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 - 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.

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!