Playing Eve Online with my eyes

I am completely confined to a wheelchair now, which makes it Impossible forward me to use a mouse. So it is on to playing via my eye gaze system, the Tobii PcEye. I assumed that Eve would be simple, as it is pretty much all point and click, and mostly strategy rather than twitch. However used with the Tobii software there is a quirk.

The latest version comes with Gaze Select, which avoids the Midas Touch of dwell clicking, where you click on lots of unwanted things just because your eyes rested in one place too long. It does this by having a little on screen menu bar from which you select the type of click, left click, double click, move cursor etc. Generally this two stage process works well, and doesn't slow things down too much.

However with Eve, there is a problem. For some reason, and it only happens with Eve so far, the left click doesn't update the cursor position.This means that the click actually takes place at the previous cursor position, which is a little disconcerting. I can get round this by moving the cursor first then left clicking, and even then, menus are a little hit or miss. The best way I've found is to place the cursor first, then click with my foot pedal.

What this means in game terms, is that I can do about everything, but it is a little slow. This doesn't matter for most aspects of the game. I can still mine, manufacture, chat or even do missions. What I can't do is pvp. Not with any success, anyway. And since I can't talk voice comms are off too, though I can listen. So in a word, I am a carebear. No change there then. Carry on.

Accessible Game Review - World of Warcraft

4/5
World of Warcraft is the big daddy of MMO's. In fact this was originally a WoW blog. I haven't played it for a couple of years though, so I was interested to see how accessible it was (and whether Blizzard had in fact jumped the shark with the Kung Fu pandas).

In the event I was pleasantly surprised on both counts. WoW doesn't need much setting up to play. Simply bind the middle mouse button to Move and Steer and you're away. The pandas aren't too bad either and the new continent is very lush.

WoW only loses a point because it still needs a bit of jumping, which I can't really do with the onscreen keyboard, and because you don't automatically face your opponents. Generally recommended, though.

Mouse Bindings

left button - Same as default profile
right button - Same as default profile
middle button - No change (do not intercept)

In-Game Key Bindings

move and steer - middle button

To make sense of the ratings look here.

Accessible Game Review - Lord of the Rings Online

4/5

Lord of the Rings Online is a fairly standard MMO in the vein of WoW or countless others, but it's set in middle earth, so that's okay. Most of the commands are fairly standard, but it does have one slight quirk.
Simply binding the W key to the middle mouse button allows you to walk forward, but not to turn, so I've had to be a bit creative. Binding both the W key and the right mouse button for the duration of the key press seems to do the trick.

Mouse Bindings

left button - Same as default profile
right button - Same as default profile
middle button - Simulated Keys (during) [W,{RMB}]

To make sense of the ratings look here.

Accessible Game Review - Skyrim

1/5

Skyrim looks like a good game, and gets great reviews, but if you can't use a keyboard, forget it. The developers desire to have a nice immersive experience with no window clutter means that it is relentlessly keyboard focused. That wouldn't be so bad, except that even in windowed mode it captures the mouse within the game window. This means of course, that you can't use the onscreen keyboard at all. It won't even accept ALT-TAB commands from X Mouse Button Control, not that that would help, anyway.

You can bind the forward movement to the footswitch to move around, but that doesn't help you to open boxes, look at your inventory, or perform a hundred other keyboard based functions.

I do wish that developers would implement standard windows behavior.The standards are there for a reason y'know.

In a word, avoid.

In-Game Key Bindings

move forward - MB3

To make sense of the ratings look here.

Accessible Game Review - Diablo III

5/5

Diablo III is a great game for people with disabilities, as long as you can move the mouse effectively. Given that moving, attacking, speaking to NPC's and picking things up are all done with the left mouse button, you could play pretty effectively with just a single input, such as a switch. However, it's handy to have the secondary ability and the action bar bound to the foot pedals too.

It has a nice flexible key binding system too, so that you don't even have to set up a layer in X-Mouse Button Control, just bind the keys in-game.

Disclaimer: I have only played a Wizard, other classes may be less playable.

Mouse Bindings

left button - Same as default profile
right button - Same as default profile
middle button - Same as default profile

In-Game Key Bindings

move / primary skill / interact - left button
secondary skill - right button
action bar skill 1 - MBWHEELDOWN

To make sense of the ratings look here.

Accessible Game Review - Eve Online

5/5

Eve Online is sometimes criticized for having endless drop-down menus and generally being a bit of a click fest. However, from my perspective this is absolutely fine. Combined with the fact that even Player vs Player combat is strategic, rather than twitchy, this makes Eve one of the easiest games to play. At least in a physical sense :)

It has one quirk, though. The double click speed is fixed and not set to the speed set in the operating system. This matters because that's too fast for me to double click with my feet, and it's how  you manoeuvre in game. This is easily fixed by binding double click to the third button.

Mouse Bindings

left button - Same as default profile
right button - Same as default profile
middle button - double click

To make sense of the ratings look here.

Accessible Game Review - Ultima Online

2/5

This venerable MMO suffers from one major flaw. It loses focus when you click outside the game window. This makes it impossible to use the onscreen keyboard. You can't even log in. There is a workaround using Dasher, but it's clunky. You need to position Dasher to the right of the game window and click to make it active, then click the input box in the game before moving the mouse back over Dasher without clicking. Dasher can then put the text in.

Since a lot of common commands ingame require text input this makes it hard. The game does have a sophisticated macro system which ameliorates this somewhat, but it requires setting up. Even then, communications are difficult, and inputting numbers in particular can be a problem.

Mouse Bindings

left button - Same as default profile
right button - Same as default profile
middle button - double click

To make sense of the ratings look here.

Accessible Game Review - Master of Magic

5/5

A fine old strategy game which runs in a DOS box. It only uses the normal left and right buttons, which is no problem with the footswitch, but switching out of DOS is a pain without a keyboard, so I've bound the middle button to ALT-TAB.

Mouse Bindings

left button - Same as default profile
right button - Same as default profile
middle button - ALT-TAB

To make sense of the ratings look here.

Accessible Game Review - Star Wars The Old Republic

3/5

The only major problem I have is that my targeting speed is a bit slow, since I can't tab target. I also have a slight issue with jumping, which requires me to pull up the onscreen keyboard and click the space bar while running forwards. Lastly, whilst the game will automatically target an enemy who attacks you, it won't move the camera round so that you can actually see what you're fighting.

Mouse Bindings

left button - Same as default profile
right button - Same as default profile
middle button - No change (do not intercept)
In game middle button - Move forward

To make sense of the ratings look here.

Gaming with ALS

For my sins, I am afflicted with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or Motor Neurone Disease (MND) as we call it on this side of the pond. We like to be different. Stephen Hawking is probably the best known sufferer of this condition. He has the form of the disease which allows you to breathe and eat after you are paralyzed. That's not the kind that I have.

Still, one thing that we have in common is that we don't wish the disease to define us. Hawking has said that he's not very interested in his disease, and I'm not either. He likes pondering on the deep questions of the universe, I like playing games. Gaming is a good pastime for the disabled. Pondering doesn't need much specialist equipment, though, whilst most gamers never shut up about theirs. So here's a discussion about mine.

My Current Limitations

At present. I can move a mouse, but I can't click it easily as my fingers are too clumsy. I can use a keyboard only with great difficulty. I can move my legs and head. My speech is slow but mostly comprehensible.

Hardware

USB footswitch with 3 foot pedals. I got mine off eBay for about a tenner.

This is useful because I can still move my feet and even though feet aren't very dexterous (by definition) they are fine for pressing pedals. I use this to simulate mouse clicks.

Software for controlling games

The footswitch can be bound to various keys depending on the application, so you can have different bindings for each game. You can do this with the supplied application, but it's a bit limited, not to mention Chinese. What I have done is to simply bind the pedals to mouse buttons 1, 2, and 3 as you can see in the screenshot below (this is binding pedal 1).

The ability to bind the pedals flexibly comes from a free application called X-Mouse Button Control, which will intercept mouse clicks and map them to any keyboard keys I choose. So far I've stuck to pedals 1 and 2 as left and right mouse clicks. But the third pedal is more interesting. By default I have that pedal bound to Page Down, so that I can read eBooks and surf the web easily, but in games or other applications I have it available.

Software for communication 

This is in a separate section because not all games need it, but if you're playing online, especially MMO's then communication is important.

For text input, I use Dasher, another piece of free software, which allows you to input text by navigating through words just using the mouse. With practice you can get up to 30 words per minute. There's a Google TechTalks video showing why it's such an efficient method of text entry here. However, it's awkward for corrections and the function keys so I use the onscreen keyboard as well.

I don't currently play any games in which I use voice comms,and my voice is still comprehensible, but if necessary, Dasher can be set to speak the text I've written, which could in turn be routed to a microphone. I haven't tried it yet though.

Future Plans

Since mine is a progressive condition, I need to consider the end game, namely how I'll control games when I'm completely paralyzed. MND doesn't usually affect the eyes, so I should be able to use eye gaze to move the mouse. However, eye gaze is not ideal for making quick selections. Normally eye gaze systems use dwell clicking, where you need to hold your gaze over the area for a second or two before it clicks. That's a bit slow for MMO's, though it might be okay for strategy games.

So I'll need a better means of clicking. It's likely that I'll have a few muscles working which can be attached to input switches, but if not, I'll still have my brain. I have an Emotiv Epoc, which is a commercially available brainwave reader. It allows up to 4 different brain states to be mapped to keystrokes via the supplied Emokey application. Then, I can use X-Mouse button Control as at present. Moving with my eyes and clicking with my brain. Sorted.

Game Reviews

I'm going to give brief reviews for the games that I've played. I'm not going to review the games themselves, only how easy I have found them to play using this setup. Games are rated out of 5, losing a point for each major infelicity that I come across.

A carebear in Eve Online

Like Gevlon, I'm back playing Eve online. I've played it before, and he's a 3 month noob, but he already has more ISK than me. Ho hum. Anyway, in case you don't know (in which case you probably don't play Eve), a carebear is someone who doesn't like Player vs Player combat much, which is unfortunate in Eve because that's basically what the game is designed around.

I am probably the ultimate Eve carebear, since I've been playing the game for six years, on and off, and in all that time I haven't killed a single other player, and been into lawless 0.0 space exactly once. It struck me that although the majority of players (80% or so) are like me, and rarely venture out of safe space, the majority of Eve bloggers are a motley collection of pirates, griefers, can flippers and scammers. Macho warriors all, I'm sure. My hope, therefore is that I may repurpose the word 'carebear', in much the same way as our gay brethren and sistren have taken the word 'queer' to their collective chests.

So, say it loud, say it proud - I am a carebear!

Young, Shifted and Black

You are young, shifted and black
We must begin to tell our young
There's a world waiting for you
This is a quest that's just begun

(with apologies to Weldon Irvine)

I'm rather enjoying levelling Kododancer through the post-cataclysm world. Even though she was level 20-ish when Deathwing made an appearance, which means that I missed all the spiffy new starting zones. Now, I know that a lot of Blizzards love-slurry has been dribbled over the 1-20 areas, but even the rest of the old world is sticky with it. I got a rattly cart ride from Ashenvale to Stonetalon just so I could join the army. Now that's recruiting. And I've even been phased after saving some group of centaurs from demons. When I'd finished the demons were actually dead. For good!

Generally, though, it's fun playing a tauren druid, a moodrood. It's nice to be able to pick any role in the game and run with it (although Kododancer was born feral - deal with it!) Also it's quite calming and peaceful being a cow. Most of my other characters are scheming wicked forsaken with bony elbows and poison in their back pockets. It's nice to be able to kick back in the Cenarion enclave, and really feel that these folk are PLU. Moo!

I luv Deathwing too

My basic problem with WoW is that I don't like repeating stuff.

I like repeatedly shooting cartoon figures in the face until they fall over in a suitably amusing manner. I quite like repeatedly making the same bit of clothing/food/pretty gems or whatever, because that levels me up in a small way. Elite Super Grandmaster of Flowers! Yakawow!

I even slightly like wandering around picking up the same flowers or bits of rock. It appeals to the hoarder in me. And I like the scenary.

What I don't like is repeatedly going down the same dungeon with a random group of mostly indifferent and occasionally rude strangers to kill a boss that I've killed many times before. Unfortunately, this is known as 'knowing tacs' or 'having the achi', and reached its nadir with WotLK. It's about making sure you've done it plenty of times before, so that you can do it over again. Efficiency prioritised over fun. WoW as a second job.

Happily, though, Deathwing turned up to change all that. I imagine that the normal mode dungeons will devolve into the usual rinse'n'repeat fest for the lootwhores, once the first flush of excitement has worn off. However, the Heroic modes, being really heroic, will hopefully be more like mini-raids, with all the excitement of having to actually worry about dying and crowd control, and getting the giddy thrill of progression. Maybe actually talking to people. That sounds like fun.

I luv Garrosh

I've decided that I love Garrosh Hellscream and I want to have his babies. He's just so masterful, but he obviously has his sensitive side. I encountered him first in an air raid at the beginning of Mount Hyjal, where he was barking orders like a good 'un. but even then I could see that beneath his shouty orc exterior there beat a soft nature-loving heart. Megeara's too much of a bony biatch to notice though. He fell into the sea but was okay. He's so butch.

But then! When his renegade general had just bombed a load of innocent nelf babies and laughed about it, Garrosh turns up and drops him off a cliff for disgracing the horde. "Honor" he said, (misspelling it of course, but thats just orcs for you). And some other stuff, but KodoDancer was too busy admiring his pecs to listen.

He was thinking of dropping Kodo off the cliff too, but he was soon convinced that she was innocent and was in fact a hero of the horde. He's so reasonable. And dreamy. Here's a picture of us holding hands.


Kodo and Garrosh sitting in a tree K I S S I N G

So, my thoughts on Cataclysm:

1. It's Very Linear

It really is. Larísa at the Pink Pigtail Inn compares it to the conveyor belt at the Tower of London. Blink and you miss the cutscene. I cut my MMO teeth on Ultima Online (actually waay before that) which didn't even have quests, so I find this a little strange. I find self-completing quests and hunter pets just appearing violate even my minimal suspension of disbelief. Mind you the world has never been very internally consistent, as James Wallis noted in his seminal study of Azerothian Physics

2. It uses lots of phasing

Finally, the actions you take actually have an effect on the world, despite the fact that there are 13 million other people running around. No more finding Manrik's wife, then watching him send other people off. Kill those nagas, and as long as part of a scripted bit, they stay dead. This is, of course dependent on the Linearity. It would be a nightmare to test all the possible paths through various levels of phasing if people could just do what they wanted.

3. It's very pretty.

Despite being remarkably old, I was sorely tempted to take some serious psychedelic pharmaceuticals when I first hit Vasj'ir. Look at the colours! whee! That's deep man.

WoW has always been more of a game than a sandbox or a virtual world simulation, and it's moving even more in that direction. However, that's not necessarily a problem, since the linearity allows for Story. Finally, your level 80 hero can do heroic level 80 things. You just can't decide what heroic things you want to do.

Haven't blogged for a while, because truthfully I haven't played for a while. Being effectively guildless and time-poor, combined with a dislike of pugging meant that my last experience of WoTLK content was of running away from the lich king after having hidden around a corner to gank his lieutenants. Not terribly heroic, 5 mans.

Anyway this is all history now because we have moved into that country from which no man returns - Cataclysm. So I can start levelling seriously and toss my tatty tier 8 armour aside for shiny new greens.

Nidhogger is now half-way to 85 and wondering where to go after Vasj'ir. He's sticking to shadow spec for now and enjoying Mind Spike a lot. There's been a certain amount of whinging about the way Mind Spike drops all your dots, but my solution is simple: don't bother with them. Mind flay for a couple of shadow orbs, then 3 Mind Spikes for a 90% chance of a crit on your Mind Blast. Finish off with a Power Word:Death and there hasn't been much that's still standing while I levelled.

Free Starcraft II Beta Keys

Last night my guildmaster and I went to the launch of the Sci-Fi London film festival, Life in 2050. This is a 5 day extravaganza of Sci-Fi films based at the Apollo Theatre in Piccadilly Circus in the centre of London. The festival is sponsored by Blizzard, amongst others, since the imminent launch of StarCraft II, Wings of Liberty dovetails nicely with the futuristic theme of the films.

Since my GM is a srs journo, Blizz wined and dined us royally* before taking us across to the venue, ready for the prestigious Arthur C Clarke Award, which was being presented. Apparently China Miéville swept the boards. Why apparently? Well, being the geeks we are, we spent the whole time drinking free beer, and playing the Starcraft II beta which Blizz had thoughtfully provided, instead.

So what's StarCraft II like? To be honest, it struck me as being much like StarCraft I, but with considerably prettier graphics. By which I mean, of course, that I got my arse royally kicked by all and sundry (just as I used to 10 years ago), until I retreated, chastened, to single player mode. It's not surprising that the gameplay isn't drastically different, since StarCraft is a national obsession in Korea, and presumably a huge cash cow for Blizzard which they don't want to overturn. (That last sentence gives me visions of Korean water buffalo-tipping which is not really relevant.) The beta was very stable, and to all intents and purposes the same as the release, unless you are a Korean e-sports gladiator.

Anyhow, notwithstanding my ramblings, Blizzard are offering 500 beta keys for StarCraft II, 100 per day, free, gratis and for nothing, so you can try out it for yourselves. All you need to do is to turn up at the Apollo Theatre and actually play a bit of StarCraft II. That's it. simples.

Of course this isn't much use to anyone outside the M25 London orbital motorway, but for those of us who live or work in God's own country - fill yer boots!

*full disclosure - assuming the royalty like kebabs and beer.

Waving my wowcock

On a recent heroic run:

and on the same run:

That is all.

Discovering my inner cow

I've been playing my new mage in SAN and enjoying the social side of it a lot. Bloggers really are a verbose bunch. Hardly surprising I suppose. However, I wasn't enoying the gameplay so much. Both of my main characters are deeps who rely on dots for most of their damage, so playing a Mage wasn't very different.

I've played 2 mages before. One of them made it to level 35 (and became a bank alt), the other languishes at level 15, unplayed and unloved. I'd forgotten about that.

At heart I'm an evil undead poisoner who consorts with demons from the deepest nether for relaxation. And can only fulfil one role in the LFG tool. So, I thought I'd try something different. A tree-hugging nature-revering herbivore. One who can tick any of the LFG boxes.

So my second SAN character is Kododancer, a fine black angus druid. Long may she tank/heal/dps. Whilst revering both nature and the elders.

Slowly dotting him to death

I ran a lot of heroics yesterday on my priest, Nidhoggur. Normally, I only do the LFG thing with 4 of my RL friends, so that I don't have to mingle with the great unwashed out there in pugland. However, this time we were short a tank and a deeps, so the 3 of us decided to spin the wheel.

I originally levelled Nidhoggur as a healer, since I already had a deeps as my main character, but over the course of time it has become apparent that my friend the Shaman is actually better at healing than I am (not least because he's better geared), and I'm a better deeps than he is. So gradually I've become more entrenched in my shadowy ways. This came to a head a week or so ago when I was forced to choose between spending my precious EoT's on Zabra's Circlet of Conquest (the deeps one) or Zabra's Cowl of Conquest (the healy one).

I went for the circlet and turned to the Dark Side.

So, there we were in Heroic PoS, a hunter, a healy shaman, a pug warrior, a pug death knight tank and Nidhoggur. This was the first time my group had done Heroic PoS, although we'd been through it a few times on normal mode.

Nidhoggur was a bit undergeared for the place, as he still has a few blues, and even a quest green, but the RNG gods had obviously decreed that one faildeep wouldn't make much difference.

I got the impression that the deeps warrior had been there before, as he was discussing how often the battered hilt drops (0% as far as I can see from 1 run), and his GS was about 2K better than the rest of us scrubs. Dunno about the tank, as I don't remember him saying anything.

We went through the trash reasonably quickly, although Nidhoggur's damage was a bit on the low side, until we came to Forgemaster Garfrost, the giant who can't decide which weapon to use.

First time through the tank died at about 30%. "sorry guys", said my shaman to a deafening silence, as we flew back.

The second time, Nidhoggur got hit by a saronite boulder, but I don't think anyone really noticed, because the tank and healer both died in quick succession soon after. Garfrost was at at 60% health this time. We were getting worse!

"What's killing you?" asked the uber warrior quite reasonably. Strategies were discussed, (essentially moar hiding behind boulders) and off we went again. This time it was looking good. The giant's health dropped steadily down to about 5%. Then the shaman died. Somehow. The tank did what he could, but it was a lost cause. He died soon after. The uber warrior tanked for a bit more. He died. Garfrost went for me. I refreshed my dots and Dispersed into a cloud of shadows. And down he went!

To say I was surprised was a bit of an understatement. I sat there open-mouthed for a minute or so until someone reminded me to rezz.

Final comment goes to the uber warrior:- "I've never seen that technique before; slowly dotting him to death."