4 ms·

I'm blind and use echolocation regularly for things like biking, increased awareness of surroundings, etc. Any chance you might add some sort of audio-only inte

I'm blind and use echolocation regularly for things like biking, increased awareness of surroundings, etc. Any chance you might add some sort of audio-only interface? Off the top of my head, you could make the user's breathing noises echo off of obstacles. Breathing could echo off of walls to indicate obstruction in specific directions, for instance. Your trailer doesn't tell me much as a non-visual user, but I like the idea of the noises you make being audible to whomever is hunting you even while they tell you what's around. That seems like a nice strategic element. If you're looking for additional thoughts/design advice, I'd be happy to brainstorm further. I design audio-only games (albeit typically titles like traditional games but with audio-only interfaces) so have put lots of thought into this subject.

nnnnni 12y ago
I'm not blind, but that's a GREAT IDEA. I'd play it that way! It could be called bat-mode!
sillysaurus3 12y ago
Hi! You should buy a Razer Tiamat, and a computer capable of running it. It's a 7.1 surround sound headset. It's different from other surroundsound headsets in that it's truly surround sound: there are a bunch of actual tiny speakers inside each ear which physically emit sound from different directions. The experience is incredible! It's nothing like headphones with two speakers, or any of the "virtual surround sound" stuff. People think we only need two speakers because we have two ears, but it's not true at all. Two speakers work sort of okay, because everyone's used to them and our audio presently is made to work for them, but surround sound is far superior. Unfortunately it requires a desktop computer that has 5 plugins for the audio. (Front, front-left, front-right, back-left, back-right, if I remember correctly.) Also, the headset is slightly hard to configure out of the box. If you plug it in and aren't overwhelmed, don't give up hope! You have to go into the audio settings and enable stuff like bass management or loudness management or... stuff like that, I've forgotten at this point but I could look it up if needed. The positional audio is so good that I think you might be able to play some games. Unfortunately, there aren't very many games which take full advantage of surround sound, but it could be fun for a friend to play a scary game like Amnesia while you listen to it. It's admittedly very expensive for probably not too much takeaway for you though. Here's a link to a comment I wrote about the Tiamat a couple months ago when Sony announced a competing project to the Oculus Rift. They said they're shipping something with "60 virtual speakers" so that prompted my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7426463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7426463
- ndarilek 12y ago
  Hmm, not sure I've ever had a computer with 5 audio plugs. Actually, I'm trying to sort through the various audio connectivity standards to find which works best for me. Because I don't need a large screen, and because the screen is the usual bottleneck for desktops/laptops, I use a small but powerful laptop as my main computer (Lenovo Helix for the curious.) Unfortunately, since this is a laptop, audio connectivity is pretty limited, and I'm in the market for a quality USB audio device that'd allow at least 5.1 connectivity. If you have any headphone/USB interface buyer's advice to offer than I'd be interested. At the moment I'm lacking enough connectors for a 5.1 interface with this setup and certainly lack same for headphones. :)
  - Myrth 12y ago
    Searching for "usb 7.1" on amazon.com gives these top products with decent rating: http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-External-Channel-Audio-Adapter/dp/B004HXGJ3S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399888698&sr=8-1&keywords=usb+7.1 http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-External-Channel-Audio-Adapter/... http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-USB-SND8-8-Channel-External-Surround/dp/B001D1PWGM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1399888698&sr=8-2&keywords=usb+7.1 http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-USB-SND8-8-Channel-External-Su... Here's the Razer Tiamat headphones, I'm using them and like a lot: http://www.amazon.com/Razer-Tiamat-Surround-Gaming-Headset/dp/B007CS9WYI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399888881&sr=8-1&keywords=razer+tiamat http://www.amazon.com/Razer-Tiamat-Surround-Gaming-Headset/d...
szhongmin 12y ago
Hi ndarilek, sorry but at this point of time the project is closed and doing a purely sound based game will be a different challenge for another project. We would suggest you check out BlindSide(blindsidegame.com) and Papa Sangre(papasangre.com) in the meantime.

nnnnni 12y ago

I'm not blind, but that's a GREAT IDEA. I'd play it that way! It could be called bat-mode!

sillysaurus3 12y ago

Hi! You should buy a Razer Tiamat, and a computer capable of running it. It's a 7.1 surround sound headset. It's different from other surroundsound headsets in that it's truly surround sound: there are a bunch of actual tiny speakers inside each ear which physically emit sound from different directions. The experience is incredible! It's nothing like headphones with two speakers, or any of the "virtual surround sound" stuff. People think we only need two speakers because we have two ears, but it's not true at all. Two speakers work sort of okay, because everyone's used to them and our audio presently is made to work for them, but surround sound is far superior. Unfortunately it requires a desktop computer that has 5 plugins for the audio. (Front, front-left, front-right, back-left, back-right, if I remember correctly.) Also, the headset is slightly hard to configure out of the box. If you plug it in and aren't overwhelmed, don't give up hope! You have to go into the audio settings and enable stuff like bass management or loudness management or... stuff like that, I've forgotten at this point but I could look it up if needed. The positional audio is so good that I think you might be able to play some games. Unfortunately, there aren't very many games which take full advantage of surround sound, but it could be fun for a friend to play a scary game like Amnesia while you listen to it. It's admittedly very expensive for probably not too much takeaway for you though. Here's a link to a comment I wrote about the Tiamat a couple months ago when Sony announced a competing project to the Oculus Rift. They said they're shipping something with "60 virtual speakers" so that prompted my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7426463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7426463

ndarilek 12y ago
Hmm, not sure I've ever had a computer with 5 audio plugs. Actually, I'm trying to sort through the various audio connectivity standards to find which works best for me. Because I don't need a large screen, and because the screen is the usual bottleneck for desktops/laptops, I use a small but powerful laptop as my main computer (Lenovo Helix for the curious.) Unfortunately, since this is a laptop, audio connectivity is pretty limited, and I'm in the market for a quality USB audio device that'd allow at least 5.1 connectivity. If you have any headphone/USB interface buyer's advice to offer than I'd be interested. At the moment I'm lacking enough connectors for a 5.1 interface with this setup and certainly lack same for headphones. :)
- Myrth 12y ago
  Searching for "usb 7.1" on amazon.com gives these top products with decent rating: http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-External-Channel-Audio-Adapter/dp/B004HXGJ3S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399888698&sr=8-1&keywords=usb+7.1 http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-External-Channel-Audio-Adapter/... http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-USB-SND8-8-Channel-External-Surround/dp/B001D1PWGM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1399888698&sr=8-2&keywords=usb+7.1 http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-USB-SND8-8-Channel-External-Su... Here's the Razer Tiamat headphones, I'm using them and like a lot: http://www.amazon.com/Razer-Tiamat-Surround-Gaming-Headset/dp/B007CS9WYI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399888881&sr=8-1&keywords=razer+tiamat http://www.amazon.com/Razer-Tiamat-Surround-Gaming-Headset/d...

szhongmin 12y ago

Hi ndarilek, sorry but at this point of time the project is closed and doing a purely sound based game will be a different challenge for another project. We would suggest you check out BlindSide(blindsidegame.com) and Papa Sangre(papasangre.com) in the meantime.