Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game I've created a separate topic about the emulator image I've created for using speakup on Windows:https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/3903 … n-windows/ URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/610653/#p610653 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game @FubsepudeAt that number of columns, the game shouldn't have a problem showing you all the actions you can perform with a worker or other unit (that is, the text that you can begin tabbing through by pressing shift "R"). This is what I was most concerned about so it's good it won't be an issue for you.The problem you will have is that in some in-game windows, specifically when you contact an embassy, or pull up the list of your units (from the menu Accounting -> Brigades), some of the text will wrap to the next line. In those circumstances, the infobox shown to the right of the main window will wrap but the main window itself will not wrap. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/610051/#p610051 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game Fubsepude, are you running the game in the framebuffer or from a terminal window from within your graphical desktop?If you're running from within your graphical desktop, check the settings of the terminal you're using and make sure the terminal window is maximized or set to full screen mode. With Konsole, you can press control minus a few times to reduce the font size. In gnome's terminal you can go to Edit -> preferences.If you're running from within the framebuffer it's unfortunately a bit harder. The only way I know is to edit your grub boot loader settings and append a "vga=" setting to grub's configuration. Messing around with the boot loader though can render your setup unbootable, so maybe it's not worth it for you to do that unless you already have a rescue disk at hand and have the time to attempt to do some amount of troubleshooting if a problem arises.What resolution is your terminal anyway?If you didn't know, you can check with the commands 'tput cols' and 'tput lines' URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/610024/#p610024 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game zkline wrote:Is it okay if I share your project a bit more widely? I'm a member of at least one online community which would probably appreciate it.Yeah, of course URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/609787/#p609787 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game No problem -- don't worry about asking too many questions, I'm happy to help.I don't have a working install of speakup at the moment because I managed to screw up some stuff on my setup a day or two ago. That's just to say that I can't check at this moment what speakup does with the current tech tree.But let me attempt to describe the way it is organized now. I have ideas about how this could be done a little better near the end of this post. Let me know what you think.The tech tree is shown as a series of boxes. In each box the first line is the name of the technology, for example "Pottery". And the second line is the amount of research points required, for example "Reqs 1240 rsrch". The color of the name of the technology (ex. "Pottery") has significance, which I describe further below.You can select a tech with the arrow keys. The selected tech will be outlined with a red box using the characters "-" and "|" drawn around the perimeter.If the tech you've selected unlocks any new units, buildings or discovers new resources, they will be shown in a separate infobox that is shown immediately to the right of the selected tech.For example, for Stoneworking, the infobox will say:"Req for:Police stationDiscovers:Stone"If there is an infobox shown for a selected tech, the text cursor will be shown at the bottom right corner of the infobox. If no infobox is shown (in the case when a tech does not unlock any new units or resources), the text cursor is shown at the bottom of the screen where the legend is. This behavior is not ideal and wasn't intentional, just something I had put off fixing at the time I was working on the screen reader mode.The color of the technology name, for example "Pottery" has significance, as mentioned above. There is a legend near the bottom of the screen describing what the colors mean. I reproduce it below. For this post, I've written out the names of the colors, in the game only the color is shown:Color indicatorsred: selected techlight blue: undiscovered techgray: discovered techorange: researchingYou can toggle by pressing enter whether or not your empire will research the tech you have selected. The color of the tech's name will then turn to orange. Press enter again and it will remove it from the schedule and it'll turn back to light blue.Overall the organization of the tree is from left to right, with the more primitive techs being on the left. The game doesn't let you switch branches in a super friendly way -- you have to back up to the parent tech. So for example if you've selected "Compass" and want to instead select "Stoneworking" which is a completely different branch you have to press the left arrow key to go back to the parent tech "Rowing", then left again to go to the parent "Woodworking". Then you can press the down arrow key and finally select "Stoneworking".As to what would make this better: I'm going to guess similar to elsewhere, putting the text cursor on the selected item and letting the infobox and other text be tabbed through like I have on the main window might be helpful. That and replacing the color with text. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/609781/#p609781 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game Hi zkline,The AI at least (and also your automated workers which use the same algorithm) build cities around ~350 tiles wide (which is around 1.7km). On average, the AI cities are twice as wide as they are tall (mostly because of the way terminals visually display characters in a non-square grid).I'd say 900 meters is reasonably close enough that you wouldn't need to build a new city hall for it.When I manually build cities I normally build them about the same size as the AI, maybe a little smaller. Making too large of a city can result in the residents on the outskirts not reliably finding a path to the city hall which means they don't pay taxes. I've throttled down a lot of the pathfinding for the residents for performance reasons. They search for new paths relatively infrequently. That is just to say if you find a lot of your residents unconnected from your city hall it might not be your fault. They may find a path soon enough. Sometimes they won't ever find a path but that's ok. Depending on the terrain you start on (like a meadow)-- you might not need to worry about squeezing out every penny of tax revenue because you'll still have enough residents paying that you can make due.A few words about the resources:Logs are reasonably common (although it does depend on your location, I suppose) and are mostly useful for building ships. The bonuses logs give are not very large compared to some of the other resources. In the menu you can go to Help then Encyclopedia to look up the bonuses each resource gives and the units you could eventually construct with it.Resources to look out for are the metals like iron, and things like horses, elephants or camels as these can allow you to build knights and other units that are stronger provided you have the technology. Most useful of all is uranium but that requires a lot of technology to even be able to see on the map -- not all resources are viewable until you have the tech to discover them. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/609444/#p609444 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game No problem, happy to help! URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/609154/#p609154 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game @zklineYou are right that buildings are multiple tiles. They are always rectangular in shape with varying dimensions from something like two tiles to 15 or so.Typically the buildings are shown with some text drawing inside surrounded by a box. The box is drawn with "-" and "|" characters around the edges.As to your question, what prevents the construction of a building -- well most things in the game. The game will not let you build over other buildings, walls, roads, units, or over land that you or your workers have previously zoned.Here's a tip that might be useful for determining empty places to put a building:Automated workers will build cities in a semi-random manner, but they will typically leave some room near the city hall. One thing you can do is select a worker and tell it to build a building. It doesn't matter too much where the worker is as long as it's reasonably close to one of your cities. After you've selected the building to build and are in the placement mode, go to the menu and select "Accounting". Then select "City halls". Select a city and your cursor will be moved to the city hall. From there, explore around until you find a valid placement.When you are selecting the location to build a building, you are selecting where the worker will place the top left edge. So, columns immediately to the right of the text cursor and the rows immediately below it need to be clear.The game will show the proposed placement of the building if your text cursor is on a valid position to build it. Effectively this means that you'll see a string of dashes like this "" appear to the right of your cursor when it's over a valid location.Basically try to find a rectangular block of "#" or "." characters and you'll be good.(I don't know if I talked about the "." characters before -- they represent empty land which has been labeled as a sector. When you automate military units you can instruct them to patrol sectors. Automated workers create a sector which will cover all of your city so that you can later automate military units to protect that area) URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/609141/#p609141 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game Hm. Let me look into packaging an emulator so that the game can be played in Linux while on Windows. May take me a little while to get something setup and distributable in a reasonable enough way. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/609086/#p609086 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game zkline wrote:I will definitely pass along feedback as I think of it.Great, thanks. I'm always happy to have feedback. Suggestions about gameplay, accessibility, whatever you think of edit: didn't see your most recent post. will edit and respond... URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/609085/#p609085 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game zkline wrote:I will definitely pass along feedback as I think of it.Great, thanks. I'm always happy to have feedback. Suggestions about gameplay, accessibility, whatever you think of URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/609085/#p609085 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game Yeah, the exact font size does not matter. However, at least on Windows 7, if you attempt to set the number of rows and columns to a value that is too large to show on the screen then cmd.exe will not show all the columns you asked it to. So, setting the font size to a lower value just helps ensure that everything fits on the screen and cmd.exe doesn't cut off anything.Using a font size smaller than what I suggested on the wiki should not pose any problems. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/609083/#p609083 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game If you are asking if the game uses neural networks for its AI, it does not right now. Although it is a long-term goal. Probably the first part of the game to see neural network usage would be at the end-game. I wrote a about my current thoughts and rough plans here if you are interested to read more.The current AI is the manually written variety you see in most strategy games. The other civilizations, barbarians, and nobility can and may attack you.Oh, yeah, also, if you contact nobility or other empires, the quotes they give you are outputs from a quote generating neural network. It's supposed to roughly match their moods. A lot of the times the quotes are nonsensical, but sometimes they can be amusing. Other times inappropriate URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/608926/#p608926 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game That's good to hear, zkline. Thanks!The automated workers will first build a wall around a reasonably large radius. Immediately after, they will start zoning land within the walls. This will take them some amount of time (10 or more years of game time, roughly). You can just let them stay automated indefinitely and when they finish they will become idle (and locatable with the ';' key).On the map here are some of the more common symbols used (these are all shown by default you don't have to adjust any of the view settings for these):Astericks "*" are the zoned landNumber signs "#" are unzoned landTildes "~" are waterSuperscript symbol "^" are mountainsIt's ok if you forget those symbols because whether you're on land, mountains, water, etc is shown at the bottom of the screen (use shift b to move the cursor to it).The type of zone (residential, business, etc) is also shown at the bottom of the screen. If you're able to quickly read out the color of the astricks on the map you can also infer the zone type (green = residential, blue = commercial, yellow = industrial, brown = agricultural).One thing about the text at the bottom of the screen: it is shown in two or more columns and some screen readers seem to read together more than one column of text at a time in a way that is hard to understand. If you tab through the text with the "." and "," keys, then tell the screen reader to read one word at a time it might be easier to understand the boundaries of the column. Maybe this was already obvious though. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/608914/#p608914 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game That's good to hear, zkline. Thanks!The automated workers will first build a wall around a reasonably large radius. Immediately after, they will start zoning land within the walls. This will take them some amount of time (10 or more years of game time, roughly). You can just let them stay automated indefinitely and when they finish they will become idle (and locatable with the ';' key).On the map here are some of the more common symbols used (these are all shown by default you don't have to adjust any of the view settings for these):Astericks "*" are the zoned landNumber signs "#" are unzoned landTildes "~" are waterSuperscript symbol "^" are mountainsIt's ok if you forget those symbols because whether you're on land, mountains, water, etc is shown at the bottom of the screen (use shift b to move the cursor to it).The type of zone (residential, business, etc) is also shown at the bottom of the screen. If you're able to quickly read out the color of the astricks on the map you can also infer the zone type (green = residential, blue = commercial, yellow = industrial, brown = agricultural). URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/608914/#p608914 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game @FubsepudeI don't have Linux mint but I have installed speakup on ubuntu which might be similar enough.I believe I ran:sudo apt install espeakupYou may need to restart your computer after that. Then you need to switch to the framebuffer console for speakup to work. It will not work if you just pull up a terminal window in graphics mode.You can switch to a framebuffer console by pressing ctrl alt f2Each function key will take you to a different console.For example ctrl alt f3 will take you to another separate framebuffer console.ctrl alt f1 will take you back to your graphical desktop (or similar, different distros map the function keys differently, so try out the others if that doesn't work.. some are like f7 or greater). URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/608885/#p608885 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game @caioSome people have had difficulty using the default terminal emulator I bundled the game with (the one that's launched if you use the .bat file).However, the game can be played with the default windows cmd.exe. You may want to check these instructions out:https://www.arcanefortune.com/wiki/inde … on_WindowsLast time I tried to use NVDA on Windows (which was several months ago), it wasn't nearly as usable as the Speakup reader on Linux.I am/was considering packaging a full Linux emulator so that Windows users could use speakup without having to install linux. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/608877/#p608877 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game @arnold18There are a few ways you can figure out what your explorer has found.In the menu, if you go to the Accounting sub-menu and then select under "Resources" the "Discovered" entry, you can pull up a table of all the resources your explorer has found. It will also tell you the distance and direction from your current location to the resource. If you press enter while selecting one of the resource entries, the game will move you to that location and place your text cursor on it.You can use this feature to cause a worker, for example, to move that location. So what you'd do is first select the worker, and enter the move mode. Then go to the menu and select the resource to move your text cursor onto it. If the resource is close enough you then press enter to confirm moving the worker to that location. In this way you can find and move to the resource and create, for example, a new city near it.If your explorer discovers another civilization, it will be shown in the game info mode (which you enter by pressing shift R). The first line shown in that mode is always any relevant news that has happened recently -- and discovering another civilization will be shown there.If you missed it and it's no longer shown there, you can always review any past entries from the menu by going to the "View" and then "World" entry under the "History" line.Another tip I have is in warfare. Probably the easiest way to invade or conquer if playing the game with a screen reader would be to use your noble houses. Contact them via the menu "Intel" sub-menu and select the "Contact Noble House" entry. Then select the "Send your troops to attack" and tell them which city to attack. The noble house may (or may not) agree to attack that city for you. If they agree it may take them a while to be successful. Asking more than one of your noble houses, if you have more than one, to attack a target can help speed things along. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/608875/#p608875 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game This ended up becoming fairly long, but maybe this will help:Once you're in the game and have closed out all the intro windows (one with some intro text, then another asking if you want to appoint any noble houses), you will be selecting your one of two workers. The game will be paused at this time.Press shift "b" (that is capital "B") to start tabbing through info about the worker and the land it is on. Some of the info shown in this mode are the actions (and the keyboard shortcuts to activate them) you can assign to the worker.The keys "." and "," move the text cursor forward and backward respectively through lines of this text. Escape exits this mode and brings you back to the map.You first likely want to build a city hall. This can be initated by pressing 'h'. (this is one of the worker options you can tab through, as described above)Then select the city hall option -- which can be done by arrow keys up and down or by pressing 'c'.If you press enter, a city hall will be built near your worker.Press ';' and the game will take you to your next unmoved unit -- which is another worker. I generally leave the second worker idle for the first turn (by pressing 'p')And press ';' again and you will be taken to an explorer. Probably you want to set the explorer to auto-explore -- press shift "b" and start tabbing through the actions for the explorer and you'll find that you can press "l" to automate the explorer's exploration.So you've now assigned three actions to each of your three units. Now you can progress game time.Press shift "r" and your text cursor will be moved to info about general game info such as the time and your economy. You can tab through this text again with the "." and "," keys. You'll find that there's an option to press "@" to progess game time until any one of your units finishes their actions.If you press "@", you will, in this circumstance progress game time one day. Because your second worker, whose turn you passed, will become active again in the next game day.Press escape and the game will take you back to the map (and out of the mode you were just in tabbing through the game info text).Press ';', again to bring you to that now idle worker.Probably the next thing to do would be to automate that worker so that it will create residential, business, industrial, and agricultural zones and city walls. As before, you can press shift "b" to start tabbing through the actions for this worker and you'll find that you can press '8' to automate it.Now time to progress game time again. Press shift "r" to again start tabbing through the game info and press "@". And again game time will be progressed until one of your units finishes their actions. The next idle unit will be the worker you told to build the city hall.What you do after that is up to you. But that's the general game loop. Assign units actions, and progress time.There's also other stuff in the menus that might be useful. From the menus you can, for example pull up tables of your units and what they are doing. You can also bring up tables describing your cities and nobles. And a bunch of other stuff that I recommend exploring.I have a more detailed guide here:https://arcanefortune.com/wiki/index.ph … ng_started URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/608605/#p608605 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game I've posted a new release of the game with a new screen reader mode featuring some of what was suggested in this thread. The main benefit of this mode is that it makes the text cursor visible and places it near relevant text in some of the in-game windows and menu selections. I also made some other small changes like removing flashing of things in the game so screen readers don't get stuck in a loop repeating whatever is changing.I wrote up a wiki page on the game's website with some of my notes and suggestions about using some of the features I've added:https://www.arcanefortune.com/wiki/inde … en_readersIf you want to play the game I highly recommend reading that page because some of what I added (tabbing through text with the text-mode cursor) is not going to be obvious unless you checkout that page.There's definitely more than can be done to make this game more accessible. But hopefully this release is a little more accessible than the last one. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/608542/#p608542 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game What's the advantage of Fenrir over Speakup?I found the numpad key controls pretty intuitive for Speakup -- being able to read one line, word, or character at a time and moving backward, forward, up and down with it. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/579496/#p579496 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game TheSecretLurker:I use Qemu. I was running Ubuntu in it for testing Speakup. I'm not sure which emulator or distro I'll choose to package up for the next release, though. I don't know how portable Qemu is on Windows since my desktop is also Linux and I haven't tested Qemu on Windows.As to the modding support, currently the game loads all the military unit types, building types, resources and a few other things from text configuration files in the "game\config" directory. You could think of it as similar to JSON in its level of flexibility, however the syntax is different (but likely self-explanatory if you take a look at the files).In the future I would like to add scripting support. I was planning on integrating Lua scripting, however someone suggested I consider AngelScript which also seems promising.Do you have an idea about what types of mods you'd like to create? It might help me target some aspects to expose first to scripting support.I was considering adding support for custom scenarios so that historical time periods could be very roughly re-enacted. Which would probably minimally require scripting support for declaring war, founding cities, and creating alliances at certain times and places. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/579243/#p579243 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game zkline: thanks -- I got it working. Speakup is great. I can see with some additional work on the text cursor placement how I'd be able to play it myself with only audio.I'd probably use the windows in the Accounting menu somewhat frequently to orient myself because they provide the distances and directions your current location is from your various cities and units. That and I think I'd define custom map sectors to quickly nagivate to (in the "Go" submenu), for the case when there might be a battle or problem spot for me to come back to later (if you're attacked, the game automatically brings you to the location of where the attack happened).--Dragonlee: I definitely experienced what you described about the flashing, even in speakup, and now that I disabled it in the test version of the game I'm working with, it's a lot easier.As to your point about speakup being beyond the ability of most here--I don't know why it would have to be that way. If I installed it in a portable emulator and got it all setup in the emulator, you could just download the emulator and run it on your computer. With a bit of work (from me in packaging it nicely), it shouldn't be any more difficult to just click and run than it is to run any other game you download online. The emulator would output its own audio, so you wouldn't have to worry about having your Windows screen reader parse what it's showing. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/577632/#p577632 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game zkline: thanks -- I got it working. Speakup is great. I can see with some additional work on the text cursor placement how I'd be able to play it myself with only audio.I'd probably use the windows in the Accounting menu somewhat frequently to orient myself because they provide the distances and directions your current location is from your various cities and units. That and I think I'd define custom map sectors to quickly nagivate to (in the "Go" submenu), for the case when there might be a battle or problem spot for me to come back to later (if you're attacked, the game automatically brings you to the location of where the attack happened).--Dragonlee: I definitely experienced what you described about the flashing, even in speakup, and now that I disabled it in the test version of the game I'm working with, it's a lot easier.As to your point about speakup being beyond the ability of most here--I don't know why it would have to be that way. If I installed it in a portable emulator and got it all setup in the emulator, you could just download the emulator and run it on your computer. With a bit of work, it shouldn't be any more difficult to just click and run than it is to run any other game you download online. The emulator would output its own audio, so you wouldn't have to worry about having your Windows screen reader parse what it's showing. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/577632/#p577632 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game JaceK: thanks for the information. I tried Ocra but I'm not sure what you mean about it being limited in window size. When I maximized my terminal it didn't seem to have any more issues than it was having before. But certainly I can tell you while it handles the game settings screens decently enough, it's not always reading you all the text once you get to the main game. It also reads you text that doesn't make sense to read together (visually it's obvious the text is unrelated)The "X" you're hearing when you move a unit or try to assign an action is supposed to be a cross-hair to let people know they're selecting where to move the unit. Definitely not useful if you're using a screen reader though to hear that repeated constantly -- possibly useful for me to disable this in the future, at least in a future screen reader mode of the game.---I haven't been able to get espeakup to work at all -- it's completely silent for every program I open on Ubuntu 20.04. I installed it and it seems that the speakup daemon is running, but when I launch espeakup, either under my user account or as root it says "Espeakup is already running!". I attempted to force kill all the speakup processes containing speakup in their name, in an attempt to restart it, but it seems to not kill them even when I try as root. Maybe it's something to do with speakup being a kernel mode driver. I guess I have to look more into this, but if it's obvious to anyone what I'm doing wrong in starting espeakup, please let me know.---I'm wondering if the easiest way forward, supposing I can get speakup working and the game seems to work best on it, as zkline is suggesting, would be to package up a portable emulator for Windows users with a light-weight Linux distro, speakup, and the game already installed.Has anyone tried this in general or is there a reason why it wouldn't work? It'd possibly allow easier access to games like Cataclysm too. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/577573/#p577573 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game JaceK: thanks for the information. I tried Ocra but I'm not sure what you mean about it being limited in window size. When I maximized my terminal it didn't seem to have any more issues than it was having before. But certainly I can tell you while it handles the game settings screens decently enough, it's not always reading you all the text once you get to the main game. It also reads you text that doesn't make sense to read together (visually it's obvious the text is unrelated)The "X" you're hearing when you move a unit or try to assign an action is supposed to be a cross-hair to let people know they're selecting where to move the unit. Definitely not useful if you're using a screen reader though to hear that repeated constantly -- possibly useful for me to disable this in the future, at least in a future screen reader mode of the game.---I haven't been able to get espeakup to work at all -- it's completely silent for every program I open on Ubuntu 20.04. I installed it and it seems that the speakup daemon is running, but when I launch espeakup, either under my user account or as root it says "Espeakup is already running!". I attempted to force kill all the speakup processes containing speakup in their name, in an attempt to restart it, but it seems to not kill them even when I try as root. Maybe it's something to do with speakup being a kernel mode driver. I guess I have to look more into this, but if it's obvious to anyone what I'm doing wrong in starting espeakup, please let me know.---I'm wondering if the easiest way forward, supposing I can get speakup working and the game seems to work best on it, as zkline is suggesting, would be to package up a portable emulator for Windows users with a light-weight Linux distro, speakup, and the game already installed.Has anyone tried this or is there a reason why it wouldn't work? It'd possibly allow easier access to games like Cataclysm too. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/577573/#p577573 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game zkline: The flashing could cause some issues, and I could add a mode in the game to disable it without too much difficulty on my end.However, the issue I'm seeing occurs with text that isn't flashing as well. For example, I'm experimenting with a feature that lets the player "tab" the text cursor through specific action items such as "v: Move unit" and all the other actions they could take. That text never flashes but yet NVDA is silent in some cases, despite the braille reader showing the correct text.As an aside, how common are braille readers? Are they something only a minority of people have? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/577238/#p577238 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game Dragonlee and aaron:My guess is that the more people that let the NVDA developers know that this would be a highly useful feature, the more likely they (or anyone reading with both the skills and time) will prioritize it.Half-unrelated, but is it possible to have NVDA only speak what's in the braille viewer (i.e. what's at or near the text cursor)?Maybe there's a setting I missed? Because there are some situations I've seen with my game where it shows what I want in the braille viewer, but the audio is completely silent. Other times it speaks what's in the braille viewer as I'd expect so I don't know why it's acting inconsistently.I think this might be a separate issue or setting I'm not finding than the one talked about in this thread, but perhaps I've misunderstood the original issue being discussed haha.Also, on my test setup NVDA seems to crash a lot. Is this typical or something weird that I'm doing? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/577204/#p577204 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game Dragonlee and aaron:My guess is that the more people that let the NVDA developers know that this would be a highly useful feature, the more likely they (or anyone reading with both the skills and time) will prioritize it.Half-unrelated, but is it possible to have NVDA only speak what's in the braille viewer (i.e. what's at or near the text cursor)?Maybe there's a setting I missed? Because there are some situations I've seen with my game where it shows what I want in the braille viewer, but the audio is completely silent. Other times it speaks what's in the braille viewer as I'd expect so I don't know why it's acting inconsistently.Also, on my test setup NVDA seems to crash a lot. Is this typical or something weird that I'm doing? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/577204/#p577204 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game Dragonlee and aaron:My guess is that the more people that let the NVDA developers know that this would be a highly useful feature, the more likely they (or anyone reading with both the skills and time) will prioritize it.Half-unrelated, but is it possible to have NVDA only speak what's in the braille viewer (i.e. what's at or near the text cursor)?Maybe there's a setting I missed? Because there are some situations I've seen with my game where it shows what I want in the braille viewer, but the audio is completely silent. Other times it says what's in the braille viewer as I'd expect so I don't know why it's acting inconsistently.Also, on my test setup NVDA seems to crash a lot. Is this typical or something weird that I'm doing? URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/577204/#p577204 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game Aaron: Thanks for your suggestion. I agree that'd it'd likely make the game easier in many ways. However I think it could also be overwhelming and not easy to interpret in another. For example, when you invade another city, most of the time you need to break through city walls to be able to get in. Knowing whether you or anyone else has already made a hole in the wall (which normally circles around the city in a large and irregular pattern) may be hard to discern I'd think. The other thing is that adding an additional mode to the game to describe all the map surroundings in text would take more work than I can commit to at this point. While the game is open source, I'm the only one working on it at this point so I can only do so much right now!zkline: That's great. Let me start with those changes. It will take me a while, but hopefully I can get much of it done and add it to the next release which will probably be anywhere between two to four months out. Certainly it may take longer and may have to come in a release even after, but I'll at least start the process.Any other feedback in the interim is welcomed too by you or others!(maybe someone can submit a request to the NVDA developers too--at least if they're aware of the issue they may get to it at some point) URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/576973/#p576973 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game Thanks zkline -- this is very helpful. I think I see what you mean with the NVDA issue you described.I don't think command-style interactions would be too feasible with my game, but maybe I could do the following with the text cursor to make it easier:-Have the game move the text cursor to the active menu item, if any.-If you don't have the menu open, the text cursor will be on the map (as it is now), but I could add a keyboard shortcut to have the game move the text cursor to either the right side of the screen (where things like your money and the game year are printed in text) or the bottom of the screen (where the map tile you're on is described in text, such as the land type or building or unit descriptions). Then I could add a keyboard shortcut to tab through the relevant lines of text on those parts of the screen.Aside from fixing the color issues, maybe that alone would be worthwhile to do?Are there any good ways to represent graphs such as gold vs time? It's not entirely necessary to see the plots but it can be useful.Another thing I'm wondering about is the best way to show the map. Each tile can be land or water. If it's land, it also has an arability value indicating how habitable it is. I could represent arability by showing it as number between 0 and 9 and have the water be something like the % symbol. But I am worried if this would be too overwhelming -- the most important thing is knowing if it's land or water. Perhaps it's easier to have a space be land and the % symbol be water so it stands out more? (The arability values, are always printed in text at the bottom so one could look that up if needed) I don't know if I'm describing this clearly or not... URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/576916/#p576916 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game My questions are in this post. Let me describe some assumptions I'm making from attempting to look into this a little on my own. I knew nearly nothing about non-visual accessibility until a few days ago and I still know very little. Please correct me if any are wrong (apparently on the internet, one of the fastest ways to learn is to post incorrect statements and have other people correct you hahaha):-Many or all of you are using a braille display. It is shows one line at a time and the text cursor is presented to you as dots that oscillate up and down.-You have a scroll wheel on the braille display. This lets you select the line above or below the line it's currently displaying? How do you scroll side to side? Is this exclusively how you select what it displays or are there different modes as to how it decides what to present on the braille display? Which mode would you use for my game?-I read elsewhere that there is significance to where console games place the text mode cursor, particularly with menu selections. Is this correct? I suppose this is related to the point above about how the braille display decides what text to present.-You use the keyboard exclusively (or almost exclusively) and do not use the mouse.Here are more questions I have:-Is it easy for you to set the braille reader to "jump" to a specific part of the screen? For example, some bits of information in the game is always presented at the same place (like at the far right of the screen or the (roughly) center of the bottom for what type of land your text cursor is on) and if you have the ability to quickly jump to it somehow, that'd make playing a whole lot easier.-JaceK: if you don't mind sharing, what Linux screen reading software are you using to access the game (and are there any particular settings you needed when you played the game)? Maybe I can try to replicate the setup you've had most success with and go from there in figuring out what's wrong with the tech tree for you and other issues you might have, if you're interested, that is. (Also it sounds like you've played Civilization -- can I ask how? I would've guessed that game would be completely inaccessible!)-Is NVDA the preferred Windows screen reader? Should I attempt to get the game working with that one on Windows or focus on something else?-Do you know of any gameplay videos of people playing games like this? (Maybe one like Stone Soup which someone already mentioned to me as being accessible on Windows).Also, if anyone has any specific suggestions about what could make the game more accessible, I'm all ears.I should note: for a text based game, the Arcane Fortune currently uses a ton of color to represent information -- but a lot of that I can fix in the future and a substantial amount of it is already written in text somewhere on the screen (mostly near the bottom portion).Best,Darin(By the way, I downloaded NVDA and briefly attempted to use it -- I was so lost even trying to use the Windows console even before I started my game haha. Hats off to you all. I don't know how you manage to browse, much less play games, but it's massively impressive!) URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/576848/#p576848 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game
Re: Arcane Fortune - Windows/Linux/Mac console-played grand strategy game Hi,I'm the developer of Arcane Fortune and am interested in learning more about what would make this game accessible. I have (many) questions that maybe you all would be willing to help me with. I think having a better understanding of all this will help me improve the game's accessbility and also avoid introducing new features in the future that may not be accessible.Firstly, though, to attempt to clarify some of what's been said in this thread, I want to say:The game already supports the Windows console--see the directions below. Further, I haven't released a 32 bit version of this game. I have only supplied 64 bit binaries on all platforms (so I'm not sure why people are saying that only a 32 bit version is provided haha).Here's how you can launch in the Windows console (that is, from cmd.exe) -- zkline already posted this earlier, but I'm reposting it with a few more steps to hopefully make it more clear:1. Open cmd.exe2. Right click the top of the window and choose "Properties".3. I set the font size to 7x12 in the Font tab, then I set the window size and height in the "Layout" tab to 181 for the width and 76 for the height. The exact amount doesn't matter too much, but much less than those amounts can cause the game to crash. You can't change these preferences once the game is launched.4. "cd" into the directory where you downloaded and unzipped the game.5. "cd" into the "game" subdirectory.6. Run "arcane_fortune_windows_pdcurses.exe"7. Select start a new game8. Configure the game to show only 8 colors--via the keyboard you can press the following letters in sequence "m", "p", "u". That sequence will open the menu which is on the top of the screen, then it opens the "Preferences" menu and then it selects the "Use only 8 colors" option.I'll post my own questions in a post following this one, because they've grown to be a lot, hopefully not overwhelmingly so. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/576846/#p576846 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
