ACCESSIBILITY
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Accessible
Navigating complex game environments for visually impaired players can prove extremely challenging.
In this case, a knight character is in a cave environment with stone staircases, rivers and multiple mysterious in-game objects.
For a visually aware player, this is easy to navigate, but visually impaired players will struggle to get around.
“Red Forge” is designed from the ground up to provide navigation tools so that any player can move around regardless of their playing requirements.
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Navigation
Navigation for visually impaired players is baked into “Red Forge”. Generally, exits from any arena will be limited to north, south, east or west. The player can then select the direction they wish to exit, and the game will calculate a “safe route”.
The power of using “Red Forge” is that in-arena navigation is always available using our built-in route-finding technology that allows all game objects to navigate between two points, no matter how far apart they are.
The player can use the same concept to navigate towards any object in the game.
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Describe
By default, all objects will have description text, an importance rating and an optional spatial audio source attached.
At any point, the player can press their “view” button, and the system will utilize AI to provide a narrative description of what is in front of them such as “You can see a golden orb in front of you, behind is a stone fountain and slightly to the right is a mysterious artifact”.
The player can then request a more detailed description of any of those objects to learn more or even navigate towards them.
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Audio
The “Red Forge engine” support for accessibility does not stop just with visually impaired players. Our spatial audio function also includes support for “visual audio” for deaf players.
This allows us to visualize audio on important in-game objects such as NPCs, so deaf players can “see” them creeping up behind them.
These settings are configurable for the player and may also lead to some interesting gameplay concepts where fully sighted or hearing players are forced to play levels using their non-primary senses.