Audiogames link:
link
Download link (1.5MB):
Color Identifier
DarkGrue - game book creator
This tool can be used to create game books similar to those found on arborell.com. The program aids you in creating a basic skeleton web of story sections and choices linking them. Each section can then be expanded upon by tapping in to all of your creative story writing skills. In the end, a simple key press assembles the entire project into a series of html files with the proper links in place for easy distribution and sharing.
Audiogames link:
link
Download link (1.3MB):
Darkgrue
Daytona and the Book of Gold - audio game that uses a mouse or trackpad
I named the game after the beach since it is probably one of the only accessible games partially programmed while sitting on the sand a stones throw away from the ocean (I was on vacation). The game is centered around quick action, memorization, and hand coordination skills... yes you heard that right, a mouse or track pad will be required to play this game. If you don't have a mouse or track pad you can enjoy scrolling through the game's main menu I suppose, but that seems a little boring to me. hehe.
The story of the game is that you are an impoverished wizard who has come across a spell capable of conjuring magical [gold] coins out of thin air! Obviously such a spell would solve all of your troubles but the spell is quite difficult. Coins are easily created but they will simply turn in to smoke and vanish unless the mystical gateway can be made stable with the spell. Speed and accuracy is the only way to stabilize the magic gateway through its different stages (levels). If you cast your spell too slowly it will never become more stable than it currently is.
Audiogames link:
link
Download link (10.9MB):
Daytona and the Book of Gold
Dog who Hates Toast - a memory and word association game
Dog who Hates Toast, is a little memory, and word association game. You are helping a crazy guy, me of course, organize his house. As Aprone tells you where to put items, he slowly goes more and more insane. Each time you complete a task, a common word is forever swapped out for some random word in Aprone's vocabulary. You'll be informed of the new word swap, but you must remember them as they start to build up. In your mind, you must work on associating his new words with the old ones, so that you can still understand him well enough to complete the next task. It really doesn't take long before Aprone is rambling off gibberish to you, and expecting you to understand him. Complete all 40 of Aprone's tasks and you win!
Audiogames link:
link
Download link (1.34MB):
Dog who Hates Toast
Lunimals - an eco system simulation game
This is a life simulation game, where you attempt to create, and maintain, a complex eco-system on the moon. This beta has 7 missions, each with their own set of quests. Unlike my previous games, this one is not self voiced with me speaking. The game should work with your preferred screen reading software, or you can use the built-in SAPI. I have personally tested it with NVDA and Window eyes. This game has simple graphics included, so if you have sighted friends or children, they can have fun with the game as well.
Audiogames link:
link
Download link (2.2MB):
Lunimals
Puzzle Divided - a math based puzzle game, that is not for the faint of heart
When I'm stuck at my boring day job, I try to bring puzzles and stuff with me
to help the time pass faster. Unfortunately, I am limited to only puzzles I can
do in my head since I would get into trouble if I was seen scribbling on paper
rather than lugging heavy boxes out of the trucks. One of my most favorite
puzzle types to take to work is a logic puzzle generated by a computer program I
made years ago. They can be quite difficult, but it occurred to me that if I
can do the puzzles without writing things down, then they might lend themselves
to being made accessible.
I've only coded 2 puzzles into the game for now, but it should be more than enough to keep someone busy. Keep in mind that these puzzles are not for the faint of heart... they are designed to make you really think! At first glance you may think they are math puzzles, but in truth there is very little need for any mathematical equations. If you think things through carefully, you'll be fine.
Audiogames link:
link
Download link (5.8MB):
Puzzle Divided
Swamp - Zombie first person shooter game.
I'll write up a description for this game later.
Audiogames link:
link
Full Download link (47.2MB):
Swamp
Temporal - The turn based, time traveling, puzzle game.
In Temporal, you awaken in a government facility deep underground. You don't know how long they have been studying you, but you have been kept in a drug induced, unconscious state, to prevent you from escaping. Through some type of mistake, you have awaken. Keeping you unconscious was this facility's first line of defense against the most powerful human ever to walk the earth. you. Using your powers, to jump forward and backward through time, you must escape the lab they have been keeping you in. This game requires you to keep careful track of what you have already done, as well as planning ahead for what you intend to still do. Traveling through time means you will share the environment with all other instances of yourself who were present at that time. Confusing? If you jump back in time, you may run through a room where a past version of yourself is busy attacking the guards. When you hold open a door now, later you will travel back in time to this point in order to run through it! With everything going on, you must always be careful not to run into any past versions of yourself, or you will destroy the continuity of events and lose the game.
Audiogames link:
link
Download link (1.33MB):
Temporal
Thumbnail wavs - a tool for quickly searching through your collected sound files
The problem with the sound files is that you have to take the time to hear each one before you know if it is the right one. When it comes to images, sighted individuals benefit by being able to arrange images as thumbnails and quickly scan over them to find the one they want. For those of you who have never been able to see, this might be hard to grasp, but scanning through image thumbnails means our brain can get basic information about dozens of images at the same time. When one stands out as being similar to the one we are searching for, we can quickly put more attention on it to verify if it truly is the one we seek or if it is merely similar but not quite the same. If it is not the right one we can instantly switch back to spreading our brain power over a lot of images simultaneously.
This whole process is a lot like opening up many windows on your computer so that each one can be doing something different. It is much faster than doing each window, waiting for it to do its job, and then opening the next one.
My huge annoying list of sound files got me wondering if the same basic principle could be applied to sound files. From what I can see, people in this community collect sound files in the same way sighted people collect image files. With that being the case, odds are each of you could have hundreds of collected sound files on your computer. Like images, sound files are hard to specifically name. Sure you can name one "Dog barking" but that doesn't help when you are looking for 1 particular bark and you have 50 recordings of dogs barking. Bad example I know, but hopefully you understand what I mean. Many sounds simply cannot be given proper names either, like all of the many beeps and buzz sounds that would be hard to associate to a file name.
I threw together a tool that arranges sound files into a series of thumbnails for quicker searches. At the moment there are 2 files but I plan to take it down to just 1 if people think this is useful. Stick the files into a folder you're storing sound files in and run it. Each of the folder's wav files will be laid out in a 2 dimensional array. Use either the arrow keys or the mouse to move between them. To get the true thumbnail effect you'll need to use the mouse or a track pad. Sliding through them will allow you to hear each get louder or softer as though they are each little radios on your desk that you are moving over. Because you can pick up multiple sounds at the same time, this attempts to simulate the eye's ability to spread attention among multiple objects simultaneously to save time. Move over the one you want and left click to copy it to the windows clipboard. Shift + click will add or remove more files to the list in the clipboard. Once you've grabbed the ones you want you can press Escape to close the program and now the desired files can be pasted wherever you wish using Ctrl+V as usual.
Audiogames link:
link
Download link (0.03MB):
Thumbnail Wavs
Time Reminder 2 - an accessible multi purpose clock, timer, and stop watch.
I was making a new computer timer for my wife, and I took an extra few minutes to make it Vi/blind accessible. I haven't found any of the existing accessible timers so I can't really say whether mine is good or bad by comparison. Here it is in case anyone wants to give it a try.
When you run it, as long as the window has focus you can just type to set it. Typing Help lists the commands. Not like you'd ever need it, but you can have up to 50 timers set at once (within the same program). You can set alarms for a relative amount of time, for a specific time of the day, or set it to chime periodically.
It is as easy as typing "in 2h40m" to set an alarm that will go off in 2 hours and 40 minutes. If you don't want to forget about some place you need to be, you can type "at 8:45 pm" for an alarm that will sound at 8:45 this evening. You can also say, for example, remember to check on something every 10 minutes by typing "every 10m".
I didn't design it to support months, but you can set an alarm that won't
sound for weeks and weeks rofl! You can swap out the wav files for other alarm
sounds too if you like. I recommend typing "Help" for a complete list of
commands though, since I'm sure I'm not thinking of them all right now. Enjoy.
Audiogames link:
link
Download link (1.2MB):
Time Reminder 2
Towers of war - The first accessible "tower defense" styled game.
The object of the game is to survive a set number of levels, all taking place on a single map. Monsters will start at the beginning of a stone path and will wind their way around the map until they reach the end (which is your base). Each level will bring more, different, stronger, or faster enemies. Your job is to kill the monsters before they are able to reach the end of the path. Each monster who reaches your base will take away 1 of your 10 lives. Killing the monsters is done by placing different types of towers around the map... each with its own unique characteristics.
Audiogames link:
link
Download link (15MB):
Towers of War
Virtual Brailler - A simulated brailler, allowing you to use level 1 or level 2 Braille to type quickly.
In a conversation about Braille note takers, user Nocturnus told me that he actually thought their advantage over netbooks was that he felt he could probably type faster using grade 2 Braille instead of a querty keyboard on a netbook. The conversation quickly shifted and I put together a small program to simulate a brailler. You use keys S, D, F, J, K, L to serve as the 6 keys on a brailler. Press Shift as backspace, Spacebar as space, Enter to save the line, Z to mute or unmute key announcements, and C to hear the current sentence being read.
For the moment it works with grade 1 Braille, and most of grade 2 Braille. Each time you press enter, the stuff you just finished typing is stored on the clipboard, so you can use paste to put it somewhere else as actual text. In addition to the clipboard, a file called output.txt stores everything you've written since starting up the program. When you start up the program again though, it clears that file.
Audiogames link:
link
Download link (1.11MB):
Virtual Brailler
Donations:
If you feel like supporting my work, with a donation, I thank you very much in advance. I don't want anyone to feel obligated to donate, so please don't consider the presence of this button to be any kind of "hint".
I want to thank the following people for donations:
Viktor
Blind Adrenaline Simulations Inc. (Che)
Tony Pitchford
Dark
Tiffany Kim
Mark Pemberton
Amin Abdullah
Darren Duff
MarcroSoft
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Richard Emling
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Another anonymous person
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You guys totally rock!
To contact me:
You can send an email to Jeremy@Kaldobsky.com