Print

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

[NightS]

Well, i just thought, if you have to get all this information by hearing it, you WILL need to lower the game FPS so you can process the information (especially in battles), or, pause a lot.
I've been reading this thread for quite a while and i wanted to help, but i didn't know how. I hope this does .

[funymunky]

This thread is inspiring. Usually when I'm unable to do something I just give up. But you're blind, and still find ways to play video games and communicate on the forum. That is just amazing to me. I hope you find a way to play this game enjoyably.

[Dae]

A programming teacher at my school is blind, yet he plays World of Warcraft.
Moreover, witnessing him checking up our projects is amazing to say the least. He prints the whole code in braille, which was in average 3000 to 6000 lines of code, reads the whole of it and THEN points out where we could have done better, some part that isn't necessary, etc. And he did that for 12 projects that day.

From then on, I thought to myself I wouldn't underestimate blind people, but you proved me wrong again. I wish I had time to help you out on this, and I do hope some day we'll read from you the stories from your fortress. Good luck

[Cheveux]

A programming teacher at my school is blind, yet he plays World of Warcraft.
Moreover, witnessing him checking up our projects is amazing to say the least. He prints the whole code in braille, which was in average 3000 to 6000 lines of code, reads the whole of it and THEN points out where we could have done better, some part that isn't necessary, etc. And he did that for 12 projects that day.

As a programming student, I'm forced to say that your teacher must be treated as a god!


This thread is really inspiring, I'm really curious about the results of the experiments that could come out of it.

[Lordinquisitor]

Alright, zkline is certainly one of the dwarfiest people around here. Someday we`ll have a legendary blind dwarf fortress Sensei. Reminds me of the story of that one blind dwarven marksman.. But with less fail, i think.

Can`t really contribute here; But i hope that the other guys find a way to help you.

[Jurph]

Of course, location information is missing from these, which I'd have to find somehow.

Oh!  No, the reason I focused on the gamelog is because it is a record of everything that goes through the Announcements window.  The announcements window ("a" from the main menu) allows you to scroll through the gamelog and hit "z" to zoom to the relevant location.  So the gameplay I'm imagining for you is some sort of screen-reader piped to the gamelog, and you leave the main Dwarf Fortress window open and play as usual.  When you hear an announcement that gets your attention, hit "a" to bring up the announcements and "z" to quickly zoom to the correct location.

I foresee a small problem with race conditions, where several things happen at once and you end up zooming to the wrong place, but I think there are ways we can fix that too.  Reduce announcements for job cancellations, for example, and keep combat in the combat log, and use Soundsense to augment it so you hear a sound cue and immediately hit A Z while the announcement reads you the details.

[eccentric]

I grew up playing text based games like Zork so having verbose game log function though DFHack would be cool.

Current (boring alert);
"You have struck an expansive cavern underground!"

Verbose (using a data dump from DFHack);
"Your miners have struck and expansive cavern, Tower-cap and Fungiwood can be seen growing on the damp cavern floor. Walls of granite with veins of galena and clusters of rutile can be seen in the distance to the East. There is a murky pool in the South West. Strange sounds of movement can be faintly heard in the distance."

The verbose reading for the current displayed screen might read;
"A thick forested hillside with dense vegetation slopes down to the West. A river can be seen below. Walls of Siltstone climb to the North."

It looks like DFHack can read temperature so "-it's a cold mid-winter morning all the ponds and rivers are frozen solid, it begins to snow."

I understand these are not very descriptive in they don't give exact locations. But really most of the time I don't know where my guys are and what they are doing. Only when I need someone do I go find them only to see them traped because they placed a floodgate on the exit side silly little guy.

I wonder would the mouse be better or would you rather use keyboard exclusively?

I'm new to DF myself I've quit 2x but now am getting to understand the game. And this is my first time looking at DFHack also I suck at programing so I don't think I'll be much help. This is an interesting idea and I'll look into DFHack more.

[zkline]

Hi Jurph and all,
Ahh, this is great news.  I didn't know you could zoom to announcement locations that way, that sounds almost practical.  I just wish I could find a way to get something meaningful up and running rather than just talking about what might work for me.  Darn screen readers and their individual quirks.
Dae, your programming teacher is a good example of what blind people can do with enough patience and willpower.  I know of a few blind programmers myself, though no blind WOW players.  Forgive my skepticism there, unless he plays with help of a sighted partner, in which case anything is possible.
Eccentric, umm, mouse?  Granted, there are some audio games for the blind which use the mouse as an input source, but there's no way I'd do that with DF.  Keyboard all the way, as rogue likes were meant to be played. 
THanks for the continued support and interest, guys.  I'll be a dwarven expedition leader some day…
Best,
Zack.

[eccentric]

Hi Jurph and all,
Ahh, this is great news.  I didn't know you could zoom to announcement locations that way, that sounds almost practical.  I just wish I could find a way to get something meaningful up and running rather than just talking about what might work for me.  Darn screen readers and their individual quirks.
Dae, your programming teacher is a good example of what blind people can do with enough patience and willpower.  I know of a few blind programmers myself, though no blind WOW players.  Forgive my skepticism there, unless he plays with help of a sighted partner, in which case anything is possible.
Eccentric, umm, mouse?  Granted, there are some audio games for the blind which use the mouse as an input source, but there's no way I'd do that with DF.  Keyboard all the way, as rogue likes were meant to be played. 
THanks for the continued support and interest, guys.  I'll be a dwarven expedition leader some day…
Best,
Zack.

The mouse questions comes from an idea after seeing the the mouse position in memory hacking on the wiki. The mouse could be used for quick scanning an area to find a points of interest. You said before your hearing isn't that good so no to sounds. So I'm not sure how it would give you feedback when you panned over a blue peacock or something.

The mouse over and having the map in grid screens so your whole embark map would be a grid of 3x3 or 4x4 full screens. Makes sense to me because it's like remembering numbers it's easier to remember them as chunks 45 76 89 instead of 457689 so logically remember the game map by chunks rather then specific locations.

To me panning around then having the game snap to alerts and things might get confusing. But hotkeys could be setup for zooming back to known locations. I suppose you move around the real-world and can navigate to where the water cooler is in an office building. So a small virtual world where you press key_q then shift arrow up five times and right 3 to get to the Mechanic's workshop is simple.

I've never played a true ascii rogue game. I made a couple back in high school on my TI-83 not knowing it, it was just simpler to program (funny I think I was a better programer at 16 then now).

And I use what ever input is easiest right now at work I currently have 2 mice, 2 keyboards and a spaceball hooked up an used all day. WASD movement hurts my hand so I made a built in USB adapter so I can use a Wii nunchuck to play games. The coolest was the playing xbox360 with the wii controller which I've never fully finished but it was fun!

[zkline]

Hi Eccentric,
I didn't mean to imply my hearing isn't that good, I just meant that the idea being discussed at that time was a bit out there, even for dwarves.  My hearing, by all accounts, is excellent, perhaps better than sighted peoples', but I have no real definitive way of measuring such things.  THe mouse panning idea sounds interesting, if a bit difficult to imagine without an actual prototype.  For now I think I'll stick with keyboard commands, which I'm already quite used to.  You can do a lot with shortcuts if you work at it.
Thanks,
Zack.

[eccentric]

I'm working on a proof of concept. I'm thinking I can setup a web interface and just use DF as a backend with DFHack to read/write the data. I'm having trouble getting the terminal to give me the 256-color UTF-8 for processing. They all just end up white when I read them back in? I think I have a solution but just need to try it. I also want to look at DFTerm2 I compiled it and tested it but I didn't try the web interface before calling it a night.

Before I get too carried away I might just process a screen dump manually. And put that up on my server for you to try.

The basic idea is you scan over the webpage sounds of points of interested are made. Mouse over a dwarf it might make a little grunting sound then key_k leftclick on him/her a popup window with the look data text is displayed. I have to see if there are some creative-commons sound effects I can use.

I'll be working over time so this might be awhile.

[Orinks]

Hey all,

I've been a lerker around the DF forums for a while, became adicted to the stories and things that can come out of these games. I've read Boatmurdered, and so far I haven't found anything that could top that awesomeness.

I'm a friend of ZKline's, also blind, and I look forward to seeing what people come up with.  for accessability. I've emailed Todi before about this, and since I never knew there was such  thing as a Linux text version, I wanted to see if that was in the Mac. It's unfortunate that it's not, and Todi says he programs the Windows version, so I hope the Mac version doesn't fall behind on updates.

I really hope we've cleared the whole braille issues up. Braille and DF doesn't seem to make a very good combo. I'd immagine there'd be a problem with rivers where the characters actually move?

About the mouse thing, most definitely a no. Mainly because that is not how DF is played, and 99 percent  of our computing is done via the keyboard.  Most Youtuve videos I've scene of DF being played, I don't think they use the mouse, so that's better for us.

I can't test DF at all because on the Mac, it's pretty much inaccessible. Don't even know what's on the screen when it opens. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to testing something, and this web based thing I hope will only be tempary, as I want to play in the client like everyone else if at all possible.

So, that's my ranty and  unorganized thoughts, but thoughts nevertheless.

Orin
One who wishes to play DF some day, solo.

[cameron]

I don't think that the mac version normally falls behind at-all given that there isn't much in the way of O.S. specific stuff in the game

Also for all water it might be best for you folk to change this line "[SHOW_FLOW_AMOUNTS:NO]" to "[SHOW_FLOW_AMOUNTS:YES]" in the data/init.txt file as it will cause liquids to be displayed by a number denoting their level as apposed to just some tildes.

According to the wiki text mode works on macs but that may have become impractical or outdated entirely, I'm not really sure what is involved in getting that to work in any case.

Any mouse control at all is a fairly recent thing iirc, so it is totally unnecessary if you prefer the keyboard.

[Orinks]

Hey everyone,

I decided to download the Mac port of DF and give it a shot to see if anything's changed regarding accessibility from the last time I tried it. I notice that it's a lot different. The last time I tried it a few years ago it wasn't ported from the Linux version. No script. When I open the DF script however, the terminal opens, cool, so maybe I might be able to put it in text mode, brings up a few lines and then the Mac crash reporter comes up.

BTW, it says the latest Mac release came out March 2011? If that's not the latest, can someone point me twards it?

Thanks.

[weulitus]

First of all my best wishes for progress on this great project! While I can not give much technical advice, I noticed that no one seems to have mentioned the great utility of DF'S own macro system. While I don't really use it much myself, I imagine it could help make a lot of things much easier an quicker for zkline. Are there any reports in the log for macros that could not be completed because of some issue like lack of building materials?