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.