Shadow Monsters by Philip Worthington is another amazing interactive game / art work. Philip has worked with Sony in the past with their Eye Toy. Take a look at Ants and Line Riders at his site too. Fantastic! Many thanks to Richard Van Tol of GameAccessibility.com for the initial link.Taken from the BBC:
Philip Worthington's idea combines light projection and computer technology to create living shadow puppets.
"The computer sees a silhouette of your hand, and analyses its curves and contours," says Philip. "By looking at the gaps in-between your fingers, and where they're pointing, it knows what kind of puppet you're making." It is bit like watching a cartoon, as animated teeth and hairs dance around the silhouette to a tune of squeaks and buzzes.
Mine-Control.com carries the work of Myron Krueger and others into the modern day. Amazing worlds can be interacted with using the body. I love this stuff, especially Calder, Moderation and Interference.This technology was put to gaming use at the Indie Game Jam in 2003, and puts me in mind of the interactive white board usage of "Reactive Colours".
Accessible Gaming Pioneers update
Published by OneSwitch.org.uk Sunday, 25 June 2006 1:03 am.
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Brilliant Computing were creating accessible video games as far back as 1988. They wrote a small number of games that featured two very important features: Compatibility with a wide range of accessible controllers and control over the speed of the game.
There is more on this in my Accessible Gaming Pioneers page. If anyone knows of anything I have missed out, please get in touch.
Labels: history
Flow in Games by Jenova Chen is a wonderul on-line game that is highly accessible to gamers using head tracker controllers (and perhaps those using eye trackers too).
Gamers who might only be able to play by moving their heads or eyes can play this wonderful mellow game without too many difficulties. Hopefully more games as accessible as this will appear from the Retro Remakes competition. Especially as Natural Point are providing two of their splendid Smart Nav head trackers as prizes.
For designers interested in how to create head-tracker accessible games, take a look at the Retro Remakes Accessibility Assistance forum.
Labels: head trackers
Trying to avoid the spammers is not easy. So, if you'd like to get in touch, please piece together my address: info [hat] oneswitch.org.uk - but remove the hat and replace with an @.
An interesting concept has come from the Retro Remakes 2006 competition, via "Rogue", for making games more accessible to deaf gamers."ActionCaptions would be based on their original auditory counterparts. So a dripping sound in the background would be visualised (symbolized!) by a small blue-ish watery text balloon. Depending on the location of the sound, the balloons would be placed on those spots. A boulder crashing down from the ceiling would invoke a much greater balloon with stylized lettering (e.g. grey, cracked stoney characters). The louder the sound, the bigger and more obvious the balloon. Timing & placement is very important in this regard as well. A blowing wind would linger longer onscreen than a slap in the face, or a gunshot."
Retro Remakes 2006 - update
Published by OneSwitch.org.uk Thursday, 15 June 2006 10:49 pm.
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The Retro Remakes 2006 Big Competition - Promoting Accessibility In Games, has 126 games presently being remade! From Asteroids to Zork, there's a huge variety of games underway. Fingers crossed they all make it...
The Retro Remakes 2006 Big Compo Rules
The Retro Remakes 2006 Big Compo Forum
Games Entered So Far...
Labels: RR 2006
Labels: music video
There are quite a few new activities in the ReactiveColours.org gallery, which are well worth trying out. Nice and trippy.
You Tube - Together in Electric Dreams
Published by OneSwitch.org.uk Sunday, 11 June 2006 12:23 am.
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Labels: music video
"Games [CC] is a dedicated group of captioners, translators, artists and programmers who modify exsisting games to add closed captioning to them. While most games (but not all) include subtitles for dialogue, many do not caption the sound effects from weapons or enemies. Adding closed captions helps hearing impaired and deaf players to experience the game as intended by being aware of the sound clues and information they may miss without the use of closed captions."
Closed Captions are the same as the UK Teletext subtitles service for television programmes. On-screen text relays what is being said (with different people having different coloured text) as well as descriptions of any other sounds and music. This can be switched on or off, and is a great boon for hearing and deaf people alike (especially when you have noisy relatives around!).
Video Place (Myron Krueger) - clip from 1989
Published by OneSwitch.org.uk Wednesday, 7 June 2006 7:22 am.
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MERU's Bugzi is a fantastic wheelchair aimed at 1-6 year olds. It can be controlled by a joystick or switches. I like it.Labels: wheelchairs
Some interval music whilst Retro Remakes 2006 proceeds...
Published by OneSwitch.org.uk Sunday, 4 June 2006 11:39 am.
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Labels: music video, RR 2006
One switch coin-op games 1977-2006
Published by OneSwitch.org.uk Thursday, 1 June 2006 10:46 am.
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Following on from the Star Trigon post, there are at least four other essentially one button coin-op games.
Atari's 1977 Canyon Bomber, Sega's Osharemajo Love and Berry and Cave's Uo Poko and Mushimetama. How many of those do you think you'll ever play?!
Labels: Arcade, history, new games, one-switch games
