Re: Java Accessibility Query regarding Custom States
Re: Java Accessibility Query regarding Custom States thggamer,THanks. This is about what I presumed. I'll have a look around that file and see if I can find out anything else going on. I'm surprised to see so few of the states mentioned. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/621824/#p621824 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Java Accessibility Query regarding Custom States
Java Accessibility Query regarding Custom States Hi ALl,I am working on contributing to some open source projects written in Java, and ran into some accessibility issues I'd appreciate help with. I'm trying to figure out how Java and the Java Access Bridge interface with NVDA, as follows…One of the projects I'm working on is an implementation of Magic: The Gathering. I did some kind of hackish accessibility already, basically I needed a way to tell the player that a card was tapped, among other states, which is a thing conveyed visually for sighted people and will make sense to anyone who has played the game before.I ended up using the AccessibleDescription property to do this, which isn't ideal, and have been trying to figure out an alternative. I thought that using Java's AccessibleState class might do the trick. I created a custom subclass for AccessibleCardState, since none of the pre-existing states seemed to quite fit what I needed to convey.The state is being passed through the Java Access Bridge, but NVAD isn't using it to describe the card in the way I thought it would. I was expecting it to say something like "CardName Tapped," in the same way it might say "Checkbox checked." My code in progress can be found here on Gitlab. I added a couple classes to the bottom of the CardPanel.java file, which is where the bulk of the logic around displaying cards takes place. If I'm missing something about the way states work, or how Java interfaces with NVDA, I'd love to be enlightened. I'm certainly willing to work with my previous solution of setting the AccessibleDescription, but thought states were closer to how the accessibility API is intended to be used.Thanks all. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/619998/#p619998 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Suggestions for Wayfar 1444 relaunch welcome
Re: Suggestions for Wayfar 1444 relaunch welcome All this bashing of muds saddens me. I haven't played regularly for a while, but still like to keep my eye out in case I find something interesting. I intend to explore Wayfar as long as it remains up, and continue looking into other games which have done unique things with the medium. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618863/#p618863 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: java ide that accessible
Re: java ide that accessible This happens with some Java apps in my experience, and is hard to debug. It rarely happens twice consistently for me, thankfully. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/616725/#p616725 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible A new snapshot version, 0.47.17, has just been released. This includes a fix to the most critical accessibility bug, in that it's possible to actually use the accessibility window as intended now. There are some weird focus issues with it which I hope to debug, but this is a lot better than it was, at any rate.The main commands used are "#tile," to ask about hexes on the map, "#move," to move units, and "#fire," to fire weapons. There is also "#ruler," for measuring the distance between two hexes, and "#entity," for asking for info about units. Finally, "#sitrep," will tell you the details of what is in range of a given unit, with a bearing in degrees.This is quite rough, and most of the nitty gritty details about how to use commands are buried in the code, though it's relatively straightforward Java. This is a hodge podge of work someone else did years ago, my efforts, and the development team's help.As always, I'll keep everyone posted as changes come in. I hope to be able to set things up so that you can mostly use the accessibility window for gameplay, whereas now you have to kind of cycle between that window and the main game board. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/613582/#p613582 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible That bug preventing the accessibility window from working has been fixed. Note that it's a bit of a brute force fix, the game's provided keyboard shortcuts don't work when the window is up. I haven't really found myself needing them, but it's something to be aware of.I'm going to keep trying to refine the accessibility a bit. At the moment it's possible to play via a combination of the "#," commands and ". hex number," which lets you select arbitrary hexes for things like physical attacks.One question I've been wrestling with is how much I want to reinvent the wheel. The game has a lot of command buttons for all kinds of things, which generally work on the principle that you select a hex/target first, and then press a button to act on it. That's what my "period," key is for, it lets you select arbitrary hexes and use the game's provided buttons to act on them.The original author of the accessibility code went with a different idea, that you can use "#," commands to essentially do the things the buttons on screen do. THIs is useful for some areas but tedious because there's quite a bit of code duplication. I'm trying to decide which approach I should go with for future work. My instinct is to try and use the game's built-in support where ever possible, and add new "#," commands only as needed, but the approach is subject to change. This is probably largely meaningless to people not familiar with the game, but I figured I'd put my thoughts out there. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/613421/#p613421 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible sightlessgamer,It's called the "Accessibility window" in the view menu. THere's currently a bug which makes it harder to use than it should be, and I need to document things better at some point. But basically you use commands starting with "#," such as "#move," "#fire," and "#tile." I didn't actually write most of them, they were largely there when I started looking into this project so it's a little bit confusing.If you wait a bit the bugfix should be committed to master. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/613408/#p613408 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible Just as an update, I've been getting reacquainted with the game, as it's been a while since I last looked at this. there are a few accessibility bugs which will hopefully be fixed in the next development release. For a bit of background, I thought I'd write up a post explaining the structure of the project, for anyone interested.There are basically three programs, only one of which I've really been focused on. MegaMek is a hex-based war game, with giant mechs battling on maps of various sizes. It includes a quite competent AI opponent, as well as support for multiple players. It's largely tactical, in that its focus is on the combat itself, the terrain and rules for weapons, damage to mechs, etc. That has been the focus of my accessibility efforts thus far.The second program is called MekHQ, and it's basically a campaign system. For those who aren't aware, Battletech not only features rules for the tactical mech combat aspects, but a strategic layer to go on top of them. THere's a system for running mercenary companies, taking contracts for various factions in the BT universe, and basically having an excuse for all the individual battles. MekHQ gives you mission objectives, tracks your pilots, money, equipment, and so forth. It's quite brilliant if you enjoy crunching numbers. It's also a lot more accessible than MegaMek out of the box, being mostly standard controls.Finally, there's MegaMek lab. This is the program I have least experience with. It's used both for designing custom units in the tactical game, and retro-fitting units from MekHQ campaigns. It also appears to be largely standard controls. Most Battletech players don't really play with custom units anyway, as far as I'm aware, there are thousands of designs from the various source books over the years which work quite well.So in summary, the whole MegaMek project consists of three programs which are somewhat interconnected. MegMek proper is the tactical war game, MekHQ is a complex campaign system, and MegaMek Lab allows you to do unit design. All three of these programs are written in Java, though the code style varies wildly. My interest is largely in running a campaign in MekHQ, so I'll eventually work on accessibility for that as well.I hope this little diversion has been of some interest. I can't promise any kind of timeframe for anything's ince this is an open source passion project, but it's coming along. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/613401/#p613401 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible Hey,Oops. I'll update the first post. But yes, if you clone the Megamek default repository, found here, you'll find all the accessibility work thus far.Note that there is currently a conflict between the accessibility window, and the "Enter," shortcut which is used to bring up the game's built-in multiplayer chat window. I have no idea why anyone decided to use Enter/return as the default shortcut for anything, but will work on fixing that asap. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/612935/#p612935 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible Hey,Thanks. This definitely gives me a few ideas. I was thinking about some kind of hex cursor, to let me explore the map independent of unit movement. You can sort of do that now with a "show tile," command but it's tedious. Some way of getting a sense of what's nearby is a good idea. THere's a command which can tell you the direction and distance to nearest units, optionally limited to either friendlies or enemies, which is something. It gives a bearing in degrees, which isn't quite as meaningful in a hex-based board game as it would be in a more free movement scenario, but still. It doesn't currently do anything with terrain, which is kind of important, since weapons can be blocked by forest or hills or whatever. Maybe a good start is to extend it to give info on the nearest terrain features, where feature is anything but clear ground. That could help build up a gestalt of sorts, augmented by the ability to move hex by hex if desired.Thanks for the ideas. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/612910/#p612910 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible I hope that a little thread necromancy can be forgiven since this is my thread, after all. I've been getting back into this project again and am hoping to continue working on it. The system is currently complicated but playable, and I hope to be able to improve on it. I'd welcome any help, as always. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/612905/#p612905 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: best accessible hex editer?
Re: best accessible hex editer? I like Radare2,, but it's a bit hard to get used to if you aren't a fan of the command line. Still, very powerful. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/599913/#p599913 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Accessible Coding Editor/Development Environment on Linux
Re: Accessible Coding Editor/Development Environment on Linux I always like Emacspeak, whether on Mac or Linux. It's not as popular as VSCode but is certainly powerful, and can be modified into whatever configuration you might need. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/589794/#p589794 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Question Regarding Linux
Re: Question Regarding Linux Also,DOn't spend all your time in theGUI. You can do and learn a lot from the command line, and use some very powerful programs, such as Emacs. THere's a lot of stuff the shell can do which is hard to do any other way. Besides, shell and command line accessibility is generally a lot better than the GUI, or at least a little more predictable. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/580760/#p580760 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: wsl function and ubuntu. do I can browse internet with it?
Re: wsl function and ubuntu. do I can browse internet with it? There's always Edbrowse. I like it for basic browsing, though it's very idiosyncratic. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/576193/#p576193 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Any way to make coding on MacOS non-painful?
Re: Any way to make coding on MacOS non-painful? Most of my coding on Mac OS is done with Emacspeak, which has a variety of ways to handle indentation. I highlly recommend it. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/560272/#p560272 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Is it absolutely necessary to know C/C++ on a great level?
Re: Is it absolutely necessary to know C/C++ on a great level? Am I the only one who hates VSTS, or is it Azure Devops, or some other weird name from MS this week? I just use it as a bug tracker, but I swear that thing has a ton of accessibility issues all on its own. I can use it, but I hate having to wrestle with it. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/503011/#p503011 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: IntelliJ accessibility?
Re: IntelliJ accessibility? Java swing is accessible on Mac OS, though some controls only work well with the latest JDK versions, and not the stable builds which are easiest to download. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/495201/#p495201 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: How do you, as a blind developer, handle icons
Re: How do you, as a blind developer, handle icons Or talk to a sighted artist about drawing a logo or something. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/459814/#p459814 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible I haven't looked at it in a while, just because we were facing some fairly significant challenges with how to handle the hex map, among other things. The basic text command setup I was using does work and is in the main codebase, but it's not as pleasant to use as it might be. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/458268/#p458268 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Interfacing with Screen Readers, WHat's Out THere?
Re: Interfacing with Screen Readers, WHat's Out THere? Thanks, that thread looks good. It would be nice to get OS X speech support but not really necessary, I know the vast majority of people interested in the project would be running Windows. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/445084/#p445084 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Interfacing with Screen Readers, WHat's Out THere?
Re: Interfacing with Screen Readers, WHat's Out THere? IT'll be C++. I'm not sure how much work the project wants to put into it, Tolk appeals just because it's a ready solution. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/445080/#p445080 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Interfacing with Screen Readers, WHat's Out THere?
Interfacing with Screen Readers, WHat's Out THere? Hi All,I'm helping with a project which wants to talk directly to popular screen readers, and wondered what libraries were out there for doing this easily. Is Tolk pretty much the gold standard, or is there anything which is available cross-platform of similar quality?Thanks for any input. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/445053/#p445053 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: An idea I have, wanting some input on possible success
Re: An idea I have, wanting some input on possible success At the moment I'm at a bit of an impasse. The game text is stored in XML files, which is theoretically easy to read, but I'm not sure of how to get at the current menu selection. We can't do it from the internal scripting language, so the only other choices I can see are modifying the game's source code, or some kind of reverse engineering to figure out how the text is displayed and vocalizing that way.I just thought of a third approach, we could write some kind of add-on for NVDA which would improve the OCR so it focuses on text of a specific highlight color. This is probably possible but I don't know how difficult it would be. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/439851/#p439851 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: An idea I have, wanting some input on possible success
Re: An idea I have, wanting some input on possible success Just to clarify a bit, the "Log files," aren't written at all unless a script explicitly does so. The command would look something like "write to log file 150 value = "Good %d is trading at %d", $good, $price, null, null…"Yes, the script syntax is *that* verbose and the nulls are required. Fortunately there is an external script editor which is very nice, as long as you're using Jaws. The game's built-in editor suffers from the same menu accessibility issues. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/439000/#p439000 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: An idea I have, wanting some input on possible success
Re: An idea I have, wanting some input on possible success Just to clarify a bit, the "Log files," aren't written at all unless a script explicitly does so. The command would look something like "write to log file 150 value = "$good is trading at $price", null, null, null, null…"Yes, the script syntax is *that* verbose and the nulls are required. Fortunately there is an external script editor which is very nice, as long as you're using Jaws. The game's built-in editor suffers from the same menu accessibility issues. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/439000/#p439000 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: An idea I have, wanting some input on possible success
Re: An idea I have, wanting some input on possible success The log files can contain, theoretically, anything. I current use them to display in-game trade prices when the player docks at a station, and a few other scripts do things like display a "map," of the sector of space the player ship is in.The problem is that, as far as I know, scripts don't have access to the context when you're in an in-game menu, though you can certainly create custom menus easily. I've approached the developers earlier about general accessibility asks, they're largely interested in working on the sequel to X3 at the moment, which is understandable. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/438984/#p438984 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: An idea I have, wanting some input on possible success
Re: An idea I have, wanting some input on possible success Hi All,Okay, let me talk a bit about X3 scripting. The language is proprietary, internally stored as XML, but script developers don't usually see that. .PCK, which Simba mentions, is just a compressed XML file. The only way native scripts can contact the outside world is to write to numbered log files. Getting data IN is more complicated, but we aren't worried about that.I need to find a way to get the current menu options and pass them to a speech program. I'm not sure how to analyze the memory structure, my experience is more with high-level languages then this kind of low-level reverse engineering. Still, I believe it should definitely be possible.Basically I want to avoid reliance on NVDA's OCR feature, which is the current way we use the menus. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/438877/#p438877 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible Fixed the git link. I didn't realize it had a period at the end and thus lead nowhere. Oops. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/426644/#p426644 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Java development environments
Re: Java development environments There's JDEE for Emacs/Emacspeak, but that requires a whole other setup that would be difficult if you aren't a Linux user already. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/425701/#p425701 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible
Re: HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible For anyone interested, there's a Github Megamek accessibility project here. ANy help would be very much appreciated.. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/425697/#p425697 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible
HElp with Making Megamek/Battletech ACcessible Hi ALl,I felt that things were sufficiently far along on this project for me to mention it on the forum here, though I don't have an official release for people to enjoy quite yet.For the past month and a half or so, I've been working on making a completely new kind of game accessible for us. For people who aren't aware, Battletech is a turn-based tactical game, centered around giant mechs/robots and the warriors who pilot them. It has a whole elaborate fictional history, and has existed in one form or another since the 80s.There is an open-source version of the tabletop game called Megamek, and that is the version of this game I've been working on. It's written in the Java programming language, and is generally straight-forward, code-wise.So where do things stand at the moment? There is a basic command line interface set up, which allows you to move ground units, fire weapons, and get unit status info. There is a 95% accessible graphical UI for the rest of the game, including scenario setup, army creation, and so forth.The biggest problem at the moment is figuring out how to handle the hex map. The game is designed so that it's drawn visually, and at the moment we're limited to asking about individual tiles one at a time, or at most a few at a time. I don't really have a great solution for this problem, though I'm sure one exists if I poke at it a bit. Any Java programmers who happen to frequent this forum, I'd love to hear from you.What can we do in the game so far? I've brought it to a point where we can play a multiplayer or single-player game, with some difficulty, including units such as mechs and infantry but nothing air or space-based quite yet. There are a few miscellaneous things I need to code text commands for, but these should be fairly straight-forward. The hex map is the most difficult part of the entire enterprise, as it's more a conceptual problem than a straight-forward coding issue.I hope that the game will become officially accessible at some point in the near future, even if only via the text commands. My ultimate goal would be to make the graphical interface fully useable as well, but that's a slightly harder problem.Still, I thought i should at least share news of the current progress and let everybody know at long last what I've been up to. There's nothing like Battletech available for the blind, and I really hope people can enjoy it soon.My current Github fork is at https://github.com/BlindGuyNW/megamek/t … hatWindow. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/425688/#p425688 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
