Blindfold Racer

Hi, not a complaint, it's just slightly amusing.
Anyone notice that in the introduction voice file, there's a tiny bit of background noise? Also, in one of the other Voice files, there's a faint siren that can be heard. :) Lol

Hi
I love this game, finally it's the first car racer on the iPhone that is accessible to blind people
I have some ideas for the car sounds.
you can put them as in-app purchases, so that a person buys the car he/she prefers, I do not know if you have already heard about the windows game called Top speed 2.
it was a game for computer which had multiplayer and multi engine
we played with headphones too.
I'd think that it would be more simple to have, swipe up to increase volume, swipe down to decrease
swipe right or swipe left to increase/decrease speed ... to be sinceer I did not understand how to manage speed. i hit with thumbs on the screen but i finished to ... reset the game!
and there is no warning!
Then, please label all buttons so that they can be managed also with voiceover, when you go to settings and so on. Let's tell the truth to ourselves: voiceover IS NEEDED to manage game settings!

Next version will have voice over for settings
In a future version, we'll add left and right swiping for volume or something like that, and up down swiping for reverse vs. forward and something else for faster / slower.
I will create a version with one car sounds optionally and see if people like it, and if so, we can expand that.

Hi again all,
Just wanted to add to the multitude of posts who've said it crashed during level 19 Mine did the same last night. I was able to tap with two fingers to feed the troll and the little voice said that it has the soda and popcorn, so i tapped the screen to resume the game as it told me to, and I heard the trolls growl a few more times then it crashed. I repeated the level and to have the same thing happen at the exact same time.
I did send on an email, just confirming that this happened for me too. :)
Still the best game and can't wait for the upgrades. :)

How can I passed level 29 and level 30?
I keep trying to play those two levels I can't past if you guys know how to play those two levels please give me some hint thanks

Hi, I am think that as a normal car system. For example, we could double finger swipe up to shift up gears, double finger swipe down to shift down. Thanks for considering my idea and if you have more questions please tell me.

Thanks for your hard work first! This is undoubtedly a good start of accessible racing game. :-D

My opinion is about the sound since it's now sort of... in an abstract design. lol
I think sounds of car engines are essential for auditory-navigation racing game, yet the volume can be adjusted or, sounds are simply faded out when cues appear.
As mentioned above, Top Speed could be a reference for engine sounds. Perhaps inaccessible apps like Real Racing do so.
Animal sounds are over-animated too...
Well, I'm a blind realist. :P

Glad to see you all working hard on it. Keep going! Best wishes to you guys!

Hi
Sound's awesome. I can't wait for the new version to come out. Can you please let us know when it is released? Thanks for making these types of games. This is what we need more of. I can't wait for the multi player racing game!

We've just finished launching a website devoted to Blindfold Racer: BlindfoldRacer.com

One of the pages (that's still under development) will be for people to create a private club, and then you and your friends can compete and compare your scores. The other page is devoted to photos of game players. If some of the people who have played the game can get a friend to take a picture of you playing our game, and email it to me: marty (at) kidfriendlysoftware (dot) com - I would really appreciate it. We will add your photo to the BUZZ page. I think our website should be very accessible; please let me know if you encounter any problems.

Hi! I downloaded Blindfold Racer last week, after listening to the podcast advertised earlier in this thread, and I like the game so far. I'm nowhere near completing it yet, as I'm gradually going through the levels: at the time of writing this, I've got as far as the level for practising speeding up and slowing down, I forget the level number now. I've sometimes played this game with my earbuds, and sometimes with my bluetooth headphones: in the latter case, it can sometimes take me a while to do the right gesture to get the game to detect the bluetooth headphones, but after that things work fine, and I've never had any problems with stereo channels being reversed. I have not yet explored the Settings screen of this game, and I've only played on the easy difficulty level so far, but I'm still enjoying the game very much when I play it, in spite of doing badly on some levels and hitting the fence far more often than I should. One thing I will say for this game is, it's one of the rare IOS games where tilting my iPhone works better for me than rotating it to turn things in the right direction.

Now for my views on the suggestions made in the comments here! Much as I feel that having car sounds instead of music would make the game sound a bit more authentic, I don't think the car sounds should be too loud, so that they don't drown out the puzzle and animal noises or the sounds as we get too close to the fence: giving us the choice of either car sounds or music seems like a good idea. Personally, I wouldn't want to use music from my personal library, as I know some songs are louder than others, and the louder ones would probably drown out the game sounds. I personally think of the inbuilt music as being like a rather eccentric car radio which pans the music left or right depending on where I am on the road. Speaking for myself, I would prefer having no gear transmission at all, except perhaps to go into reverse, or at least to have manual gear transmission turned off by default in the easy difficulty level. As for mazes, I'm not very good at those, so I'd probably do badly on maze levels, but that's just me, so I wouldn't fight for mazes not to be included if others want them.

Finally, many thanks to the developer for all the comments and answers to questions posted here.

The new version will detect bluetooth on (regardless of whether or not its paired with a device) and tell you to tap the screen with 2 fingers.

I think part of the problem with the swipe is that its working, but there's about a 5 second delay for things to get going. I'm looking into that as well (so it won't delay after the 2 finger tap).

Hi,
I have to say, at first I didn't like the game very much. The first levels are very repetitive and you can't skip the introductions before every level. As someone mentioned, interrupting the game to tell you what's happened after you have had to listen to a detailed description of the sounds, is not necessary. Also, the game crashed a couple of times and I had to start from level 1 and go through it all again so I nearly gave up ;)
That being said, now that I'm past the training, I love it! Unfortunately, it crashes at level 19 for me too so when it's fixed, I will have many more levels to look forward to!
The settings don't really work for me. I think the best option would be to use VoiceOver for the settings. We can easily turn it on and off.
Also, when I want to increase the speed, even though I tap the right corner, I often hit the "Next Level" button which I didn't even know was there and I have to start the level all over. (Actually, I don't think it needs to be there while you're playing, it can just be visible in between levels).
About car sounds, I would like car sounds but I also very much like the music because you've selected fun and happy tracks. On the other hand, I think sounds should be real sounds so I don't like the drums. I think the best solution would be to have a car sound with three different pitches representing the speed and the music (the car radio) representing your position on the road. I also think the sound for hitting the fense should be changed - what's wrong with a little crash? It would make sense because all other sounds are real.
Thank you for working so hard on an accessible car game. If it would help you improve the game, I personally wouldn't mind paying for the app. Or you could make it free for the first 20 levels or something, that way only people who enjoy the app and spend time playing it would have to pay. Just a suggestion. Keep up the good work!

Sighted people have more trouble with the first few levels, and a lot of the annoyances you found were to accommodate sighted people playing. Blind people whiz through the levels without a second thought, as you did.

While the game is describing the level, you can tap the screen to skip the instructions. If the game is still computing the layout of the track, it won't let you skip, but doesn't tell you one way or the other. What we could do - (let me know) - is to stop speaking when you tap the screen, but continue to beep every few seconds while computing the track, and then start the level - or it could just stop speaking a say - "Please wait a second" - and then begin. It's usually under 5 seconds.

(In a future release, we will download the precomputed track from the website, which would make it much faster. That requires a bunch on inhouse testing, so we will not release that for a few weeks).

Do you think we should ask - at the beginning - a question similar to "are you experienced in audio games"? If they say yes - which I expect most people on this forum are - then we would make the first few tracks go much faster (it used to be that way). If anyone could come up with wording for that question that's appropriate (for both sighted and non-sighted people), that would be great.

In the version after the one that's being submitted to apple tomorrow - we will switch fast/slow to swiping, as I described above.

As to sounds, in a subsequent release, we can let you customize more of the sounds. We used to have real sounds when an animal was hit, but younger kids thought it was sad and mean. I thought it was funny. Can't please everyone, but by making it an settings option (now that we've switched to voice-assist), we can have more flexibility.

Hey, can you please add traphic cars as obsticals too? And an arcade mode and a normal mode. In arcade you can crash as many as you like, or you can have lives, and in the normal mode with one crash the game is over. I'm sorry if it's confusing.

I assume you mean traffic - having to navigate around other cars. We will, but the issue (I may have mentioned it before), is with the current sound package, its impossible to tell if an object is in front of you or behind you. There are 3D sound libraries we can use to emulate 3D sound, but we want to accomplish other things first. The next step is to take the current game, and make it like the game you describe... It will be one very long level, automatically switching from level to level, with no delay, and the game will end as soon as you crash or hit an animal. We may (comments please) allow a SAVE mode to let you continue where you left off, but that might make it too easy. There would definitely be a PAUSE and RESUME ability. The big question is if it should include some of the harder logic levels, or just avoiding obstacles. Got a good name for it? I think it should be different from Blindfold Racer, even if it uses some of the same levels.

Hi,

I would like to ask you a question. Are there any podcasts about Blindfold Racer? Best wishes, André

There's one mentioned at the top: http://www.tffppodcast.com/looking-at-blindfold-racer-a-new-ios-game/
If you are thinking of doing one, we just submitted a new version to the iTunes App Store today; it should be released by Apple in about a week.

Ah cool. I'll look at this thread to see if there's anything I need to or what to coverk and this time I"ll have my wireing corect. *smiles*

Hey I have to pick on myself every once in a while lol!

Give me some examples for logic & navigation puzzles. I was also thinking of making you follow a tune where a sequence of 3 musical notes would be played, and you would have to tap out the sequence on the screen (top/ middle/ bottom). In other words, for example, 8 notes would be played: hi/low/medium/hi/hi/low/hi/medium and you would have to press the screen in the corresponding areas.

That might be a bit complex for us non musicians. I'm a musician, but I don't know if others might like the idea if they don't have an ear for that kind of stuff. Thoughts? I'm thinking big picture here. I'm not saying I don't like it. I do but I would want to make sure I'm not the odd one out here. lol!

I'm not thinking complex here... think of 3 music tones - very low, medium and very high. I'm not a musician either, but the challenge is to simply remember the sequence. As you hear it, you think LOW, LOW, HI, and then you tap bottom, bottom, top. Most people will probably succeed up to 5 or 6. I'll test it out with some musically impaired adults (like me).

I can see where you're coming from with your comment, Charles, as there is not really any racing in this game, but "racer" could refer to the kind of caar you're driving, not necessarily to being in a race. Therefore maybe the puzzles aren't so irrelevant after all. Just my opinion, of course!

Or maybje have it this way. You are driving down the road and you cannot move on the road until you solve a puzzle there. etc etc. Maybe? I'm thinking out loud here.

That's actually what one of the grade schoolers recommeneded... He played some racing games and their would be mini-puzzles to complete a level from time to time.

Hey it can challenge the brain. Any thoughts so far? I'm beginning to like the idea.

If you are interested in participating, email me at marty@kidfriendlysoftware.com and I'll send you the questions and wait for your answers.

What's New in Version 1.6
Fixed problems with troll level, better compatibility with voice assist, setting screen uses voice assist and has more options, fence music controlled via pinching, detection of bluetooth headphones, assorted bug fixes

OOO I suck at the pinch jesture. Should I do my adendum on this or wait? obviousally not tonight. I'm a bit sleepy and I want to make the best quality I can. Lol! Plus, I'm not updated yet. lol!

Please give me feedback on 1.6; I think I addressed all issues emailed to me or mentioned on this forum. I'm working on the Challenge Mode for the next version. I'm looking for a few testers - the first test version should be ready in about 2-3 weeks. I will use Test Flight (thanks Ken) to distribute the test version.

Hello,
I just tried this game. On level 11, I'm unable to change my speed; the game seems to pause and un-pause, but that is it. In addition, avoiding obstacles works as expected, but centering the music seems backward. That is, I can turn left to move left for obstacles or prizes, but when I turn left, the music goes left instead of right. Perhaps I'm missing something obvious? Oh, and the braille mode seems inactive no matter what I try.

I don't mean to be negative - this looks like a great game, and it is the first of its kind to be accessible. Keep up the good work!

I assume you are on an iphone - make sure you tap at the very edge of the screen, not in the middle.
I meant to increase the tolerance of that in this version, but I forgot.
In the next version, we'll let you increase & decrease speed also by swiping.

Hi everyone, I haven't tried pinching yet, so far the game works great but the only disappointment is that once I'm trying to catch the drum, the game crashes. Can anyone else confirm this? Keep up a good job! (It happens on my IPhone 5)

This is the first iPhone game I've played that has really enthralled me, and kept me entertained. I'm just having a couple of issues. First, I also have the problem of level 22 crashing whenever I try to find the drum. After i had it crash several times on that level, I unlocked the rest of the levels because I didn't want to wait for it to be fixed. Now for the second issue. I'm on level 29, and I can't figure out how to honk the horn or make wind. I think I've tried everything... A two finger single tap, two finger double tap, and lots of other taps. At one point, I even shook my phone to see if that would work. Has anybody else figured this out? By the way, I have an iPhone 5c running iOS 7.