Hi, all. Been a while since I've done much with accessible gaming or
AQ. I went from being severely unemployed to having a job that ate up
all my time. The amusing bit, though, is that now my job leaves me
with little to do, so I'm blanking my laptop screen and working on
personal projects during the downtime, the latest of which is poking
at AQ. In doing so, I had various contributions, issues and thoughts
which I wanted to toss out, and instead of writing a new message for
each one, I thought I'd toss 'em all out here.
My laptop and desktop are OS X-based, so I nearly have AQ running
nicely on Tiger. Yesterday I managed to build ZQuake under OS X, a
confusing process as the code needed to be compiled with gcc but
linked with g++, necessitating changes to the Makefile mid-compile.
Today I ported ag_say to the Carbon speech API, so AQ is now self-
voicing. Tomorrow's goal is to write launcher scripts that create AQ
directories in the standard OS X preferences location, then search
for either the shareware/full Quake datafiles in the application-
specific libraries folder, making the structures if they don't exist
and popping up semi-helpful dialogs. The eventual goal is a self-
contained drag-n-drop AudioQuake.app bundle for OS X. But I have some
questions along the way.
I'm not a Windows coder. I'm trying to keep the ag_say code as
portable as possible, so I've refactored the code to place all the
API-specific checks into separate functions that are different based
on conditional compilation. What's a WCHAR, though, and is it
interchangeable with char *? It'd be much cleaner if the code could
standardize on char*, and I think it'd allow for the possibility of
hooking into more speech APIs more cleanly. Anyway, what I'll
probably do is fire off my version of ag_say.cpp and let someone who
is more familiar with Windows coding clean up my refactoring, as I'm
a bit out of my league with the Windows aspect.
I notice that the code includes a means of popping up a voice
configuration window. How is this done from the game? I should be
able to do so with the OS X version, but if there isn't an in-game
function to do so then it'd make more sense to just require the user
to make the changes from the system preferences menu.
I had some thoughts about the game sounds. I'm not a huge fan of the
tonal sounds, and had some thoughts on how they might be changed. The
bang noise that is played when menus are accessed and F10 is pressed
always reminded me of a door. Perhaps this could be used as the door
noise. It'd also have the advantage of fitting in with the other
audio icons for health, armor, ammo, etc. as the sound would reflect
what it represents.
Is there any means of detecting whether a slope is moving up or down?
If so, perhaps up and down slopes could be represented by the same
sound made by the player moving up or down, only shifted down an
octave. Not only would this convey more information about what is
being scanned, but it'd be more instantly recognizable as a slope
than would a low E tone. :)
Can the wall scrape sound be made less loud? It seems to distract me
quite a bit. Does anyone actually find the continuous wall warning
sound useful? I've had that feature turned off, and use a combination
of the "l" function and the fact that I don't hear footsteps when I
try moving to know that I'm up against a wall. This has the advantage
of using the continuous wall warning noise as the scrape sound, which
is far less distracting IMHO.
Actually, does anyone turn footsteps off? If not, might it make sense
to remove that ability entirely and always have them on? Seems like
it might decomplicate the interface a bit, and you can offer a bit
more in the way of implicit accessibility if footsteps are an
explicit feature.
I also had some documentation questions while browsing through the
manual. When jumping, how do the existing systems let you know when
you are at the edge of a gap? The manual tells you to move up to the
edge, and there are ESR modes that let you know when you're near, but
nothing that indicates that the next step will be your last, so to
speak.
Section 6.2.1.1 says to use "t" to toggle continuous wall warnings.
Section 7.3 says to use "t" to toggle monster detection. The latter
seems to override the former, and there seems to be no way to toggle
continuous wall detection. Am I missing something, or is this a mistake?
6.2.4 should probably clarify the difference between the initial
corner sound and the final one indicating that you've passed the
corner. I know that confused me for a while, and I thought that I was
being shot at. :)
7.2 suggests, as a tip, using "k" to see if you can make a jump.
Shouldn't this be "j"?
Is any discussion given about how to shoot monsters? Should they be
on the same level to shoot them?
Can we have more explanation about how to jump obstacles using ESR
mode 2? I'm stuck on how, exactly, to pass the 7th (at least I think
that's which it is :) tutorial map, with the jump around the corner.
And, just out of curiosity, has anyone had much success with playing
the standard e1 maps in single-player mode? I'm struggling with them,
and am wondering if the "normal" maps are just too complex for non-
sighted players? Or am I just too new?
Also, I've noticed a file in the demos folder. How do I play this,
and is it possible to start this demo after start-up if it's AQ-
specific? If so then I may configure the OS X application to do so in
order to give the user a more immediate taste of how AQ sounds.
Anyhow, think that's all for now. I'm sure I'll have more thoughts
after tomorrow's oh-so-busy workday. :P
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