Audio Game Maker: game building environment for the blind

Category: Accessible Games

Post 1 by talksina (Veteran Zoner) on Friday, 15-Sep-2006 11:15:47

Hi, I found this on www.audiogames.net
The
Bartiméus Accessibility foundation
has announced the development of Audio Game Maker, an application which enables visually impaired people to make their own computer games. A first prototype
of the application is scheduled to be released in Februari of 2007.

Audio Game Maker aims to increase the number of computer games for the visually impaired, since very few accessible computer games exist. Many visually
impaired players want to create their own games but give up when confronted with programming difficulties and other technical issues. Creative players
manage to modify existing games with their own recorded sounds in order to make 'new' games. Despite these efforts, there is a huge demand for an accessible
tool that enables visually impaired people to make computer games.

Audio Game Maker aims to be a solution for this problem by offering a simple and accessible game building environment. Audio Game Maker is part of project
Game Accessibility, a series of activities conducted by the Bartiméus Accessibility foundation in order to improve the accessibility of computer games
for players with impairments. Accessibility has been researching the accessibility of computer games over the past few years, and participated in the development
of two games for the blind: Drive, an audio racing game, and Demor, a location-based audio-augmented reality game.

Please submit your suggestions, wishes and recommendations at the
Audio Game Maker forum
(Game-Accessibility website) or the
AudioGames.net thread,
if you prefer to use your AG login. Please fill in the questionnaire, in order to help the developers to create the game maker you want!
Links here:
http://www.accessibility.nl/
http://www.game-accessibility.com/forum/viewforum.php?id=15
http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?id=853

Post 2 by nikos (English words from a Greek thinking brain) on Friday, 15-Sep-2006 11:53:56

Sounds very interesting. Thanks for posting.

Post 3 by rat (star trek rules!) on Sunday, 17-Sep-2006 15:15:38

yeah, i saw that, it sounds like something i would check out

Post 4 by laced-unlaced (Account disabled) on Sunday, 17-Sep-2006 15:42:21

interesting article.

1thanks

Post 5 by b3n (I'm going for the prolific poster awards!) on Sunday, 17-Sep-2006 17:47:48

I would use it as long as i could code it in notepad and the programs that it made wern't dependent on there compailer for example they could be saved as .exe files.

Post 6 by talksina (Veteran Zoner) on Monday, 18-Sep-2006 9:08:45

well I suppose, at least this prototype, is something like a wizard where you put text and/or sounds, with keyboard commands (type the key name or press the key itself) and it performs mixing, association between sounds and keys, etc etc.
I suppose the first release would be very limited and AudioGameMaker could have a proprietary software (like the first ms-dos adventure editors for newbies) but I don't know, I am just thinking, but let's see in february 2007!

Post 7 by buk buk buk (move over school!) on Saturday, 30-Sep-2006 0:43:29

That's great!

Post 8 by chikorita (move over school!) on Saturday, 01-Mar-2008 23:44:51

HI all! sorry for bringing this back, but... the AGM has had a lot of updates. on I think january 25 2007 there was a huge fire at the accessibility foundation, and a "beta" was released on august 2. go check it out!

thanks.

Post 9 by skpoet711 (Zone BBS is my Life) on Monday, 24-Mar-2008 22:45:28

I downloaded this, installed it, but it won't run, major error and it closes.
it seems to have potential though from the forum


dell d630 c2d 2.0 ghz, 2gb ram, 120gb hd

Post 10 by zhuuraan (Account disabled) on Tuesday, 25-Mar-2008 5:38:23

This program doesn't work. I have it on my computer and the best I can do is navigate the menues a little but it's far too buggy for release. I'll be glad to know when there is a stable, or at least more stable release of it. I'd hate to put work into making a game only to lose it to a crash or better yet have ten million ideas I can't put into an actual game cuz the program don't work. I know it's a test but it shouldn't have been publicly released until it was worked out more. It's march, almost april 2008 and it's no better than it was last february.

Post 11 by l_bryant2004 (Generic Zoner) on Tuesday, 25-Mar-2008 13:13:52

Hi. I am definitely not impressed, and I am extremely upset. If you look at the Audio Game Maker forum, the Foundation who created this is no longer developing this, and left us with a buggy release. I'm far better off learning vb.net and just coding games I am sure will work on Windows and other devices! You will see what I mean once you get this thing up and running. Laters.

Post 12 by zhuuraan (Account disabled) on Tuesday, 25-Mar-2008 21:57:30

Well, I don't know anything about VB so they leave me only making text adventures with ADRIFT. I like adrift but to make actual audio games would've been cool. Glad some people can still make their games.

Post 13 by hamster (Zone BBS Addict) on Thursday, 03-Apr-2008 18:04:26

I don't have a problem creating games. Simply read manual, absolutelly no problems - created my first simple game, but didn't released it yet.
It'll be fun.
HP c2d 2.00 1gb ram 120 gb hdd win xp
What bugs did you find?

Post 14 by blindndangerous (the blind and dangerous one) on Tuesday, 15-Apr-2008 21:07:46

that sucks that it doesn't work. I woulda like to try it out.

Post 15 by l_bryant2004 (Generic Zoner) on Monday, 21-Apr-2008 0:37:45

The bugs I found, or rather others have found is that even though a creature is killed or a spawnpoint is destroyed the sounds don't always stop playing, and so far I haven't seen any games created with it that are impressive, unless people have some they built, I'd be more than happy to try! Laters.