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[oyog]

Ok.  So I'm chemically inebriated.  You can tell 'cause I'm posting.  Forgive me my misspellings...

How do we translate one sense to another?  How many ways are there to interpret sense of smell, taste, touch in an environment that relies entirely on audio and visual input?

[BoxedLunch]

Well i know things like the Wii where the motion of the controller affects what happens in the game could be considered touch. This probably could be improved over time though, maybe manipulate the weight or feel of the controller, although the former may require it to be connected to something, like a cord that increases resistance based on object weight.

There are games supposedly being made where you take cards and you place them on objects that you wish to use as cover or something along those lines. I remember seeing that on here somewhere, but i wouldn't know where to find it.

[Gimym JIMBERT]

Synesthesie

[C.D Buckmaster]

Colours are an important form of stimuli, you can use them in creative ways to recreate senses.

[tesselode]

I have synesthesia. I can get a vague visual idea of some sounds.

[oyog]

Synesthesie

Games targeting people with synesthesia might actually be pretty interesting, if not incredibly niche.

Thinking about it a little more clearly, I'm not sure there's much reason for using senses aside from sight and sound in games.  Admittedly I should have thought of the force feedback used in some arcade racing games.  But really, how would any of your other senses be useful in a game?  I suppose there's descriptions of smells in adventure games and we can probably leave it at that.

I gotta remember to not post drunk...

[dEnamed]

Scent has been translated into gaming environments to a degree. It's usually done with clouds of color layered atop the actual gaming visuals. I think Discworld Noir did this to a degree. Several other games too although I can't remember too many of them for some reason. Didn't Aliens vs Predator have something like that too? Where enemies would glow brighter if they were wounded because supposedly you could scent their fear?

So scent actually does have a point in game by providing additional information to the player that in some cases might be useful. Pretty obscure as it is though.

Also there's this rather unfortunate accident a while back with Leisure Suit Larry. They shipped the game with some sort of perfumed paper sheet which you had to scratch open when the game told you to, to get the corresponding scent to a scene. Rather unfortunate because the paper also had the property to react with general warmth and the game shipped during summer - so legend has it, several people opened up a box of abysmal stink.

Also there was an adcampaign in germany for some War FPS I think. They also used perfumed paper to advertise their wargame and thought it'd be a great idea to let it scent like burned flesh, rubber and ash. Great idea. No really, who wouldn't want an entire magazine smelling like war nightmares?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை]

describing something in words causes someone to think of it and remember the sensation. for instance, if you write, in dialogue, "this smells like strawberries", the player will remember what those smell like and "sense" it

[oyog]

Scent has been translated into gaming environments to a degree. It's usually done with clouds of color layered atop the actual gaming visuals. I think Discworld Noir did this to a degree. Several other games too although I can't remember too many of them for some reason. Didn't Aliens vs Predator have something like that too? Where enemies would glow brighter if they were wounded because supposedly you could scent their fear?

Yeah, Alien vs Predator occurred to me while I was hiking today and thinking about this more.  I started thinking about the rattlesnake I saw yesterday and wondered how a fps would simulate the heat sensing pits rattlesnakes and other pit vipers use for hunting and figured it would be something like alien or predators vision modes.

In a hypothetical game involving just about any non-ape mammals scent would be far more important than sight.  I imagine the game being presented in black and white and color being used to represent scent marking for territorial purposes or hormones used in communication between members of the same species.  Sound, as well, would have to be used to relay information far more in a game like that than it is in most games.

These are themes that occurred to me years ago in high school while I imagined some kind of ecosystem-sim-mmo.  I never really figured out how it would end up working but it still seems like a cool idea to me.

[:)]

describing something in words causes someone to think of it and remember the sensation. for instance, if you write, in dialogue, "this smells like strawberries", the player will remember what those smell like and "sense" it

This sounds like a DUH thing, but it's very useful.

Being a good wordsmith can cheat you out of a lot of stuff.

Of course it all goes to nothing if your game has no sense of atmosphere. Keep that in mind.