Hi Ron,
Which Warcraft game do you mean *exactly* ? See list below:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Warcraft Computer games
a.. Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (1994) - real-time strategy game
b.. Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (1995)
a.. Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal (1996) - expansion pack to Tides of
Darkness
b.. Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition (1999) - allowed online play of
Warcraft II on Battle.net
c.. Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans - adventure game, cancelled
d.. Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (2002)
a.. Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne (2003) - expansion pack to Reign of
Chaos
e.. World of Warcraft (2004) - MMORPG
a.. World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade (2007) - expansion pack to World
of Warcraft
b.. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (2008) - second expansion to
World of Warcraft
Warcraft Tabletop games
a.. Warcraft: The Board Game - strategic board game from Fantasy Flight
Games, based heavily on Warcraft III
b.. Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game - role-playing game from Sword & Sorcery
c.. World of Warcraft: The Board Game - board game based on World of
Warcraft, also by Fantasy Flight Games
d.. World of Warcraft: The Adventure Game - board game based on World of
Warcraft, also by Fantasy Flight Games
e.. World of Warcraft Miniatures Game - a miniature war game based on World
of Warcraft, by Upper Deck Entertainment.
Warcraft Collectible card games
a.. World of Warcraft Trading Card Game - 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Assuming you mean World of Warcraft, there are original features in the game as
well as several addons that may help making it (slightly) more accessible for a
few visual diabilities. One is Color Blind 4.0
(http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info6395-ColorBlind4.0.html ) which
makes the game accessible for color blind players. To enlarge fonts you can use
Clearfont2 (http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/clear-font2.aspx
). The Dominos addon
(http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info9085-Dominos.html ) allows you to
scale your action bar buttons. ScaleEverything
(http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info10292-ScaleEverything.html ) lets
you scale all dialog frames. There are more addons out there for scaling other
stuff. Simply do a Google search and check out WowInterface. I haven't tried
most of these addons myself, though. You can also code your own addons (there's
a HUGE community out there, so you could also post your question on a forum and
have someone else help with building or build the addon).
"Scaling" the gameworld (where your avatar walks around) is not really present
in an addon since WoW allows the player to zoom the camera with the mouse
scrollwheel, from 1st person to 3rd person, far away. WoW also features a neat
feature called "follow". If you select follow and then click another character
(for instance a fellow party member) your character will follow that other
character automatically. You can probably write a simple macro (= an in-game
script written in simple programming language, with which for instance you can
assign a keyboard key to execute the action "follow <party leader> = ON" or
something). Macros are actually very powerful and could be WoW a whole lot more
accessible. Unfortunately Macros can be used to 'cheat', for instance, someone
could program a macro to make an avatar automatically fight. This way someone
could simply start the game and leave it on with the macro running for a couple
of days/weeks and then return to have a high level character. So the
functionality of macros was cut back a lot in the past :(
But even with all the addons and macros that are out there, there is not yet a
blind-accessible addon/macro that makes the game accessible. I've been looking
into this in the past and found none, although I discoverd that there are some
possibilities. For instance, it is possible to simply play sound external sound
files in the game with a simple macro:
/run PlaySoundFile("Interface\\AddOns\\PlayMe\\PlayMe.mp3"
This script runs the file PlayMe.mp3 located in the PlayMe addon folder. This
way it is possible to record sound files for everything in the game (a huge
task, which could be sped up with recording speech synths reading textfiles and
batch processing for cutting it up - still a huge task with the 100.000+ ??
items/options/etc. in WoW). But since using macros not very handy [1] this
should really be done in an Addon. I think you can also play soundfiles from
addons, since the Shared Media addon
(http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/shared-media-blizzard.aspx)
supposedly can do this. The addon should then be able to capture in-game
events, such as when the player presses the TAB-key (automatically selects the
most nearby enemy), and on the in-game event play a sound file (for example
"Level 36 Troll"). If this is possible I don't know. Mmm... I guess I'll visit
the Addon Dev Community forum (http://wowinterface.com/community.php ) and make
some inquiries about what is possible.
Hope this shed some light on the accessibility of WoW for blind gamers...
Best regards,
Richard (http://www.audiogames.net)
[1] You then need to connect all keyboard keys to the actionbar buttons, and
add macroscripts for each button. Meaning that every time you gain a new
spell/ability, you need to add such a sound script (and since WoW is not
screenreader accessible, so when you are blind you can't do this yourself).
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Schamerhorn" <blindwon...@cogeco.ca>
To: "gamers@audyssey.org" <Gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 1:46 PM
Subject: [Audyssey] Warcraft
> Hi all
>
> Just wondering and asking on behalf of a friend if anyone knows of a way
> to enlarge the print/graphics? Or for that matter other ways to make it a
> more playable online game.
>
> TIA
> Ron
>
---
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