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Gaming With a Headmouse?
Posted by
timothy
on Mon Feb 21, 2005 08:13 PM
from the kbounce-is-certainly-addictive dept.
from the kbounce-is-certainly-addictive dept.
seanbhoy writes "Do you have any information on games that can be played by myself? I am disabled from the neck down, and use a headmouse to access the Internet, etc. To get an idea of my disability, I have almost the same injuries that Christopher Reeve had. Can you point me in the direction of similar would-be gamers and computer users? Also do you have any information on games that may work with the headmouse I use?"
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Quality Suggestions? (Score:5, Funny)
You might be disappointed by the quality of the suggestions you get to your question, since most Slashdotters are disabled from the neck up.
Re:Quality Suggestions? (Score:5, Interesting)
Back on topic. What about problem solving walking through environments a la MYST and the like? Or boardgames on Yahoo [yahoo.com].
Parent
DUCK HUNT!!!!1 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:DUCK HUNT!!!!1 (Score:5, Informative)
You mentioned virtual NES but I think you are limiting yourself unnecessarily to games that require the lightgun.
Reading up a bit, a headmouse (4-directional movement) could be combined with a sip/puff stick (two switches). Compare the NES controller: A D-Pad, an A button, and a B button. Most games marginally use the start/select buttons, if at all.
As long as its possible to map the movement of the headmouse to a button, it seems that any game which requires two buttons and a directional pad would be playable.
In addition, there is always the MAME project. In addition to many games that are mostly mouse based (the lightgun gams, and trackball/spinner games such as arkanoid, etc), many games use only a joystick and less than two buttons.
And there is always the old Atari with paddles. Two-way movement (mouse) with one button. Gameboy games as well.
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I've got to ask (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm assuming the postere typed their own question.
Re:I've got to ask (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I've got to ask (Score:5, Funny)
It's ironic that the guy who can't type at all has better typing skills than the guy who can.
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Not really (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Try neverwinter (Score:5, Informative)
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Try Online Game Sites (Score:5, Informative)
Note that this isn't an endorsement for either site - I don't know what kind of extra junk they install when you install their games, for example - but these type of games meant for the "casual gamer" usually work with minimal input, and the people who play them certainly seem to like them.
Headmouse (Score:5, Interesting)
DDR (Score:5, Funny)
Re:DDR (Score:5, Informative)
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Medical School (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.medschool.pitt.edu/
Good luck.
Re:Medical School (Score:5, Funny)
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Plenty of games... (Score:5, Informative)
and you're not going to want a first person shooter - too much need for quick reaction times.
A turn-based game would do the trick. Start off small and addictive with that evil NetHack (nethack.org) and in ten or twelve years time when you're done work on the Total War series - Medieval and Rome are both bonza games and not necessarily reliant on twitchy relfexes... but start off with Shogun (www.totalwar.com).
Best of luck. Enjoy.
Re:Plenty of games... (Score:5, Informative)
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A Few Thoughts (Score:5, Informative)
You did not say what hardware/software you are using so I don't know if this is any use but if you're running Windows (and I assume that your hardware just emulates a standard mouse anyway), here's a few ideas.
Most RTS games can be played mouse only so you should be OK with anything Command-And-Conquer-esque. I'm not sure how quickly/accurately you can move a cursor but you can adjust the speed of most RTS games to suit. Turn-based strategy games would be good too, and you can play both types online.
There are loads of online games (cards/board games etc.) which you only need a mouse to play. If you have an onscreen keyboard you will be able to chat as well.
Most FPS games will likely be out of the question as you generally require a keyboard AND mouse to play. Having said that, the original Doom/Wolfenstein games can be played without a keyboard.
Also, try to find out if there's a disabled gamers group either online or near you. I would imagine there must be SOMEONE out there in a similar situation to you, so maybe they can be more helpful than me!
Good luck!
Here's a good list... (Score:5, Informative)
That being said:
Activision's Total War series
Any game of the Civilization series
If someone codes a set of keypresses for you, games on emulated systems (Final Fantasy titles on NES/SNES/PSX for instance, or turn-based games on a GBA emulator like Advance Wars) would likely be doable.
Some of the older MAME titles - not fighting titles like Soul Calibur, but scrollers like R-Type - could be mapped to your headmouse incredibly easily.
You might be able to convince someone to code you a custom interface to use EQ, WoW, or FFXI if you're interested in them; most of the hotkeys are fairly straightforward and could be bound to a wheel-type mouse interface pretty easily.
Steer clear of FPS play, as you'd need (at least) fingers capable of WASD to do them.
If all else fails, there's always games like Go, Chess, and the like to be played out on Yahoo Games or elsewhere. Yeah, they're somewhat old school, but it's always possible to find a game.
Oh, and I did mention a lot of "someone would have to code up the interface", but for most of them it's just remapping joystick axes/hotkeys to certain mouse movements.
Happy gaming!
I have a headmouse: Here's the lowdown. (Score:5, Informative)
I find that some games work better than others. I like using it for strategy games, for example. It's not so good for games like Star Wars Galaxies, where you have to push the mouse left and *leave* it there, to turn left. With a headmouse, this results in you tipping further and further left, until you can't go any further (or turning your avatar back right, if you want to straighten your head back up). D'oh! With pretty much all games, you will probably have to recenter it frequently, regardless of how well they get along with the headmouse.
Another thing that complements a headmouse is the wonderful Shoot program (http://clans.gameclubcentral.com/shoot/). It's a free voice recognition program intended for use with games. Because it's intended for use with a very small vocabulary, the performance is vastly superior to what you'd get from Dragon, and the overhead is much smaller, to boot. It's designed so you can assemble different profiles for all of your favorite games, and it works surprisingly well.
The last thing I recommend is to keep an eye on the Game Accessibility SIG (http://www.igda.org/accessibility/) of the IGDA. They're dedicated to spreading awareness of accessibility needs in mainstream games and sharing methods for making accessibility easy.
Good luck!
Notes from Another Headmouse User (Score:5, Informative)
If you do play games that require a few keyboard commands, check out Game Commander [gamecommander.com]. It allows you to program voice commands for games. It has a pretty customizable interface and you can even program macros.
If you have an on-screen keyboard, you can always go old-skool with text adventures from Infocom.
Stop by my blog [the19thfloor.net] if you have other questions. I've seen other disability-related questions posted on
I'll try my best to help (Score:5, Interesting)
Text copied from here [orin.com]
It does seem rather powerful, especially if it can be combined with voice recognition. Although voice recognition isn't perfect it could certainly be good enough to mimic the button pushes we make when playing a game.
It probably won't be as fast though. So you probably want a game that isn't twitch based. Lets review the categories.
1) MMORPG. Although this isn't twitch based I'm reluctant to recommend it. I don't mean to be insensitive, but I believe that you will meet a lot of insensitive impatient people who will only hurt your self esteem. I don't know the average age of an MMORPG player. All I know is that many act like 12 year olds. Maybe if you find trade skilling rewarding. You could be a very good trade skiller, I'm sure. In fact, if you enjoy trade skilling then you can build your character to the highest levels and people want to do business with you. This category is different than the two below, because there is social interatction here. And if you want more of that, then this might be your choice.
2) Turn based strategy. Civilisation... Oh the memories... I'd really have to recommend this genre. This is one of my all time game genres. And you can play it at any speed you like. You invest a lot of time in the strategy and you can ask a unit to do something which will take many turns. This means that later in the game it will do tons of stuff, that is really interesting to you, the player, but you won't actually be doing much pointing and clicking. Whatever else games you play, you should try to do this too. It is just too much fun to not do. To round it up, whether you win this or not _only_ depends on your thinking. Nothing else. You will be as good a player as a non handicapped person. It might take longer. But what the hey.
3) Real time strategy. This is another one of my favorite genres. Although this really can be as much twitching as a first person shooter, you can normally set the speed to anything you like. You might find that this really gets your adrenalin pump going. I know it does for me.
4) First person shooters. This might not work when you play with a random person from the Internet. But you could get a group going with the same type of problem as you. All that matters is that everyone is about similarly fast. This could be a lot of fun, _and_ it could also be super rewarding if you can organize and build a community and make friends. I currently play an MMORPG right now, and the part that is the most rewarding for me is to organize events and try to help people have fun. The game itself is secondary. You might want to look at games such as Ghost Recon which is more "suspense" and "one shot one kill" rather than the Quake "circle/strafe" "rocket jump" game play.
5) Someone else mentioned Myst. Myst and other puzzle games might be good for you. It isn't for me, but many like it. Maybe you are one of them.
And finally, good luck finding the game that is for you. I love it when I have a new game.
Re:wait... (Score:5, Funny)
And the only way to win is not to play.
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Re:I would hope to see very few if any (Score:5, Insightful)
Having humor about one's disability is an ability, not a disability.
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Re:The one and only game! (Score:5, Insightful)
dude...
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