Doom3[CC] v2 Released

[Liquidize105]

The Games[CC] group has released version 2 of their closed-caption mod for Doom3.

The new feature include:

color coded closed captions for characters and environmental sounds
support for multiple languages (English, Spanish, French, German and Brazilian-portuguese)
a visual sound based radar on the HUD


There's a demo video on the front page (http://www.planetdoom.com/doom3cc/index.htm) of their website. I suggest that you watch it without audio to get a feel of what this mod does for a hearing-impaired gamer.

It's not the flashiest mod out there, but it's a selfless one. Great job for answering the call (http://www.planetdoom.com/doom3cc/about.htm), guys.

[Chagrinful]

I guess theres alot of *monster closet slides open*, heh what a waste of time!

[da.Guvna]

I'm not deaf myself, so it doesn't really benefit me, but I think it's a great thing these guys are doing. Who knows, maybe eventually developers will include subtitles in their games as standard, just like DVD producers do?

[LilBunnyFuFu]

I guess theres alot of *monster closet slides open*, heh what a waste of time!

Wow.

Stunnng.

[Paranoia]

Curious, how will the closed caption affect online multiplayer gaming?

[bKangy]

Yeah, I was pleased to see that Valve had taken the time to give HL2 closed captioning. I like these people, if I had money to donate, I would!

[fitbabits]

I guess theres alot of *monster closet slides open*, heh what a waste of time!

Your ignorance is astounding.

[Sloth]

i watched the video and while its a good idea, I hope there is a way to filter some of those options as clearly the amount of feedback is more than you can read and assimilate in a short period of time. Things like telling me the shotgun rises or I can hear my footsteps is something I personally would filter out in favor of the more important information like a monster opening a door.

[Varsity]

Your ignorance is astounding.
I laughed at the first bit. :p

[Thumper]

The CC didn't seem too overdone to me, and two of them just made the mod for me.

[Constipated Moan]
[Zombie Pain]

[TheEpicOfTyler]

<lamejoke>

lolz i wunder if you can even see them without flashlight!11

</lamejoke>

:(

[Morrolan]

Good on these guys.

[Liquidize105]

i watched the video and while its a good idea, I hope there is a way to filter some of those options as clearly the amount of feedback is more than you can read and assimilate in a short period of time. Things like telling me the shotgun rises or I can hear my footsteps is something I personally would filter out in favor of the more important information like a monster opening a door.
It's color coded, you learn to look at the colors after a while; and there's a sound-based radar.

It still needs some work, like size and font for action-oriented text, but it's getting there.

[reid]

It's color coded, you learn to look at the colors after a while; and there's a sound-based radar.

It still needs some work, like size and font for action-oriented text, but it's getting there.

Hey all, I'm the designer of the Dynamic Closed Captioning system, thanks for the support!

To Liquidize105, can you please elaborate on what you'd like to see regarding size and font in the CC mod?

I'm guessing you mean that a large monster has larger sized font for the captions? Or that it's font looks different?

The Games[CC] team thought about doing various things with text to animate it, but in the end we decided it would be too distracting. I used Doom3 to create a general purpose CC system that could work for all games.

For those that think there are too many captions displayed, the system was designed to put the most important captions at the top of the list. If you see "unimportant" captions it's because there's nothing else that's more important going on. Once a monster sound is played, or a grenade bouncing or a door opening, those take priority over the other sounds. So, in the end, you should never miss anything.

-Reid

[if76]

Your ignorance is astounding.

I'm all for being PC but what exactly is he ignorant of? He's not even making fun of deaf peoplel. He's making fun of Doom 3.

[Chagrinful]

I'm all for being PC but what exactly is he ignorant of? He's not even making fun of deaf peoplel. He's making fun of Doom 3.

Thank you for backing me up there.
The rest of you should really get a friggin clue before you go bashing someone.

[Plac1d]

I wonder if zombies are deaf.

[Liquidize105]

Hey all, I'm the designer of the Dynamic Closed Captioning system, thanks for the support!

To Liquidize105, can you please elaborate on what you'd like to see regarding size and font in the CC mod?

I'm guessing you mean that a large monster has larger sized font for the captions? Or that it's font looks different?

The Games[CC] team thought about doing various things with text to animate it, but in the end we decided it would be too distracting. I used Doom3 to create a general purpose CC system that could work for all games.
Hi Reid,

Let me explain. The point of ambient sound effects is to add to the visceral intensity of the game, it's also an early warning system. Once a player gets used to the system, I'd imagine that he is not reading the sound text anymore, rather he would peek at it out of the corner of the eye to help him identify clues for the next appropriate weapon. That's where your mod comes in: It should transcribe sound cues into visual cues to an appropriate degree.

Things that I'd suggest are:
A simple color-coded system to help classify the sound. The more perceivably dangerous the sound, the higher up the spectrum the color goes: blue > green > yellow > orange > red. Subtle, don't give away too much.
Use different fonts; a monster's growl, a roar, a scream should be represented in graphically spasmatic fonts, whereas friendly and environmental sound would be the standard font.
The radar should display a monster only while the audio is present. Make it intense.
Less distracting, more ergonomic interface. As of right now, it doesn't feel like a part of the game yet.


Take it from there. Would a deaf gamer be more sensitive to subtle visual cues? Take advantage of it somehow.

Be creative.

[Ghost_Saint]

I don't know what you guys are talking about "I'm not deaf, I don't care." Playing Accessible Quake and closing my eyes is actually pretty darn fun.

[reid]

Hi Reid,

Let me explain. The point of ambient sound effects is to add to the visceral intensity of the game, it's also an early warning system. Once a player gets used to the system, I'd imagine that he is not reading the sound text anymore, rather he would peek at it out of the corner of the eye to help him identify clues for the next appropriate weapon. That's where your mod comes in: It should transcribe sound cues into visual cues to an appropriate degree.

Things that I'd suggest are:
A simple color-coded system to help classify the sound. The more perceivably dangerous the sound, the higher up the spectrum the color goes: blue > green > yellow > orange > red. Subtle, don't give away too much.
Use different fonts; a monster's growl, a roar, a scream should be represented in graphically spasmatic fonts, whereas friendly and environmental sound would be the standard font.
The radar should display a monster only while the audio is present. Make it intense.
Less distracting, more ergonomic interface. As of right now, it doesn't feel like a part of the game yet.


Take it from there. Would a deaf gamer be more sensitive to subtle visual cues? Take advantage of it somehow.

Be creative.

I've already got the color coded system in there. Player and friendly colored captions are blue, green yellow and white, the lower spectrum of colors, in the cool calm area according to American color psychology. The system allows separate color definitions for different languages, cultures.

I do not agree with the dynamic font idea. The Dynamic Closed Captioning system is meant to be accessible as possible, this means using a font that is easy to read, and could be scalable if we implemented that feature. If we used highly stylized fonts readers who have vision impairments may not be able to read the text or some may not like the font from a simple aesthetic viewpoint. I personally HATED the default Doom3 font because capital i's looked like lowercase l's and creates confusion sometimes when reading the logs. Very poor font choice, I didn't want to make the same mistake.

The radar does only display the blip when the caption is on screen. We didn't want to use special monster specific icons because then that would reduce some of the fear of not knowing what was around the corner.

I'm also not keen on the closed captions being built into a hud that fits the theme of the game. When adding a hud, less space will be used for the text, which needs to be as big as reasonably possible. One of my main goals was to make it unobtrusive and not distract the gamer. I know what Doom3 is about, shooting the opponents on screen, not reading text. There is a difficult balance that needs to be struck between making text ledgible, accessible (in the right position) and non-obstructive of the game view.

I wonder if you've spent much of your life watching TV or movies with closed captioning? They never fit the theme of the show being watched, they are boring, plain and unobtrusive (if positioned properly). When you get used to using captions, you forget about the plain "interface" and only focus on the words, which is exactly what I wanted with the Dynamic Closed Captioning system.

-Reid

[SaintArnold]

reid-
Awesome work. I'm sure that many people will benefit from this, and I hope other sites follow EA's lead and spread the word. What would really be kickass is if you could get id to take note and give you some linkage.

Liquidize, nice post.

[fitbabits]

I'm all for being PC but what exactly is he ignorant of? He's not even making fun of deaf peoplel. He's making fun of Doom 3.

Are you serious? Did you read the quote? For your benefit:

I guess theres alot of *monster closet slides open*, heh what a waste of time!

Read the last part. My mother is almost completely deaf (as is my boss) and I'm sure that they would not look on closed captions as a waste of time - in any medium.

[fitbabits]

Thank you for backing me up there.
The rest of you should really get a friggin clue before you go bashing someone.

And you should get a friggin' good dose of humanity about you before you start bashing people who spend their own time and energy trying to include those who are hard of hearing into a world that is dominated by those with no such 'disabilities'.

I wonder if you also think that new innovations in headsticks or mouthsticks are also a waste of time.

[Liquidize105]

I tried your mod in doom3 with the sound muted. Here's what I can tell you:

While it's hell of a lot better than having nothing at all, it's still missing something. That something is the sound cue, every monster has a unique one. The cue would play, I'd hear it, and the appropriate weapon would come up to anticipate the attack. Players with normal hearing would deduce from the cue the monster type around corner, and thereby countering the attack.

Doom3[CC] has lines of red text with arbitrary descriptions that may or may not id the creature. Also, even if it would, it wouldn't do much good because it takes too much time to read them. The monster could be chomping down on my neck by then.

That process is instantaneous for sound cues, you have the means to implement a vidual cue system that could do the same. Personally, I'd flash unique monster symbols on the screen with different transparent values to indicate proximate volume. Maybe you can come up with even better ideas?

Edit: Or just put the monster's name next to the "[HISSING SQUEAK]," like "IMP: [HISSING SQUEAK]." It's hella easier, but it won't make the game play more like the way its intended to play.