r/Blind • u/Prolly_Not_AI • Aug 24 '24
Technology Blind Guy Makes Videogame He Can Actually See
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3139140/This_Is_Not_Your_House/?ref=gamehypesCody Tierson, 30 M, has an aptly named indie dev company called Trash Eyes. He has x-linked macular degeneration and color blindness that caused him to stop driving at 27yo. Playing many of his favorite games (i.e. Dark Souls) is difficult for him due to the position of his blind spots. He decided that since most jobs were impossible to maintain, it was time to start game development as a new career-focusing on games he would actually be able to play.
This first game is a choose-your-own-adventure style psychological horror visual novel. Your goal is to help an elderly man decide what to do following the event of someone taking over his house.
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u/draakdorei Retinopathy /Dec 2019 Aug 24 '24
Do you know what game engine your husband used?
I've been on/off working on two CYOA games using Narrat, for the ease of working in a pure text environment, even though it's far less organized than something like Twine or Renpy.
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u/Prolly_Not_AI Aug 24 '24
Yes, he used Renpy for this game. He tried out Narrat because he liked that it had built in RPG features, but didn't find the functionality as intuitive as Renpy.
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u/SightlessKombat Aug 27 '24
Given this uses Ren'py, does it have support for self-voicing mode implemented? I can't recall if it's something devs using the engine have to tweak their games to work with correctly or if it just works out of the box. Edit: Just saw your below clarification. Thanks, will give this a look!
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u/giantpumpkinpie Aug 24 '24
It looks great! Hopefully this can become screenreader accessible in the future.
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u/Prolly_Not_AI Aug 24 '24
It does have a cool feature where if you press the 'v' key, whatever you hover over becomes text-to-speach. Any textboxes for the story narration will also automatically be Text-to-Speech. You just press the 'v' key once to activate and again to deactivate.
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u/giantpumpkinpie Aug 24 '24
Ahh sweet. That's nice. I'll have to have a play with it. I have some students (and a blind partner) who will be quite excited to play if we can get it to work for our purposes.
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u/Superfreq2 Aug 24 '24
Always great to see a VI person have mainstream success. And I like that an indi VI dev is making things for once, rather than a sighted indi dev making things for us. Don't get me wrong, it's very much appreciated when they take the financial risk of doing so, but it's refreshing coming from our own community. Hopefully Renpy's built in self voicing, and even better the clipboard output option can be added to the next version. "Alt Text" tags on images would also be an excellent edition! TTS or voice acted audio description for cutscenes would be the cherry on top. But I know that all of that takes money, time, and knowledge. This is the first version, and all of that can wait. Congrats to your husband for successfully completing a game and getting it on steam. That's no easy feat! I hope it is the first of many to come. ☺👍
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u/Prolly_Not_AI Aug 24 '24
We actually just found out and tested the self voicing feature! It works as is! No need for an update :) just press the 'v' key to activate/deactivate.
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u/Superfreq2 Aug 24 '24
Cool! Definitely a good start! It will need to be tested to make sure that the voicing works well with the way the game was made though, as sometimes buttons can be pictures with no text labels for instance. But fingers crossed!
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u/IShouldHaveKnocked Aug 24 '24
Looks beyond excellent! We only have a Mac, hopefully one day my husband can give this a shot.
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u/HotFloorToastyToes Aug 24 '24
This is incredible! I have central blind spots, and I can only play certain video games, so I LOVE the idea of an accessible video game!
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u/Ok-Bother-7166 Aug 25 '24
I work for Foundation Fighting Blindness and will be hosting an exhibitor table at this year’s Twitchcon in San Diego happening in September. I would love to connect with you and your husband! I am hoping to get the gaming community involved with our community and organization and would love to get you in touch with our org in your local community! Feel free to DM me anytime, would love to set up a zoom and learn more about you, your husband and his game!
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u/Superfreq2 Aug 25 '24 edited Aug 25 '24
Okay this sounds awesome and I love that you're reaching out to connect with OP and their husband, but seriously. I'm sorry but like... Why would it be expected that an organization that wants to "fight" bvlindness so badly that it made it's whole name about it would be interested in engaging with the existing blind community. We are blindness. So assuming you don't want to fight us... You've still failed to fight our blindness off, which is a pretty awkward place to start for both of us. It feels like the Venn diagram of people who are devoted to ending blindness and those who are comfortable with it doesn't really overlap much in my experience, which is probably a condemnation of both sides really... But it's still a terrible name for anyone who wants to be part of the community of people who don't wake up hating them selves for being blind every morning, and sort of just punches you in the face with the idea that you shouldn't be blind because blind is bad. Which... personally I think it is too, but when you have no choice... You kind of have to embrace it and move on with your life unless you want to be miserable for ever.
And just to clarify because emotions suck in text. I'm not angry, just kind of bemused.
I'm not trying to imply that fighting blindness is a bad idea either. Someone needs to do it... And I don't think that it's impossible to engage with the existing blind community while having that goal. AFB does an okayish job at it... But man that name just kills any nuanced conversation before it can even take flight, and makes connecting with us an up hill battle for you guys. I truly appreciate that your organization is trying, but it sounds like you have your work cut out for you, so I wish you the best of luck!
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u/Nighthawk321 RossMinor.com/links Aug 24 '24
But not accessible to people who are totally blind? I’m afraid this comes off a little tone deaf, but still cool of him to do for himself.
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u/Prolly_Not_AI Aug 24 '24
I get that. When he has more coding experience or more funds pay someone who does, making the game more accessible to all is a goal. But for now, I think he's pretty cool just for learning a skill so that he could make a game he could play and open up his own doors for a new career. (We're also quite new to the blind/visually impaired community. The only people we know with this disease are his own family members)
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u/Nighthawk321 RossMinor.com/links Aug 24 '24
Yeah that’s totally valid. I work in game accessibility. Happy to answer any questions he may have in the future :).
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u/ChipsAhoiMcCoy Aug 24 '24
This guy is awesome. He also did a fantastic job doing the audio descriptions for the avatar series.👍
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u/Superfreq2 Aug 25 '24
Wait... But isn't a blind guy saying tone (Deaf) also a bit tone deaf?
Okay I'm sorry, I like you Ross but I just can't pass up this good of an opportunity for humor. ROFLMAO I've said and heard similar things in conversation before realizing as well so I think we're all guilty of it.
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Aug 24 '24
How do you know he's blind? I had a quick look at the page and it doesn't say anything about that.
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u/Prolly_Not_AI Aug 24 '24 edited Aug 24 '24
Because he's my husband and I've seen his medical records. But you can always ask him about it on the Trash Eyes X account
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Aug 24 '24 edited Aug 24 '24
That would do it :)
Can your husband see anything? Because if he can see stuff, then he's VI, not blind,. The turms are a bit different in the US vs the UK but I think it's very important to make that distinction.
This game doesn't mention anything about using a screen reader, nor self voicing mode so I'm assuming he can see something.
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u/Prolly_Not_AI Aug 24 '24
Ah. Yes he would be visually impaired then. He has more pinhole-like vision. Similar to a figure 8 pattern. But he can no longer get a new perscription for glasses so he may be very close to legally blind at this point. Thanks for bringing up the accessibility features. I'll be bringing them up to him as something to add. I think he'd want to make this game more accessible to others.
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Aug 24 '24
No problem :)
I think it all depends on where you come from, I think in the UK he'd be called VI, and I think in the US he'd be called legally blind or something like that? I'm honestly not sure.
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u/SilentLeader Aug 24 '24
Yeah, in the US if you're visually impaired enough, you can be legally blind even if you're not experiencing total 100% blindness.
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Aug 24 '24
Ah,, ok, i'm sure that's diffirent in the UK where I'm from, I just haven't looked into it enough to know the diffirence.
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u/DHamlinMusic Bilateral Optic Neuropathy Aug 24 '24
US does not have a scale like the UK, just the SSA threshold for legal blindness.
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u/OliverKennett Aug 24 '24
The scale seems to be better in that it's more accurate. I'm total so reading about games or apps or even people who are blind that are using sight, all be it, residual sight, to complete tasks and play games, is rather confusing. My personal take on it is to be constructive in terminology, say what someone has rather than what they lack so, legally blind becomes partially sighted. It's a subtle difference but think it carries more information and has a more optimistic tone.
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u/DHamlinMusic Bilateral Optic Neuropathy Aug 24 '24
Oh for sure these types of things need to be clear up front about what level of vision we are talking about. The US does not have a scale in part because unlike other countries there is no change in what services and supports are available to someone based on how much vision they have, I’m total and get the same options as someone with 20/200 best corrected without any other issues.
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u/Prolly_Not_AI Aug 24 '24
Hey! I did bring this up to him. He's new to coding as of about a year and the accessibility features were beyond his understanding. As he learns more or has the ability to hire outside help, it is something he would like to do across the board for his games. He just couldn't wait for his skills before releasing THIS IS NOT YOUR HOUSE
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Aug 24 '24
Thanks for letting me know, the game isn’t my kind of thing, I’m not a fan of the text adventure games but that’s good to hear.
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u/Mrblindguardian Aug 24 '24
I don’t know why you get downvoted this much, but i agree :)
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u/Badassmotherfuckerer Aug 24 '24
Because the "blind" and "visually impaired" distinction is a strange instance of pedantry to bring up in this instance. Not sure if that's a UK vs US distinction, but blind is a catch-all term that the average person I meet will understand. I'm not totally blind, but everyone knows it means there's vision issues with this person. If I have more time and want to talk with someone, I'll maybe say visually impaired and explain, but if I need sighted help with something from someone, I'll just say "I'm blind can you help with x?" I mean also, look at the sub we're on, it's /r/blind, not /r/VI. and I'd assume most people here are visually impaired not totally blind. I don't think the correcting nature comes off as helpful.
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u/Mrblindguardian Aug 25 '24
I disagree, where i live in denmark, it is quite important to distinguish between blind and visually impaired. Even much so in this instance, because, i as a completely blind person would most likely not be able to play this game :)
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u/Superfreq2 Aug 25 '24
I don't think the blindness status of the dev should be questioned without evidence though, just the accessibility of the game in this case. Two separate issues, and Brad came off as confrontational about something overly personal, even if he didn't mean to. Being questioned by other blind people kind of sucks when their is already a fair amount of tension and some bad blood between the blind and low vision communities that I think most of us want to move past, and it can also feel overly medical in an era where more of us are embracing the social model of disability to at least some degree.
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u/Badassmotherfuckerer Aug 25 '24
I mean I'm not completely blind, so I'd be considered visually impaired. But I use a lot of the same technologies as the completely blind to use the computer or my phone. So I wouldn't be able to play this game either. I know that in specific contexts the dissention can be pertinent, like is something is accessible even to those with no vision, or if something requires some sight, like in this case. I just mean that the spectrum of vision impairments is incredibly broad and people who aren't completely blind can have vision impairments that require them to use the same tech. Thus the distinction can be overly pedantic, especially when most people know blind means a person has vision issues. When I just tell someone I'm legally blind, I think they often assume my vision isn't that poor.
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Aug 24 '24
Oh, it doesn’t bother me.
They’re just people on the Internet so I’ll never meet them in real life.
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u/LadyAlleta Aug 24 '24
This is awesome. I can't wait to see what else he can create in the future. Maybe a guided audiobook game or something where you use a braille display to feel which direction to go in a maze. I'm not in tech at all so I'm just dreaming