Playing Shenmue blind

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Playing Shenmue blind

Postby Caturria » Tue Nov 17, 2015 11:58 pm

Hello.
I’ve been lurking around the dojo for a while and figured I’d finally chime in.
My name is Jordan and while I’ve known about Shenmue for almost ten years I never really got in to it until just recently. Please forgive me; this is going to be a very long and unusual post, however I am willing to do whatever it takes to prove the claims I’m about to make here.
Those of you who frequent gaming magazines and sites might know me on YouTube as genuinescorruption. Despite having been completely blind since birth, I’ve been a gamer at heart for almost my entire life. My childhood dream was to complete Ocarina of Time and in 2008, a group of diehard fans helped make that a reality by writing me step by step directions to navigate the game’s complex world. That combined with the game’s very well done sound work (which allowed me to know exactly where enemies were in relation to me and defeat them) made it possible for me to actually beet the game. I recently listened to a YouTube let’s play of Shenmue one and found myself completely immersed in the story. Researching the mechanics, I came to wonder if this game might actually be mostly playable (limitations of past technological eras often end up being accidental accessibility features).
I was wondering if someone would be able to elaborate on the navigation. The fact that you move Ryo with the d-pad instead of the analogue stick sounds really promising. If the analogue stick just controls the camera, can’t you just keep the camera behind you at all times so that if you push up on the d-pad, Ryo will always move north? Is this navigation structure anything like it is in either Pokémon or Final Fantasy X?
Do you think you can hypothesize on how much help would actually be necessary in order for me to complete this game? From what I can tell, the motor cycle race would be extremely hard, as would the forklift sequences (but they’re mostly optional)? There seem to be some pretty good auditory landmarks in some places to help verify your whereabouts (like Tom with his music, something that sounds like a marry-go-round in one place, etc.) which is more than can be said about many of the games I’ve played. Oh, and then there’s the stealth sequence…the footsteps on those guards are not only loud, but directional!
I’m planning on downloading this game and trying it out this weekend to see if I can make any progress on my own. Are there any other pitfalls you think I should know about?
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this. Speaking of which, in case you’re wondering how I’m able to read your responses or otherwise operate a computer (a common question I get asked on the internet), I use a program called Jaws which translates written text on screen to speech and allows me to navigate GUIs. It’s developed by a company called Freedom Scientific (http://www.freedomscientific.com).

Kind regards,

Jordan.

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Re: Playing Shenmue blind

Postby Mr357 » Wed Nov 18, 2015 1:05 am

Welcome to the Dojo Jordan! An important game element that might prove difficult for you is the first-person lock on system for examining things, opening drawers and cabinets, and picking up objects. Although you could probably go by trial and error with a lot of those, it relies heavily on your position and which direction you're facing. The biggest problem you'll probably run into though, is the quick time events. They make a very distinct sound, but regardless of which button they call for they all make the same sound. You could look up the sequences in advance with a walk through though. Your idea about the movement is correct. If you only hold down up, Ryo will move in a perfectly straight line until he collides with something, at which point he should stop. If you hit down twice, Ryo will turn exactly 180 degrees. As long as you have a good idea of how the maps are arranged, navigation shouldn't be too difficult. I think you'll be able to appreciate the fact that the game is fully voiced more than anyone else. If you can reliably find certain people, they can almost always give helpful information on where to go and how to get there.

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Re: Playing Shenmue blind

Postby Caturria » Wed Nov 18, 2015 1:39 am

@MR357 Thanks very much for the nice and detailed post. Do you know if there's such a thing as a one touch command to reset your angle to north? I'm thinking of Star Ocean: till the End of Time in which sometimes a cutscene would conclude with you facing some random direction, but you could press (I think) start and it would snap your camera back to a default position, causing you to again be oriented such that north was forward. If worse came to worse I may have to find someone to write step counting directions through some sections that were especially tricky, but hopefully not the entire game.
If I understand correctly:
*Attendance in the forklift races is mandatory, but you don't actually have to perform?
*At your job, you can neglect to move but a single box and you won't get any raises, but can still progress?
Am I correct regarding those? Can you elaborate on the motor cycle race and the combat?

Kind regards,

Jordan.
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Re: Playing Shenmue blind

Postby Amir » Wed Nov 18, 2015 1:51 am

Just to correct one thing from Mr357's post, you press down once on the d-pad, not twice, to do a 180.

Yeah, you don't need to place anywhere on the forklift races, can come last, third, first, whatever. And you won't get fired from your job until the story decides to. What I can see being annoying for a blind player is bumping into other forklifts while driving around; a lot of the time it's hard to get around them or to get out of where you are if you're in a tight spot.

The motorcycle race is mandatory, you have to get to the harbour in time to save someone. There's no other vehicles on the road so it's just a case of knowing the route, when to turn, decelerate, etc. I'm pretty rubbish at racing games, took me a couple of tries but it's not Ferrari 355 or Gran Turismo hard.

Is there any text-to-speech plugin for PC games you could use if you were to emulate it on PC, i.e. to let you know what capsule toys you've got by going over them in your collection?
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Re: Playing Shenmue blind

Postby Caturria » Wed Nov 18, 2015 2:27 am

Hi,
There's no text to speech utility that works in games, because games render text as images, not using your system's native character set. The only thing that might work is to try and find the currently rendered text in the game's ram space, which is probably doable if I had a couple of points at which I knew exactly what text the game would be displaying.
When knowing what's in your inventory is important, taking note of all the items you get as they come in and keeping a log for the entire playthrough is required. Knowing what you got from a random event such as the toy capsules (or random item drops from enemies in some RPGs etc) is impossible without a tool like a save editor. When I play pokemon games, I'll just back up my save file and bring it in to a tool like pokegen (a save editor). Most of the time I have no interest in hacking items, but a tool like that is really helpful when you need to know what you have and in what order your inventory is in.

In free quest mode, if for argument's sake you held right until you heard Ryo take 5 steps, then left for the same 5 steps, would he be in exactly the same position provided you didn't hit a wall at some point? or is there some more complicated turning mechanic that would ruin that?

Kind regards,

Jordan.
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Re: Playing Shenmue blind

Postby Amir » Wed Nov 18, 2015 3:01 am

Caturria wrote:
In free quest mode, if for argument's sake you held right until you heard Ryo take 5 steps, then left for the same 5 steps, would he be in exactly the same position provided you didn't hit a wall at some point? or is there some more complicated turning mechanic that would ruin that?


Shenmue has "tank controls" like the old Resident Evil and Tomb Raider games, meaning that Ryo only moves forward, and only with the forward button on the d-pad; left and right just change direction, back does a 180. I imagine this makes it more difficult to keep track of where you are, unfortunately. One feature though that might help is that Yu Suzuki specifically made it that if you hit a wall, Ryo stops moving; it was common in games at the time for the character to run on the spot when presented with an obstacle.
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Re: Playing Shenmue blind

Postby johnvivant » Wed Nov 18, 2015 8:32 am

fascinating post.

shenmue 2 might be easier for you because the majority of NPC's are able to guide you to your desired location, and the game automatically puts you into the 'follow mode' when this happens.

as for shenmue 1, free battle should be quite easy because mashing elbow assault (forward, forward, punch) or kick, kick, kick, can pretty much win all battles in the game. (although the end battle with chai might be a real headache)

QTE's button combinations are always fixed so you can find them out beforehand. sound plays when you are supposed press the button which helps.

you get a huge auditory cue from the cat when you walk past it!
tomato mart music can be heard as you walk past it
tom has audio cue - his music. tom's hot dog stand is a good maker actually since its about half way down the main road of Dobuita street, a place where you will be spending a lot of time.
the main road has audio cue - heavy traffic sound - so you'll know when you are near the bus stop which you'll need at disc 2.
each shop and restaurant has its own unique music, at least those that you have to enter via a door.

area music in Shenmue 1 varies quite a lot but in shenmue 2 (which is a lot bigger) each area has its own unique music for day and night which almost never changes, which i imagine would be helpful for knowing where are are.

for speaking to npcs, you could walk about tapping A and engage passers by in conversation. a lot of the time you don't need to speak to a specific NPC, since many NPC's can you give you the same info.

in regards to movement,

pressing forward on dpad makes Ryo move forward.
pressing down on dpad makes Ryo do a 180 degree turn
pressing left (or right) actually makes Ryo move forward to the left (or right), meaning he doesn't just pivot in a stationary position like a Resident Evil character, he moves forward slightly in the process of turning left or right. so basically if you kept holding down left or right on its own, Ryo would being moving in a small circle. if that makes sense.

it is possible for Ryo to pivot within his own footprint, i.e. in a stationary position by holding down the B button and moving the D-pad left and right.

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Re: Playing Shenmue blind

Postby Caturria » Wed Nov 18, 2015 11:25 am

@Johnvivant thank you very much.
If he stops when he hits a wall that's a huge help. If he can't strafe (sidestep without changing direction) that's quite an unfortunate obstacle. Is there a way to reliably turn 90 degrees?

Is there in fact a marry-go-round somewhere in Dobuita? There's definitely something that sounds like one (it emits happy festival music), but the YouTubers I listened to did not interact with it. If memory serves it sounded like it was near Tom. All those things are in fact helpful because you could in theory line yourself up with them and then know exactly where you were located and which way you were facing.
Kind regards,

Jordan.
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Re: Playing Shenmue blind

Postby Amir » Wed Nov 18, 2015 11:31 am

Caturria wrote:

Is there in fact a marry-go-round somewhere in Dobuita? There's definitely something that sounds like one (it emits happy festival music).


I think you might be hearing the Tomato Convenience Store music:

phpBB [video]


Either that or the Xmas music that plays around the 25th Dec.
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Re: Playing Shenmue blind

Postby Caturria » Wed Nov 18, 2015 11:55 am

It's definitely not the tomato music. It sounds like tipical marry-go-round music. It's kinda odd for winter but that's what it sounds like. I can't say I know what tipical Christmas music in Japan is supposed to sound like but maybe that's what it was (I think I remember hearing it mostly on disks 1 and 2).
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Re: Playing Shenmue blind

Postby Mr357 » Wed Nov 18, 2015 1:01 pm

It probably was the convenience store. Amir linked the music that plays inside, and I'm pretty sure the ambient music that you can hear from outside of it is different.
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Re: Playing Shenmue blind

Postby johnvivant » Wed Nov 18, 2015 1:11 pm

Mr357 wrote: It probably was the convenience store. Amir linked the music that plays inside, and I'm pretty sure the ambient music that you can hear from outside of it is different.


yeah, pretty sure its the tomato mart theme. for some reason it sounds really weird when heard from outside the shop.
in this video you can hear it while ryo is speaking to nozomi
phpBB [video]
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Re: Playing Shenmue blind

Postby Caturria » Wed Nov 18, 2015 3:43 pm

Wow! That is in fact it. I wonder if that's a totally different mix of that theme or if it's just some really bad DSP? I would never have recognized that as being the music that plays inside that store.
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