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[DrKillPatient]

Orinks, did you get it from bay12games.com/dwarves? That's the official download, I've got that on OSX, Windows 7 and Arch Linux and none of them seem to crash immediately. What version of OSX do you have?

[Orinks]

I'm running OS X 10.7 Lion now.

By the way, does anyone have that telnet server handy that ZKline was testing stuff out on? I'll test stuff and will contribute to this as well.

[zkline]

Hi all,
Long time not posting here, but I'm back I think.  As for the OS X version and text mode, it doesn't seem to be implemented as per the wiki, though it does work on Linux.  That's the primary barrier to extensive testing on my part
As for rivers and water and such, I leave that to  the DF experts around here.  I agree with Orinks as regards mouse support though, as I've previously said. 
Other than that, keep the feedback coming.  I'd love to see this project move forward.
Best,
Zack.

[DrKillPatient]

I'm running OS X 10.7 Lion now.

By the way, does anyone have that telnet server handy that ZKline was testing stuff out on? I'll test stuff and will contribute to this as well.

I don't have Lion myself, but I heard about errors with DF beause of its libraries not being named in the same way as Snow Leopard. I found a fix around the net, though: Try changing the 'df' startup script in the main Dwarf Fortress folder in this way:

The standard DF script has:

export DYLD_FALLBACK_LIBRARY_PATH=${PWD}/libs
export DYLD_FALLBACK_FRAMEWORK_PATH=${PWD}/libs

Which puts the libraries DF ships with right at the end of the search path. Change those to:

export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=${PWD}/libs
export DYLD_FRAMEWORK_PATH=${PWD}/libs

The script can be opened with any general text editor.

[Jurph]

I'm not sure how relevant this is to our pursuit -- in fact, I think it may be the exact converse of what we're looking for -- but there is a charity called Special Effect which specializes in adding alternative interfaces to games.  At a glance it appears they place eye-movement controllers in line with graphics-heavy games.  If they have software developers on staff, or are able to get pro bono time from professional developers, it may be possible that they would donate some time to developing the interface we've outlined here.

zkline, any software dev who undertakes this without a deep understanding of DF is going to need to communicate with you or another DF player to really understand the problem space.  I'm a DF player and I lead a software dev team by day, so I could probably draft a project outline if they wanted to get an idea of the required scope.

Also, Zack, are you musically inclined at all?  I was thinking that information about the coordinates of the cursor could be played as a three-note chord using woodwinds if the coordinates are aboveground, brass if in rock, strings if underground but open space, etc.  Duration, pitch, or volume could stand in for the coordinate's distance from the wagon site.  You wouldn't want to hear it all the time, but it's another piece of input that could be pulled using DFHack and then quickly translated to audio.

[zkline]

Hi Jurph,
I hadn't heard of that charity before, and will have to investigate further.  Thanks for pointing it out. 
As far as the problem space is concerned, an outline would probably be a good idea.  With my limited play experience I'm not sure I'd be the best person to consult with about all the particulars, though I can probably at least make general remarks about what I think needs to be addressed.
In an ideal world, we'd find a software developer who was both intimately familiar with DF and had the time and motivation to attempt an interface like the one we're contemplating.  I don't know what the chances of such a person's reading this are, but i have to put the call out there.  Any takers?
On a more practical note, music is an interesting method of conveying the coordinate information.  I used to play piano and listen to a lot of different musical styles, so chords are a possibility.  I see this as an alternative to the more precise numerical announcements, possibly selectable via a toggle setting of some kind?
Thanks for the ideas and input, Jurph.  They're much appreciated as always.
Best,
Zack.

[Jurph]

The basic process of playing DF is a feedback loop where the player uses a variety of visual and textual stimuli to choose his/her next option.  In order to streamline the process for a blind player, we need to be able to present several families of information to you -- effectively present the situation at hand so you can play proactively, but also present off-screen developments so you can react appropriately.  It's a complex problem.  Here's a sampling of the data structures we would need to aggregate and transmit in a somewhat customized format:

• Event information from the event log(s) - typically a sentence that lives in a text file.  A sighted player gets this by reading it at the bottom of the screen.
• The current view and the identities of everything at that cursor location - this is a fairly complex data structure but it needs to be integrated and presented fairly simply.  A sighted player gets this by glancing at the screen and seeing the floorplan (Z level), scanning the area and observing something at an X,Y pair, and then seeing the icon's shape and color relative to other nearby icons.  The "look" feature displays some/all of this information as well.
• The "Q" menu, from which nearly all workshop tasks are assigned.  A sighted player sees this as a right-side menu, much like the "look" feature, except that the Q menu allows you to take further actions...
• The current menu options - A sighted player reads this from the right-side display panel.
• The fortress Stocks screen, where reader software would need to read the categories, and then when Zack tabbed over to the right, it would need to say, e.g. "Hidden forbidden diorite" or "Melt finely decorated exceptional copper breastplate" on demand.  A sighted player navigates this menu by noting which items are highlighted and interpreting the bracket characters for quality and decoration.
• The fortress kitchen screen, where reader software would need to say "Brew and cook 51 plump helmets ... only brew 20 sun berries ... do not use 8 donkey tallow." as Zack scrolls down the items on the left side.  A sighted player sees the item name and quantity on the left and the brew/cook status on the right.  If these are stored as standing orders, it might be the sort of thing that DF Hack could export to a more friendly format.
• The fortress Health and Justice screens, which I almost never use, are similarly complex.  The military interface is particularly daunting in its depth and complexity.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like it requires a tree diagram of each of the several-dozen menus.  The good news is that by understanding how these interface menus work and really diagramming out their functional flow, we can start to see efficiencies that could become the basis for either a custom UI or Toady's eventual UI overhaul.  The bad news is that even drafting the functional diagrams could take days or weeks of effort.

[Orinks]

Hey all,

It's been a while since I've checked up here, has any progress been made, even there's a whole ton of stuff to do?
Thanks.

[HungryHobo]

also blind,

Most Youtuve videos I've scene

wait... what?I may need this one explained.

I think some of the more exotic approaches involving playing the screen as a sound may have been based on something like "vOICe".
The general idea is that in blind people who have a working visual cortex you can induce a form of artificial synesthesia with (quite)a bit of training.

so for example to get a quick overview of an area you might have it scan the screen and line by line play simple sounds.
perhaps beep for wall, boop for friendly creature, peep for enemy etc.
and allow the user to gradually speed it up as they get used to it.

There's some videos floating around of systems which scan images and "play" them. It's kinda awsome to see someone listen to something which to anyone not used to it sounds like modem noise then sketch a rough outline of the contents of the image that was just played to them.

as mentioned before it'd be one hell of a project though and simple text is probably the way to go.

actually I notice that there's a "Legacy" version as well as the SDL version on the downloads page. is this compatible with screen readers?

[FearfulJesuit]

I think maybe you could do it...if...
What if you had a...like a big sheet of Braille hooked up to the CPU, except it wouldn't be Braille, it'd be DF only, and it would be electronic but also have raised patterns, and if you didn't know what something was you could press it and it'd tell you, and you could move it around to view different parts of the map? With a big pause key and everything? It wouldn't be cheap to manufacture...

But, as others have said, I salute you for trying to play DF. You, sir, are a god among dwarves.

[HungryHobo]

He actually mentioned that. unfortunately

for an 18 character wide reader:"$1,300+.  Larger ones exist, but they are even more expensive and uniformly single-line."

so no 80*40 DF map display in braile

[Pseudo]

What's the typical refresh rate of a braille display?

He actually mentioned that. unfortunately

for an 18 character wide reader:"$1,300+.  Larger ones exist, but they are even more expensive and uniformly single-line."

so no 80*40 DF map display in braile

But for walls and such you wouldn't need very wide. Don't think of it as a braille display - think of it as a 2n*3 dot display - 18 characters would mean 36 dots wide. A 36 wide segment of the map viewed at a time would be workable... especially if you had two modes - one with three dots (that could display 2^3=8 different possibilities), and one with one dot (passable/impassable or type/not type, or whatever...).

So for example: (and pardon me if I translate to braille wrong - it's been a while.)

(Oops - I thought it was an even width. Just ignore the last row please?)
in the one dot type:

Code: [Select]

...     ..
..........
.         
which would get translated to (hopefully... I`m going from memory and Wikipedia here):

Code: [Select]

qh--g

Or in the three dot type (you would be able to read only the first row, and would have to scroll down for the other two...):

Code: [Select]

...     .
...     ..
 . ..... 
which would get translated to (hopefully...):

Code: [Select]

]<--h

There are eight possible types for three-dot representations. One possibility, in order:

Code: [Select]

| |.| |.| |.| |.|
| | |.|.| | |.|.|
| | | | |.|.|.|.|
 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7


• (0) Empty space
• (1) Up stair or ramp
• (2) Creature or object
• (3) Wall
• (4) Floor
• (5) Down stair or ramp
• (6) Interesting wall(ore, Construction (Workshop, et cetera))
• (7) Unexplored

Anyone else have any ideas about this?

Of course this assumes you have some sort of braille display. If you don't, it's sort of moot.

So anyone reading this that has a braille display, can you say the width in characters, the size of a single character (three rows or 4), the encoding that you typically use, and the approximate refresh rate? I doubt this will be usable as anything other then a thought experiment, but it`s worth a try at least...

Fakedit: This might work with sound as well - to get a general idea of something scan through using some sort of dissonant chord (as a major chord blends in with itself too well to pick out easily) left to right with a distinctive sound at the end. Actually, if you were wearing headphones it could pan the sound L-R as well... Hmm...

Neat idea, and I hope I can help... if it works it could be !!awsome!!.

[Pseudo]

Bump?

[Dave1004]

waitwaitwaitwait

what the hell.

How the hell are you reading peoples posts if you're blind? What? Do you navigate the computer using voice commands, or...Wait, what?

*Dave cancels Thinking, interrupted by WTF*

Wat?
Wat?
Wat?
Wat?
I...Don't...Get...IT...

Need coffee...Please explain. Please.

[rarborman]

Hello, hope you don't mind me uselessly gibbering about an idea.

I read this all and I doubt you'd get much out of Dwarf Fortress without at least some way to differentiate what stuff is different from others in a semi-real time way; I'd have to argue that you'd need more then what your aspiring for, Dwarf Fortress needs a special tactile interface for the blind; mostly for the small important differences in the sea of random visual garbage data. An interface for the blind would probably take more away from the innate height map that the visualizers use, like Stonesense, and some sort of haptic board; like a modified version of one of those Pinpression desk toys with lots of tiny actuators, in addition to some programming; Since it probably wouldn't be wise to show anything but height, important objects, and the location of the cursor on it it wouldn't have to be as complex as actually displaying text just differing heights from flat to show walls, slopes, trees, objects, and dwarves; while the rest could be a voice descriptive of what is occupying the same square as the cursor, which would just be outputting the right text into words.

I know I don't have the expertise to make such a thing but if ever it could be done, not only would it work for this but most rogue-likes(and other games as well), and someone here would probably be the one to be able to do it.

Randomly, Rosalyn.