Gaming: How I play video games.

Hi everyone,

In this post I am going to talk about my favorite hobby, video games. I'll discuss how I play and the various hardware and software I use to make it all possible. Hopefully I can help some disabled gamers who have lost their ability to play.

Hardware and Software

- Tobii Eye Tracker

The Tobii Eye Tracker is what I use to move the cursor around. It's a sensor you attach to the computer monitor and connect to a USB port. The sensor reads your eye movements and translates it to move the cursor. You need to go through your occupational therapist or speech pathologist to get one of these. There are Eye-trackers on Amazon specifically for gaming which you can get but they don't come with the accessibility software.

- Sip-Puff switch

The Sip-Puff switch is used for mouse clicks. Basically you have a straw you put in your mouth and you sip on it to initiate a Left-mouse click and you puff your lips to initiate a Right-click. The Sip-Puff is a lot better than clicking with your thumb. This is another thing you need to go through your occupational therapist or speech pathologist to get. Unfortunately its not something you can get from Amazon.

- ComfortKeys Pro Onscreen Keyboard

This is a program that gives you a fully customizable keyboard on your Windows desktop. You can add or remove buttons to your preferences. I use it to navigate the game menus.

 

Link to the program.

https://www.comfortsoftware.com/on-screen-keyboard/

 

- AltController

This is probably the most important piece of software without this the other equipment is useless. Alt Controller is free Open Source software to help make computer games more accessible. It allows you to map computer inputs like mouse pointer movements to actions like key presses in order to create alternative controls. The program was created by Tim Brogdan. I used to use it only for racing games but in the years since I discovered this program, I've started using it for other kinds of games and have gotten pretty adept at creating profiles. How it works -

The different colored rectangles are the regions that are overlaid on the game/emulator screen. They don't show on the game screen unless you want them there. They don't have to look like this either the regions are fully remappable and you can customize them how ever see fit. How it works is if you move the cursor into the "Walk Forward" box your game character moves forward. If you move it into the "Walk Backward" box they move backward and so on and so fourth. Forward and Back can also be substituted as Accelerate and Brake for driving gamess. You also don't have to just dwell in the region either you can set it up so you have to hold down a switch or mouse button to activate the region. The mouse/switch buttons can also be assigned to different keyboard key presses. You can also create a custom window which acts as a tool/action bar that can be moved anywhere on your desktop and you can assign as many buttons as you want and like the regions the windowis fully customizable. Here's one of mine -

 

 

 

 

If you want to learn more about it please click the link below. You can also email the creator of the program, Tim Brogdan. The email is on the site. 

 

Link to the program.

https://altcontroller.net/

- Emulators

Last but not least, Console Emulators. Even with the AltController software, some PC games aren't going to work especially first-person shooters. I found a way around that by using Emulators, Currently there are working Emulators for every game system up to 7th generation consoles(PS3). Except for Xbox 360 which does work for some games but not as well as the Playstation 3.