Whack-a-Mole for the Visually Impaired

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Whack-a-Mole for the Visually Impaired

• Luv Kohli
• COMP290-039
• April 20, 2004

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Images and sounds by Pat Friedl
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Images and sounds by Pat Friedl
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Images and sounds by Pat Friedl
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Motivation

• Lack of fun games for visually impaired children
• Children need exercise for muscle tone
• Educational spatial reasoning

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The Game

• Furry woodland creatures appear at random to
  pester the player
• Based on the location creature sounds are coming
  from, the player hits the creature back into its
  hole

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Goals

• Fun and enjoyable game
• Physical activity
• Inexpensive equipment

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The system (1)

• 4 USB mice that represent moles, connected to a
  PC via a USB hub
• 2 speakers, one behind the leftmost mole, and one
  behind the rightmost mole
• Panning is used to interpolate positions of other
  moles

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The system (2)

• Written in C
• Using Single Display Groupware Toolkit (SDGT)
  from University of Calgary for multiple mouse
  input
• http//www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/grouplab/software/SDGT
  /
• DirectSound for sound output

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Why mice?

• Curiosity, as well as desire to evaluate the
  interface
• Seems to give a natural, inexpensive solution

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But there are issues

• Issues with the mice
• Issues with getting multiple device input
• Issues with using USB
• Issues with using audio panning

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Issues Mice

• Buttons on mice can be difficult to hit with a
  bat
• Solution is fairly simple
• Put something on top of the buttons to give the
  user a larger target

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Issues Multiple Mice

• Mouse is already a major input device for PCs
• Having multiple mice can lead to problems in
  controlling the system
• SDGT addresses some problems but still difficult
  to reconcile system mouse vs. other mice

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Issues USB

• USB devices are plug-n-play no guarantee on the
  order in which mice are attached to the system
• Implication explicit calibration needed to
  determine relative order of mice (moles)
• Makes accessibility difficult

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Issues Audio Panning

• Sometimes difficult to differentiate between 4
  panning positions
• 3 is easy
• System currently set up with 4
• Difficult to distinguish between locations of
  more than one sound hard left and hard right at
  the same time sound like middle
• Full spatial audio and mole placement might be
  better
• Stomp-a-Mole with a DDR pad

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Evaluation

• Multiple-mouse interface is not ideal webcam
  solution might be better
• Multiple-mouse interface might be well suited to
  other types of games where each user has direct
  access to their own input device
• Hungry hungry hippos! (maybe.)

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Enough negativity!

• Despite all the issues, it still works
• Focus on making gameplay accessible, rather than
  calibration interface which is assumed to be done
  by someone else

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Game Flow

• First, calibrate system mouse and mole mice
• Calibrate speaker panning positions
• Train player through instructions (if required)
• Currently 4 levels, with moles disappearing at
  increasingly faster rates
• Only one mole at a time for now

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Demo