Audio Navigation: Aftermath
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

It has been about two weeks since I posted this experiment on a popular gaming web site and it has been downloaded over 1000 times. Been rated and 9.6 out of 10 and recieved incredibly positive feedback from the modding community. Usually within the first 5 comments on a mod is someone bashing the game but that has not happend at all with this project. The game has been played in atleast two dozen countries (Listed at the bottom of the post). Sighted people (as a blind person told me we are called) seem to be quite taken with the concept of the audio only game. So where to go from here?

Googling around the internet, I have found there is a large demand for blind accessible games from both people who have been blind since birth and who lost their sight as they got older. They want to play a wide range of games from Sports Mananagment, to side scrolling platformers, to advanced 3d games such as quake and hl2. They say and I agree that games could be translated to audio games relatively easily and could even be included in mainstream versions as a toggelable menu option.

The Following are some of My favorite response to the Game, which we are now calling The Blind Monks Society.

Jordan Canning
"OK JUST PLAYED A BIT AND THIS IS POSITIVELY THE BEST THING EVER!"

horizonbreakk :
"I freaking love this! Hilarious audio as well. Amazing concept with many applications, horror, psycho thriller. or in this case, a good time. awesome guys. Keep up the good work!"

David Underwood:
"That was the best 15 minutes of gameplay I've had in a long while! Excellent work, very well done."

Chris Kukowski :
"Wow, this mod was absolutely awesome. I had a bad day today but the end of this game made up for it, I almost cried. The music at the end really made me appreciate sound and the ability to hear. Just goes to show how amazing all the little sounds are in life and how much more powerful music must be to the blind. Haha, thanks for making this, thanks a lot! It honestly gave me a better outlook on life XD"

Tom Edwards
"Fantastic idea, and some great writing too. :-)"

Countries that have played the Blind Monk's Society:
USA
Germany
South Africa
Finland
Bulgaria
Belgium
England
France
Greece
Poland
Italy
Switzerland
China
Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region of China)
Japan
Australia
Canada
Brazil
Czeck Republic
Netherlands
Afghanistan
Denmark
Sweden
Portugal
Estonia
Mexico
New Zealand
Singapore

Tue, Apr 8, 2008  Permanent link

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Audio Navigation: Phase 5
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

Our world is a visually centered place, most of our navigation, decision making and interaction is based off of visual cues. In out project we wanted to shift focus onto another eaqually usefull but often overlooked sense, the sense of hearing. To strip away any ability to use the other senses we created a video game with no visuals that players have to use sound to navigate a virtual space. Think of ita as being blind for 20 minutes or so. Players will be at first frustrated that they can not discern where they are going but will soon learn that it is easier to to navigate with only hearing than they first thought.
Since creating this project we realized that blind children are completely excluded from the video game craze that is sweeping the world, and hope that perhaps we could further develop this project into a full fledge game for blind kids.

Below is a 3:00 minute sample of the audio from our game, that takes you through the introduction and sets the player off to wander the world by themselves to search for windchimes to bring back to the monastary. For the full Effect of the 3D sound we recomend wearing good quality headphones.


To play the game you need to own a copy of HL2 or anyother Source Engine Game and the Download for the mod is available here.

Fri, Mar 21, 2008  Permanent link

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Audio Navigation: Phase 4
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

This project that Eric and I put together was created in Hammer - the Half Life 2 level editor used to create game mods. We chose to use this program because it provided a means for us to easily create three dimensional audio landscapes. This was essential for our project since it is entirely based on navigating with absolutely no visual feedback. The player uses only one of their senses to experience this virtual space - their hearing. It is recommended for the player to use headphones for the game to know where they are relative to the sounds surrounding them. We provided a narrative that guides the player in order to avoid having the player get lost. All the voice acting was provided by the both of us. We plan to post it to a mod community in the near future for anyone to download.

Fri, Mar 21, 2008  Permanent link

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Battle of the Sexes 3
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

This is the final render of the battle of the sexes. We shifted focus of the project from watching the population explode and collapse to the connections drawn within "families". Children draw web like connections to their parents and all bots draw tiny ellipses to denote their paths. Medium: Print on matte paper at 100cm by 70cm 360dpi.

Wed, Feb 6, 2008  Permanent link

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Battle of the Sexes 2
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

Simulation of two genders with mate and killing functions tied to collisions. Children draw lines to their parents. Background shifts colors depending on which sex there is more of.

Video of program running

Wed, Jan 23, 2008  Permanent link

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Battle of the Sexes 1
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

Our concept begins with an even number of black and white vehicles moving about randomly within the confines of the window. When two vehicles of different colors bump into each other, they spawn four new vehicles, two of each color. There is a connection made between the parents and the children with black and white lines. If two vehicles of the same color collide, they disappear along with any connections between them and other vehicles.

Wed, Jan 16, 2008  Permanent link

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Visual Research Project 1
Project: Emergence and Navigating Space

A magnectic particle simulation done in processing by Robert Hodgin. Particles follow simple attraction repulsion logics and can be influenced by other rules causing the sphere of particles to distort and shift in natural elastic movements.


Sven Geier, and employee of NASA at JPL creates these fractal artworks in his spare time. He inputs mathematical equations into fractal programs tweaking the numbers until he gets something that he likes and then adds collered filters or parameters to give the images more feeling and depth.

Tue, Jan 8, 2008  Permanent link

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