Audyssey; Games Accessible to the Blind Issue : 51 2nd quarter, 2007 Edited by Ron & Sylvia Schamerhorn Fun, Friendship, Knowledge, Charity +++ Welcome Welcome to the 51st 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. In this publication I've attempted to pack in a whole bunch of great information about gaming and the ongoing developments that are taking place. So read on! 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. +++ Contents: Welcome >From The Editor Letters Beyond Scrabble Word Puzzle only great minds can read this Vista Game Compatibility Chart Phil's Funnies Developing Accessible Games News From Game Developers Game Announcements and Reviews Contacting Us Distribution Information and Submission Policies +++ >From the editor I hope everyone is having an enjoyable summertime. Here in the great white north I must say it's been more the humidity the last while that's hard rather then the actual temperatures we've been having. Life's been keeping me busy, as I'm just over two months married, and Things have been going great! This particular second issue of 2007 is more on the late side, however as I hope you, my readers, will not only notice but appreciate significant things have taken place in the accessible gaming realms. As a few examples the game Sound RTS, extensive news in both the developer and reviews sections of the mag, and the long awaited Audio Game Maker is now on the scene! So be sure to give this issue a complete reading. Many of the items might be short but I have attempted to cram useful tips, tricks, and links throughout these pages of this issue. As always my inbox is always open for comments suggestions and whatever Ron editor@audyssey.org +++ Letters In this section the content is taken from the list primarily, but may also include something I receive directly. Generally these are of course game related, but perhaps not in all cases. A review or announcement as such. Sometimes it might just be someone's thought's about a game or genre of game. I hope these prove interesting and informative. ++ Hi all, I work for the San Francisco Chronicle and am planning to produce an audio podcast about audio games. I'm hoping to find folks in the San Francisco Bay Area to interview who are either avid audio gamers or developers. Is there anyone on this list who fits that description or who might be able to point me toward someone who does? I'd be very grateful for any help they could provide. Thanks for your time, Justin Beck Justin Beck Podcast Producer San Francisco Chronicle 901 Mission St., San Francisco, CA. 94103 Office: (415)777-8713; Cell: (510)332-3719 AIM: podcasterjustin Email: jbeck@sfchronicle.com Check out Chronicle Podcasts at sfgate.com/podcasts < http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/podcasts> ++ Lucky us! Hey all non devs like me! Is this not awesome? IN the past 6 months, we've had judgement day, rail racer, a demo of monty me thinks, and now Sound RTS? I've dreamed of playing games like this and for a beta, this is clean! Not one hang up or anything. Really good year this year, and the quality I'd say has gotten drasticly better... Yay devs! Love you long time! *grins* Seriously, thanks. We all appreciate it! Rock! Back to wimpy peasants Everett ++ Below is an email I got earlier this week. I'm putting it here in hopes that someone here can assist me in helping a friend out with this hand-held game. Message Hi there, in case ya don't know who I am, it's Kim's mom! Anyway I have a question for you and since I remember that you know about games, maybe you can help me with this one even though it's not totally computer gameish! One of my friends lucked out and found one of the Henry games I don't know if you heard of them, they were put out maybe in the 80's very similar to the old Simon game where you repeat what the tones are that you hear and if you do it correctly in the same sequence, well you either win or go to the next level. Anyway when I was at dog school last fall that was when I found out that this game called Henry existed. I've been looking for one cause it was so much fun to play it but one of my friends did snag one for themselves but of course the game did not come with the instructions to set it up or instructions for use. Would you or any of your game playing people happen to have those sought after instructions? If they had the actual game I'd really be interested as well but I'd like to help in the search for those elusive instructions for my friend if they are available. Any suggestions or help would really be appreciated. I can't remember who made the game but she did call and of course they said "we no longer make that". bye for now. Laurie and LD Weston ++ Hello all, Here's an opportunity that might be right up your alley, for one of you out here. We got any programmers here who might be interested in developing an educational, accessible game that is health-based? My first thought was a video/computer game that teaches one how to better, or properly, take care of their Diabetes. Or maybe something about the various health aspects of blindness and vision loss? Got any ideas? Why not go with it, and give it a try? Details on the competition are below. Please forward this funding opportunity for game developers and programmers, to people you think would be interested. Thanks, Everett www.everettgavel.com New Competition Seeks Innovative Ideas for How Video and Computer Games Can Improve Health and Health Care Deadline: September 25, 2007 A new competition seeks novel ways in which video and computer games can be used to help people manage their health and improve how their care is provided. The online competition, "Why Games Matter: A Prescription for Improving Health and Health Care," is sponsored by the Pioneer Portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation ( http://www.rwjf.org/ ) and uses a unique, Open source competition model developed by Changemakers ( http://www.changemakers.net/ ), an initiative of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public ( http://www.ashoka.org/ ), that promotes enterprising solutions to social problems. "Why Games Matter" is the third in a series of idea competitions co-sponsored by RWJF and Changemakers. The collaborative competition model attracts solutions from social entrepreneurs from the U.S. and around the globe. Innovators submit their ideas online and the Changemakers community provides feedback on the problem and proposed solutions throughout the life of the competition. Through this competition, RWJF's Pioneer Portfolio and Change-makers hope to challenge game developers, researchers, health organizations, and others to demonstrate new and therapeutic ways in which games can help improve health and health care. The open source structure of the competition also will further build and energize the community of people who see the potential of connecting games and health. An expert panel of judges will select approximately twelve finalists. The Changemakers global online community then will vote on the competition Web site for three winners, each of whom will receive a $5,000 cash prize from Changemakers. All finalists will win the opportunity to attend the "Why Games Matter" Change Summit at the 2008 Games for Health conference, the premier event for game developers, researchers, funders, and other leaders in this growing field. The online application can be found at the Changemakers Web site. RFP Link: http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/pnd/10008206/changemakers ++ The Role Of The Mouse In Audio Games from AudioGames.net New Article: The Role Of The Mouse In Audio Games The mouse is an accurate and versatile input device and it is used in many mainstream games as a pointing device to direct soldiers to specific spots, aim at enemies and turn the camera. These are things visually impaired gamers won't need to do often in games. Audio games hardly use the mouse as an input device. In this article Brian Bors discusses and examines why the use of the mouse might make audio games more fun, backing up his arguments with small downloadable examples. You can find the article on Game-Accessibility.com through the following link: http://www.game-accessibility.com/index.php?pagefile=roleMouseAudioGames Greets, Richard http://www.audiogames.net ++ Just curious about something, and I thought other list members could put their input into a discussion: Firstly, how long has this game been available to gamers? Now, having asked that question, here is my point and a thought for discussion: Recordings are already surfacing that will show you how to beat the game if you are stuck? While I appreciate these being made available, I have to ask: So soon?? And at least 1 request has been made for them? My thoughts are that if you are shown how to beat the game this soon after it has been released, this will take away from the replay value of the game. You just get a game and are already giving up after just a few days?? Work at the game for a good long while before you have the method of winning given to you. I wouldn't even think of asking until I have worked at it for at a minimum of 2 months. A good example is Grizly Gulch. Once you beat that game, there's nothing left to do. Their second game was, from what I understand, a bit harder to beat, but the same thing happens once you beat the game. Now that I can beat it because I know the solutions to the puzzles, what do I do with the game? If Liam's game has surprises that weren't there the last time you played, or if things are randomized, that would give the game replay value, and if you're always trying to play better, and you can do so to attain a higher score, that's replay value--improve from your high score. But isn't part of the fun of playing a game the challenge of figuring out, on your own, how to beat it the first time? ++ Hi. As people will probably know, I'm a huge fan of the Chronicals of Arborell, http://www.arborell.com/ A site which contains several extremely well written gamebooks and stories, with a full rpg and other game things in development. Wain Densely, the Gm is absolutely fantastic about accessibility, and at the moment is trying to make the site more accessible with text versions of maps etc, as well as producing an html version of the card game. He's requested that people please send him in put with comments and suggestions about screen reader accessibility, so that he can improve things in the future. As I said, these are probably my favourite gamebooks on the net, and the fiction is extremely great as well. also, i've rarely come across a gm of an online game esque thing who's so good about accessibility, so comments and support for him would deffinately be a good thing all round, so I hope people will take the time to check the chronicals out. ++ This was sent in regarding a blind mudders list starting up. Hi all, Support admins emailed me today saying that the issue with the audio has been sent to the dev team to be worked on. In the meantime, however, he said so that I can get subscribers now he said that you can email them at support-admin@jiglu.com to get yourselves activated and subscribed to the list. I'd just tell them that you're blind and want to subscribe to the TBMIC because of the audio capcha not working on the invite page for the list. Thanks and lets hope this gets resolved. + Hi all, To subscribe to the group via email: Send an email to: tmic-request@jiglu.com with the following command in the body. subscribe [your email address]. If the brackets don't work, try without them. Then send it off. Then when you get it back you should be able to reply to it and you're on. ++ For game music Hi there. The link in Yohandy's signature leads to a site that does not seem to be in English, however, if you just go to http://gh.ffshrine.org it presents the English version of the site. Hope that helps. Jal For more SNES music, plus other formats such as .gbs for Gameboy Color, and .USB for n64 music, you can check out: http://zophar.net/music.html And for "all-complete" music tracks of Sega Gen games, check out: http://www.project2612.org/ The plug-in for "Winamp" can be found there as well. However I don't know if Mareo Brothers was ever on the Sega at all or not. http://www.zophar.net./music.html This was also recommended by another lister. +++ Beyond Scrabble By Nancy Feldman Years ago I realized that I was no longer satisfied with the board game choices I had available in Braille. There was only so much Scrabble, backgammon, checkers or parcheesi one could play before throwing up one's hands and begging for mercy. Then one day a creative friend asked, "Why can't we just modify the games we buy at game stores? I'll help you Braille them." And with those few words, I was immersed in a hobby that has kept me entertained for the past twenty-five years. I have hundreds of games sitting in my closet, and I buy more every month. Some only get played a few times, because they're boring, or need just the right group of people, or were fad games that got played while the fad was hot (Harry Potter Trivia, for instance), but lost their appeal as time went on. There are games that stand the test of time, however, and I thought I would mention two of them, because they're easy to adapt, and fun to play. One of my fascinations is word games. I love Scrabble, but sometimes you want a quick pick-up game that can fit in your purse, and the Brailled scrabble game just doesn't qualify. Two card games satisfy this requirement quite nicely, however: Palabra and Quiddler. As games go, I prefer Palabra. There are 120 cards in the deck, each with a letter, a point value, and a number of stars ranging from zero to three. Each card also has a color. This information was easily transcribed on each card, using a slate and stylus. At the start of the game, each player is dealt seven cards. There are lots of ways to score. You can build a word using cards of any color, but if you use cards all of the same color, the value of the word is doubled. If you manage to use letter cards with stars on them as well, then the final score for the word is multiplied by the number of stars on the card. You can also score for runs of three or more letters, for laying down six or seven vowels, for putting down five letters of the same color, or by building on the words of your opponents. And just when you think you've managed to score for some fabulous 200 point play, there are two nasty jokers that can be played to cancel your score, so watch out. The game takes about thirty minutes to play, and is simply a lot of fun. The rules are on-line, but also come in the box in print, and scanned fairly well. An alternative to this is Quiddler. These cards are also easy to Braille, with only one or two letters and a point value. The game is played in eight hands. In the first hand, you're dealt three cards, in the next four, and so on until the final hand is played with ten cards. The game plays like rummy, where you can draw from the face-up discard pile, or from the face down deck. When a player can use all of his cards to form words except one that he must discard, he can go out. Each remaining player then gets one more turn to lay down as many words as he can, and his remaining points subtract from his score. At the end of each hand, the player with the most words, and the player with the longest word each receive ten additional points. This game is also fairly quick, taking from 30to 45 minutes to play. Sometimes we change it up by saying you can only use words related to a certain topic: animals, fantasy novels, etc. or by saying that words have to be at least four letters long and so forth. Both games can be purchased on-line. I found Quiddler at Amazon.com for $8.99, while Palabra retails for about $19.99. These games can also be purchased at your local game store. I'd strongly advise taking a trip to your game store because there's a world of entertainment available at your fingertips if you're willing to be a little creative in finding ways to make the games accessible. +++ Word Puzzle - Only great minds can read this This is weird, but interesting! Below is an unusual puzzle, if your screen reader sounds odd it's just part of the below puzzle. Are you able to figure it out? fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it +++ Vista Game Compatibility Chart By Thomas Ward 6/29/2007 Introduction Before you read the chart below I feel it necessary to point out a few things. First, to get most of these games to operate properly under Windows Vista you must have a recent copy of the Microsoft dx7vb.dll and dx8vb.dll files. These files cann be found on any Windows XP system located in the c:\windows\system32 directory. They do not ship with Windows Vista so must be manually copied from a Windows XP computer to the new Windows Vista computer, and placed in Vista's c:\windows\system32 directory. Some games such as Sarah will install these files for you, but in most cases there is no other way to obtain these necessary files other than to copy them from a Windows XP computer to your Windows Vista computer. Second, some games such as Rail Racer require the very latest DirectX updates from http://www.microsoft.com/directx and the .Net framework to run. So be sure to have the required system requirements installed. Finally, I do mention some games require full administration rights to install. To do this arrow to the games installation file, press the Windows context menu key, arrow to run as administrator, and press enter. This will allow you to install the game as administrator. Blind Adrenaline Simulations Name: Rail Racer Version: 1.0 Results: Passed Description: Requires .Net 1.1 and DirectX 9.0C latest. BSC Games Name: Bobby's Revenge Version: 1.0 Results: Passed Description: No issues. Name: Chopper Command Version: 1.0 Results: Passed Description: No issues. Name: Hunter Results: Failed Description: Unable to initialize. Name: Pipe Version: 2.0 Results: Failed Description: Unable to initialize. Name: Troopenum Version: 2.0 Results: Failed Description: Unable to initialize. Draconis Entertainment Name: Aliens in the Outback Version: 2.02 Results: Passed Description: No issues Name:Dynaman Version: 2.2.5 Results: Passed Description: No issues Name: ESP Pinball Classic Results: Passed Description: No issues Name: ESP Pinball Extreme Results: Passed Description: No issues Name: Monkey Business Results: Passed Description: No issues. GMA Games Name: GMA Dice Results: Passed Description: No issues. Name: GMA Mine Buster Results: Passed Description: No issues. Name: GMA Solitaire Results: Passed Description: No issues. Name: GMA Tank Commander Version: 1.2 Results: Passed Description: No issues. Name: Lonewolf Version: 3.5.5 Results: Passed with errors Description: Unable to use screen reader support with Window Eyes 6.1,, but could be used with Sapi 5 tts engines. Name: Shades of Doom Version: 1.2 Results: Passed Description: No issues. Name: Trek 2000 Version: 5.0 Results: Passed Description: No issues. Kitchens Inc Name: Baseball Results: Passed with errors Description: Must be installed using full administration rights. Name: Battleship Results: Passed with errors Description: Must be installed using full administration rights. Name: Golf Results: Passed with errors Description: Must be installed using full administration rights. Name: Life Results: Passed with errors Description: Must be installed using full administration rights. Name: Monopoly] Results: Passed with errors Description: Must be installed using full administration rights. Name: NFL Results: Passed with errors Description: Must be installed using full administration rights. Name: Snakes And Ladders Results: Passed with errors Description: Must be installed using full administration rights. Name: Spanker Results: Passed with errors Description: Must be installed using full administration rights. Name: Trivia Results: Passed with errors Description: Must be installed using full administration rights. L-Works Name: Judgment Day Version: 1.0 Results: Passed Description: No issues. Name: Super Liam Version: 1.0 Results: Passed Description: No issues. PB Games Name: Dark Destroyer Version: 1.0 Results: Passed Description: No issues. Name: Duck Blaster Version: 1.0 Results: Passed Description: No issues. PCS Games Name: Packman Talks Version: 1.0 Results: Passed Description: No issues. Name: Sarah and the Castle of Which craft and Wizardry Version: 1.0 Results: Passed Description: No issues. Name: Super Dog Bone Hunt Version: 1.0 Results: Passed Description: No Issues. USA Games Name: Final Conflict Version: 1.0 Results: Passed Description: Requires .Net 2.0 and DirectX 9.0C latest. Name: Montezuma's Revenge Version: Beta 1 Results: Passed Description: Requires .Net 2.0 and DirectX 9.0C latest. Name: USA Raceway Version: Not Available Results: Passed Description: Requires .Net 2.0 and DirectX 9.0C latest. +++ Phil's Funnies Games We'd Like to Play, by Phil Vlasak Montezuma's Revenge side stroller game Do you wonder how it will be playing a game with little kids in tow? Now you can with this new Side stroller game, Imagine exploring the temples of Montezuma's with a little baby in a stroller or baby carriage! Here it cry and cry until you give it a bottle. Imagine stopping every twenty minutes to change its diaper! The game comes complete with a full range of baby products, bottles, diapers, baby powder, booster and car seats. And wait until your kid gets hold of those door keys, gulp! The game is perfect for Moms, Dads and caregivers of all kinds! And when you complete the game on the single stroller level, try the stroller in double and triple styles. smiles, Phil + More of Phil's Funnnies Games we'd like to play. by Phil Vlasak Montezuma's Raceway. Start your engines and stop your bitching, its, Montezuma's Raceway. a new and exciting fast action game from USA Games Entertainment. In this high speed action treasure hunting adventure you are Panama Joe, racing at 215 MPH through several eerie and mysterious underground Aztec temples searching for gold, gems, and other lost treasures. Such traps as burning fire, pits filled with boiling lava, electric force fields, vanishing platforms, and burning ropes are no challenge to your realistic stock car racer. You can hear your wheels crush deadly creatures including giant hairy black spiders, rattle snakes, and rolling skulls. Along the way you can gather such treasures as gold coins, gems, swords, colored keys with your hood mounted vacuum cleaner and your headlights will light your way. Find out if you have what it takes to play this game! smiles, Phil +++ Developing Accessible Games by Thomas D. Ward When I began losing my sight in the late 1980's I dreamed of the day I could write my own accessible games. Games which a totally blind gamer could play, driven by sound, and that were the same quality as those my friends were playing on the NES, Sega, etc. Not surprisingly in 1997 when I began college at Wright State University I decided I wanted to be a computer programmer. Writing databases in SQL, web pages in html, CGI scripts in perl, etc was fine, but what I wanted most was to write my own accessible computer games. In 2004 I started USA Games Entertainment. Since starting USA Games I have been asked several questions about how to write accessible computer games by the general VI community. I have always tried my best to answer questions, give helpful hints, but never seamed to put all of my experience into one location. In this article I would like to banish some of the myths and preconceived ideas about accessible game programming you may have, and replace it with some informative information about the process of writing your own accessible games. Weather you plan to ever write your own accessible games or not I hope this is an interesting read. One mistake that most new programmers often make is they get some idea they can take a programming course or two, read a couple of programming books, and then begin writing complex computer software. More often than not many inexperienced computer programmers want to start out by programming computer games. However, the reality is that computer games are one of the most complicated pieces of software to program. Writing computer games is much more than programming alone. When a computer programmer decides to write a game of any serious complexity he or she should have aduquit math skills, some knowledge of physics, understanding of artificial intelligence, and should have aduquit skills in a programming language. The one thing that really helps above all else is good programming experience. I can't stress experience enough. In some ways a game developer's job isn't much different than a building engineer when it comes to mathematics. In games where your character or hero is in some castle, ancient temple, space station, etc you will have to use allot of geometry and trigonometry equations to design the game world. If a developer is really serious about 3D games then the developer will need to depend on some calculus to design and move throughout the game world. Another job of the developer is to make the game act in a way that is as real as possible. The only way that is possible is by using excepted laws of physics. For example, we know we can calculate the distance traveled by a moving object by multiplying it's velocity times the time it took to travel from point A to point B. However, real life isn't that clean. There may be some forces acting against that object such as water or wind that slows the objects actual velocity down. Consider a submarine game. As a submarine moves in deep water it must contend with hydrostatic pressures which can damage the hull, destroy the submarine altogether, or slow it's progress down. Fortunately, a developer can create a physics equation in his or her game to handle the hydrostatic pressures to make the submarine operate more realistically in a virtual ocean environment if he or she wished. When computer programmers discuss artificial intelligence, (AI,) sometimes people think of Sci-Fi legends such as: Johnnie V, Commander Data, Hal, I.G. 88, and so on. However, the truth is programming artificial intelligence for a game isn't quite that complex, but there is still quite a bit you should know before writing a really serious game. In some games artificial intelligence can be accomplished by using simple conditional statements such as if, then, else which will instruct the AI characters to act in a certain way. While using if, then, else statements may allow for some simple intelligence it isn't practical for more complex decision making tasks. if a developer really wants to make his or her game characters seam more realistic the developer should study how to program fuzzy logic into the games major characters. Fuzzy logic techniques will allow for much more lifelike decisions on the part of the game's characters. Finally, a game programmer can't even start writing games unless he or she knows a programming language fairly well. Most professional game programmers use C++, but for non-professional game programmers there are quite a few language choices out there including: Python, C# .Net, Java, and Visual Basic. Personally, for a Windows developer I would highly suggest C# .Net, (called C-Sharp,)for the main reason it is fairly simple to learn, is widely used by professional software developers, is well documented, and natively supports all the Microsoft technologies you would want for writing accessible games such as: Sapi 5, DirectX, and the .Net Framework. I've used it for quite a while, and I feel it is one of the best programming languages for the Windows platform. However, for an extremely beginner programming language Python might have allot to offer. The language is very simple to learn, isn't as strict as other programming languages, and is very handy to know. One of Python's better features is it can be wrapped around Windows core features such as Sapi, DirectX, etc to gain access to those libraries for some high performance computer games. Since Python is primarily a script language a developer could compile the game engine core into a Windows exicutible but allow for end user custom scripted levels, adventures, etc. In recent years quite a few accessible game developers have turned to Visual Basic and Visual Basic .Net for writing games. Both languages will certainly do the job, but I have often found that quality documentation for writing games in Visual Basic and Visual Basic .Net is extremely lacking. The languages have become popular do to the fact Visual Basic is easy to learn and statements and blocks use plane English statements like Function, End Function, Sub, End Sub, While, End Loop, etc rather than using braces around code blocks as is used in C style languages. If the developer knows how to do it a Visual Basic .Net developer can have the same features as C# .Net, but the beginner game programming documentation for Visual Basic .Net isn't really out there for inexperienced programmers. Before I leave the topic of Visual Basic I'd like to point out the fact that Visual Basic and Visual Basic .Net aren't really the same language. Visual Basic .Net was largely based on classic Visual Basic, but many major changes were introduced into the language as to make it a new language in it's own right. Earlier I mentioned experience plays a critical roll in writing computer games. When a developer takes a programming course or reads a programming book he or she learns the fundamentals of computer programming. Just because a developer may know what statements does what, knows how to structure a function, declare a variable, or knows where to put his or her braces does not mean that same developer can put together a working program let alone one as complex as a computer game. That is where experience and practice comes in. No amount of book learning can add experience to a programmer. A programmer really begins learning when he or she actually begins by writing small programs, and slowly writes more and more complex applications. The idea a developer could read the, "Idiots Guide To Language X," and begin writing the next Mortal Combat as his or her first project is frankly an impossibility. Only through practice, trial, and error will a developer gain the experience to write really high quality games. For example, let's assume an inexperienced programmer tries to store a floating point value like 9.6 as an integer value. The developer's game compiler will give an error to the effect that a floating point value can not be stored as an integer. After the developer learns his or her mistake and corrects the problem it is unlikely that same developer will make that same mistake again. As a result he or she has just gained some experience. The more a programmer programs he or she will find new ways to structure programs, organize code blocks, store functions in files to be used in other projects, etc. It is this kind of learn as you go that can't really be described in a book, but has to be experienced first hand. Each programmer sooner or later designs his or her own style. A developer finds out over time what works and doesn't work. For most of this article I have discussed what skills are required to write high quality games. the one thing I have not mentioned is time. Programming a game of any real complexity will require quite allot of a developer's time. If the game writing is a developer's hobby it will naturally have to be balanced between that developer's work schedule, family, and other duties he or she may have. As a result it could take weeks, months, and even years to complete a game title on your own. The time it takes to create a game depends on complexity, style of game, your own free time, your own skills, and so on. Plane and simple they are really works of patient long hours of trial and error. For all the negative points I have raised about game programming I can say once you have the skills and experience writing accessible games can be really rewarding. The true fun is creating places you never have visited before, get to use all kinds of weapons, and generally just have fun after months of hard work. You can be a criminal, hero, sub commander, fighter pilot, whatever. It is all up to you. If you would like to start programming your own accessible games the best place to begin is by subscribing to Safari Books which is located at http://safari.oreilly.com. This internet service sells several programming materials online which can be read in your favorite web browser. They have many exilent books on Visual Basic .Net, C# .Net, Python, Java, C++, and more. If you wish to download a free Visual C# .Net or Visual Basic .Net compiler you can find a link to them from my web site at http://www.usagames.us/faq.html. +++ News from developers ++ News from Audio Games 07/18/07 from AudioGames.net News "What are you doing hanging around here? Visit the Experimental Audio Games Section http://www.audiogames.net/playcenter/index_exp.php and go play not one, not two, not six but twelve new Experimental Audio Games developed by 29 Game Design students of the Utrecht School of the Arts! These audio games are the result of an assignment within a Game Audio Design seminar. The students are all looking forward to hear your feedback, so please tell them what you think of their games in the Experimental Audio Games Forum http://forum.audiogames.net/viewforum.php?id=19 Have Fun! Richard + 22/04/07 Hi, One of the students who developed "Nameless" (the untitled RPG audio game) posted the following on the AudioGames.net forum (http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?id=1275): *quote* Hello, I'm one of the designers from that game, I have to admit the room discriptions were done last minute, actually in the last 10 minutes before we had to hand in the game, so it was rushed. The first room has some small cracks in the walls which create a draft. Maybe try to cast a spell on that? The gate is which the innkeeper used to lock you in the dungeon and which you have to open to escape. But of course you can't open it right away, so you have to investigate the rest of the creepy cellar first. The game is a bit small I guess but the source code is included so people can make it bigger by adding in more rooms, which is quite easy. Just copy one of the room functions and give it a new name and add it to the list of rooms, then you can modify it all you like. It's also possible to add RPG aspects to the game like character statistics and include random encounters and combat and all that. This was the plan originally but we did not have much time and were quite busy with other projects as well. I have the code for character stats, experience, gold, monsters, leveling up, and a simple combat system. So if anyone wants to have that just post it, I still read these forums every few days. Actually if anyone has a plan of a game world for me to program I'll do that for them, but you have to provide the audio files and the ideas of everything that is in the world. I'm just going to do programming and the game mechanics. *quote end* So here's a great opportunity for those who would like a simple audio RPG game maker. I suggest those who are interested contact Eva (the developer) and let her hear your ideas and suggestions. And you can find "Nameless" and the other eleven 2007 Experimental Audio Games (and the 2006 Experimental Audio Games) here: http://www.audiogames.net/playcenter/index_exp.php Greets, Richard http://www.audiogames.net ++ News from Blind Adrenelin 13/06/07 Rail Racer It's alive! Alive! enough said. Get it here: www.blindAdrenaline.com Be sure and reed the reed me file included with the zip before installing or bad things will happen, very evil and bad things. Enjoy, Che Blind Adrenaline Simulations Games by one of us, for all of us www.blindAdrenaline.com email: che@blindadrenaline.com + Ok, the first RR online tournament is done and it went off with great success. Kelvin ended up taking the top prize by beating Steady 3 out of 5 on the final track, congratulations Kelvin! A new tournament has started for players that did not finish in the top ten of the last competition, this is to make it more fair for the newer players. Head over to Blind Adrenaline to sign up if you haven't already, the tournament will be open to new registrations for 3 days, ending on Wednesday August15. Happy racing, Che Blind Adrenaline Simulations Games by one of us, for all of us www.blindAdrenaline.com email: che@blindadrenaline.com + In regards to the competition it is only for those with a full copy of Rail Racer, not just the demo. Ron ++ News from Dreamtech Interactive 07/30/07 I tried posting the manual to wrecking ball a few times but it must be too big. Patch one of the game is up for download at http://dti.us.tt and I'll put the manual up too. Ken Downey President DreamTechInteractive! + 07/28/07 Okay, I just compiled the latest version of Wrecking Ball--hopefully nothing weird happened along the way and it *is* the latest version. Find it at DTI.us.tt and have fun. By the way, I'm still working on the ads situation--hope to have it resolved soon. Ken Downey President DreamTechInteractive! + 07/23/07 Well, folks, I finally have a webpage. I'm still using Kara's modgirl ftp site for links, because I'm using Geocities for the web page and storage space is limited. Here is the site and what it contains. The site: www.DTI.us.tt It has World of Darkness, which is now freeware! See the register.txt file for the code. The Sound RTS soundpack 4 modded from Bryan Smart's previous packs. Enemy attack, where you shoot down jets, planes, choppers, and bombs And, Wrecking ball beta 1 free to download. Many more levels for this are coming! I also have a site called the Treehouse, which shares a page with DTI. It contains links to Teamtalk and channels on my Teamtalk server which is always up and running, and which should be accessible. By the way, if you have a good picture of a treehouse, send it my way and I'll put it on the site. Ken Downey President DreamTechInteractive! + If using the above link exclude the 3 w from the link. ++ News from Kitchens Inc 07/20/07 Hi, I have put a new file up on my web site. File name wintgf6.exe File size 70k Three new trivia files, basketball, birds, States and Capitals TGIF and BFN Jim + 04/11/07 Hi, I have put a new file up on my site. File name winlife3.exe file size 283k In version 3 I have fixed the bug in the beginning of the game that would crash some computers. The file can be found on my free windows sapi5 text to speech games page. BFN Jim jim@kitchensinc.net http://www.kitchensinc.net ++ News from L-works 18/07/07 HI gamers: I've rewritten the LWorks website as well as put up an updated version of duck hunt. You can find it on the all new free games page. New features include a pause feature, two ducks, clay pigeons, and bug fixes. I've also made most of the sapi speech interuptable by pressing space. You can check it out as well as the other games at www.l-works.net Liam + 11/07/07 This afternoon I had a spark of creativity and decided to recreate duck hunt for nintendo. For those who have never played it, Duck hunt was a game that came bundled with the nintendo. You had a gun that you would shoot at ducks on screen with. There was also this dog that tended to laugh at you if you missed ducks. Of course he was all smiles if you shot one down. You can download the game at www.l-works.net/dhsetup.exe I hope you find it fun. Liam ++ News from PCS Games 07/23/07 Hi Folks, Since I finished reading the last Harry Potter book, I am now adjusting the Sarah game accordingly. slight spoiler space I hope to get Sarah to record the new descriptions and the real name of The Gray Lady It will take a few weeks to do this. I will post the changes as a patch plus update the full game download. Phil phil@pcsgames.net ++ News from Spoonbill Games 15/04/07 Word Target DESCRIPTION. Blind Gamers Word Target is a game of anagrams. Each game consists of a 3 by 3 grid of nine letters, which are the scrambled letters of a random nine letter word. Your task is to find as many words of four letters or more using the nine letters in the grid. The letter in the centre of the grid is referred to as the target letter. Each word in your list must contain the target letter, and there must be at least one nine letter word in the list. Plurals ending in 'S' and verb forms ending in 'S' are not allowed. You cannot use a letter more than once in the same word. That is not to say you cannot make a word with two E's for example, but you can only do this if at least two E's appear in the Word Target grid. You cannot make proper names such as London, Robert, or Mozart. You cannot make any abbreviations such as E T C or acronyms such as U N E S C O. You can make foreign words provided they have been adopted into the English language. At your discretion, you can add any words you find, which are not in the Word Target dictionary, and which you deem to be acceptable words, to the User dictionary. But you cannot change, add to or delete words from the Word Target dictionary. ++ News from USA Games Entertainment Aug. 1, 2007 USA Games Entertainment would like to announce the immediate release of Montezuma's Revenge Patch 2. This patch fixes a number of bugs found in Public Beta 1. This patch includes such new features as the ability to get sound descriptions and to test your speaker orientation from the main menu. In addition, a number of miner bugs were fixed including the missing exit game option, mysterious bug where you can jump through walls while standing on a staircase, and several others. A complete listing is found in the Changes.txt file that ships with the full patch. To download this patch visit http://www.usagames.us and grab it from our download center. + USA Games News July 6, 2007 Montezuma's Revenge Beta 1 Released After a year of solid development and hard work USA Games Entertainment would like to announce the immediate availability of Montezuma's Revenge public beta 1. This 2 level demo is a breakthrough release for Montezuma's Revenge. Montezuma's Revenge is a fast action, classic side-scroller, supporting Microsoft's DirectX June 2007 technology, has built in Sapi 5 speech drivers for the most popular text to speech engines on the market, and Microsoft's .Net Framework 2. In this demo you will be able to explore two dark and eerie under ground temples searching for such treasures as magic healing potions, swords, torches, gold coins, and gems while you avoid such deadly creatures as rolling skulls, giant spiders, and slithering rattle snakes. As you travel the temple passages you will have to climb ropes, jump across deadly ledges, navigate vanishing platforms, jump over pits of blazing fire, and more. If you are ready for a fast action adventure join us in Montezuma's Revenge. You can download Montezuma's Revenge from our web site http://www.usagames.us. Before installing Montezuma's Revenge you should download the Montezuma's Revenge manual from the USA Games downloads center to familiarize yourself with the proper setup. You also should read our FAQ page, download and install any and all system requirements before running the game's setup. Thomas Ward President of USAGames Entertainment http://www.usagames.us +++ Game announcements and reviews Below are some of the new games available. Though an old treasure or two may be discussed also. It's noteworthy that in some cases it's only an announcement of a game, taken from the email list, and may not be a full review, or an official notice from the developer. 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. ++ Audio Game Maker Freeware from http://www.audiogamemaker.com 08/0207 Hi, You guys can all go and download audio game maker right now! The download is up. so go and grab it at www.audiogamemaker.com and hopefully we'll see lots of new games whatever they may be coming out. + Hello, Here is an alternative link to download the sound libraries for audio game maker. http://www.audiogamemaker.com/application/agm_soundlib.zip + Hi, I made an mp3 of the audio game maker tutorial. then all you'll need open is the audio game maker, and windows media player to follow along with it. For this one I used ibm viavoice outloud which is the same as jaws eloquence. http://www.divshare.com/download/1449767-0d0 Josh + Some examples of Audio Game Maker They are popping up on http://www.audiogamemaker.com/index.php?pagefile=gamelist + AGM Game Well, I've just released my first sample game, the demo from hell. Face three cowardly drivers who will think nothing of taking you out as soon as you hit the wall! If they back you into a corner, though, they win. One of the opponents is on your side, and he goes for one of the other, faster opponents. It's at http://tbrn.net/modgirl/Ken's%20games Enjoy! Ken Downey + Tool for soundports and AGM Hi, See: http://www.game-accessibility.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=1896#p1896 "We have created a small application that helps you select the outport you want instead of a trial and error-approach! Sound_helper! http://audiogamemaker.com/application/sound_helper.exe Put this file in the root of your agm folder or the game you have created. When you execute it, it will write a textfile to that directory. It is called audioports.txt and it lists the numbers you can enter into the soundport.txt in the data folder. The audio engine works best with DS (direct sound) drivers. ASIO is also good if you like. Running this application outside the AGM folder is useless, because it needs files from the AGM data folders. Let us know how it works. Remember, if AGM already works, you do not need this application." ++ Play 20Q Speciality Games Hi Folks, 20 Q just added a Harry potter quiz to its list: Play 20Q Speciality Games US Music UK Music Television Movies Sports People Places Names Harry Potter 20Q Project Furry Play 20Q Demo Games 20Q Junior Pocket Game Flash Demo Mobile Game Flash Demo Play Other Games Other Games Hangman - guess the word Memory Game - card matching Fungus - interactive web art 20Q game and A.I. related information Play F.A.Q. - Game FAQ About Press Awards In The News Store Quick Tour History of 20Q A few questions for the inventor Now Phil: It is a little tricky gettin' to the game. I do the following: go to, http://www.20q.net/ then go to the bottom of the page to, site map and hit enter. Then I can hit enter on which game I wish to play. If someone can figure out the exact url to each game I would appreciate it. Phil ++ Hi all, This is just a post to say that I've found a game which is derived from the first ever mud, which started life at Essex University in England in the late 70's. It is actually quite a bit different from most all modern mud games, and is very fun in its own right. Best of all it's free--despite what the account pages might say. If anybody's interested, you can check it out. The website is: http://www.mud2.com Hope you like it, and looking forward to bringing this game to life, it's really quite amazing. All the best, Zack. ++ Games comparison - Change Reaction and Jawbreaker By Charles Rivard Both games can be played without sighted assistance. Jawbreaker and Change Reaction are the same sort of game. Jawbreaker comes preloaded on a Pac Mate, which is Freedom Scientific's PDA for the blind. Change Reaction is a game for the PC. from www.draconisentertainment.com In Jawbreaker, you work with differently colored jawbreakers, identified to you through the use of a JAWS graphics file that you paste into your Windows folder. The file can be obtained, and you can find out all you need to know about the game, from the web site for Pac Mate users, which is www.pacmategear.com You break a jawbreaker that touches other jawbreakers of the same color that are side by side or consecutively placed in a column of jawbreakers. Any jawbreakers that touch, that are next to one another, will disappear. Jawbreakers that are above those that have been popped fall down into the empty spaces of their respective columns. The more you can pop with one breakage, the higher your score. You play until you can break no more jawbreakers. In Change Reaction, 5 denominations of coins are used, identified verbally through your desktop PC's soundcard. You left and right arrow across the columns of coins, and drop the coin that you have randomly been given onto a column. Any time there are 3 or more of the same denomination of coin you drop onto a stack either across or down, those coins will explode, making their respective stacks shorter. If there aren't enough coins to cause an explosion, your dropped coin is added to the stack, making it higher. If you discard the coin in your hand, twice the value of that coin is subtracted from your accumulated total, and you are given another coin to drop or discard. The object of the game is to race against the clock and wipe the board of all coins before time expires, and rack up higher dollar amounts in your jackpot. You can then send your high score to Draconis to see if you can make it to the top 10 list. Each game has different game settings. The difficulty settings of Change Reaction, from the easiest to the most difficult, are 8, 6, 4 and 2 minutes to clear the board, respectively. If you clear the board before time runs out, you can choose to play a bonus game to try to double your score. Only 2 denominations of coins are used, and you have 2 minutes to clear the board. If you do, you double your score. If you don't, you get nothing. If you find the way to trigger a fun variation of the game, sounds are different. You can play different variations of Jawbreaker. Some will replace popped jawbreakers rather than decreasing the columns, so different tactics must be used to rack up your score. I find both of these fun little puzzle games a challenge, and hope you'll give both a try. Change Reaction can be downloaded and used as a demo for, I think, 15 days, after which you must buy the game and use the registration key you are sent to unlock the game into the fully featured version. All info on the game can be found at www.draconisentertainment.com and this is also where you purchase the game. Happy gaming! ++ The new GMA Mud client is coming Hi all, thought some on the list would be interested in the below. I don't think david greenwood is subscribed to this list so no point asking him questions here, but feel free to discuss. kevin - (lord l) ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Greenwood" Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 Subject: [GMAGamesTalk] The new GMA Mud client is coming Hi all, VipMud is a Mud client that we are currently about to alpha test. For those of you who do not know what a Mud Client is, it is a communications program which allows you to communicate with on-line multi-user games on the internet. In the past such clients as the following were used: 1. GMud. More or less accessible, but not usually right out of the box. Its main weakness was that it had no scripting capabilities, and in my opinion not too much better than a Telnet client. 2. TinTin+ - an Unix text -based client which is an excellent program, but it was only available for those accessing the internet through a Unix shell. 3. ZMud - Another excellent program, but almost totally inaccessible. 4. Mush Client - A reportedly good client supported by Jaws scripts, but it does not work right out of the box. Certainly it is not as powerful as TinTin+ nor ZMud. The VipMud client that I always wanted would do the following: 1. work right out of the box without having to download scripts or make Many setup option changes. 2. Work directly with Jaws, Window Eyes, and MS Sapi. 3. Be able to use multiple voices concurrently, and be able to mix MS Sapi speech with a screen reader voice. Also have different voices assigned to different activities such as incoming text, command entry, script editing, system messages, and so on. 4. The gamer should be able to play multiple characters on a single Mud or on multiple Muds at one time, and the characters should be able to work together using triggers, aliases, macros, and other scripting commands. 5. Support for.Wav, .OGG, and .MP3 files. These files should be played as background, or when an event is triggered such as when you kill a monster or you sustain an injury, or to indicate low stats such as energy, mana, hit points, and so on. 6. The scripting commands should be voice oriented. For example, you may want to stop speaking spam, but you may want it still displayed on the screen for future use. Or you don't want something displayed on the screen, but you want it spoken. 7. Lots of accessibility aids. An example of one is let's say a character name Xandiavier asks you a question. It is a painful and time consuming experience to first find his name on the output screen, if your client allows this, and then cut and copy it to your entry field. inStead you could type: "Tell X", then press control-space to complete the word with the client doing the work by finding it in your recent output info, and then finishing with "how's it going?" The End result is "Tell Xandiavier How's it going?" Other shortcuts are needed as well, such as quickly finding a previously entered command by typing one or more of its leading characters and pressing, say Shift-space. Another helpful tool would allow you to extract hard to remember place names, character names, spells, and weapons from a built-in list of names and phrases which you maintain with just a simple keystroke. 8. Be able to support powerful scripting capabilities to give you complete control of your actions and environment. VipMud does all of the above and much more. It is almost completely Written and is going into alpha testing. Beta testing will start in the summer sometime, and it should be coming out early fall, and so stay tuned. Regards, David Greenwood DavidGreenwood@GMAGames.com http://www.GMAGames.com ++ Two football or socker games that are accessible. hi all. For any one who likes socker here are two games that are accessabel. They are easier than Free Kick and Hattrick. http://www.footiemanager.com this is a game with real teams, real stadiams, and real leagues, but the players are fantacy. http://www.sockermanager.com this is a football game with real teams leagues and players. But it is harder than footie manager. any one who wants more info email me off list and i am willing to help you get set up. Even set up your account for you if you give me the details i will need. Although you should not need my help with that as it is very accessible forr blind users. Their is also a chat room and forams to chat on. any one who does not really understand socker i can help them. ian and riggs riggs_mcnamara@yahoo.co.uk ++ Harry Potter Wombat Test Hi Folks, I've been wanting to take the wombat test since the first one came out and finally J.K.Rowling has made it accessible on the , accessibility enabled version of her web site. http://www.jkrowling.com/ Hints: 1. You need flash to make it work. 2. you need to hit enter on the Eraser - question mark 3. next hit enter on the fly. 4. The fly turned into a key that opened the door to the Room of Requirements. Through it is a view of my desk from above. There is a wombat test paper on it under three paper weights. a paper weight in the shape of a triangle a paper weight in the shape of a circle a paper weight in the shape of a line You need to hit enter on all three paper weights. You can now take the test but be quick because you only get 35 minutes to finish. ++ Harry Potter Guess the voices Hi Folks, There is a Harry Potter Guess the Voices Game. It is flash based and quite accessible. You need to have read the Harry Potter books thoroughly and even better listened to Jim Dale reading them. If You answer 15 out of 15 questions correctly, You are a prefect! Here is the link to the page, http://www.randomhouse.com/audio/features/harrypotter/ Then click on the link, Guess the Voices Game The 5 multiple choices will be numbered and a button to guess then the person's name below the button. Between questions you get your current score with a next button to go to the next audio question. Have fun! ++ Jedi Quake 4.1 qmod Cara Quinn Hi All, -been a while since I've posted and I wanted to let y'all know that at long last, update 1 for Jedi Quake is here!!! For those who might be unfamiliar with this, Jedi Quake is a series of mods or modifications to the game Audio Quake, which, itself, is a mod for the extremely popular FPS Quake. You can download the installation for the game itself, as well as the latest JQ release / update at: http://tbrn.net/modgirl The game installations are in the AQ folder, and the JQ releases are in the root. For those familiar with the mod, this update contains several bug fixes as well as many new features, so I've posted it as a self-contained release. It's a standard QMOD file for Quake and can also be converted into a zip file if you'd rather install or work with it that way. If you find you have any trouble downloading it, (as Windows sometimes wants to treat it as a zip file) you can set your browser to download all File Types in the save as dialogue, and it should save properly, as a QMOD file. Then, as long as you already have Audio Quake installed, you can simply press enter on the JediQuake QMOD file and it will automatically install into your installation of Audio Quake. As always, please feel free to contact me on or off list with any questions, concerns, or feedback. Enjoy! and have a most wonderful weekend!!! Smiles, Cara :) ++ Hi, I've just started up my TWGS game server, for anybody interested. Right now, there's just the one game--a 5000 sector universe with a limit of 250 turns per day. I plan to create a couple more games to suit different styles of play and lengths of daily time if this is requested. For the interested, you can find my server with your Telnet client or helper program at: zkline.dyndns.org, port 2002. If anybody has any questions about this, please feel free to contact me on list or off. I'll get back to you guys as soon as I can. Have fun, and good luck, Zack. Z_kline@hotmail.com ++ JMC Scripts Now Updated to V3.0 By: Bryan Garaventa Hello, I originally tried signing up for the BlindGamers list, but I guess it's no longer around. Well, it's been about 4 years since I've checked, so that's probably it. This is simply to let people know that I've finally added some new features to the JMC Scripts at http://gutterstar.net/jmc_scripts.php . I was a bit surprised to realize that the last build was in 2003, but well, it's been pretty busy. Hopefully people will enjoy the new features, they add quite a bit of advantage for blind MUD gamers, but we can keep that a secret right? Shhhh. Have a great day, Bryan Garaventa http://gutterstar.net/ ++ Judgement Day Available from L-works.net By Andy Smith Hi: In L-work's newest title, called Judgment Day, which was launched December 12, 2006, It is quite good; however, you wouldn't know that from the demo. I was not sure if I should buy it actually. But once you unlock the thing, wow! You've got a whole world of fun right at your fingertips! bonus games perhaps the most exciting feature is the bonus games. There are 4 bonus games, plus a little extra bonus game that doesn't do much of anything but give you a trophy. rocket rage, it's you up against mad rockets dropping faster, Or, itt seems that Way. At first, your machine gun goes so fast it's a mystery how you can get only one bullet out at a time. But, my strategy is to just hold down ctrl the entire game and move from side to side. The catch is that your gun fires slower. And slower. And slower. Until... 10 rockets land, oh no! Parachute jump, this one's fun! You're falling out of this parachute with bags falling to make you fall faster. You've got to avoid these rocket-enemies, and at the same time, get the bags. They've got to be exactly in the center; not even a centimeter off. Weapon Search, this one, to me, is kind of similar to super egg hunt in a number of ways. You move up and down, among the rows and columns, trying to collect as many weapons as possible within 3 minutes. You've got to make it to the door before it is known there is an intruder. number guess, in this game, you've got a menu (if that's the propper word), with the numbers 1 to 12. You have to guess the number the computer is thinking of, however, you only get 4 tries per number. The trophys: There are 40 of them all combined; even counting bonus games, and regular game trophys, and also extra trophys. In Judgment Day, you do certain things to obtain them. For example, to start, once you get your unlock code you will want to beat it, right? On easy, right? Well, if you beat it on easy normal hard or even unlockable ultra, you get trophys. However, in the demo there is no way to tell how good this is. L-works theater It's movies! Yeah, and they're being mailed right in your computer! In this theater there are little unlockable pieces of audio; but please keep in mind there is no video to watch. They're quite funny, once you've got the propper amount of trophys! submitting scores: You can show your fellow gamers how good you are! Get number one and. And finally, the regular game! In the regular game, you got to shoot down rockets, copters, planes, and disablers. From personal experience, planes are the hardest to kill. They love to move around; keep your machine gun, rockets or nukes on them and you'll stay away from harm. closing thoughts: While the keyboard interface is good, the mouse input option is much Better. It gives me the sensation that I am actually shooting stuff down, rather than pushing buttons. I also like the trophy system; I became addicted, staying up to 3 am on weekends to play it to get the trophys. I like the unlockable system; with the movies, bonus games, and other content; it's just awesome! ++ Playing with the Wii Reviewed by Che Martin Hi all, I purchased a Nintendo Wii last week, and I'm here to share my impressions with my fellow blind gamers. The Nintendo Wii, pronounced "we" is the latest entry into the video game console market by Nintendo. What makes the Wii unique is the way you interact with the system. Instead of punching buttons, you hold a wireless controller in your hand much like a small TV remote. This controller, called a Wiimote is absolutely amazing. Instead of pushing up and down arrows to select menus, you just point at the menu item you want and click the A button. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to operate the menus because of this, but fortunately this is not the case. When you move the pointer over a menu selection, the Wiimote vibrates slightly, and by memorizing where the different menu items are, you can go right to the menu you want. The Wii comes with a sports disk that contains basic versions of baseball, tennis, golf, bowling and boxing. As a blind player, I can compete quite well with my sighted friends and family with all the games, which is amazing. This is made possible by the unique control system the Wii remote affords. For example, in the bowling game, you hold the remote up in front of you as if you were holding a bowling ball, hold down the B button, then swing your arm back then forward just as if you were tossing a real bowling ball. At the bottom of your swing, release the B key and listen to the pins fall. The faster you swing, the faster your ball goes, and you can even put english on the ball by twisting the remote. Baseball allows you to swing the remote like a bat, and this one takes some good timing, as you need to swing just after hearing the swoosh of the pitch. Tennis can be played the same way, though I had the most trouble getting the timing down for this one. Golf is a real treat, as you hold the remote like a golf club and you really start to get a feel for how hard to hit the ball after some practice. This one requires a sighted friend, as the game does not speak your distance to the pin. The best of the lot in my opinion is boxing, which uses an additional attachment to the remote called the Wii Nunchuck. By holding the Nunchuck in one hand and the main remote in the other, you have the ability to throw punches with either hand, and the system recognizes your glove position at all times, so you can guard your face or body, lean back, left and right to avoid punches and so forth. It is an amazing gaming experience for the blind, and I have yet to be defeated by any of my friends or family, which shows you how well the blind can play these games. Additionally, boxing is a great workout, and you will be sweating after a couple of rounds. Overall, I would highly recommend this system to any and all accessible gamers out there, especially if you have kids in your family, it is a real blast. If anyone has questions, I'd be happy to answer them if I can. The Wii is 250 dollars, comes with the sports games and a remote and Nunchuck. I bought a second remote and Nunchuck for 50 bucks so I could play head to head with friends. Later all, Che ++ Mortal Kombat on the Wii First Impressions By Che Martin So I rode down to the local Wal Mart to buy MK Armageddon for the Wii yesterday, since Amazon informed me without explanation that my order would be delayed 2 weeks. I hate Wal Mart and all it represents, so you can imagine how badly I wanted to check this game out. My 11 year old nephew was here to check it out with me, which is a good thing because the menus and so forth don't talk and need to be memorized. After finally figuring out we had to register the second controller through the Wii setup menu, we were on our way. After choosing Baraka, my old time favorite from MK, I went into practice mode. The game shows a diagram of special moves you can do, one after the other, and with the Wiimote, the special moves are super easy to pull off now. For example, with Baraka, you hold down the b button and go back forward to throw his blade, or up down to wind mill his blades, works almost every time like a charm. I have never played MK blind before, and the things I was afraid would be a problem with two player are indeed a problem. I cannot tell when I am near enough to the opponent to kick or punch, likewise how far away I am to pull off a projectile move. Also, there is no consistent way of telling quickly what side of your opponent you are on. You can do a back back and listen for the sliding back sound, but if you aren't on the side you think you are on, suddenly you have moved into range of the enemy and you get ppounded. Maybe with more experience, I can pick up on more subtle clues and be able to tell where I am better. Punches and kicks are handled by the direction pad on the main remote, with movement and blocks done on the nunchuck. It all works quite well. Anyway, this is a first impression, I will probably do a podcast of the game and make it available on my website sometime this week, as well as give a text file that lays out the menus, as that is very much needed for blind play. More to come... Che ++ Some stuff about the PS3 Commercial console game Reviewed by Shadow Dragon Well, just got a little bored, and figured since a review of sorts has been done about the WII, might as well throw in my two cents about the ps3. Hopefully this hasn't been done yet, to my knowledge it hasn't, so I'm gonna do it now. Basically the PS3 would be worth the 600 dollars you spend on it... if you were sighted. Right now in my opinion its basically what you could call a glorified ps2, if even that, from a blind gamers prospective. If you're sighted, you can browse the net, download games, demos and all kinds of things, stream video directly to your ps3, do streaming from ps3 to psp and all that stuff if you're interested in movies, and many more things. You can play blue ray discs on it, which basically amounts to super high def video and not much else, so that's pretty much useless to blind players as well. The games, I have to admit, are pretty OK. Granted its about all we can do on the ps3 is play games, which is what it was made for, but we can't use a lot of the other features, and what we can use is basically useless to us, high def video has no effect whatsoever on the blind, and it doesn't change the sound one bit. Anyway, I'm getting off topic, back to the games. I bought 3 games with my ps3, or rather, I bought 2 and my brother bought 1. Fight Night is, for all intents and purposes, probably the best boxing game I've ever played. It has realistic boxing effects, nothing's synthasized, its almost like they actually had a couple guys throw punches at eachother and go through the motions of boxing, and then recorded it in high definition sound. It sounds awesome, and the slow motion KO moments just add to the awesomeness. Career mode is pretty sweet , though you'll need sighted help to play the training games. The autotrain almost never gives max benefit, and all 3 of the minigames you play for training involve sight. The weight lifting could probably be a timed thing, but I haven't messed around with it much. Anyway yeah, if you're going to spend the huge amount of money for a ps3, be sure to throw in an extra 60 bucks for this game. Even if you're not a huge fan of boxing, you will be after you play this. Especially if you have some sighted help. The controls are quite simple, though I'd recommend having someone help you change the control scheme to something easier, it starts out with no buttons to throw punches, you have to toss all your punches with the joystick. You can switch it though so that your square and triangle buttons are left and right jabs and your x and circle buttons are left and right hooks. I personally prefer this, but I'm sure there are those of you out there who will like the fact that your joystick gives you total punch control, that is to say, you can actually wind up your haymaker before tossing it, you can fling stunning left and right hooks, jabs, straights, uppercuts and almost any other type of boxing punch you can think of. Just by making the correct motions with the joystick. Next up, Virtua Fighter 5. Basically they made this game immensely tough for blind players. At least from my experiences. What they've done is advanced the AI to the point where its like you're in a real fight. That is to say, in the later rounds of the game, you'll never get away with throwing repeat attacks. If you throw the same attack more than once, sometimes you can get it off twice if you're lucky, but after that the AI knows that attack, and it starts countering it, shooting in under it and attacking you before you can get another attack off. So if you keep throwing high kick combos, the AI will duck, dodge or parry your kick and come in under it with an attack of their own. For those of you who have played MK, Tekken, basically any other fighting game on the market, you probably know what I'm talking about. I'm sure everyone likes to repeat combos sometimes. Well not in this game. They've taken it to the next level on the grounds that, if you keep repeating the same attack over and over in a real fight, you're going to get owned, which is exactly what happens in this game. The controls are easy to master. Sadly it doesn't make any use of the 6 way axis controller motion censer, its basically got the same control scheme of the old virtua fighter games with a much more advanced AI. So that's the PS3 for you. I guess if you've got the cash, go ahead and snag one. They're ok, and I have a feeling they're going to get a whole lot better, for example, Tekken6, WWE Smackdown Vs. Raw 2008, etc. So far it seems like they're feeling out the capacity of the blue ray discs and seeing exactly what they can and can't do with this system. Once again, I say, if you're not sighted, its not really worth the 600 bucks you pay for it, its probably worth the price of a ps2. But then again, there's not much we can do about that. The more realistic sounds make the game a little more fun, but that's about all you get out of the system for 600 bucks, is just realistic sound. So its up to you, I won't make a decision either way. The games are pretty fun, but you could just as easily live without this system and stick to your old ps2, games are still coming out for that and getting more and more realistic in sound by the year anyway. Basically what it amounts to right now in my mind is tossing about 600 bucks into a shiny new ps2. My brother loves it, but he can use all of the features, like WWW browsing and downloading games. Anyway I think this message may be way too long already. So I'm gonna cut it short so it doesn't get rejected. Feel free to ask any questions you may have about the ps3, and I'll try to answer them. ++ TAFN for golf and mudding Hi all. We've set up a golf group on Tafn The Accessible Friends Network which is an organisation and chat site based in the UK. We also have two Alter eon Mudding sessions for beginners and advanced players. For golf we're using Jim Kitchen's golf game version 10. If your interested come to www.tafn.org.uk or contact bob@tafn.or.uk. >From John Snowling. ++ Rail Racer By Che Martin Available from http://www.blindadrenalin.com Hi, this is Che martin, the developer of Rail Racer writing to give a brief overview of my new game for the blind. Rail Racer is set in a future where 80 percent of the western hemisphere has lost there sight due to an explosive comet entering the atmosphere. In this future world, the blind race on rails for fun, and that is where our game comes in. As the name implies, Rail Racer is run on multiple rails, one Rail per racer. But this isn't your average train rail friends. Besides having to accurately switch gears and keep your RPM up, you will have to deal with jumps, loops, nasty curves, and force shields, sometimes 2 or 3 of these at once, depending on the track you are racing, it can be quite challenging. Every effort has been put into Rail racer to give it as much replay value as possible. Here is a partial list of features of the full version: Multiple control choices, mouse, keyboard and joysticks are supported. Career mode, open up new and more difficult tracks as you earn more money racing. Upgrade your racer as you earn more money, upgrades include supercharger, nitros, a gravity puller, six speed transmission and more. Post your times to the web for bragging rights. Over 20 custom designed tracks included. Both lap racing and tag racing modes, where you take turns catching the other guy. Adjust the gear ratio and wing angle of your racer depending on the type of track. Strategize pit strategy on longer tracks. An included track editor so you can make your own tracks and share them with friends. Track upload and ratings page for uploading and reviewing other tracks. Professional voice over in the menu system. Extensive Sapi support allows you to adjust all aspects of your Sapi voice in game. And much more. The best feature of all though is the online racing support built into the game. With Rail Racer, a dedicated server account is provided, so you can select to join or create an online race from the game menu and be racing in seconds, no need to type in IP addresses or hope your friends server doesn't go down. The multi player rooms have built in chat support so you can talk some trash before or after your online race. Also, you can place bets in online mode with your friends, risking some of your hard earned career money, just another incentive to do well. Multi player mode supports up to 20 players per race. Blind Adrenaline also has an exclusive tournament system to manage online tournaments, once you register online, you simply join the tournament, report who won each match, and the system tracks everything else for you. We just finished a tournament, and the competition was very tight, especially near the end. Rail Racer is a different type of accessible game, few games for the blind offer the number of features of RR, and none offer the ease of use or speed of its online play. Even if you aren't into racing games, I urge you to check out the free demo, we have many players who never tried a racing game before that absolutely love it because of the multi player competitions and ability to talk to the other racers online and make bets. You can get the demo here: http://www.blindAdrenaline.com Happy racing, and feel free to email me if you have any questions. Che Martin che@blindadrenaline.com ++ Sound RTS By Che Martin Available from http://jlpo.free.fr/soundrts/ There have been lots of questions on the forums and email lists about Sound RTS strategy. Having logged many hours with this excellent game, I'd like to provide a few pointers to the new player. The biggest mistake I see in online play is players not recruiting enough peasants. Depending on the map you are playing, you should have anywhere from 8 to 15 peasants going to gather resources and construct buildings. If you only have 3 or 4 peasants, by the time you have enough gold to outfit a decent sized army, your opponent will have amassed a huge force and will crush you like a hollow bug. One very important keystroke in the game is control alt e, this will pick all inactive peasants so they can be put to work on something else. So if you hear "work complete", use this keystroke to re assign these peasants to doing something else, every second they stand around is another second you are losing the resource race in the game. Keep in mind that several peasants can be used at once to accomplish a task. 5 peasants assigned to build a barracks will complete the job much faster than just 1, and time is of the essence in this game. Also use the number keys on the top row to select various amounts of your units. For example if you have 12 peasants, and you want six of them to mine gold while the others build a town hall, select all peasants with control d, have them start the building, then press control 2 to select half these peasants and hit backspace on a gold mine to start them mining, being efficient with your unit selection is a key part of the game. One last note on peasants, don't worry about using up lots of food slots with peasants, once they are no longer needed or if you need the extra food slots, simply put them in offensive mode and send them to the enemy to be slaughtered, they will go willingly and leave a little tear in your eye. Feel free to play taps after giving the order. One strategy a lot of players use is to skip right over using footmen, and upgrade their town hall to a keep so they can build a stable and therefore recruit knights. Knights are far superior to footmen, they have 45 hit points versus 15 for footmen, and they are the fastest units on the board. At 15 gold each, they are a bit expensive, but well worth it. On map 3 for instance, when I am ready to go to battle, I will often have over 10 knights, a few archers and a couple of mages. This is a hard combination to beat. Having said all that though, it is important to defend against an opponent who tries to launch an early offensive. If you are up against someone that uses this tactic, you should build a barracks fairly early and produce a few footmen in case you are attacked near the beginning of the game. Losing a couple farms at the outset can be devastating, and just 3 footmen can help avoid this often. Make sure you have the map you are going to play memorized. you don't want to be wandering around wondering where the gold deposits are in the middle of a match. For example, map 3 consists of 4 equal areas on each side of a 7 by 7 grid with a very large gold mine in the center at position d 4. It is important to hold d 4 due to this large deposit of gold, but don't try to take it too early or you will just get knocked off when your opponent comes in with a superior force. The best way to do map 3 is to get up to 13 or so peasants, wipe out the gold mine that you start on, then set up a town hall on the next gold mine closest to the first. By the time this second gold mine is exhausted, you should be in good shape to defend and attack. Speaking of town halls, be sure and build one near new gold and wood reserves, so your peasants won't have far to travel to drop their goods, this is very important. Finally, make sure you take advantage of the upgrades to your troops afforded by the sawmill, blacksmith and stables for archers, footmen and knights respectively. Having these upgrades can mean the difference between victory and defeat. If you haven't tried Sound RTS yet, you can get it and read the documentation here: http://jlpo.free.fr/soundrts/ There are also links to sound packs and tutorials on the site. Lastly, I host sound RTS tournaments at my web site http://www.blindAdrenaline.com Sound RTS is currently on version beta 7, with beta 8 coming out soon, which will address some online speed issues. Once that is released, we will be starting up a new tournament for anyone interested. Hope to see you on the battlefield soon, Che martin + Sound RTS tutorial By Che Martin I have created a tutorial for the beginning Sound RTS players, which I hope will help get more folks playing this amazing game. By the time you finish this tutorial, you should be able to take on the computer with no problems. You can get it here: http://blindadrenaline.com/downloadCounter/download.php?x=RT+audio+tutorial Have fun, Che + Further on Sound RTS By Ken Downey The main things are: First, hit f10, go up until you hear increase game speed, and hit enter. This will give you an edge against those who don't know to do this, but it will cost you the game if you don't speed up and your opponents do. Build town halls near big gold deposits and forests, gold and wood is carried back to the nearest town hall before it is counted. Town halls are hospitals too, so if you're in the thick of it you can send your wounded back there. The easiest way to do this is to press w until you get to the nearest town hall, then control space for first person mode. This takes you there. Press escape, then start checking hit points. Through first person mode, you can go anywhere your people are--just control them and hit control space and you're there. Here's the way I work it. I'm at the battle and I hear someone saying he's almost dead. I hit w, control space, and escape and instantly go to the town hall, then I check my wounded footmen by pressing r for footmen and v for hit points. If the hit points are low, hit back space. This will send the soldier back to the town hall to be healed and, of course this works with all units. By the way, first person mode is great for scouting and knowing what might be delaying your units as each square is announced as they move on, which gives you exact knowledge of their movements and can tell you how far they have to go to drop supplies off at the town hall, as well as helping you understand the speed of each unit. Remember, just because a1 is next to a2, there may be a six square path that must be taken due to obstacles. As far as soldiers go, the footmen and archers don't last long and do little damage, so when you buy them treat them as expendable resources. You can't exploit your peasants. As much as you would like to for whatever twisted reason, you cannot exploit peasants or soldiers. I say this because bad keystrokes cost time, and time can cost the game. For want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost. For want of a horseshoe, the horse was lost. For want of a horse, a knight was lost. For want of a knight, the army was lost. For want of an army, the war was lost. Time is valuable, so when you go to recruit footmen for example, make sure that it says "barracks," and not "town hall," when you press w. Also, you can't choose the path to the west and hit enter--the 'go' to command must be selected or the backspace key used. Your peasants like to be lazy--I've heard them pacing back and forth when I gave them a path without the "go to" command. Upgrade--always upgrade. |Remember that the town hall can be upgraded immediately after completion of the barracks, and to upgrade to a castle you have to have a sawmill, blacksmith, and stable. The workshop is not necessary. Knights are your best soldiers by far until you can get mages, which can heal other units and cast deadly spells. Once your stables are built, upgrade the horses' speed as soon as possible. This makes any knights you have deadly foes and lightning-footed scouts. 3. In map 3, d4 is the location to have, and anyone who possesses it will probably win if he plays his cards right--but Che, who gave me a sound thrashing not once but twice last night and taught me to respect my betters, (I'll get you yet Che Martin,) has taught me that this is not the case unless you have many soldiers right from the start Recruit, recruit, recruit! Ten peasants at the start of a game will net you much wood and gold. But, you ask, what about the population limit! Well, press control d for all peasants, then 2 to control half of them, and set their mode to offensive by pressing shift a twice followed by enter. Then, use them as scouts--that's right, sacrifice them to the dogs of war! Speaking of scouting, here's the best way. Go to a square you've never visited before, (next to a known square, if possible) control some units and hit back space. Then move another square and back space again--there is no need to hit the keystrokes for controlling units a second time because the game remembers whom you commanded last, so just arrow around and hit backspace and soon, much of the board will have been explored. This is an etiquette thing, so pay attention. Don't log in, invite everybody to a game, get no response, log out, log in, invite everybody, log out, log in, invite everybody, log out and please don't use long names. Messages of your doings can be very annoying, and can cost a player a key building during attacks since your messages prevent them from hearing the attack coordinates in time. There really should be a keystroke for announcing positions of enemy attacks. Hope this helps Ken Downey + Sound RTS sound pack Made by Ken Downey http://tbrn.net/modgirl/Ken's%20games/ ++ Hi folks At http://playball.ws A new audio promo with some folks you may know from http://for-the-people.com Second new item: Updated stats for the 1940Replayed season for strat-o-matic's HRFL League. Victor Chang aka Hong Kong Champ Grand Prize winner of the Crash's 3-pointer pool Has gotten his prize Strat Computer Baseball game version 12 You can check the final Standings on the playball.ws home page Vic's nickname is Buffalo Hunter. Be sure to come back to playball.ws for the upcoming NFL pool the best Accessible pool on the net. Lastly, I have submitted the lastest Jaws configurations for the Strat Baseball game version 12 in the Strat Instructional Jukebox page. Those who may want to demo the game there is a demo game and a startup kit with its own Jaws configs. Crash ++ Baseball Mogul Hi all, I just stumbled on this game while I was in a fresh Baseball kinda mood from listening to the OSU Beavers squeak by good old UC Fullerton this evening. It seems quite accessible, albeit a little complex and managerial. What I'd really like is a game with the old Triple play-style play-by-play announcements, which I can fully play without the need for a playstation controller. Heh. Anyway, here's a link for you guys. Anybody with a more strategic or patient mind willing to check it out? Has somebody already? http://www.sportsmogul.com/baseball2k5/free.htm + Update on baseball mogul Hi all, For anybody interested, I've been doing some playing around with the Baseball Mogul game I mentioned a few days back. It has a fairly useable interface, with a few annoyances and things which someone like a Jaws scripter might be able to fix. The principle one is that it uses lots and lots of tables and tabular formats for representing statistics. On the plus side, nearly all controls are standardized menus, buttons, etc. I'm not a Jaws user myself, so can't help with the scripting. If anybody is interested in helping me figure this game out, or scripting it or whatever, please do let me know. Thanks, Zack. ++ Space Empires 3 Hi all, This is one of those games which is accessible mostly by complete surprise. It's the shareware title Space Empires III, created by Malfador Machinations. This is a turn-based strategist's dream--complete with ship design, planets, colonization, AI, etc. I have found almost every component of the game to be quite accessible, because of the standard and mostly standard Windows controls it uses. The mouse cursor is essential, because you need it to explore dialogues and read reports in a meaningful way. But it works, folks! Most of it anyway--I've asked them about movement and the like, but I really don't see a reason that shouldn't work, too. The URL for download is: http://www.malfador.com/ >From there, you can find Space Empires III--though I've not looked at the >others in the series as extensively yet. Anybody have any thoughts on this game? Thanks much, Zack. ++ It's time to play Scrabble Well, for those of you who don't have a pac mate but do have a PPC with Jaws on it, or for those PM owners who haven't been checking their email, a version of Scrabble has been made accessible for Pac mate and can be found at www.pacmategear.com Hope you like it--and by the way, the game and scripts are free. +++ Contacting Us All material for inclusion in upcoming issues of Audyssey should be sent to me at the following snail or email address: Ron Schamerhorn 1180 Dorval Dr. #303 Oakville On L6M 3G1 [905]-842-1933 blindwonder@cogeco.ca or editor@audyssey.org and to chat find me at rschamerhorn@hotmail.com for Windows/MSN messenger no email to this one please. +++ 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 two 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: blindwonder@cogeco.ca 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. From now on, this is official policy of the Audyssey community. This magazine is free in its electronic form, and will always remain so. 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 cd or 3.5-inch disk in a self- addressed mailer if you want your media returned to you. 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. 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. 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. 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. There are two moderators keeping things civil and orderly. Be certain to read the Audyssey Community Charter as all list members are expected to follow its rules. 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 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 our home-page. 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. Darren Duff also provides a home for Audyssey. http://www.angelfire.com/music4/duffstuff/audyssey.html Where the issues can be read, downloaded individually or one zip file of all the issues. Thanks Darren! Another location to find Audyssey current and back issues is http://www.audiogames.net/page.php?pagefile=audyssey Thanks to Richard and those at Audio-games! We extend our gratitude to Kelly Sapergia who has provided a place for all the issues of the magazine. . You can find them at www.ksapergia.net/audyssey.html _______________________________________________ Gamers mailing list .. Gamers@audyssey.org To unsubscribe send E-mail to Gamers-unsubscribe@audyssey.org. You can visit http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org to make any subscription changes via the web.