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[lethosor]

Future of the fortress blud

Or the suggestions forum. Future of the Fortress isn't really intended for suggestions.

Anyway, disabling the blinking characters (which I assume are multiple creatures/objects on a tile or creatures with some sort of status indicator) is something Toady would probably have to do.

[mifki]

Anyway, disabling the blinking characters (which I assume are multiple creatures/objects on a tile or creatures with some sort of status indicator) is something Toady would probably have to do.

There must be a counter somewhere which the rendering code uses for blinking, so we could reset it, but I couldn't find it.

[lethosor]

Anyway, disabling the blinking characters (which I assume are multiple creatures/objects on a tile or creatures with some sort of status indicator) is something Toady would probably have to do.

There must be a counter somewhere which the rendering code uses for blinking, so we could reset it, but I couldn't find it.

I was thinking about that. For all I know, though, it could be something that's used in several places that wouldn't be safe to reset (e.g. SDL_GetTicks()).

[zkline]

Would SDL_getticks be useful in the  Curses display mode? I don't know much about how that API works.

[lethosor]

Oh, true, that probably wouldn't work. It does seem that the flashing icons get slower as the game gets slower, at least in fortress mode. I know there's a counter for the number of ticks that have passed, which some DFHack tools use, so it's possible that Toady uses that too.

[mifki]

Oh, true, that probably wouldn't work. It does seem that the flashing icons get slower as the game gets slower, at least in fortress mode. I know there's a counter for the number of ticks that have passed, which some DFHack tools use, so it's possible that Toady uses that too.

I tried all fields in enabler and gps, nothing worked, which is strange.

[IndigoFenix]

Hey, this is still going.

This should be quite doable.  There is already a utility (soundsense) that reads from the game log as stuff goes into it.  And DFHack can read anything in the game and output anything to the log.  So if someone makes a utility similar to soundsense that reads the log to a text-to-speech program, a lua script could handle the rest.

I'm pretty handy with lua, so I might work with that part if I get the time.  It's a shame this isn't in the modding forum, since this would definitely be a modding project.

For adventure mode, this should be quite playable.  Fort mode is a bit iffy, since there's so much going on at any given moment and a lot is dependent on precise positions and pathing, but it might be abstracted to a certain degree.

And given the popularity of Drunk Fortress, I can see Blind Fortress becoming a thing even among sighted players.  DF players have a thing for additional challenge and novelty.

[Grand Sage]

I volunteer to try and get Toady this way!

Do you want me to make a modding thread for this too? I havn't worked with DF mods (or any mods) before, so i cant write it, but if you tell me what kind of mod or program we need Id be happy to start a discussion about it, maybe someone will be interested.

EDIT: as i can see TheBiggerFish has already send him this way.

[zkline]

Thanks all.

I was checking this out of interest, and it seems I've been on here in some form or other since at least 2011. It would be nice to be able to play on my own after six years or so

[Grand Sage]

Allright everyone, Toady made a statement on this matter in his latest future of the fortress reply. for your convenience I have included a copy below:

The latest discussion about blinking characters isn't as straightforward as a bit-flip -- there are a lot of interleaved timers and so forth, so it's a mess to turn it on and off, and it's also not simple to use background to convey a state like a creature on a ramp (since background colors mean different things already and we'd need to sort that out somehow).  There'll be complications like this, and there might not be time to rewrite things a certain way, but I'm up for suggestions or places where I can help on my end (as opposed to mods etc.).

[zkline]

I'm afraid it's hard to make suggestions without knowing more about the internals. At the moment, my experience is limited to the "real," text-mode provided by the Linux console and my screen reader. The blinking is annoying enough that I can't really spend a lot of time in either game mode without  feeling like I'm going to go insane

[Lightman]

zkline, I sent you a PM but perhaps you haven't read it. I think I can fix the blinking problem for you but I need to know a little about your setup.

[Waterline]

This thread inspired me into studying the concept of advanced interactive book.
In other words - imagine DF generation and interaction powers fitted into a text only interface that is even optimized for TTS or sort of.
When you can avoid all the tiles and just describe the location in general while maintaining great level of details.
Which, obviously, is a great load of work, but I almost can see it say, for adventure mode. Since I am that kind of player in first place.

Edit: though not saying I can see into how to make it with DF. Was rather speaking about start-with-scratch project.

[mikekchar]

Sorry for responding so late.  I forgot about this thread.  As for the flashing text in ncurses mode, I think this is probably fixable without modding DF.  Basically, ncurses interfaces to the terminal using escape sequences.  In Un*x (including Linux), there are many different protocols for the terminals, and you can specify the protocol using your TERM environment variable -- of course the terminal application you use has to support the protocol.

So, having said all that, different terminal applications (and protocols) have different capabilities.  Flashing is one of those capabilities.  If you claim that your terminal application can not support flashing, then ncurses will not send you the escape sequence for flashing characters.  To do this you have to set up a custom terminfo entry for your terminal (type "man terminfo" into the console for all the gruesome details).

I've never actually played with this stuff, but I'm quite confident I could get it to work, so feel free to reply to this if you would like me to give it a go.  I'm actually just out the door for a trip to Canada, but I will probably have some time starting this weekend.

[zkline]

Sorry for responding so late.  I forgot about this thread.  As for the flashing text in ncurses mode, I think this is probably fixable without modding DF.  Basically, ncurses interfaces to the terminal using escape sequences.  In Un*x (including Linux), there are many different protocols for the terminals, and you can specify the protocol using your TERM environment variable -- of course the terminal application you use has to support the protocol.

So, having said all that, different terminal applications (and protocols) have different capabilities.  Flashing is one of those capabilities.  If you claim that your terminal application can not support flashing, then ncurses will not send you the escape sequence for flashing characters.  To do this you have to set up a custom terminfo entry for your terminal (type "man terminfo" into the console for all the gruesome details).

I've never actually played with this stuff, but I'm quite confident I could get it to work, so feel free to reply to this if you would like me to give it a go.  I'm actually just out the door for a trip to Canada, but I will probably have some time starting this weekend.

Enjoy Canada. This sounds like a promising idea, I use the default Linux terminal type normally, of course. The idea of writing a custom terminfo entry never occured to me, I wonder if Curses would throw a fit?