I love the idea of games that are playable by anyone, regardless of any physical disabilities. I mean, in a virtual world we’re all equal, right? Well, no, sadly. If you can’t operate the controls quickly (or at all) then you’re in trouble. You’re not an equal in a world you can’t hear or even see, either. And there’s no real need for any game to be unplayable, no matter what the disability that needs to be worked around.

Now having said that, I’d like to be the first to point out that my last game made no concessions for anybody at all. You couldn’t even modify the controls! Well, that, at least, is fixed in The Tenth Crusade. The mouse is usable, and even the menu is mouse-operable now, which should allow for use by headtracker software. (Should, but I’ll be looking for somebody to test it.) The player’s weapons will track enemies automatically, similar to the way they did in Desert Strike, and there’ll be an option to hand over all the weapon control to a computer co-pilot. Voices and sound effects will have captions, just as soon as I do some research into conventions for displaying them (and get some voices and sound effects, of course!)

The only big problem I can see is adapting the game for visual limitations, in particular complete blindness. Part of my design doc for Contact Sam Cruise suggested adapting the game into a sort-of text adventure, with a text-to-speech routine for describing things and a multiple choice method of advancing through the game. I’m not sure that would be so effective for this game. (”You are at grid location A-12, facing north-east. There is an enemy tank in front of you. Do you want to 1. attack the tank or 2. move on?”)

I could, of course, be barking up the wrong tree entirely by wondering how to adapt a fast-paced tactical shoot-’em-up into something that’s not fast-paced, not particularly tactical and not entirely a shoot-’em-up. But still, it’s going to bug me until I come up with a solution.