus, is making sure that his board is dynamite. One of the ways he is doing this is by adding accessible games. A game must be speech friendly, or able to be read by a screen reader, to be able to be put on his board. Tom became interested in the bulletin board thing when he started visiting The Game land BBS, which is a multi-node bbs that people from all over the country play games on regularly. Once he started logging into Game land and playing some of the games, he suggested improvements to the board to its sysop, known as Swampy. Due to Tom's influence, Swampy got the quick-logon feature up and running. Now people who ask for it can get their profile set up in such a way that everything they want is more easily accessible. On this quick-logon menu, as well as the regular menu, is another feature Tom asked for: a screen-reader-friendly menu. Games are being added to it if they are accessible with speech software. In July and August, Tom began to be interested in creating his own bbs, using a dsl connection. After a couple of months and many changes, the board now runs off of its own computer, a Pentium 350 with 192 megs of ram and a mean DSL connection, which ensures that the BBS experience is enjoyable. It has ten nodes, which means that ten people can be on it at once. Later, Tom plans to upgrade his board, with the intent of increasing resources on the computer that will host it, making Game world run smoother. You may be asking yourself, So how do you get on Game world? The only thing you need is a piece of software called a telnet client. Although Windows has one built in, it can hardly be expected to act reliably, since it will read the ansi characters such as umlauts and grave accents that show up. As far as I know, only the internal and external dectalk, which are hardware synthesizers, do not cause the screen reader to crash when entering Windows telnet. With another telnet client such as teraterm, the umlauts and other symbols are read, but it cuts out a lot of the other stuff that makes some screen readers crash. Teraterm can be downloaded by going to the Jfw web page at Jfw.Cjb.net going to the application friendly page, and then to the link that says "Download Teraterm." Okay, that's enough of the technical details about telnet. Also, it would help to make sure you have ansi.sys loaded into your config sys. To access game world, go to your telnet client, be it Windows telnet, or any telnet client you have, and in the host name box, type the following: Gameworld.darktech.org When you log on for the first time, you will be asked for some information such as the alias and password you would like to use, your email address, the kind of system You use, and whether or not you use ansi graphics. Just follow the prompts and put in the information that is needed. You will be asked to verify your information with the bbs, and then you will be sent a validation code to the email address you specified in the set-up of your profile. This should happen relatively quickly. The bbs gave you a password by this time, but it will now ask you for a password that you will remember, and will tell you to keep it safe. Following is a list of all the games on game world and a little bit on what they are like: 1. Dog world: You become a dog in this game, and fight creatures in the alley. Your object is to catch the evil dogcatcher. It is very similar to Legend of the Red Dragon, or LORD. 2. Legend of the Red Dragon or LORD: This is a game in which you fight creatures in the forest, win over Seth Able or Violet and other patrons in the inn, and in the end, defeat the red dragon while mastering three different skills. 3. Clans: A game which involves strategy. The object of this game is to make sure your clan becomes the richest. 4. Pimpwars: An adult game in which you are a pimp and try to get the biggest number of brothels. Nobody over 18 is allowed in this game. 5. Lord 250 Fights: This is Legend of the Red Dragon again, but with 250 forest fights, as opposed to 100 fights. 6. Usurper: a strategy game based on the Star Trek universe. 7. Afghanistan 2002: A rated-X game created by the sysops of Gameworld and the Gameland BBS as a joint effort. The object of the game is to blow up Afghanistan. Along the way, you fight with creatures, do evil deeds, and more. 8. Rancho Nevada, Rated X: a game in which you try to become the most powerful person in Nevada. Since it is rated x, only people above 18 will be allowed. 9. Rancho Nevada: The G-rated version of Rancho Nevada. 10. Wild West: a game which is set in the Wild West. 11. Forces of Darkness: A game in which you warp to different planets, and get enough money to fight the forces of darkness at the end. 12. Mo's Mud: a mudding game in which you fight a variety of different creatures. 13. Lunatics: You are a patient in an asylum for the insane. Your object is to try to escape. 14. Planets Teos: A game in which you try to take control of as many planets as possible. 15. Death Masters: In this game, the object is to escape hell by fighting with and killing a lot of monsters, and it definitely helps to be able to mutate. 16. Lord XXX Rated: Legend of the Red Dragon with XXX rated content. Again, those who are below 18 will not be allowed to play. 17. Baron Realms elite 18. the Arcadian Legends 19. Falcon's Honour 20. Falcon's Eye these games have a similar theme. You have to have the biggest city and crush the other empires. 21. Synchronet Blackjack: A game which comes with the Synchronet software, which runs the board, and is speech friendly. 22. Dicewar: Another game which came with synchronet and is speech-friendly. the object is to try to get a higher score with the dice than your opponent. 23. Sorcery: the object is to knock down your opponent's health by attacking them and the monsters they summon to protect them. You do this by summoning monsters of your own and casting other spells. 24. Jedi: A game with a Star Wars theme. It may require you to doctor your dictionary so that some punctuation is totally ignored. 25. Assassin: In this game, you learn to be an assassin and develop skills. 26. Church Wars Rated XXX: In this game, you are the pastor of a church. You can be righteous, neutral, or evil. You can recruit members, get involved in scandals, and collect money. There appear to be 99 levels, and you get to each level by buying a church. Again, no one under 18 will be allowed. 27. Armagedon: a game which is set in the end of the world. 28: Trade Wars Gold 2002: A game in which you trade your way to a bigger dominion. the order of these games may be changing as Tom adds more to the board. Among those coming soon are Door Mud and Ultimate Universe. To reach Tom with any questions, please email him at Gameworld.tnt@verizon.net If you have any questions for Swampy, email him at Swampy@darktech.org. If you want to get onto his board, just telnet over to: gameland.darktech.org If you want to see why Gameworld is dynamite, just telnet to: gameworld.darktech.org I believe you will find that it's a really decent set-up. If you have any problems with the board, the sysop will get right on it. Just give it a try, and you might find that it's your favourite game arcade along the information superhighway. I know myself that it is the perfect place to hang out at the end of a long day at work. +++ Answers to Puzzles: Answers to Puzzles and Games 1. Not so long ago, I actually tested the helium balloon puzzle in our car using our son's helium balloon. The balloon surprisingly floated in the direction of the turn. That is, when we turned left, the balloon floated left inside the car, even though the passengers were thrown to the right. The reason for this is that, like the passengers, the air inside the car also moves to the right, creating a higher air pressure in that direction. Lighter than air balloons will tend to move from a high pressure area to a lower pressure area. 2. No, I didn't try this one out, but the answer is that the level of the water in the pool will drop. No again, It has nothing to do with the cannon ball cracking the bottom of the pool. The logic is as follows. The water should rise since the cannon ball displaces its volume in water, but since the boat is lighter, the boat rises causing less displacement, and thereby lowering the height of the water. The cannon ball is denser, and thereby heavier than the water being displaced, and so the reduction in the boat's weight causes the water to lower more than the cannon ball makes the pool's level rise. 3. I was quite attracted to this puzzle, and I don't think it has anything to do with the metal pin the doctors left in my leg after my last ski accident. When thinking about the magnetic rod, note that bar type magnets have most of their magnetic attraction at the ends, leaving the centre of the rod with almost no magnetic attraction. Arrange the rods so that they are positioned like a capital T. If there is an attraction between the two rods, the bottom rod is magnetized, otherwise, the rod across the top is the magnet. 4. If you like to keep your coffee as hot as possible, put the milk in first. The greatest heat transfer occurs when the difference between the hotter and cooler items are the greatest. Since the milk will be added in any event, more heat will be lost to the surrounding air if the coffee is hotter, and so add the milk immediately. Note If you like these physics type puzzles, let me know, I have lots more where these come from. If you don't, let me know what kind of puzzles you do like. I will use this information to decide what to include in future issues. You can contact me at: DavidGreenwood@GMAGames.com +++ Contacting Us I can be reached in three ways. The easiest is via my Sympatico E-mail address. My e-mail address is as follows: mikefeir@sympatico.ca You can also call me via telephone. I have voicemail, so you can leave a message if you fail to catch me at home and off-line. I'll do my best to return calls, but won't accept collect calls. My number is as follows: (905)-814-0608 Alternatively, you may correspond with me on 3.5-inch disks, provided you be sure to send them in returnable disk-mailers. I don't have the money to pay for postage. My mailing address is: 5787 Montevideo Road Mississauga, Ontario, Canada Postal code: L5N 2L5 This information is valid until we move into our new apartment in May. After this point, I will still have a Yahoo E-mail account at: Michael_feir@yahoo.ca Items can still be sent to the postal address above. Adam Taylor, star of Adam, The Immortal Gamer, and our resident ADOM guru, can be reached three ways. You can send him e-mail at: blade@ican.net Or, you can check out his homepage on the web: Blade's Armoury http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arcade/9111 His page is dedicated to providing help, cheats and solutions to many games. Send him a request, and he'll do his best to find what you need. He also has sections on ADOM and Nethack available. Also, you can download the magazine from his page. Finally, if you wish to contact him at home, his address is: 3082 Bartholomew Crescent Mississauga, Ontario Canada L5N 3L1 Jay Pellis is an avid fan of graphical adventures and console games. For those of you wondering which Sega or Nintendo games are at all enjoyable to the blind, he's the one to turn to. He can be contacted at: jalucard@icontech.com Justin Fegel has resigned his official position as an interactive fiction staff member. As such, he will be sorely missed. However, Justin plans to remain active in the Audyssey community. Therefore, those who need guidance with interactive fiction may still benefit from his experience. He can be contacted at: Jfegel@earthlink.net Kelly Sapergia is our expert in interactive fiction. He is a well-established reviewer of games for Audyssey, and has an interest in developing interactive fiction as well as playing it. He can be contacted at: kjsman2@sk.sympatico.ca James Peach is responsible for maintaining our new official homepage. Your feedback will help him make our site a better place to be on the Web. He can be contacted at: jamespeach@hotmail.com Randy Hammer conducts an ongoing search for worth-while mainstream games that can be enjoyed by blind players with sighted assistance. He will also review commercial games and shareware produced specifically for the blind, such as that from ESP Softworks, PCS, and eventually, Zform. He can be contacted at: RHammer@illuminet.com Justin Ekis is our new web-based games expert. He will search for and report on on-line games like Utopia and Archmage. He is also going to keep a close eye on the re-emerging BBS scene. You can contact him at: j.ekis@verizon.net Dave Sherman has become well-known on the Audyssey list and has now joined the Audyssey staff as our multi-user-dungeon expert. Interest in muds has popped up again and again in the Audyssey community and elsewhere among the growing net-savvy blind community. Thanks to Dave's efforts, newcomers will have another expert to turn to for guidance. Dave will also report on the various different MUDs out there and steer us to the more blind-friendly ones. You can contact him at: drsherm@earthlink.net Muds take a long time to become familiar with. Therefore, Maria Dibble joins Dave Sherman in his exploration of muds. They also make a great team to tackle interactive fiction games together. Maria can be contacted at: mdibble@pronetisp.net David Lant has long been an active member of the Audyssey community. He is now one of our two moderators keeping things pleasant and orderly on the Audyssey discussion list. He can be contacted at: DLant@btinternet.com Brenda Green is the new co moderator. Her efforts on behalf of the Audyssey community are very much appreciated. She can be contacted at: bdgreen@tru.eastlink.ca Randy Hammer conducts an ongoing search for worth-while mainstream games that can be enjoyed by blind players with sighted assistance. He will also review commercial games and shareware produced specifically for the blind, such as that from ESP Softworks, PCS, and eventually, Zform. He can be contacted at: RHammer@illuminet.com Paul Nimmo is a long-time resident of the Audyssey community who maintains a Frequently Asked Questions or faq file for Audyssey. When it is updated, it gets posted to a number of sites. He can be contacted at: pgnimmo@iprimus.com.au