Accessibility in shmups

This is the main shmups forum. Chat about shmups in here - keep it on-topic please!
Post Reply
User avatar
Eyvah_Ehyeh
Posts: 129
Joined: Sat Apr 10, 2021 5:10 am
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Accessibility in shmups

Post by Eyvah_Ehyeh »

Mostly accessibility in shmups has been discussed (if at all) concerning difficulty, just as this conversation has been had in the broader gaming culture when it came to difficult games and whether they should implement easy modes, or whether that would be a waste of resources that could better be put into the "normal" experience or would even be bad for character or the integrity of the game or the game designers, but here I would like to bring up the question of other types of accessibilities, and I would like to ask you if I'm the only one who really would appreciate if like ALL shmups had a myrriad of graphical options, such as options for turning off the background and replacing it just with black; options for making the protagonist ship shots less intrusive, etc. I mean I've definitely have seen quite a few indie games the last years implementing color blind mode and other options catering to epileptics and just for example people in general who don't enjoy screen shakes - when will it become more common in shmups to create options for players who actually find it detrimental to their experience to have the whole screen filled to the brim with stuff?

Like there's dyslexia, right, and I think I might have something akin to that but applied to "a lot of different stuff happening at the same time" visually. Like I lose track of even where my ship is, and most of the time when I die in shmups, I barely register the reason behind it, and quite often it's because all of the screen becomes one big blur and I stop seeing what's actually going on, what foreground and background, what's enemy projectiles and what's collectible, etc. Am I perhaps more normal than I assume in this? It makes a world of difference for me anyway when a game looks like Parsec47, rRootage, or Noiz2sa, as compared to say caves games, or, the probably worst offenders - Touhou games. I mean god bless their precious hearts and graphics with bullet patterns that make screenshots look like art, but not a single one of them is made for ease of play, and for going easy on my eyes and ability to keep my attention on what matters. I mean there's just so much going on, and to make it EVEN worse, now, in Lunatic Legacy which I just bought, when you graze bullets (which you want, for score), on top of everything, white things shoot out of you when doing that, white things that to me look like white enemy bullets, making it even more difficult to gather my bearings and focus on what I actually find enjoyable - dodging.

Thank you for your time, and input.
User avatar
MathU
Posts: 2172
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2007 11:13 pm
Location: Paranoia

Re: Accessibility in shmups

Post by MathU »

I very much appreciate all the graphical options in Hellsinker, especially the ability to turn off various distracting effects and turn on extra useful ones that tell you more about enemy condition for scoring.
I just wish the latest version with even more cool new graphical options ran properly in Wine.
Of course, that's just an opinion.
Always seeking netplay fans to play emulated arcade games with.
User avatar
BareKnuckleRoo
Posts: 6162
Joined: Mon Oct 03, 2011 4:01 am
Location: Southern Ontario

Re: Accessibility in shmups

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Arcade games are a big influence on the genre; because of the nature of how arcade games worked, accessibility wasn't really a commonplace thing to see. It was a big deal when rapid fire became the norm in shmups a opposed to button mashing!

Screen shaking is annoying, not just from an accessibility standpoint but also because it directly interferes with the gameplay. Fortunately, many games with excessive shaking (Monolith, where certain weapons shake the screen with every shot) let you disable it. However, some still don't (Downwell, which has wildly excessive shaking making it difficult to see threats while shooting). Constant screen shaking during gameplay is frankly annoying and seems to be a relatively recent thing indie games decided to do. It's not something arcade shmup developers did during their games because it would interfere with the dodging.

It's also hard to program stuff like visual accessibility options, depending on how the game is programmed. It is certainly doable though; CAVE's Xbox360 port of Mushihimesama Futari has some funky display options such as a black and white mode.

Not every game is going to necessarily be able to tailor itself to everyone's needs, either. Especially if you're making something that's going to have limited customization due to hardware limitations like a homebrew Game Boy shmup. Accessibility is the sort of thing that's very individual and needs to be customized to different needs, and even games trying to offer accessibility options. Maybe the best option would be a list of games that offer custom display options for this sort of thing? What kind of visual adjustment options should become standard for accessibility? Rolling Gunner is a recent game that offers the option to reduce background brightness or even disable it altogether (but because the background is a way to remember when enemy waves will appear, it likely makes it a lot harder if you disable it entirely).

Physical accessibility also matters. Games offering easy modes or autobomb options are a way of helping with this. Button mashing to fire is also lame and shmups nowadays are generally expected to have auto-fire where your ship fires at an acceptable speed to feel powerful without needing to mash.
Like I lose track of even where my ship is, and most of the time when I die in shmups, I barely register the reason behind it, and quite often it's because all of the screen becomes one big blur and I stop seeing what's actually going on
Out of curiosity, how long have you been actively playing shmups? Part of getting good at the more visually intensive ones is learning to adjust your eyes, learning what to pay attention to and what not to be distracted by, and so on. It's something that can certainly be difficult to do!
User avatar
Eyvah_Ehyeh
Posts: 129
Joined: Sat Apr 10, 2021 5:10 am
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: Accessibility in shmups

Post by Eyvah_Ehyeh »

Roo:

I'd say all of the accessibility issues interfere with gameplay - at least my gameplay. Black and white mode sounds like it would make it even harder to parse the action and separate figure/ground.

"What kind of visual adjustment options should become standard for accessibility?"

To the extent that all of these things are even an issue, I'm curious as to what things might irritate players here, or if they've had similar thoughts, and who knows, in ten years they might find themselves into shmups. ^^

I played shmups like crazy, like all the cave games, psikyo, touhous, basically everything, when I was 15-19, then less and less, and eventually not at all. Only now, when I'm 33, am I considering playing much more again. :)
User avatar
Rastan78
Posts: 1964
Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2005 2:08 am

Re: Accessibility in shmups

Post by Rastan78 »

If you're playing a game with 16 bit style graphics on a large LCD monitor while sitting close, turning on scanlines and/or some kind of smoothing filter might help your eyes to read the graphics and separate foreground from background etc. I usually don't mind playing in sharp pixel HD mode from the couch, but if I try to imagine playing relative screen size and distance to what you have on a 29" monitor Japan style cab, then imagine that in unfiltered HD . . .

IMO things get really garbled up at that point bc you're eyes are seeing what looks like Legos rather than rounded forms with shading. Sort of like standing 10 inches from a Monet painting. So also just distance from the screen being comfortable for you can be something to think about. Play around with more or less contrast etc. A lot of consumer TVs are setup with a garishly bright and bluish image out of the box to stand out in the showroom. That requires toning down the backlight and warming up the color temp to a more natural look.

I do think it's normal for bullet hell games to come across as pretty illegible for most people until you spend enough time with them. Once you understand and can predict/ remember more about what's happening your brain will make sense of it much easier. I had that experience trying to learn GGXrd. At first I could not make out what I was trying to block where and why as everything was moving too fast and obscured by particle effects etc. The more I played and understood the more everything sort of slowed down and became readable. At first it was like listening to a language you don't understand. For some reason it seems like they're speaking at 5x normal speed.

Also games with an absurd amount of onscreen numbers and flashes of light aren't for everyone. I tend to not play these as much and go more old school these days. Maybe try a slower paced series like R-Type, or a middle ground between that and pure bullet hell like Raiden Fighters or an early Psikyo game. And don't feel like you have to play a game where the entire screen is covered in bullets.

I'm not sure about your specific situation, but my advice would be experiment to find a monitor setup and games that are comfortable for your eyes, break a game into manageable chunks that you can learn, give yourself time to improve without expecting too much too soon, and don't be quick to assume that you can't do it.
User avatar
Eyvah_Ehyeh
Posts: 129
Joined: Sat Apr 10, 2021 5:10 am
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: Accessibility in shmups

Post by Eyvah_Ehyeh »

Thanks for your consideration, Rastan. I have experimented some already, and for sure it took some maturity for me to realize that I should play games the way I enjoy them, rather than to prove something, which is why I don't play Dodonpachi anymore, and it isn't my favorite shmup and hasn't been for many years. I find that I do enjoy easy mode in Touhou games more than normal mode, and so I play easy mode. I can be frustrated and angry with myself for not being able to be as good as others, or I can simply enjoy life more. Disease/disability and just time in general has taught me these things the hard way (I suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome since twelve years back). For sure my general state of health contributes to what sort of experience will make my life more enjoyable, and so most of the times I'd rather play Slay the Spire, Into The Breach, or Dominion, for example, because there's less post exertional malaise/better recovery from these kind of activities. CFS:ers tend to have a difficult time with too much stimulation.

Interesting that you mention scanlines, because I tend to enjoy the scanlines look more, but found that actually it irritates my eyes more when sitting close to a screen, and I enjoy sitting close to the screen, in front of the computer, rather than a TV, like the old days when I even had a dedicated 28 inch TV that always stood on the side for that true vert experience. :P

I also gotta add, Team Grybanser Foxs "Zeno" series is the gold standard for now when it comes to customization. 0-100% scanlines, 0-100% background color, customization of enemy bullet color (different for different bullets), speed of camera movement, etc. Now that's really awesome.
User avatar
Lethe
Posts: 368
Joined: Tue Mar 03, 2020 9:49 am

Re: Accessibility in shmups

Post by Lethe »

Ultimately, as with any complex game, you deal with danmaku by simplifying the possibilities, not evaluating all of them. You shouldn't be trying to watch everything on the screen but instead balance your familiarity with how a given pattern works against avoiding the bullets that are actually a threat. I always found it bizarre to hear complaints about Touhou games having too many bullet colors and thus being impossible to parse - different colors usually behave differently, so splitting up the patterns into little digestible chunks is easier than in games with only one or two colors. Perfect Cherry Blossom (Lunatic) Chen is a simple and flawless example of both concepts: the entire fight is evaluating each bullet color in sequence.

Stage routing in these games often comes down to a similar thing. It's beneficial to be in specific areas of the screen at specific timings, so the only bullets that matter are the ones between your current position and your target. If you're familiar enough with the patterns that are going to be a problem, you can macro them or do some other kind of abstract dodge without even looking at the bullets.

I think more playing time will build up your confidence with the screen often being full of crap, moving around aggressively even when it is, and learning what you're supposed to be looking at to simplify the problem and not have to worry about anything else.

Hellsinker is an interesting pick as usual. There was a time when I thought having a variety of config options like that was the difference between a PC game and a console or arcade one. You still don't see many shmups that take such things seriously. Something I don't see mentioned often are Eschatos' green rangefinders - they display the 2D hitboxes of enemies that appear behind other targets or are 3D angled, which is a perfect tool for a pseudo-3D game that does wonky camera shit. Doesn't solve all of its problems but it's a step in the right direction.
User avatar
Eyvah_Ehyeh
Posts: 129
Joined: Sat Apr 10, 2021 5:10 am
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: Accessibility in shmups

Post by Eyvah_Ehyeh »

You bring up good points, Lethe. I do believe it can be more or less difficult to simplify possibilities though, for example when you're supposed to pick up stuff that is green, but some enemy bullets are green as well. In Zenodeath I tried changing all the bullets to aqua color for that reason (and changing my hitbox to "red"), and started thinking along your lines, whether perhaps I was missing something this way simply because it would make it harder to understand quickly what kind of patterns were on screen - that it might be easier to "read" a screen that says "aqua straight shots interspersed with red big shots" than just having brain understanding "aqua=bad" and seeing aqua everywhere. I will approach Touhou games with new eyes now and look more closely at the coloring of bullets to guide me.
User avatar
Verticen
Posts: 87
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 4:57 pm

Re: Accessibility in shmups

Post by Verticen »

Accessibility is often neglected in shmups. This is really unfortunate, because in many cases accessablilitty can be added with simple menu options; like disabling sceen shake and shrapnel effects. Color accessibility is something I would really encourage; adjusting the brightness or hue of bullets and such. This was harder to do in the arcades of course, (though Bakraid sure tried!) but should now be common place. They aren't though with a few exceptions e.g. m2stg and zeroranger and probably hellsinker.

Some games just have graphics that are hard for everyone to see, and you just have to see what you can do with adjusting contrast. I guess you could argue it's part of the challenge in titles like Garegga, but I imagine it's just poor choices in art design more often than not.
Rastan78 wrote: ...So also just distance from the screen being comfortable for you can be something to think about. Play around with more or less contrast etc. A lot of consumer TVs are setup with a garishly bright and bluish image out of the box to stand out in the showroom. That requires toning down the backlight and warming up the color temp to a more natural look.

I do think it's normal for bullet hell games to come across as pretty illegible for most people until you spend enough time with them. Once you understand and can predict/ remember more about what's happening your brain will make sense of it much easier. I had that experience trying to learn GGXrd. At first I could not make out what I was trying to block where and why as everything was moving too fast and obscured by particle effects etc....
Many retail "smart" TVs have motion smoothing turned on by default too. This can in fact make cause bullet patterns and backgrounds to become blurier in the image displayed on the TV screen. You may have better, more responsive visuals by disabling dynamic filtering effects and switching to game mode and such.
User avatar
Elixir
Posts: 5422
Joined: Sun Jun 26, 2005 3:58 am

Re: Accessibility in shmups

Post by Elixir »

I can't play Hellsinker or Strania due to how the games were made, both of them give me motion sickness due to how the camera pans around maze-like stages while it expects you to control an unfixed ship. It's like playing a VR game in first person but not being able to turn your head.

I won't go into the games I've beta tested over the years, but some of them had omissions that should have been really obvious to the dev. I've told countless devs what I expect in a game, the basics being: stage practice, online leaderboards with downloadable replays. But developers should think about supporting monitors over 60hz, Directinput and Xinput support (not just what Unity itself provides), and a higher base resolution while taking notes from previously released games (and for the love of god, when it comes to keybindings, pressing button = map button function to button pressed, not set button to x icon to do y thing).

It's nice when games like Eschatos offer the ability to turn off explosions and stuff like that, but that's pretty rare, accessiblity has never been a strong point in this genre and I don't really see it changing. Ask anyone who has played the recent Touhou 18 demo and they'll probably tell you it's too damn bright.

I'm willing to use Joy2Key, Xpadder and Sizer to get a game running in a way I'm comfortable with, but I'm me, I know what I'm doing and I'm not "random customer #627". It's especially bad with doujin games that have no controller support whatsoever and run in a low base resolution. Most people will just refund a game if it doesn't work properly or simply not play it, they're not going to mess around trying to get it to work. Making a good game is one thing, making a game that runs on people's PCs is another.
I haven't actively browsed/used this forum in many years and it's no longer an accurate representation of me.

I have retired from genre-specific content creation after 13 years, but I'll always love this little genre in my own personal way.
User avatar
davyK
Posts: 657
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2009 9:48 pm
Location: Belfast, Northern Ireland

Re: Accessibility in shmups

Post by davyK »

Controller support is primary. And having the controller config simple using key presses as mentioned above by @Elixir

Tutorial modes and difficulty levels are an obvious topic. But make the difficulty changes noticeable!!! Not every game feels instantly easier at lower levels.

Another idea I thought was good was structural level changes - I once played a platform game on the SNES that truncated levels when set to "easy". I thought that was a good idea as it compelled you to go back and see what you were missing.
User avatar
Eyvah_Ehyeh
Posts: 129
Joined: Sat Apr 10, 2021 5:10 am
Location: Sweden
Contact:

Re: Accessibility in shmups

Post by Eyvah_Ehyeh »

Elixir wrote:It's especially bad with doujin games that have no controller support whatsoever and run in a low base resolution. Most people will just refund a game if it doesn't work properly or simply not play it, they're not going to mess around trying to get it to work. Making a good game is one thing, making a game that runs on people's PCs is another.
I cannot for the life of me understand how come like over ten main games later, Touhou series still plays in the 480x640 resolution. I get wanting to have a distinct graphical legacy, but come on. I for one find that games like Rolling Gunner and Crimzon Clover really add something to my experience by being so high resolution/clean graphically compared to Cave games, as it leads to less strain on my eyes and adds readability. I haven't experimented much with brightness and other screen settings though, so will experiment with that more.

Multiple quick save states like in Ketsui on PS4 is another thing of beauty that more devs should embrace. It just adds so much to the training mode to be able to try different strategies so quickly - otherwise the survival junkie in me takes over and makes every round into a highscore round, rather than a training one.
Post Reply