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Exclusive Interview by AudioGames.net Christopher Lewis: The Formula 1 Audio Racing Game 1. Could you please give me a small introduction of yourself: where you're from, what you study (and what it is a little, maybe?) My name is Christopher Lewis, and I have just completed my Degree in Computer science with Cybernetics at Reading University. Cybernetics is basically the subject of control and feedback, which surrounds such areas as Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality and Computer Control. I have even studied bionics as part of my degree, talking about the design and construction of prostheses. I had a placement year as a part of my course, during which I worked at Microsoft as an Application Development Consultant, designing and developing programs for the team I was working for. I originally come from a small village called Rochford in Essex, and developed my first audio game in 1994 on the Commadore Amiga, a voice-text adventure called Armageddon. I now work for a newly formed company called First Health Solutions as their IT Director. 2. You developed an audiogame / accessible game for the blind. Does it have a title already? Yes, it called Audio Formula one, as it is quite simply an audio simulation of the 2002 Formula one season, containing all of the different tracks modelled into 3D sound and all of the teams and drivers. 3. So how does the game work? What is is about? The game was created as a part of my course - the equivalent of a dissertation. Coded in 60,000 lines of C++ code utilising DirectX, it works by building on the 3D sound technologies present in DirectX to give a 3D Aural Version of a Formula one game. It represents different items on the track with different sounds - a beeping sound represents the racing line that is the shortest path around the track, ticking sounds for the edges of the track which is surrounded by gravel, represented with another sound and which causes the car to slow down, and a final edge of a barrier, crashing into which causes the car to stop. The cars are immune to damage in this version of the game, but you must try and keep on the racing line in order to beat the other cars, signified by the sound of their engines. 4. And who is the target group for your game? Anyone with an interest in formula one racing, and who wants to try a system which relies on using your ears rather than your eyes. As age groups go, during testing people from age 8 to 38 have tried the program and found it to be fun! 5. There are already several other attempts of audio racing games out there. How is your game different? I believe that it is the first audio Formula one racing game to accurately model the formula one tracks in 3D audio. The details of the tracks themselves were converted into a series of straights and turns to scale with the actual track, then this information was converted into a binary file. 6. How did you develop the game? What steps did you take? Did you work with other persons (programmers, sound designers, etc) in a team or did you do it all by yourself? The
project was solely my own work. First of all I researched into what
would be a suitable representation for the sounds in the game and asked
visually impaired players for their advice. From this I found that most
people would prefer bleeping sounds rather than a single looped sound.
I then had to find a suitable way to follow the track around, and to
represent the track inside the computer. Designing this took almost
8 months. While the design phase was going on, I began researching formula
one itself - the speeds that the cars can travel at, what tracks were
raced around, the layout of the tracks, etc. At the end of this research
phase I created the first "level editor", which allowed you
to enter the track as a series of lines. This gave a skeleton of the
structure of the track, onto which was added the widths of the track
at each stage (The widths do actually vary as you go around the track)
and I then added the gravel and final barriers. This was saved into
a special text file, which was then processed by a second program to
generate the binary file which actually specified the locations of each
of the beeps within the track. 7. What was the hardest part during the making of the game? Creating a realisting sounding representation of the 3D track, while limiting the processing costs. I had to go away from an actual true-3D audio environment and change the system somewhat to only process those sounds directly in position with the player's car, because the number of sounds playing proved to be impossible to listen to and understand what was going on, and the processing power required was way too high. Once the design of producing 3D tracks was completed, the system itself was not too bad to code. 8. Did you (and if so, in what way?) use the knowledge of previous attempts of audio racing games? I had tried Drive, an audio drag-racing game, and found it to be a little too simplistic. Another student at Reading University had created an Audio Space Invaders game which I also tested and could look at some of the design problems he faced when he created his project, to try and learn from them. 9. Did you test the game with players already? If so, what was their response? Were they part of the design process as well? Yes, the system was tested right from the outset with a group of my friends to help me decide whether I was moving in the right direction or not. I used questionnaires to get information from them not only on what they thought about my project, but also what they thought of driving games themselves, and what made a good driving game. Their response to my project has been positive, all of them found it very easy to play, and enjoyable as well. 10. And did you get help from blind and/or seeing players? Yes - A number of partially sighted players tested the program for me, so I could gauge how different playing the game was for them compared to a sighted person. Their feedback went into "polishing" some of the aspects of the game. 11. Will the game be available for download or for purchase and, if so, could you give some details on how to get the game? The game is not yet available for download, but I will be releasing a demo of the game very soon. It will be available on my website at www.inchargeoftheworld.com/audiof1/ , and will be free to download. There will hopefully also be an update sometime in December of a new version of the program. 12. Why did you decide to develop this game? I have worked in schools for disabled children in the past, and it is actually my aim to create a games system which anyone can play. Disabled children don't necessarily want games specifically designed for them to play, they want to be able to play the games their friends who are not disabled play. Hopefully one day we will get to that situation. The game was a proof of concept that you could represent complicated 3D environments in sound, so that proper commercial games could possibly add a menu option "enhanced sounds for the visually impaired" and the extra sounds needed to navigate around the environment would be there. 13. What's your personal view on audiogaming/accessible gaming? As you may gather from the previous answer, I want there to be an integration of accessible games with the mainstream, rather than as a separate entity. Games where you can set the speed things are happening at so that someone whose hand-to-eye coordination isn't particularly good can still play it, without getting frustrated. Games which have their 3D visual environment also modelled in sound, and voices and sounds translated into visual cues. All of these, as options in the game, are not too complicated to include but it appears that game manufacturers are not willing to put in that little bit of extra time to do it. 14. Did you design any other (accessible or regular) games as well? I created an accessible game for the Commodore Amiga called Armageddon, using the speech synthesiser which was present on that machine, and have been designing games for nine years now, so have about 250 designs that still need work before I can realise them into a program. 15. Do you have any plans for the future (concerning audiogame design)? I am going to update Audio Formula One hopefully, to make it a more enjoyable game, and to add some other features. Hopefully from that I will be able to develop a new 3D audio engine which sits on top of DirectX and will allow other game developers to easily integrate audiogame style systems into their commercial products both on the PC and on the XBox games console. 16. Do you have a favourite audiogame? I think Terraformers is a fantastic game, and really shows what I mean about catering for everyone, not just a selected population. 17. Anything else you want to share? That's all folks! (C) Audiogames.net 2003 |