HOw best to experience DW when I can't really play it?

[BlindGuyNW]

Hi ALl,

I have a soft spot for 4X strategy games, and particularly those with the scale of Distant Worlds, but the game itself is a little too graphical to be comfortable to play using my screen reader, as far as I can tell. I'm wondering if there might be any more novel ways to experience it.

I had a friend at one point who was willing to basically run the game and handle the controls, while presenting me with events as they happened and letting me make decisions. Sadly, they have had a lot of trouble running it on a more modern computer, a problem which I gather is not unique to them.

I have a copy which I bought through GoG, in hopes that I might be able to make something of it myself, but the actual UI seems to be an unholy mash-up of standard Windows controls and custom graphical stuff which my screen reader struggles to interpret.

Is there a way I can enable any more detailed event logging, so I can figure out what's going on moment to moment? I was wondering how much of the game could be modded, UI-wise. I basically hope I can figure out a way to control the game without having to interact a great deal with the graphical map.

Any input on this question would be greatly appreciated.

[Siddham]

You are right about the UI being a "mash-up of standard Windows controls and custom graphical stuff". The game started out as a hobby project and by the time it had become a business project it was too late to change early development choices & decisions which were hardcoded into the deep structure of the game. The UI is often criticized and causes issues for players with poor sight. Personally I find the UI to be fine once you learn it; but I think my view is probably a minority. I have no idea how someone with no sight is going to manage the game so I'm sorry I cannot help you there. I hope some of the other players who still post here may be able to give you some more useful information. There is a second game being developed and I fully expect Distant Worlds 2 will have a more industry standard, flexible and scalable UI.

[sinbuster]

I can't honestly think of a more difficult UI for a game. There is a lot of information all over the place. Not only that, the number of events, characters and units will only increase with time. The ship builder is also tough to navigate, as is the fleet tab. I could go on.

I can say the messages history button (H hotkey) is actually quite detailed. Not the messages ticker at the center-top of the UI but the button just to the right of it. I rely on it for a lot of stuff, especially character missions. So much can happen that you can't track it on the ticker. Clicking on the messages history tab opens a new window and pauses the game so you would not experience things in real-time. Also, the individual events are written in such a small font, and are very close together, so you have to contend with that. The individual event text can be highlighted, however, though I don't know enough about screen readers to know if that is helpful in any way. I hope for all our sakes the new UI is way, way easier to navigate.

[BlindGuyNW]

Well, I've been poking at the game for a while on my own and have managed to figure out a few things.

My screen reader reads quite a bit of the screens already, and tons of the information on colonies and such is available in nice tabular format. I was able to use the expansion planner to build a colony ship for a new world in my star system, though whether it would have been a viable colony is another question, as I'm still a bit at sea in that regard.

The issue at the moment is those messages which appear along the side of the screen. My screen reader gets quite confused by them. Is there a way to disable them, or at least minimize the number that appear there?

I finally figured out that a lot of the issue I was having is that the "Start playing," button once you begin a new game is not detected by my screen reader and does not actuate via the keyboard. Fortunately my reader has an OCR feature which aids in finding such things.

I'm actually reasonably optimistic about the potential for this game, if I can figure out a setting which is slow and frequently pause and if my screen reader will continue to cooperate.

[Erik Rutins]

Hi there,

Unfortunately, I can't offer advice from experience as I've never tried DW with a screen reader, but if the pop-up messages are an issue, it may be worth trying to see if you can access them through the Message History instead. You can find that button circled in the screenshot below, it's in the top right upper corner of the central top UI button panel.

Regards,

- Erik

[SirHoraceHarkness]

I can't conceive playing this game blind using a screen reader though I suspect the heavy automation options makes it possible. Much respect to the op for overcoming his blindness!

[BlindGuyNW]

At the moment, I'm wondering how best I can avoid having to use the graphical map. I suspect the Empire Navigation tool will be my best friend, if I can only figure out how to open it. Is there any way to bind it to keyboard shortcuts so I don't have to fuss with bookmarking mouse positions?

[BlindGuyNW]

I have figured out another source of some of my confusion. Essentially, the way that the game is coded, my screen reader is off and able to see items which are not actually present on screen. That is, for instance, I frequently see a description of some information about the game editor, even though that is not actually visible for sighted users. The game does not appear to properly take objects out of my screen reader view, and thus I see many which are potentially not actually visible. This may be a screen reader limitation, but I also suspect that there is some strange coding at fault. this is at least informative, in that I now know another reason I was a little bit confused before. I am still bound and determined to try this game somehow, even if I have to keep fighting it tooth and nail to do so.

[BlindGuyNW]

Hi All,

So I've been poking more at DW tonight and have figured out at least some of what's happening, though am less sure why. The screen reader basically gets accessibility information from the OS and apps via so-called accessibility APIs, and in the case of DW the information being returned by the API is nonsensical. For instance…

There are tons of "learn about pirates," buttons, but in reality none of these is actually about pirates at all. These buttons are for things like your next and previous colony ship, spaceport, etc. I know this because I can route the mouse to the button and use screen reader OCR to get the true tooltip. The same goes for all the other controls on the screen, I can't trust the things the screen reader tells me because they are meaningless, and the same bad label is often misused for many different buttons. It's less that the screen reader sees things which aren't there, and more that it's being misinformed.

What can I do about this? I'm not sure yet. I hope I can find a way to get the program to read the actual information. It's obviously present, I just need to figure out how to get to it. IF I could find a way to tell the reader to go about finding the API info another way, that would be ideal.

[Erik Rutins]

Unfortunately, DW1 was never developed or designed with this in mind, nor did we have any testers to help inform us about it, so I really can't advise on any workarounds. With that said, this has raised the question about how we make sure DW2 is more friendly to gamers using screen readers. We will look into that and may ask you to join our eventual beta test to help us see if we can improve in that area.

[BlindGuyNW]

Erik,

I appreciate that the original DW wasn't designed with accessibility in mind. I would very much hope that DW2 can be a little better in that regard, but I will certainly keep poking at DW1 in the mean time, as I believe with some effort it can be a lot better than it is now. The weird button labelling seems to mostly be a factor in the main view, from what I've seen, and most of the buttons it victimizes do appear to have keyboard shortcuts anyway.

I am certainly willing to offer any help I can in terms of testing and advice in order to make DW2 playable. This kind of game has been a passion of mine for years.

[BlindGuyNW]

Hi All,

I wanted to give a quick update, as I've been making some actual progress with Distant Worlds lately, albeit rather slowly. I'm still getting used to the way a lot of the controls read with my screen reader, and have slowly learned to use a mix of OCR and screen reader commands to read a lot of information. I'm hoping there is a mod or a method I can use to scale up the fonts, as the OCR system has a bit of trouble with them.

I spent an hour or so with a sighted friend today running through various game screens. I think a lot of what I need will be conveyed by the in-game messages, though as always with these kinds of games I struggle a bit to put it all together into a coherent whole. My empire is currently running largely on automation and advisor suggestion, and I need to figure out how to tell whether the suggestions are reasonable.

One thing which throws me for a bit of a loop is being suggested to contact an empire I haven't otherwise heard of before—whom are these people we're offering mining rights to, exactly? I wish I had a way to explore each system, the bodies in it, and the interconnections between them. I'm not sure yet how best to do that. Sadly, the Empire navigation tool windows appear to be somewhat inaccessible, so it's a little difficult to quickly move among various locations, though it's entirely possible I haven't yet found an efficient way to do so using the rest of the UI.
I'd love any tips folks might be able to provide. Does anyone know of a way to get data out of the DW save games? maybe I could find a way to explore the galaxy/system map virtually that way.