Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[CaptainMcClellan]

Not sure if this belongs in the suggestions or in discussion. I was watching an 80's movie called "Sneakers", pretty good movie by the way. Anyways, one of the characters, "Whistler" was using a braille terminal on account of not being able to see. It got me thinking, since Dwarf Fortress is displayed totally in ASCII symbols of a rather limited set, could it be possible to set it up to display to a braille pin-board? ( In the movie, the braille terminal only displayed one line at a time, I'm thinking more like a grid of braille symbols. ) Now, I'm not saying this would be very practical at all, but do you think it's possible to make a Dwarf Fortress machine for use by the blind? If so, do you think that it'd be or could be made to be even somewhat worthwhile for play? I dunno. Discuss how you'd think it'd be possible, whether or not you're crazy enough to attempt it, whether or not you think there are any blind people who would play it, etc.

[612DwarfAvenue]

Considering how there's only limited symbols with color defining a lot of the variation, not to mention the speed the game moves at (or wouldn't be moving at, if you stopped to [k]view every symbol you didn't know the color of), i really don't see how this could be done. Even if you somehow had additional symbols in place of colors, you're talking about... 4080 symbols total. That's the 255 symbols times the 16 colors ingame. Now, obviously not all the symbols use all the colors, but even if we halved it to 2040 or even quartered to 1020 that's still way more characters than is practical.

[CaptainMcClellan]

Considering how there's only limited symbols with color defining a lot of the variation, not to mention the speed the game moves at (or wouldn't be moving at, if you stopped to [k]view every symbol you didn't know the color of), i really don't see how this could be done. Even if you somehow had additional symbols in place of colors, you're talking about... 4080 symbols total. That's the 255 symbols times the 16 colors ingame. Now, obviously not all the symbols use all the colors, but even if we halved it to 2040 or even quartered to 1020 that's still way more characters than is practical.

Ah yes, quite right. The colours. Hmmm, very true what you say. Perhaps we could have a temperature differential to represent the colour? I don't know, that's too complicated, yes?

[GavJ]

Even without colors, braille only has 64 possible characters, you're at 1/4 what you need.

And you really need to be able to just track things without reading every character for it to be a practical game. Imagine if you build your entire fortress flat, but rotated so it goes through z level, and how slow and annoying that would be (and confusing). And you have about half of an idea how much of a mess it would be to try and play with braille.

[JonathanCR]

Not sure if this belongs in the suggestions or in discussion. I was watching an 80's movie called "Sneakers", pretty good movie by the way. Anyways, one of the characters, "Whistler" was using a braille terminal on account of not being able to see. It got me thinking, since Dwarf Fortress is displayed totally in ASCII symbols of a rather limited set, could it be possible to set it up to display to a braille pin-board? ( In the movie, the braille terminal only displayed one line at a time, I'm thinking more like a grid of braille symbols. ) Now, I'm not saying this would be very practical at all, but do you think it's possible to make a Dwarf Fortress machine for use by the blind? If so, do you think that it'd be or could be made to be even somewhat worthwhile for play? I dunno. Discuss how you'd think it'd be possible, whether or not you're crazy enough to attempt it, whether or not you think there are any blind people who would play it, etc.

I love this idea even though it's clearly impossible. Make it waterwheel-powered, and you've got a classic dwarven engineering project right there.

[CaptainMcClellan]

Not sure if this belongs in the suggestions or in discussion. I was watching an 80's movie called "Sneakers", pretty good movie by the way. Anyways, one of the characters, "Whistler" was using a braille terminal on account of not being able to see. It got me thinking, since Dwarf Fortress is displayed totally in ASCII symbols of a rather limited set, could it be possible to set it up to display to a braille pin-board? ( In the movie, the braille terminal only displayed one line at a time, I'm thinking more like a grid of braille symbols. ) Now, I'm not saying this would be very practical at all, but do you think it's possible to make a Dwarf Fortress machine for use by the blind? If so, do you think that it'd be or could be made to be even somewhat worthwhile for play? I dunno. Discuss how you'd think it'd be possible, whether or not you're crazy enough to attempt it, whether or not you think there are any blind people who would play it, etc.

I love this idea even though it's clearly impossible. Make it waterwheel-powered, and you've got a classic dwarven engineering project right there.

XD As hilarious as that is, it's probably possible. I dunno.

[gritstone]

We should try making your avatar available to blind people.

[CaptainMcClellan]

Heh. Yeah... I guess it could best be simulated via sticking some electrical probes inside the blind person's eye-socket and touching it to the optic nerve, whilst pressing the buttons really quickly. However, this would be highly unethical.

At any rate, I'm working on another idea for a blind DF terminal that doesn't use braille, but instead a pin board and provides graphics in the form of raised text and symbols, with a button the bottom which one can press to have a description of the selected item read aloud to them. Keeping up with one's dwarves ( as in more than one at a time ) is still a challenge I haven't figured out the solution to. I also haven't figured out the matter of colour either, though I still think it's possible to use heat differences maybe. A possibly more probable way to go would be to have each character vibrate slightly, with the vibration speed being dependent on colour. However, I'm not thinking that would work too well and haptic feedback would probably wear out the pin-board rather quickly. Hmm...

Also, everyone remember this thread is a hypothetical. At best any solution is going to be somewhat impractical. That shouldn't stop any true Bay12'er, and while it is also in the nature of the Bay12'er to snark, I ask you to please restrain yourselves and take this seriously as a thought exercise or a vague possibility.

[gritstone]

Perhaps you could consider the use of 3D audio as a supplement to touch.

[CaptainMcClellan]

Perhaps you could consider the use of 3D audio as a supplement to touch.

I was thinking that, but I thought echopings for every dwarf on the current Z-level would eventually get too confusing and possibly overwhelming to the player.

[Scoops Novel]

Heat sounds like a way to give an overview of the fort, if you can give it narrow bands. Set your dwarves to warm, wave your hand over the board, and feel the little red dots moving. Like i said though, narrow bands, and I'm not sure your hand could distinguish the individual heat sources. Maybe like this (the image that is)? http://www.iflscience.com/physics/amazing-2d-rubens%E2%80%99-tube-visualizes-sound-plane-fire

This project does sound like something you could easily do for adventure mode, though.

[CaptainMcClellan]

Heat sounds like a way to give an overview of the fort, if you can give it narrow bands. Set your dwarves to warm, wave your hand over the board, and feel the little red dots moving. Like i said though, narrow bands, and I'm not sure your hand could distinguish the individual heat sources. Maybe like this (the image that is)? http://www.iflscience.com/physics/amazing-2d-rubens%E2%80%99-tube-visualizes-sound-plane-fire

This project does sound like something you could easily do for adventure mode, though.

Mmmm... Very interesting concept! And it seems to be the most practical way to keep track of dwarves. You get an A for creativity and my approval. ( For whatever it's worth. XD )

Very true! I wasn't even considering adventure mode. And this same hardware could be used for any number of rogue-likes.

[GavJ]

I think the minimum noticeable spatial resolution by your nerves on heat differences is probably low enough to restrict you to something like a 10x10 to maybe 20x20 grid. Assuming you can make up a mechanism that changes heat accurately and quickly enough, which sounds extraordinarily difficult.

[Scoops Novel]

I think the minimum noticeable spatial resolution by your nerves on heat differences is probably low enough to restrict you to something like a 10x10 to maybe 20x20 grid. Assuming you can make up a mechanism that changes heat accurately and quickly enough, which sounds extraordinarily difficult.

I'm not sure what you mean by the grid limit/think i mean. I'm just thinking of a moving object specific heat tracker, possibly with a moving flame. It wouldn't cover the whole fort at once, you'd have to move your hand for a better view. But yeah, moving to practical territory is likely in the best interests of the thread (sorry OP.)

For adventure mode, how about contextually remapping the symbols, with an emphasis on familiarity? I don't know about the variety of symbols you'd expect on screen at any one time, but if there's something indicating "k" is currently a goblin, and you've spent a lot of time in goblin-ville recently, k should remain a goblin where possible, while a broken lantern you never interact with is keyboard detritus. After returning from a expedition to foreign lands, it could return the symbols to a makeup more or less similar to what it was before you left, though "s" for forge might be preferentially assigned if you've been trying to fix a blade for 6 months. I'm far from certain you could do that with modding however.

[CaptainMcClellan]

I think the minimum noticeable spatial resolution by your nerves on heat differences is probably low enough to restrict you to something like a 10x10 to maybe 20x20 grid. Assuming you can make up a mechanism that changes heat accurately and quickly enough, which sounds extraordinarily difficult.

I'm not sure what you mean by the grid limit/think i mean. I'm just thinking of a moving object specific heat tracker, possibly with a moving flame. It wouldn't cover the whole fort at once, you'd have to move your hand for a better view. But yeah, moving to practical territory is likely in the best interests of the thread (sorry OP.)

For adventure mode, how about contextually remapping the symbols, with an emphasis on familiarity? I don't know about the variety of symbols you'd expect on screen at any one time, but if there's something indicating "k" is currently a goblin, and you've spent a lot of time in goblin-ville recently, k should remain a goblin where possible, while a broken lantern you never interact with is keyboard detritus. After returning from a expedition to foreign lands, it could return the symbols to a makeup more or less similar to what it was before you left, though "s" for forge might be preferentially assigned if you've been trying to fix a blade for 6 months. I'm far from certain you could do that with modding however.

Hmm, I just meant like a small heat producing node not an open flame.

Too complex, would require even more massive reprogramming of the game then would already be necessary. I dunno, maybe though simply to make it practical enough to play.