Hi tom.
I have no objection at all to reading a screen of text input as you will
gather from my playing of smugglers and eamon. That being said, i can see
instances even in traditional type games ehre that sort of system wouldn't
work.
take battleships or concentration, (better known as brainiac).
Even if you had text output say a1 miss, a3 hit on cruser, etc, and
inserted a hole bunch of review commands to tell the player the coordinates
of what ships he/she had hit, that still does not give the same spacial
information as just hitting arrows to move a speaking curser around and
having points spoken as you come to them, at least I find not for me.
for instance, I might want to hit b2 then c2 in battleships to cover a wide
possibllity. Lter on I might forget which squares I'd shot and how much
space betwene them, however simply going to a2 and then hitting right twice
I'd know there was one square betwene I hadn't shot at.
I don't know why, but this makes a major difference in my spacial
comprehention.
Even with less complicated games such as hearts, I rather like the feature
that spoonbill's hearts and che's both have of using keys to cycle through
your hand one card at a time, where as if it was printed all on screen I'd
have to hear some of the hand and remember.
Of course, this only applies to games where each turn you are given lots of
information. Text adventures or choice based games where it's read a
description and react don't have this issue, and a game like destination
mars is quite playable with just reading the screen with a screen reader.
however, if you have a mind to create games with spacial components and lots
of info, such as battleships, concentration etc, I'd personally suggest tts
output just for the extra convenience of game specific keys to speak
information and thus make the players' job of comprehending the game
easier.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
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