[games_access] Game Accessibility Suite, and first prototype...

[Michael Ellison]

The prototype/proof of concept is just a command-line interface, and
slows it down when it is injected  - either at startup of the game, or
injected while the game is running depending on command line
parameters.

When I've got the user interface code done, it will be a runtime
control - all that needs to happen there is for a multiplier to be
changed and a base time offset reset.

It's actually interesting the effects it has on cutscenes - it varies
between games.

On Doom 3, the cutscenes have their audio triggered by events in the
cutscene but don't have feedback from the audio engine.  The audio
plays at normal speed so the lips become totally unsynchronized from
the audio. The start of each speaker's dialogue, however, lines up
with what's being displayed on screen.  It's like watching a really
horribly dubbed movie in slow motion.

On Half-Life 2 Episode 1 (and probably any other Source game), the lip
synchronization appears to have feedback from the audio engine.  As a
result, the time between sentences is long, but the lips synch up
perfectly at the full speed of the audio while all other animation is
slowed down.  I was pretty amazed when I saw that - neat technology on
Valve's part.  (BTW - to get GASThrottle into HL2, you currently have
to inject it while the game is running using the -p or -n switches).

For pure video cutscenes, it depends on how they render it.
DirectShow so far has seemed to be actively hostile to the technique.
Windows media player pretty much just stops and repeats a single
buffer of audio/video - probably due to the fact that the system
timers and audio card timers are irreconcilable.  I'll need to find a
way around that one eventually... Some other video libraries seem to
be just fine, although audio becomes unsynched.

Cheers,
Mike

On Jan 18, 2008 2:01 PM, Eelke Folmer <eelke.folmer at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Michael,
>
> I haven't had the time to test it yet but can you slow it down the
> game while you play the game or is everything slowed down before you
> run it? will this affect the animation of cutscenes etc? I can imagine
> players sometimes just want to slow things down while they play and
> not while they're like walking around. (Kind of like bullettime in max
> payne or slow in prince of persia). It would be cool if your tool
> could support that.
>
> Cheers eelke
>
>
>
>
> On 14/01/2008, Michael Ellison <devellison at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Greetings,
> >     Just wanted to post a note if any of ya'll are interested... I've
> > started an open source project on SourceForge.net to create a suite of
> > utilities to make modern Win32 games more accessible.  Currently
> > trying to figure out a good way to do external captioning with Reid,
> > and I have a few other utility projects going at the moment.
> >
> > I've finished my first prototype utility using the common libraries
> > I'm building up.  It is called GASThrottle, and should allow you to
> > slow down many modern games on Windows to 10%-90% speed.  I've tested
> > it with Doom 3 and Far Cry with great success, and others with mixed
> > results - e.g. it crashes BioShock ;( .  When I looked, I didn't find
> > much out there that did this for modern games that worked, although I
> > found a few that didn't and some that work *great* for old DOS games.
> >
> > If there is already a free utility out there that does this well,
> > please tell me :)
> > Right now it's just a command line app, but if it looks useful to
> > people I'll eventually make it all nice and pretty.
> >
> > Anyway, if anyone has ideas/suggestions on this or other utilities to
> > add to the suite, please email me or post in the project's
> > forums/tracker.
> >
> > Download page: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=212119&package_id=258851
> > Code Docs: http://gameaccess.sourceforge.net
> > Project URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gameaccess
> > Source Repository:
> > https://gameaccess.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/gameaccess/trunk/
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Mike
> > _______________________________________________
> > games_access mailing list
> > games_access at igda.org
> > http://seven.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/games_access
> >
>
>
> --
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Eelke Folmer                           Assistant Professor
> Department of CS&E/171
> University of Nevada              Reno, Nevada 89557
> Game interaction design        www.helpyouplay.com
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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