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Blind Tactics

Started by Dallas.Wiens, April 02, 2016, 11:01:57 pm

Dallas.Wiens




   Hello, my name is Dallas Wiens, and I am a blind gamer.
I am attempting to bring Final Fantasy Tactics to the blind community, and have decided that with my lack of skill I must reach out to those with more skill and experience than myself.
I must find a way to get the values for the content of the game itself.  I would need to allow a screen reader to output the information in audio to the gamer.  This has been done on Pokémon crystal.
From my understanding this is referred to as ram hacking.
I would need the dialogue to be sent out via the screen reader, as well as the various combat and non-combat dialogue.  I would also need to indicate the move tiles, along with their X,Y coordinates, and their height.  Obviously anything that has a textual value, and helps  a sighted player play the game, is something that I would need to be able to show to the blind player.  This is a lot less complex than what it appears to be here. 
I personally do not yet have the skill to do this, nor do I know where to begin the learning process.  So I'm reaching out to you all here on the forum.   I have read through quite a number of forum posts, and in turn a number of reviews of the changes made by some of you all.  I am highly impressed with all the changes you've all been able to make to FFT.  I of course am asking for aid in learning to do this, but if this is a challenge that anyone else wishes to pick up as well I'd be more than grateful.

My key concern is to bring this game to the blind community, whether I'm involved in this happening or not I personally couldn't care less.  Though I am willing to do the work myself if that is what it takes.

Thank you all for your consideration
to understand more about screen readers and how they work I recommend reading about NVDA here www.nvaccess.org/
To see how this works with roms, you can check out the source code for the Pokémon Crystal hack on github.com  I hesitate to place the entire url here due to the rules, though if I am asked I can provide the full url, provided I'v been given permission by an admin.

3lric

Hello Dallas,

I'm an admin here and it is fine for you to post the whole URL.

I would love to help you with what you are doing here, but I'm honestly not sure where to start, or which information would be most relevant to you to begin what you are trying to accomplish. Hopefully someone else here has a bit more insight on something like this than I do, and if there ends up being anything I can do to help out, I'll surely do so.

I wish you luck!
  • Modding version: PSX

Angel

I'll be honest with you: I want to help you. I really do. But I don't believe it to be feasible due to the complexity; the AoE effects are difficult to describe in a meaningful way, and to keep mind friendly fire situations, much less reaction abilities and percent chances of hit... you'd be absolutely assaulted with data in a way that (biased as I may be) would be difficult to retain and use. I won't say it can't be done, just that it would only be legitimately possible if you have a very good memory as well as internal visual memory. Not being blind (just merely very very nearsighted) I cannot pretend to identify, but from a programmer's perspective... there's a lot of complexity to the engine I'm not sure how to translate effectively.

Comparing Pokemon Crystal to FFT is like comparing Pong to Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward; 48 keys aren't enough for one class rotation, and you still need to be keenly aware of your surroundings.
  • Modding version: PSX
* Angel should quit being a lazy bitch
<@Elric> I agree to that as well

nyanyame nyanyajuu nyanyado no nyarabide nyakunyaku inyanyaku nyanyahan nyanyadai nyannyaku nyarabete nyaganyagame
At the end of the day, are we not all trapped inside lemons?

Dallas.Wiens

Normally I would agree with you, but I've been totally blind (0 light perception) for 8 years now, and as such I've begun to understand things in a slightly different way than when I was sighted.  There are plenty of roms that could be hacked and made playable, some vastly easier than FFT, the problem with this is that as a community we have absolutely shit to play that can be played reliably.  I was just going through FFX again myself, without sight, and though there are some serious problems with that it is at least pseudo playable.  Tactics is even more so, so long as you know what you are selecting on your battle menu, and what tile(s) your aiming at. 

If I can access the ram memory address and provided I know what lines go to which things game side, I can then call audio to each of those things.  Such as when Ramza Speaks, I can have that read by the screen reader.  When Deleta takes damage, it would read out the damage value, and it would also read out the unit that has taken that damage.  True enough that aoe, especially the very large scale aoe attacks, like the summonings would read out a lot of information at the same time, but all of that can be double checked when you scan the battle field checking out your units and your enemy's.  If I can get all of the menus and the dialogue read to the player via the screen reader, that would be step one, anything past that can be addressed at that point.

I really appreciate your input, however, I respectfully disagree with it being either too complicated, or too spammy.  We've learned to adapt to MUDs that send you anywhere from 1 to 30 lines of text in rapid succession.  my screen reader alone reads at 930wpm, and mine is by no where the fastest.

If you can help me with the ram memory address, and help me figure out which lines apply to which things in game, I can use that information to show you what I'm talking about.  The static nature of the game is one reason I want to use FFT as the first installment.  Consider doing something like this with VH lol