Playing Shock2 with only your ears

[6647ea5e98723Drew]

With the latest NewDark updates, I've been able to get a much more accurate sonic picture of the environment than I'm used to getting from most games. This makes me think  about the possibility of modding the game so that it could be playable without vision. For starters, it would require a lot  more sound sources, such as rushing wind to indicate open space or areas to be jumped, bump sounds when the player hits walls or mantable obstacles, and cues for inventory objects, doors, replicators  and the like. More significantly, the text would need reading. This could be accomplished by writing a bridge to the Windows Speech API, or preferably, by interfacing with a dedicated screen reading program. An open source one is available at nvda-project.org. Creating an interface that allows more menu and inventory management actions to be accomplished with the keyboard instead of the mouse would also be of help. I'm not sure to what extent these are possible with the tools available but some people have been doing some amazing things recently I wouldn't have thought possible. So it seems to me it's just a matter of getting motivated  people with the right know-how together to fit the various pieces together. Apart from that, I see aiming at enemies on a different level from you to be a problem, as well as knowing when they're close enough to be in range of melee weapons.

Hopefully, this idea will interest enough people to stimulate a discussion of what the issues are and how to address them.

[6647ea5e98892akumaKAERU]

This is a great idea!

I love the sound in SS2 and the idea of a purely aural experience would be a fantastic thing!

There are a few games based purely on sound for IOS. I currently have PapaSangre, but haven't played it yet as I have not really stopped to play games on my iPhone...

[6647ea5e98af5ZylonBane]

There's about as much chance of anything happening on this as there is of me deciding to translate SHTUP into Egyptian hieroglyphs. It would be an enormous amount of work, toward a probably unachievable goal, for the benefit of an exceedingly tiny minority of gamers. The System Shock community isn't exactly overflowing with engineering resources.

[6647ea5e98c92Kolya]

There's only a handful of people who actively work on mods. And yes, they've done amazing things, but each of them has more ideas than they will ever get accomplished. They aren't waiting to realise someone else's.
The mod you describe would mean tons of work for many people. It's not gonna happen. If you want to start it yourself, I would humbly suggest to write a normal FM first, that might contain a pitchblack area.

[6647ea5e992acakumaKAERU]

There's about as much chance of anything happening on this as there is of me deciding to translate SHTUP into Egyptian hieroglyphs. It would be an enormous amount of work, toward a probably unachievable goal, for the benefit of an exceedingly tiny minority of gamers. The System Shock community isn't exactly overflowing with engineering resources.

By that same logic this mod has the same chance as SHTUP actually being finished. LOL!  

The mod you describe would mean tons of work for many people. It's not gonna happen. If you want to start it yourself, I would humbly suggest to write a normal FM first, that might contain a pitchblack area.

Agreed. Something similar to a text based adventure, using SS2 sound properties instead, would be fitting. Ken Levine said he intended on using SS2 more as a story telling device since he found that the Dark engine was quite limited at the time.

[6647ea5e99694Join2]

By that same logic this mod has the same chance as SHTUP actually being finished. LOL! 

Not at all. SHTUP benefits nearly all Shock 2 players and improves the game. This potential (or not) mod would be for the minority, a very insignificant minority. Sorry.
I seriously doubt there are any modders here with the passion for such a task.

EDIT: I missed the joke