AudioQuake is based on earlier software from AGRIP called “AccessibleQuake”. The previous game's ethos was to prove that accessibility barriers can be lowered and it allowed blind gamers to play singleplayer Quake (or offline multiplayer with computer-generated opponents). AudioQuake's philosophy is to take this idea to its logical extreme and allow blind and vision-impaired players not only access to Quake, but equal access to both the game and the community of Internet play and level design and creation of new modified games that surrounds it. AudioQuake provides this via the following three main features:

At first it may seem obvious that AudioQuake is, well, Quake. This idea, however, has had a profound impact on how the game is designed. At all times, we have tried to maintain the spirit of Quake. You will not find a lot of voice-over information because Quake didn't have it – our accessibility features are designed to use intuitive techniques and sounds so that you are not distracted from playing the game. We have only added the accessibility features necessary to play the game effectively. To keep things fair, we've not allowed AudioQuake players to do anything Quake players can't (within reason).

This design philosophy comes across in the way the accessibility features present themselves in the game. The idea is that an AudioQuake player is no different than a Quake player, but they have in their possession certain “objects” that provide accessibility features such as enemy detection (the EtherScan RADAR), item detection (the Detector 5000) and navigation (the Navigation Helper). Many features can be toggled on or off according to your individual taste and level of sight.

We have tried our best to make it possible for AudioQuake players to use the original Quake maps. Currently there are a number of maps from the game that cam be played by blind players. A series of tutorial maps is provided to help you get used to the game and we hope to provide a range of custom-built accessible maps in the future.

In the end, the main point of AudioQuake is not to prove that video game accessibility is possible, as this has already been established. The main point is that community accessibility is possible – that blind and vision-impaired players can use the exact same software, join Internet games and contribute new maps and modifications, just as the sighted are able to.

The game has been built to be customisable. You can change a great many of the game-play aspects described below quite easily so that they suit your taste and style of play. We are here to cater for a large range of people from the blind to the vision-impaired. Everyone is different and we're confident that you'll get a lot more out of AudioQuake if you customise it.

The process of customisation is described later on. It's not difficult and there is help provided along the way. It is probably a good idea to read the next part and learn how to play the game before you delve in to tweaking it, however!

Everything we have created for the project (code, sounds, tools) is available for you to use, modify and redistribute. The licence we have used for the project, the GNU General Public Licence, permits anyone to do these things as long as they keep the source code to their work available for others, just as we have for you.

Our reasons for making AudioQuake Free are that it should make it easier for people to get hold of and play the game. The most important reason, however, is described in the following section...

We're building not just a game, but a framework with which you can create your own games. This framework currently allows you to alter all aspects of the way the game works and sounds, with level editing planned for the future, as we get closer to the 1.0.0 version number.

With a number of commercial game engines now made Open Source, the possibility of making other titles accessible is a reality. Some even use the Quake engine – Half-Life would make a most amazing and immersive accessible game due to its amazing sounds, AI, story line and massively popular online game modes.

It is possible that later engines such as Quake3 and Unreal could be made accessible even without access to the engine code. We wanted to produce a Free game, which is why we didn't choose these titles. We also thought that Quake would be a good starting point as it marked the dawn of modern game engine design.

We would love to see a community spring up around AudioQuake and make other games based on it. You can use any of our code and sounds. The techniques we've used should be applicable to newer engines, too.

As explained above, AudioQuake is a series of modifications to the game Quake. For AudioQuake to function correctly, you must have Quake. Our website details how you can get hold of the game.

If you're uncertain as to whether you should go to the trouble of getting hold of a copy of Quake, you can try running AudioQuake with the “shareware” version of the game. This is a demonstration version that only includes one of the four “episodes” of the full game. It contains no deathmatch arenas so two game modes (deathmatch and team deathmatch) will not be fully available. It should, however, give you a good idea of if AudioQuake is for you.

The setup program for AudioQuake will give you the option of having the shareware version of Quake automatically downloaded and installed. If you've got the full version of the game on CD, this isn't necessary.

An excellent expansion pack has been created that upgrades many of the sounds in the game to much more high-resolution and visceral levels. You can elect to have this pack installed when you install the game – and it is highly recommended.

The pack was not made by AGRP; more information on mindgrid:audio can be found on its web page.

Currently, binary packages are available for PowerPC and x86 machines. To install the game from one of these packages, simply download it, ensure it is executable and run it. For example:

$ ./AudioQuake-0.3.0_linux-ppc.run
                

Then simply follow the on-screen instructions.

A setup program is provided to ease the task of getting AudioQuake up and running. Because some people may already have some of the speech software AudioQuake requires, we've created three different sizes of setup program. This means that you can download the smallest one you need. The following list should help you decide which size is appropriate for you:

You only need to download one of the setup programs mentioned above. Once you've decided which you need (choose the largest one if you're unsure), you can follow the installation procedure as described below:

You should now be ready to play the game – read on for information on how to do this...

If you're a developer, or a curious user, you may be interested in looking at the source code for AudioQuake. Source packages are provided for both Linux and Windows. Instructions for installing AudioQuake from source are provided in an appendix.

The “game launcher” (described in more detail shortly) is your entry point to AudioQuake. To start the game launcher in Linux, simply run start.pl from the directory where AudioQuake was installed. In Windows you can run the launcher via the Start Menu – Choose Start, Programs, AudioQuake, Start AudioQuake.

The game should now begin talking to you. Please send an e-mail to our tech support address (found on the ContactUs page of our site) if you are having problems and we'll do our best to help you out.

When run AudioQuake for the first time, the game will asess which version of the data files you have available. It will search for the registered Quake data on your hard disk (which is useful if you've purchased the electronic download of the game or have installed it from CD before). If when you installed AudioQuake, you indicated that you have a retail CD (by not having the Shareware episode downloaded for you), this is when you'll be asked to insert the CD so that the data can be installed.

AudioQuake runs in stereo sound and gives far superior performance on headphones than with traditional desktop computer speakers. We strongly recommend the use of headphones as they will let you get the most out of the game.

Many people are now looking into, or own, surround-sound systems. Surround sound is something that we are going to be adding before AudioQuake reaches 1.0.0 (it is the core of the “Implicit Accessibility” feature).

As mentioned above, this program acts as a front-end to AudioQuake. It exists to allow you to adjust many accessibility-related options and review your keybindings before starting the game. The launcher has a spoken menu-based interface. To enter a menu choice simply type the letter that corresponds to your choice and press ENTER.

When you start Quake itself, you'll be presented with the console. Here you can type in commands to start new games, play the tutorial maps or join in a multiplayer match. Instructions on how to do this can be found throughout the rest of the manual. All of the in-game events are self-voicing, including text editing within the console. After you exit the game by typing the “quit” command into the console, the launcher's main menu will re-appear. To fully exit AudioQuake, choose the exit (X) option from the main menu.

In the original Quake, there was a traditional hierarchical menu. This is not present in AudioQuake as the console allows you to do more, is faster to use and is also the way most players choose to interact with the game nowadays, anyway.

To move around, use the arrow keys. Turning is implemented in a familiar way to users of accessible games – pressing the arrow keys snaps the player round a certain number of degrees. By default, the player has a 16-point turn (that is to say each tap of the arrow keys will turn you 22.5 degrees in that direction).

A very important move in Quake is “strafing”. To strafe, hold down ALT and press-and-hold the left or right arrow key. This moves you from side-to-side and helps you avoid incoming enemy fire.

To jump, press SPACE. To jump over a gap in front of you, move up to the gap using the up arrow and press SPACE as you reach the edge. If you need to do a running jump, hold down the SHIFT key as well as the up arrow. Holding down SHIFT makes you run instead of walk.

AudioQuake provides a number of features to help you get around maps. These can all be toggled on/off. Some, but not all of them, are on by default (again, please read the customisation section for more information).

To toggle the whole of the navigation subsystem on/off, use the N key.

The navigation helper described in the previous section has a number of sub-features. They are all disengaged when you toggle the navigation helper off (as they are all linked).

This chapter describes some helpful features that are not tied to, or part of, the main navigation helper.

To toggle monster detection on/off, press R. This acts as a kind of RADAR that lets you know where enemies are. The faster the beeps, the nearer the monster. The sound is actually two close-together beeps; the pitch difference between which tells you where (vertically) the monster is with respect to you. For example, if the monster is lower or higher than you. If the monster is roughly on the same level as you, the beeps will both have the same pitch.

If there is a hazard in front of you – some kind of ledge/drop – you'll be told about it by the navigation helper. If you want to try and jump over the pit, you can use this alternative ESR mode to help you do so. Pressing the R key again when you have a drop in front of you will make the ESR lock onto it instead of enemies. It automatically falls back to detecting enemies when you lose the lock on the pit (by jumping over it successfully, falling in or just turning and facing another way).

If it can't find a pit, it will just turn the ESR off.

The ESR is capable of detecting the nearest monster, enemy (player or bot not on your team) and friend (player or bot team member) to the player. It uses a different sound to indicate which is which, so that you know not to fire at team mates (vertical level information, as described for monsters above, is provided for all three types of detection).

By default, the T key toggles if monsters are detected, Y toggles enemy detection and U enables/disables the announcement of friends. All three features are enabled by default.

You have at your disposal a device called the Detector 5000 (or the “D5k” for short). It will help you find a number of things that'll enhance your chances of survival. The items it looks for include health, ammo, armour, weapons and keys.

If the D5k finds more than one item in your vicinity, it will space out the announcement of the items so that you can get a better fix on where they are.

Item detection can pick up ammo, weapons, armour and health. You can toggle it with the D key.

To fire, press CTRL.

To switch weapons, use the keys 1-8 on they keyboard. You won't start off with more than an Axe (1) and a Shotgun (2). By default, you'll be using the gun at the start of any game.

From 1 to 8, the weapons available in Quake are: Axe, Shotgun, Double-Barrelled Shotgun, Nailgun, Super Nailgun, Grenade Launcher (grenades are often affectionately known as pineapples), Rocket Launcher (the “boomstick”) and the Lightning Gun. There are four different types of ammo you can pick up: Shells, Nails, Rockets and Cells (the grenade launcher uses Rocket ammo).

Some weapons are more effective against certain types of enemy than others – you'll begin to get an idea of how your implements of destruction are working as you play the game. There are also a number of special moves you can do with some of the weapons. Again, you'll begin to learn techniques as you play but to help you on your way, here are the names of some of the most interesting ones are the “rocket jump” and the “pineapple jump”. Beware of mixing liquids and electricity, too...

If you run out of ammo, you'll automatically switch to the next best weapon for which you do have enough for at least 1 shot. For more information on weapons, please consult Quake's MANUAL.txt file.

You're going to need to know when it's time to find some health or when your favourite weapon is running low on ammo.

To be given a verbal report on your health and armour levels, press 9. Your current level of health will be announced, along with how many armour points you have. There are three types of armour in the game, each saves a certain fraction of the damage that would otherwise take health points off you. This fraction is also read out.

Unless you have a special power-up, your health will never get above 100 points. Even if you do find a MegaHealth power-up, your health can't go over 200 points and it'll gradually decay back down to 100 over time.

To get a rundown of your ammo counts, press 0. The quantity of each ammo type that you posses will be announced.

When you've come to the end of a map, the game will pause for a few moments. To move on, press SPACE (you'll only be able to do this after a few seconds).

A number of things may cause a map to end. This largely depends on what game mode you're playing in and could include such events as: You've reached a slipgate or exit, one of your team has reached a slipgate or exit, the timelimit has been reached or the fraglimit has been reached. The meaning of these events will become clear after you've read the next part of the manual.

One of Quake's strengths is that it allows total control over which keys do what. AudioQuake does not take any of this control away from you (please read the Customising AudioQuake section for details) but it does, by default, limit the number of defined keys. Originally, there were many ways to perform some game actions (like jumping or shooting). We have disabled a lot of the keys so that the likelihood of pressing a key you don't mean to and getting yourself into an unknown situation because of it is reduced.

Some extra keys you may be interested in are:

The skill setting has been touched on above. By default, if you start AudioQuake from the launcher and tell it to jump straight in to a certain episode, the medium (“normal”) difficulty level will be used. If you are new to the game, it can be quite hard. To switch to the “easy” skill level, bring down the console and type:

skill 0
                

This will set the game to a slightly less unfair skill level. Some monsters will disappear and other monsters' attacks will not harm you as much.

As you progress through the game and collect bigger, badder weapons and the almighty runes, you'll want to preserve your progress. To save and load games, use the console. Here are the commands you'll need to know about:

The classic multiplayer game mode. No monsters to get in the way. No exit. An arena designed solely for combat between players.

In a deathmatch game, you have to move around the deathmatch arena (a special map designed to make this type of play more enjoyable through being easy to navigate) and find other players. You must frag (blow to bits) any players you do find along the way.

This mode is similar to the last one but has one main difference: You are not on your own – you can have an epic battle in which all the players on your team are against all the players/bots on the enemy team!

Team Deathmatch games are started in the same way as regular deathmatches and can have frag and time limits, except that the fraglimit is the number of frags that a team must score to win.

To actively participate in team deathmatches, you must set your “teamname” the same as a group of other players on the map. You can do this using the following console command:

team red
                

The above example would put you on the “red” team.

This is probably the most interesting game mode and has been the focus of many a LAN party. In this mode, you play the singleplayer campaign with the help of other players or bots. You can all work together against the monsters. Coupled with eh chat facilities on offer, this gametype can be very enjoyable.

To start a deathmatch game, bring down the console and type:

deathmatch mode
                

where mode is a number that corresponds to the variation on the weapon/item rules as described in the last chapter. For example, if you wanted to play the most popular type of deathmatch, you'd specify number one.

The above command simply tells the game that when you next start a map, you'll want to play it in deathmatch. You now need to chose a map to play on. In the full version of Quake (not shareware), there are 6 deathmatch maps. They are named “dm1” to “dm6”. AudioQuake provides a number of extra maps. Use the “map” console command to load one of them (just as with single-player).

map agdm01
                

When you're in the map, you will notice that there is not much going on. To create (“spawn”) a bot, press the comma or dot key on your keyboard. An enemy will be provided for you to play with. When either of you is fragged, you'll “respawn” at a random teleporter in the map, ready to resume the game – but with a slightly decreased frag count (your score).

Please note that the bots act like players; they use all the weapons and navigate the map on their own. In other words, they're tough!

fraglimit frags
                    

timelimit 10
                        

Team Deathmatch games are started in the same way as regular deathmatches and can have frag and time limits. The previous section explains how to set these up. The important thing to note about starting team deathmatches is that the teamplay mode must be set before you open the map and start spawning bots. This can be achieved easily via the console. For example:

teamplay 1
                

You can of course replace the number one above with the number corresponding to the teamplay rules you prefer (described in the previous chapter) or specify a zero to disable teamplay (useful when returning to a singleplayer game afterwards).

Once you're in the game, you can spawn friendly bots with the comma key and enemy bots with the dot key. You can also call bots to your aid with the forward slash key. When they hear your call, they'll let you know and try to get to you. If they make it, they'll let you know when they arrive, too. When they get to your side, they'll start looking for enemies again.

To start a “co-op” game, you need to type the following commands into the console:

deathmatch 0
teamplay mode
coop 1
                

Deathmatch mode needs to be forcibly disabled to allow access to the co-op gametype. The coop command toggles the game into co-operative mode and mode in the teamplay command signifies that you can, as with team deathmatch, choose which teamplay rules you'd like to use. After the above commands have been entered, you can start the map you wish to play. For example:

map e1m1
                

As with team deathmatch practice games, you can spawn friendly bots with the comma key and enemy bots with the dot key. You can still call bots to your aid with the forward slash key. When they hear your call, they'll let you know and try to get to you. If they make it, they'll let you know when they arrive, too. When they get to your side, they'll start looking for enemies again.

When you play any of the gametypes (singleplayer or practice matches) mentioned above, it is your computer that controls all aspects of the game – from the generation of game sounds to the behaviour of the monsters or bots you're playing the game with. When you play a game over the Internet, this isn't the case. What happens is that your computer connects to another computer which acts as a server. The server manages connections from all of the players and controls most game-related things (such as keeping track of players' scores and movements round a map). Your computer still takes care of dealing with your input and playing back sounds, but it doesn't control the match being played in any way.

So, to join an Internet game, you need to connect to a server that other people may also connect to. There are many QuakeWorld servers out there but most don't provide the accessibility features that AudioQuake does. You'll need to connect to a specific AudioQuake server in order to play the game.

When you install AudioQuake, your player name will be set to “AGRIPUser”. Before you join a multiplayer game, it is a very good idea to change this to something else, so that your friends can recognise you (and so that everyone has a different name).

To change your name, you can use the following console command:

name yourname
                

Most characters are acceptable in player names. If you include any carets in your name, they won't be displayed as they are a signal to Quake that you want the next character in your name to be displayed with a highlight.

If you're going to be playing a team deathmatch game, you'll probably want to give yourself a team (maybe the collective name that you and your friends play under, or perhaps a colour). You can do this with the team, as described in the first chapter of this part.

There are two other personalisations you can make regarding your appearance to others in multiplayer games. These are the colour of your character's uniform within the game. The console commands topcolor and bottomcolor can be used to change these. We mention them here for completeness.

Now you've made yourself a little more unique in the virtual world, it is time to join a game...

We have set up a few game servers under the AGRIP banner (details can be found in an appendix), but you're certainly not restricted to playing AudioQuake on one of these – in fact, we encourage you to seek out other servers on the Internet to play on and/or to set up a server of your own. This can be especially rewarding if you know a few people that you'd like to play the game with. Anyone who sets up a server (covered later in the manual) can have it automatically advertised to every other AudioQuake player, via the AGRIP master server. This keeps a list of all active AudioQuake game servers on the Internet. By using a program that searches this list (known as a server browser), you can find a game to join. As server admins are free to chose any gametype and selection of maps that their server runs, you should be able to find a match that suits your tastes.

To search for games over the whole Internet, you can use either the AudioQuake Stats and Servers site, or a command-line program called QStat. This is a very powerful, popular and accessible tool, which allows you fine control over your searches. For more information on using QStat, visit it's web site at http://www.qstat.org/. Information on the AudioQuake Stats and Servers web site can be found in the next chapter.

When you've found a server to join, you can connect to it from within AudioQuake by issuing the connect command, specifying the IP address or host name of the server. For example, the following two commands both connect to the primary AGRIP server:

connect agrip.org.uk
connect 195.137.71.106
                

Remember to seek out and join servers other than the official AGRIP ones, especially if they are geographically closer to you, as they'll offer better performance. This will also encourage others to run third-party servers, thus spreading the AudioQuake work network.

When you're in the game, you may notice some additional messages being announced, other than the usual item/powerup-related ones. These are chat messages that are being sent from one player to the other players on the server. You can send a chat message too; in the console, issue:

say message
                

This will broadcast a message to all other players. Your message can contain spaces and there is no requirement to surround it in quotes. If you only want to send a message to your teammates (perhaps because it reveals where you are or some other tactical information), you can use the following command:

say_team message
                

There is not much to say specifically about this stage, other than have fun! Try to be considerate of your teammates, if you're playing a team gametype. If not, then friendly competition is always good!

There are three main ways to leave a game:

When you've left a game, you'll be back at the console. From here you can quit AudioQuake, or start a new single or multiplayer game.

The Stats and Servers website is part of the online community surrounding AudioQuake. As well as the community resources on the AGRIP Wiki, the Stats and Servers site exists to help you get more out of the game. By visiting the site, you can:

When you visit the stats and servers site, you're presented with a number of choices on where to go. The main page lists the sections you can visit, providing a brief description of each one. The most important areas of the site fall under a few categories:

You can skip to any section at any time by using the global navigation bar, which is present on most pages in the site.

To get your stats included, all you need to do is play on any of the public servers that advertise themselves as logging stats. Most servers do this; some may not (because they're aimed at providing practice for new players, for example).

Quake is a “client-server” game. This means that at any time, to play the game you need a client and a server. The client is the program that the user interacts with, that outputs audio/video and captures input (to be used when moving the player or typing in the console). The server runs the game itself. It controls the environment (lifts, buttons) and items in it (powerups, monsters) and keeps track of scoring in multiplayer games. If you're playing a singleplayer game or practice match on your own computer, the client and the server are both running on your computer. If you're playing an Internet multiplayer game, the server could be hundreds of miles away.

When setting up a server, the most fundamental decision is what type of server to set up. Dedicated servers are programs that only perform the task of running the game. They do not output any audio/video and don't allow you to play a game on them directly. Listen servers, however, act as the singleplayer and offline game modes do – except that they allow connections from other players on the Internet. From your point-of-view, this makes listen servers “feel” very similar to the on or offline games you've been accustomed to playing up until now.

This topic and many others is dealt with on the Stats and Servers site (in the FAQ section) – be sure to check it out for the latest information.

You can do all sorts of things with the server by interacting with its console when you start it. Tasks such as setting the gametype and map, getting status and kicking players (as well as chatting to the players from outside) can be done via the server's console directly. However, this is not always practical (you may be in the game yourself when you want to change the map, for example). In this case, you can use the “remote console” admin feature. It is beyond the scope of this manual to explain, but you can find out a lot about it and many other features by using the approach detailed in Appendix B, Finding out More – The Web is Your Friend!.

It is recommended that you run a dedicated server on Linux, using the screen program. This allows you to safely detatch from the machine without stopping the server. Furthermore, it is recommended that you copy the standard output of the server to a log file (this will help us fix bugs, should they arise).

It is very important that you configure your server properly before running it. To do this you will need to edit the server.cfg file, which lives in the agrip/ subdirectory of your AudioQuake installation. Please use a plain text editor on the file. There are many comments in the file that explain how to set things up, so they will not be reiterated here.

This section does, however, explain some of the more complex parts of the configuration.

localinfo A B
localinfo B C
localinfo C D
localinfo D A
                    

You'll find yourself needing to carry out a number of tasks as an admin. To get the best information on how to do these jobs, please consult Appendix B, Finding out More – The Web is Your Friend!. Also, please join the mailing list for server admins. We use it to provide a lot of useful information and arrange regular matches.

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This section controls which objects and which features of these objects, are to be activated when the game starts.

If you use the toggle keys to turn things on/off and then complete a map, the settings you had at the end of the last one will be carried on to the new map.

This part of the file allows you to configure things like the detection distance, ESR and D5k field of view and if they are to make sounds when an item or enemy is outside of your field of view. You can specify the default player turning angle here, too (this is the angle the player turns when you press the left or right arrow key).

Here you can control how loud various sounds AudioQuake makes actually are. They act as “throttles” that AudioQuake will apply before it makes sounds. You can control the volume of all of the AudioQuake objects.

Key bindings just tell the game what you want to happen when you press a certain key on the keyboard. This section allows you to redefine which keys cause which things to happen in the game (such as toggling devices on/off or using the compass).

Bindings work by specifying a key and then the command that key is meant to activate. In Quake, these commands can be quite cryptic so we have added “aliases” for them. These aliases are much more readable names for the in-game commands and should make configuring AudioQuake much easier for you.

As mentioned above, aliases exist to provide human-readable equivalents to the commands Quake actually uses. You don't need to edit this section – it is maintained by us for each release. It only exists to make configuration easier.

This is not strictly customising the launcher, but does have a great effect on how AudioQuake sounds if you're using the SAPI interface. Your default voice is set in the “Speech” Control Panel applet and it is this voice that the SAPI interface uses to talk to you. Here are the steps you would need to follow to change the default voice:

The next sections in this chapter cover options you set inside the launcher itself. This section explains the general procedure for editing launcher settings.

The launcher is actually a plain text file and can be easily edited with your favourite text editor (such as vim or notepad). In this file, there are a number of lines you can edit to change the way speech output works. They've been grouped together into a configuration section. At the time of writing, this section starts on line 46 of the start.pl file (there are comments in the file that explain where it starts and ends).

my $win32_talker = '|ag_say.exe';
                    

my $win32_talker = '>COM1:';
                    

If you're using Linux, you might want to customise which software synthesiser AudioQuake should use. Do this by editing the “$nix_talker” variable. Examples of possible TTS engines are given in the script.

It is not expected that Windows users would need to use a different TTS program but it is as simple as altering the “$win32_talker” variable.

If you have a hardware speech synthesiser or Braille display attached to your computer's serial port, you can set up the launcher to work with it instead of the SAPI interface.

To set up a serial speech synthesiser or Braille display, you will need to change the following variables:

Currently there is only one other launcher option. This controls if the launcher prints out anything on the console/screen it was started from. It's on by default.

The variable is called “$print_to_stdout_flag” and there are comments below it that explain why you may or may not want to alter it.