An overlay for Liquid Hacks 2021, with the goal of giving better accessibility, features, and ways to keep up to date with Team Liquid.
- Project Description
a. Requirements
b. Libraries
c. Features - The Story
a. An Introduction
b. The Idea
c. Our Solution
d. Extra Feauture and Gratitude - Screenshots
The purpose of the project is to help improve accessibility in games while showing their support for Team Liquid. We do this by utilizing the following features:
- Windows
- Java 17+ (If the file is a .jar, .exe should work fine regardless)
- If jar the do
java -jar <JarFile>
- Kotlin stdlib
- Kotlin reflect
- Jetbrains Compose
- KotlinX serialization
- In-game visual of where the sound is coming from, as well as a color code to help indicate what type of sound it is (for example, gunshot vs. walking vs. landing).
- Overlay plugins
- Customizability of position for overlays
- Speech to Text for VC and game audio
- Tutorial for rocket league moves via an overlay
- Team liquipedia information in the app
- Cache information from Liquipedia on our own servers, then fall back to the original if we are offline.
LiquidOverlay is a program made to primarily assist the HoH and Deaf communities worldwide in their gaming journeys and help with ease of use. Upon listening to Steven Spohn's speech at the LiquidHacks opening ceremony, we were able to see how gaming can make a difference in a person's life. Specifically, the lives of those that need assistive technology. We were inspired to make a difference.
The idea started in a Google Doc where we compiled a list of options for the competition to enhance the gaming experience and accessibility. When we researched the accessibility options offered for the competitive FPS game "Valorant", we saw that there were none offered to address this community. Given that this game is heavily reliant on sound, from agents' abilities to footsteps and gunshots, we realized that to be able to play this game competitively, this is a necessary tool. We wanted to level the playing field for the HoH and Deaf community.
How would we accomplish this? We decided to make an overlay that uses visual effects to help deaf people "see" sound. These effects will help show where the sound was last heard in-game for the duration of the noise and will allow the HoH or Deaf player to be on the lookout for enemies. This would facilitate the process and allow them to visually see what the other players are hearing.
This idea grew and we asked ourselves, "Why stop there?" What can we add to make this a tool for even more people? This led our team to look into Speech to Text to be able to translate for people that speak different languages than those used in the game.
Lastly, we wanted to show our appreciation for the LiquidTeam and its players. Without LiquidHacks and the Liquid Teams' support, it may have been difficult to get to the point we have in such a short time. They also opened our eyes to looking for these opportunities to make gaming something everyone can enjoy. For that, we wanted to show our thanks and decided to add a section to our overlay titled "Our Liquid". This section will allow fans to stay up to date on the latest and greatest of their favorite Liquid players, teams, and live streams.
