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[mifki]

I don't think DF uses curses blink feature or anything like that.

[zkline]

I don't think DF uses curses blink feature or anything like that.

Not even in the pure tetx mode? That surprises me. The blinking has to happen somehow, and I don't know of a way to do it on a terminal without something like Curses or Terminfo.

[lethosor]

I agree with mifki here. I've only ever seen terminals that support blinking between a given character and nothing, while DF typically switches between multiple characters on a tile (and sometimes uses an animation to switch between them). As far as I can tell, DF is just redrawing any characters it needs to change without relying on the terminal's blinking capabilities.

[skeletonkay]

My apologies if this is unrealistic or has been previously mentioned, but this thread reminded me of a sensory replacement device I recently read about (I think it was in the New Yorker, or something). It uses light electric stimulation to map visual information to the tongue, and I think a blind man uses it to rock climb. On a conceptual level, it could offer an interesting way to supplement text-to-voice if the DF map info could be effectively sent through the device (say, transmitting a 3x3 grid to the tongue displaying walls, trees, etc. and using voice for detail). Seems like the price is around $10,000 USD though, so again, unrealistic.

http://www.wicab.com/faqs

[zkline]

Hey, all. Happy 2018. Please see below for your pro forma blind DF ramblings.

More seriously, I can't seem to quit. I've been thinking about DF again, and just checked into DF Remote, and was greatly pleased to see it's still a going concern. At this point I believe the actual game UI is kind of a lost cause, but I remain somewhat hopeful for alternatives.

Sadly, my sensory replacement devices are overdo, so I remain more or less where I was last time. I'm trying to get into accessibility in a professional context, which is probably not all that helpful for this project, but still…

Anyway, I'm back, for… The third or fourth time? I've los count, and hope I'm still welcome, even if I am stubborn.

[zkline]

Sorry for the double post, but…

There are a couple interesting developments today on my end. I discovered an alternative screen reader which has somewhat better control over exactly how I review the terminal than the default Mac accessibility solution. For the curious, it's called TDSR, and you can grab it from Git here. The really important thing about this program is that it keeps the review cursor positioned in the proper column when moving up and down, which my regular Mac reader struggles with..

I've also discovered what happens when you cap the FPS. As an experiment, I tested capping it at 1, and noticed that the problem of my readers announcing blinking characters was much lessened. The game is of course a lot slower, but I don't want to claw my ears off as much now.

So this is at least a positive step even if it isn't a solution. I'm going to keep at it

[Heretic]

Glad to see what topic has some progress, not so glad that i can't do anything usefull at the moment. Anyway, good luck.

[zkline]

Actually, I've managed to make considerably more progress, thanks to the folks on the  DF subreddit. I've discovered that the text-mode DF plays reasonably well with my Windows screen reader. I've made inroads at a small fort with a couple stockpiles, and am hoping to make more progress today.

The blinking and terminal cursor issues still remain, but I'm feeling a lot more optimistic than I have recently. i think there is a lot of promise for the future here.

[Pvt. Pirate]

have you tried editing the raws to make the game way too easy, just so you can test the interface and controls?
i know this removes a lot of FUN, but it could help for a beginning.

[zkline]

I haven't. I'm not quite sure where I'd begin doing that. So far, the controls are easy enough to use, though I'm not nearly as efficient as sighted gamers would be. The ability of my screen reader to tell me color is invaluable, though I'm not quite sure what some of it means—I know Red is a blocked workshop, but what is magenta/purple?

The most time-consuming task is probably making sure that I know where my cursor is, bookmarks can definitely help with that if I remember to use them. The screen reader also isn't as efficient as it could be about reading tiles I'm looking at, I often have to search manually for the tile contents. I want to be able to run DFHack commands from the console, but for some reason ctrl-shift-P isn't working as I'd expect.

I need to get a demo of my setup up sometime soon, I think it might be fun/educational to show where the issues are.

[lethosor]

DFHack keybindings don't work in text mode, and Ctrl-Shift-P wouldn't be possible to support in any case. You could try running command-prompt with dfhack-run, although I'm not sure if that's more convenient than just using dfhack-run by itself.

[jecowa]

I thought "curses" was just the name of the tilesheet until now. Does the curses_640x300.png tilesheet come from the (n)curses wrapper or did Bay12Games create it?

[zkline]

 I think that the default symbol set is based on the old DOS CP437, actually. I guess Bay12 just chose it :-)  i’d be curious to know what the history behind that decision was though.

[lethosor]

It is a CP437 font, but I'm not sure where it came from or if Toady made it himself. The "curses" name dates back to at least 0.23.130.23a, possibly as far back as the first version of DF, so that's well before DF supported ncurses. My best guess is that the name comes from PDcurses or another Windows curses implementation which old games like these used, possibly including old versions of DF.

Anyway, I've added the ncurses cursor control idea to the DFHack issue tracker, so hopefully it won't get forgotten.

[SmileyMan]

You could try getting in touch with Barry Ellis (https://twitter.com/OneSwitch) - he's an expert in computer game accessibility, and a thoroughly nice guy.