

Show HN: Survival Thriller Game that uses Echolocation - szhongmin
http://lurking-game.com

======
ndarilek
I'm blind and use echolocation regularly for things like biking, increased
awareness of surroundings, etc. Any chance you might add some sort of audio-
only interface? Off the top of my head, you could make the user's breathing
noises echo off of obstacles. Breathing could echo off of walls to indicate
obstruction in specific directions, for instance.

Your trailer doesn't tell me much as a non-visual user, but I like the idea of
the noises you make being audible to whomever is hunting you even while they
tell you what's around. That seems like a nice strategic element.

If you're looking for additional thoughts/design advice, I'd be happy to
brainstorm further. I design audio-only games (albeit typically titles like
traditional games but with audio-only interfaces) so have put lots of thought
into this subject.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Hi!

You should buy a Razer Tiamat, and a computer capable of running it. It's a
7.1 surround sound headset. It's different from other surroundsound headsets
in that it's truly surround sound: there are a bunch of actual tiny speakers
inside each ear which physically emit sound from different directions.

The experience is incredible! It's nothing like headphones with two speakers,
or any of the "virtual surround sound" stuff. People think we only need two
speakers because we have two ears, but it's not true at all. Two speakers work
sort of okay, because everyone's used to them and our audio presently is made
to work for them, but surround sound is far superior.

Unfortunately it requires a desktop computer that has 5 plugins for the audio.
(Front, front-left, front-right, back-left, back-right, if I remember
correctly.) Also, the headset is slightly hard to configure out of the box. If
you plug it in and aren't overwhelmed, don't give up hope! You have to go into
the audio settings and enable stuff like bass management or loudness
management or... stuff like that, I've forgotten at this point but I could
look it up if needed.

The positional audio is so good that I think you might be able to play some
games. Unfortunately, there aren't very many games which take full advantage
of surround sound, but it could be fun for a friend to play a scary game like
Amnesia while you listen to it. It's admittedly very expensive for probably
not too much takeaway for you though.

Here's a link to a comment I wrote about the Tiamat a couple months ago when
Sony announced a competing project to the Oculus Rift. They said they're
shipping something with "60 virtual speakers" so that prompted my comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7426463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7426463)

~~~
ndarilek
Hmm, not sure I've ever had a computer with 5 audio plugs. Actually, I'm
trying to sort through the various audio connectivity standards to find which
works best for me. Because I don't need a large screen, and because the screen
is the usual bottleneck for desktops/laptops, I use a small but powerful
laptop as my main computer (Lenovo Helix for the curious.) Unfortunately,
since this _is_ a laptop, audio connectivity is pretty limited, and I'm in the
market for a quality USB audio device that'd allow at least 5.1 connectivity.

If you have any headphone/USB interface buyer's advice to offer than I'd be
interested. At the moment I'm lacking enough connectors for a 5.1 interface
with this setup and _certainly_ lack same for headphones. :)

~~~
Myrth
Searching for "usb 7.1" on amazon.com gives these top products with decent
rating:

[http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-External-Channel-Audio-
Adapter/...](http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-External-Channel-Audio-
Adapter/dp/B004HXGJ3S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399888698&sr=8-1&keywords=usb+7.1)

[http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-USB-SND8-8-Channel-External-
Su...](http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-USB-SND8-8-Channel-External-
Surround/dp/B001D1PWGM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1399888698&sr=8-2&keywords=usb+7.1)

Here's the Razer Tiamat headphones, I'm using them and like a lot:

[http://www.amazon.com/Razer-Tiamat-Surround-Gaming-
Headset/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Razer-Tiamat-Surround-Gaming-
Headset/dp/B007CS9WYI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399888881&sr=8-1&keywords=razer+tiamat)

------
exDM69
This is interesting, I must give it a try because I practice echolocation in
real life. I have perfectly good eyesight but seeing some documentaries about
blind people who echolocate prompted me to learn some myself. I'm not very
good but I can improve my situational awereness in darkness.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Please tell more about how you learned and practice echolocation.

~~~
exDM69
I saw a few videos about blind kids who echolocate [0], and got inspired by
it. The videos only briefly showed how they practice, but it did show a
teacher training a pupil by putting a pane of glass on either side of the head
and then made him guess which side it is on.

Echolocation is not some kind of magic ability, where a person without vision
gains superhuman abilities to measure time between echoes. This is the way it
is often portrayed in the media, though.

Shaping your mouth and your lips, click with your tongue to create a
_directional_ click going to your left or right hand side. Then listen to the
sound of the click (the click itself, not some magical echo 10 ms later) and
try to hear differences in the color or timbre of the click. It's just _like
tweaking the settings of a reverb effect in an audio software_. Hard surfaces
like glass or concrete sound very different from soft things like humans or
trees. Distant objects sound different than close ones.

Scientifically, you are measuring the _impulse response in frequency domain_
[1] (ie. spectrogram). According to the _convolution theorem_ [2], the impulse
response has all the "information" about the surroundings you can have
(applies to acoustic, mechanical and electrical signals too).

I sometimes practice by trying to navigate long hallways at the office and
trying find my desk without the help of eyesight (I know it is n'th door to
the left, and open doors are easy to tell from hard walls). Sometimes I
practice outdoors just trying to recognize trees, buildings, cars or humans
from their echo.

Blind people often echolocate subconsciously by listening the echoes of their
footsteps and surrounding noises. This was demonstrated by a echolocation
teacher by playing white noise in a familiar room and seeing their new
students who claim they don't echolocate get lost in their own living rooms.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9mvRRwu5Gw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9mvRRwu5Gw)
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impulse_response](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impulse_response)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution_theorem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convolution_theorem)

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errantspark
In a game where sound is the only way to see you save a lot of time on making
textures. : P Looks fun.

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zenbowman
Sounds cool, downloading now. I've been working on a similar idea in my spare
time, using video and sound as input.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iai72LhlcZA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iai72LhlcZA)

Edit: Tried playing, it didn't seem to pick up input from the microphone, I
had to press 'Q' constantly to fake sound. Is the mic disabled in the Mac
version?

~~~
szhongmin
Mac version can use microphone input. Check your Sound preferences and you
need to do calibration in game.

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melloclello
Looks cool, graphics could perhaps use a little improvement? I'm imagining it
would be much scarier if there was a bit of base white noise instead of a pure
black background. Messes with your imagination.

