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[Button]

OK I just had an idea.

What's the DFhack script you're using to output the symbols to console? If we mod the script with a map of symbol to speakup-readable-string, that would take care of this problem significantly more easily!

I was thinking you wanted to mod the game files so that nothing would use symbols that couldn't be pronounced, which isn't possible - but modding the dfhack script is way more possible. Please direct me to the script and I'll dig in :-).

[zkline]

There isn't any DFHack script at the moment.

The feature I'm using is built into DF—at least on Linux. That's why I think we could do a lot with DFHack.

To do what I'm doing, go to data/init/init.txt, and set Print_Mode to Text.

[Button]

Hm. Mmkay.

Proposal for alpha DFHack for the Blind Script:

• Bind 'print to dfhack' to a key of choice
• When key is pressed, if a cursor is on the screen, DFHack prints out the x-y-z coordinates of the tile, and the contents of the tile, to the DFHack console.
• If no cursor is on the screen, DFHack prints out "No cursor."

You've tested the screen reader on the DFHack console, right? If it updates, will it speak the new lines automatically, or will it read through the whole console?

[zkline]

Yeah, the DFHack console reads just fine. It can be set to read new lines automatically, and I can scroll back to read old ones too, if I need that.

I wonder what else we could use commands in DFHack to do?

[Dirst]

The documentation for DFHack is located at https://github.com/DFHack/dfhack/blob/master/Readme.rst

Maybe someone can come up with a plug-in that allows the player to load a game from the DFHack console.  As it is, you'd have to put a saved game folder under the data/save folder, for example data/save/region1, then launch the game.  The first choice will be to continue playing.  With DFHack set to default settings, you press Enter three times to get into that saved game.  Press k to get a cursor on the screen, and you can then use the "probe" and "cprobe" commands in DFHack to get information about a tile and a selected creature, respectively.  It's unlikely that the cursor will happen to be on a creature, though.

When you are done poking around, issue the "die" command in DFHack to kill the game.

[IndigoFenix]

Has anyone thought of using Soundsense?

Soundsense reads data from the game console and plays sounds in response to certain strings.  DFHack can print data to the console.  Between them, a great deal could be done.  Pretty much everything essential to gameplay, at any rate.

Including flavor text for everything would require either a lot of extra work or an additional program that printed certain console output to a text reader, but that can come later.

[Button]

Has anyone thought of using Soundsense?

Soundsense reads data from the game console and plays sounds in response to certain strings.  DFHack can print data to the console.  Between them, a great deal could be done.  Pretty much everything essential to gameplay, at any rate.

Including flavor text for everything would require either a lot of extra work or an additional program that printed certain console output to a text reader, but that can come later.

Yeah, that was brought up a bit ago, but the level of logging and additional sound design makes it a long-term project.

I'm interested to know if zkline's gotten probe/cprobe to work?

[Scoops Novel]

I recommend copying/moving this to the modding board for extra, code-keen eyeballs (wow. no pun intended xD)

[Urist McVoyager]

I was going to mention Soundsense myself. You could pop over to Suggestions and place one for mouse support with the ability to port whatever's under the cursor to a third party tool. Because one of the major problems you'll face once you get down to actually using the k button is that it won't let you do anything. So you'll have to log how far you went in what direction to reach your destination, then cancel out of k, find the right button in the menu for whatever you're building, and then retrace your steps. If you could use the mouse, and have a reader built into it, then you could use it to autolook and cut out a step.

Even us sighted folks could use that sort of feature.

[riffraffselbow]

To be honest it's hard for me to imagine a sound-based interface that merely reads out the contents of the screen being a practical way to play the game. Given that the screen is a matrix of something on the order of 50x50 symbols, and a typical fortress can easily fill many screens, it's hard to imagine any real management getting done even if the readout found some way of simplifying screens significantly, say 100 symbols per screen (a 25x reduction from our hypothetical 50x50=2500 symbols, no trivial task)

Given the frequency with which experienced players can miss fortress-ending fun creeping around on-screen despite the fact that they can survey an entire screen at once, I'm not sure even the (admittedly much better) solution of reading out whatever's under the mouse cursor at the moment would help that much.

In short, despite the game's primary display being textual glyphs, it's hard for me to imagine programmatically presenting the game as text in a manner that is satisfying and complete while also succinct enough to allow for reasonable rates of play.

[hermes]

I dunno, I have no experience playing anything blind but DF is probably one of the better games to play because the same information is available from more than one place.  The fortress itself is represented on the map but one could also look at a list of workshops and rooms and get a reasonable idea of the layout.  Units are represented on the map but also in the units list.  If this cross-referenced data were presented in an intelligent way I don't see much of a problem with maintaining a mental map of the fort or with keeping track of changes....?

If Button's suggestion were implemented with smart audio outputs for standard DF menus, and some custom audio outputs to present other information that would be good?  I don't know of any Text To Speech libraries that'd be useful.

[Dirst]

There isn't any DFHack script at the moment.

The feature I'm using is built into DF—at least on Linux. That's why I think we could do a lot with DFHack.

To do what I'm doing, go to data/init/init.txt, and set Print_Mode to Text.

For some reason it was not listed as a bugfix, but TEXT print mode works on OSX as of version 0.40.24.  So the next version of DFHack should give you a choice of machines to use.

[lethosor]

For some reason it was not listed as a bugfix, but TEXT print mode works on OSX as of version 0.40.24.

Tentatively fixed text mode error on OSX (lethosor)

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=5677 was also resolved.

[Iamblichos]

The idea that just popped in my head on this would be a haptic force feedback glove that lets the wearer "feel" the layout of the screen by moving the cursor around.  Since the brain automatically stitches the sensations together, you would be able to feel the walls, corridors, etc. and possibly change the feedback types for each tiletype, to tell where the stairs are in relationship to the corridors, rooms, gates, etc.  Combined with a vocal feedback device (like Soundsense) that announced events and read the logs to the player, the only real issue would be menu-heavy information overload moments like the trade interface, diplomat reports, etc.

Combat would require a lot of pausing to reread the screen, but most people play combat with lots of pause time anyway.

This is not a short-term solution.  It would make someone a pile of money who wanted to code it, because it is not just the blind who would find it very useful indeed.  I am not that person, but hopefully someone sees this and grows rich 

[zkline]

SO I don't know if necro-ing threads is okay if I'm the OP But I figured I should do this rather than start a third thread for my ramblings.

I've been bitten by the DF bug again, and have talked to some of the people behind my Linux screen reader. The reason it fails to read a lot of the characters is that they are beyond 255 unicode, which is the maximum it supports.

So I'm now wondering how much of the DF display can be modded to display from 0 to 255? It doesn't matter that CodePage 437 uses those values internally, what seems to matter are the Unicode translations. This is more information than I've had before on why it fails, at any rate.

Also, I've created http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=157486.new#new in hopes of making a much simpler change to make adventure mode more playable.

I don't know how long my enthusiasm will last before I get swept up in the accessibility issues again, but here we are.