With a focus on action/platform games (e.g. Little Big Planet) or first person shooter (e.g. Call of Duty) games
Hi Jerome Dupire
You may look too the tecnology in research about Brain reader using an EEG. There are proyects to use it with google glass.
http://www.medgadget.com/2014/08/philips-and-accentures-concept-of-universal-eeg-controller-for-als-patients-video.html
Dont know if there is some with games but is a start.
Best regards
Hi Jérôme,
I believe the research on that subject is extensive enough for you to find a lot of information just by googling. Here's some works on the subject:
1) This thesis has a chapter (p18) about motor impaired gamming: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?rep=rep1&type=pdf&doi=10.1.1.217.805
2) This article talks about controller for motor impaired players: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2254481
As for your specific request (Little Big Planet and Call of Duty) I believe it's possible but it would take a while to develop an adequate human-machine interface that would be able to replicate (or at least getting close enough) the complex instructions players give in those games. Some technologies you might want to look better are:
1) Cam-based eye-tracking (so a computer cam can recognize where the player is looking at): http://www.tobii.com/, http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/opengazer/, http://www.pygaze.org/
2) VR goggles: https://www.oculus.com/, http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/gearvr/gearvr_design.html
I'm guessing since I'm not in any way an expert in motor impaired gamming, but the movement of the eye should be on of the best "controllers" to explore (including "blink", or "blink twice", "blink trice" and so on).
If I were to start developing for motor impaired games I would start with the most simple case however. Games that only need a click to move forward like visual novels. They typically use the mouse but I'm sure any other different type of controller can be adapted. This would at least give me a good starting point for further development.
I've been using ren'py game engine to produce games and e-learning tools (visual novel style) so if you would like to check this tool you can find it in here:
http://www.renpy.org/
I have some experience with it so feel free to ask questions if you need to. Also please share your conclusion if possible since I'm quite interested in the subject.
Best of luck.
Just one more thing (I got to explore the web a bit after checking your post). Take a look at this project:
http://hackaday.com/2013/02/12/build-an-eye-tracking-headset-for-90/
http://www.shapeways.com/product/LQJJK2CHQ/pupil-mobile-eye-tracking-headset?li=productBox-search
http://pupil-labs.com/
Pretty convenient if you want to explore the eye-tracking technology.
Hi Pedro and thank you for your message. Actually I'm working both on video games and accessibility for a while. As you mentioned, my question was (voluntary) very specific (unfortunately, Google has some limits as well). Indeed, LBP and CoD are quite more complex than other "motor accessible" video games, since they are "highly real time" and the gamer have to manage a lot of complex controls. The issues linked to the visual control based interactions are : low frequency limit (try to blink your eyes to "turbo fire' in a FPS ) AND the loss of visual feedback, proportional to this interaction frequency.
Hi Jérôme,
I understand the complexity of the task you're trying to fulfill. Wish I had more help to give but I'll keep an eye out for other possibilities and post here if I find them. For now I can only manage possibilities (if it helps you in way).
Have you considered autocomplete methods?
Autocomplete are methodologies that test your initial input against a list of possibilities and try to guess what you want. Examples are cellphone SMS systems, programming IDE, google search (or other search engines).
Autocomplete is very very common for words but in theory there's nothing that stops it from being applied to any other media such as eye tracking or any other type controller.
Right now I'm trying to remember all instructions in a common FPS game and I'm thinking - the player needs to:
1) Look around (mouse)
2) Move (4 keyboard instructions)
3) Shoot (mouse-click)
4) Use (keyboard click)
5) Reload
6) Go to menu (pauses real-time)
Typically 1), 2) and 3) are very common, 4) and 5) more sparse, and 6) rarely. A possible hypothesis could be:
A) Look around 1) with eye tracking
B) Blink movements for Use 4) and Reload 3) (You are right off course, shooting with blinks would be insane).
And that would leave us with 2) and 6). Go to menu could be any possible movement since it's only used rarely (maybe close eyes for 1 second or more?!).
Move it's a real problem. Replicate 4 keys for extremely common motion is complicated. Is any kind of tilt movement a possibility? (finger joystick, tong controller, head tilt, etc...)
Sorry again I'm just guessing at hypothesis so no real world experience for the problem you're facing. I've was doing a quick look around on the web for human-machine interface and brain-computer connections keeps popping up. Is that a possibility?
Hi Jérôme!
I think that research on action or "dynamic" games for people with motor disabilities is very interesting, specially if it tries to avoid the usage of additional expensive hardware.
In fact my research group and I are working on the development of GNomon, a framework that enables the creation of dynamic and engaging one-switch video games for children with severe motor disabilities. The framework supports the selection of multiple elements, which can freely move around the screen, with just a single switch. It is based on a custom implementation of the NOMON interaction modality. I attach the work-in-progress on GNomon and our ongoing research.
Have a nice day and good luck!
Conference Paper GNomon: Enabling Dynamic One-Switch Games for Children with ...
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