Will the controls be disability friendly?

azulchico · February 2013

Hey all. I am a disabled gamer. I can't use my right hand to use a keyboard, mouse or other gaming devices anymore. Still, I have been able to play fine on most games. However games that require 1 hand on the mouse and 1 on the keyboard at all times prove difficult.

How are the controls for Neverwinter? Will I be able to play effectively using solely the keyboard? (i.e. can I turn the camera and target enemies with the keyboard?) I don't mind having things to occasionally aim with the keyboard like in World of Warcraft (warlock's rain of fire) or in Guild Wars 2. I prefer to play mostly with the keyboard however.

Anyone know? The game looks really fun so far and I look forward to the beta weekend, but it will really put a damper on my excitement if I won't be able to play at all hehe. Thanks in advance!

zebular · February 2013

I do hope you take advantage of WSR/WSRMT, like I do in all my MMOs! This is very fun to use in Star Trek Online especially! I plan to use it also in Neverwinter Online.

(WSR = Windows Speech Recognition, WSRMT= Windows Speech Recognition Macros Tool)

azulchico · February 2013

You know, I haven't really used speech to augment my gaming. Do you know of a tutorial or site that explains how to set it up?

azulchico · February 2013

I should mention that I have a gaming mouse with 8 buttons on it plus scroll wheel and button. I am able to play Diablo III well enough with this setup. If the controls are customizable enough and there aren't many powers I can bind them to the buttons and would probably do ok.

zebular · February 2013

Check out these great video tutorials:
http://www.schoolfreeware.com/Free_Speech_Recognition_Dictation_Software_For_Windows_Vista_and_Windows_7_Tutorials_and_Download.html

I believe one of the later tutorials gets into the Macro tool specifically. One you learn how to set up macros, its really easy to just plop in a new macro on the fly.

Here's a great wiki to help you locate and use the correct codes to get you macros to emulate the correct keys: http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/wsrmacros/

azulchico · February 2013

Thanks, zeb. I'll check it out after the streams are over

zebular · February 2013

azulchico wrote: »

Thanks, zeb. I'll check it out after the streams are over

Most welcome, double check the links as I have edited them to properly point to where I meant. I acidentally copied the urls from my extra tabs while make sure they were the videos I was thinking of.

Unfortunately, I don't think NWO will be any different then any other MMO or Game really, in that those of us with a disability or impairment must still seek out other available tools to ease our access into them. Thankfully Windows has this build in, save for the Macro Tool, that you will need to go download from Microsoft. The Speech Recognition is built in though on Vista and later systems.

I haven't tried Dragon but from what I hear, WSRMT works better in many cases, especially for gaming. Don't hold me to that though, as every user will have their own opinions.

quorforged · February 2013

Neverwinter is more action oriented than most MMOs; almost shooter-like in its controls. That might pose a more serious hindrance to one handed play than slow-paced, tab-target-based MMOs like WoW.

oldskylancer · February 2013

Cryptic games are usually Xbox controller friendly that being said there are some great modded one hand controllers.

http://benheck.com/Games/Xbox360/controls/1hand/singlehandcontroller.htm

valkyriechosen · February 2013

The game looks pretty dependent on mouse controls, but an 8-button gaming mouse will probably cover most of the needed key binds, if what I can pick out in the videos really is as many onscreen abilities as we can have at one time. I think the voice recognition software is a good idea as well, once it's properly trained to recognize your voice with optimal accuracy. I only know a bit about Dragon due to my job, and it tends to need a lot of fine tuning. I know nothing of the windows accessibility tools.

I expect you'll have to target with the mouse, and use the mouse buttons as your primary control, with voice for some of the less used abilities, which are on longer cooldowns, and thus you won't have to shout stab stab stab, or 1 1 1, repeatedly. I hope the tools you have available will be enough to let you enjoy this game.

azulchico · February 2013

Thanks for all of the helpful replies. I think I'll start training the voice software tonight or tomorrow. From the streams it looks like I'll be able to use the mouse for most everything relating to combat. I went ahead and bought the Guardian pack so I will be able to try the game out this weekend and see how it goes.

oldskylancer, those one handed game controllers look really interesting but I don't know that I could afford that at the moment. It seemed to be several hundred dollars.

I should say I also have a Saitek Cyborg Command Unit which has about 20 buttons laid out like the left hand 1/3 of a keyboard with a small joystick and a couple of buttons where the thumb would rest. I could probably use that too but aiming with the joystick would be difficult I think. We shall see!

azulchico · February 2013

I wanted to report on my success playing the beta this past weekend. I setup control schemes for both my Razer Lachesis/ and my Saitek Cyborg Command Unit.

I don't think either product is made anymore, but Razer and Steel Series seem to have comparable products. There are also other companies that make multi-button gaming mice.

Anyway, I found the joystick control style of the Command Unit to be to difficult for me to aim in combat.

I had some difficulty at first getting the mouse to do what I wanted but I was using the "Click" options for some of the functions that were using Shift+ or Ctrl+ Mouse Button 1 that were assigned to actions based on "Press". They only seemed to activate some of the time. Changing them all to "Press" alleviated this problem.

In the interest of helping other one-handed gamers, here are screenshots of the mouse and game key bind config screens.

Here is the Lachesis configuration. The actions on the left correspond to the buttons shown on the right. The actions Click, Menu, Universal Scrolling, Backward and Forward correspond to buttons 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 in the game. Although the mouse has 9 buttons, buttons higher than 5 don't correspond to buttons in game. Instead you assign them keyboard keys. You can see I have assigned the extra buttons to Tab, Alt, Shift and Control. This allows me to chord buttons for extending their uses.

I realize this control scheme may seem convoluted but it worked great for the time I played. I played a guardian fighter to level 22 and a devout cleric to level 10. I am definitely feeling much better my ability to play the game effectively.

I hope this info helps other gamers.

A note: The Utility Power key bind "Joy11" is from the key binds I did for the Saitek game pad. I could have easily assigned the 11 key on the game pad to whatever the game's default is. And I should have done so to keep the key binds as default as possible for guests who wish to play

Also the Interact / Loot key bind should be "Middle Press". I can't take an updated screenshot as the beta is over.

Will the controls be disability friendly?

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