BlindGuyNW

Hey TonyE, This is your requested check-in on the 12th. Best, Zack.

I will. :)

Hey All, I just got the HCE and what I assume is the latest update, V 2015.027, installed. If there's anything else I need to be up to the latest version, I'd love to know. I was looking at the export DLLs, trying to figure out how to get started with accessibility work, but couldn't connect to download any of the source code. Is there a better API for doing that kind of thing now, or a server which will let me download without authentication? Any info would be very much appreciated, as well as help figuring out how to go about the process of making this stuff a bit more accessible for me. Some of the export DLLs, like the AAR file, seem promising if only because they appear to be able to fetch information from the game and send it to other places, which is basically what I need. If there were a way to ask in-game objects for information about themselves, position and course and the like, I'd be half-way there, I believe. The biggest issues are interactions with the mouse-only areas of the UI, principally the map. Thanks for any information or help y'all might be able to provide.

Hey there, I'm back again, after almost a year ashore, so to speak. This seems to be a pattern. ;) Anyway, I grabbed the paper Harpoon, though it seems like that's going to have access issue of its own, not least of which being I can't effectively play both sides, let alone plot things on graph paper. Anyway, I wanted to check in and see how things were going around here. I still have access to HCE, and other versions of the game, though need to reinstall them on my newest machine. NVDA and Golden Cursor remain my screen readers of choice. I hope that increased accessibility is still possible. :) Paging @TonyE, et al.

I'm happy to help out with hotkey suggestions or anything else you might need. NVDA is a complicated beast, and the add-on just adds to that, no pun intended.

Lately, I'm using NVDA with the Golden Cursor add-on. The latter is useful for moving the mouse pixel-by-pixel and can also do screen bookmarks. NVDA itself can do OCR, thanks to Windows 10, though that isn't as useful for Harpoon as for other games I've played. Jaws also occasionally still comes in handy, it gets a view of the entire screen I have trouble getting with NVDA. I tend to alternate decent between them.

I'm looking forward to trying whatever you can come up with.

Hey, Hey, I might be missing something, but I can’t seem to get that to work. It’s possible that it only appears momentarily, or that something else I’m doing is in advertently disturbing things. One thing I might try at some point is recording another demo, if only because this time I will have a bit more understanding of what my screen reader is capable of, and so forth. As far as what would help, I’m still trying to figure that out. One issue I am running into is that I am both trying to learn the game system, and the Quirks of the computer implementation, all at once. I wonder if it might be helpful to arrange a time to connect live with someone who is more intimately familiar with it, and might be able to watch me fumble at the map, and so on, just to see where things break down. :-) I have sighted friends who are willing to offer a pair of eyes, but they are no more familiar with the game that I am.

Hello all, Thanks for the welcome. I have played around a bit more with the latest version of HCE, and am trying to formulate some thoughts. The fundamental problem of a lot of information being conveyed visualy still remains, principally of course the map. That being said, I discovered tonight that I can use the "group iD toggle," (Ctrl+alt+I), combined with the screen reader's review features, to set courses on the group map. It's a little difficult to tell where those courses are going, of course, but that's a separate problem. In general, what I lack most is orientation and a sense of scale. It's difficult to tell how extensive given maps are, and figure out where the boundaries lie between land and sea. Nevertheless, I'm reasonably optimistic about things, because I can now move the mouse with pixel-by-pixel accuracy reliably, and bookmark spots to return to later. I was hoping to find a way to access the latitude and longitude info on the map. It's not exactly a friendly coordinate system for navigation, but it might at least give me orientation to where I am, or where landmarks are. This is a bit rambling and disjointed, I apologize. I'm happy to expound on things further by voice or in text, whichever would be preferred. The problem is fundamentally that I reach certain roadblocks which, until i've figured out a way around them, present obstacles to enjoying the rest of the game.

Hi ALl, I just wanted to drop by, as it's been a while since I checked in around here. I got an email from matrix Games today which reminded me of the Harpoon series, and it occurred to me it had been ages since I poked at it. I have learned quite a lot about accessibility and related matters since I was last here, and have gained a few abilities I didn't previously possess. I am mostly hoping that with sufficient dedication I can enjoy some Harpoon if not any of the other Matrix titles. I have been previously poking at other fairly complex games, so it is not quite as alien to me as it used to be. I wanted to say hi, in case anyone is still interested. I intend to re-download HCE later today and see where things stand. WIth warmest regards, as always.

I could also lurk around here without posting to nag, I suppose. I appreciate that this community is still around, at any rate.

TonyE et Al, Any chance there's been any movement on the RHA add-on? I keep coming back to an interest in Harpoon every few months, it seems. The current global situation probably doesn't help that any. Fingers crossed for something sometime soon.

TonyE, THanks for letting me know. I'm definitely still here and still interested. I happened to stumble onto a PDF of one of the Harpoon manuals, ca. 1996. That got me to thinking about the later versions, and back to wanting to play again.

Hey all, I was reading something earlier today which put me in mind of Harpoon again, so here I am back to see how things are going. I suspect anxiety over the current global situation is partially to blame, I have a family friend who's fairly involved in naval matters. Anyhow, I'd love to do some gaming with Harpoon at some point, whether in the current form or with any accessibility work that might have been done since. Please consider this yet another ping of interest

Thanks, TonyE. Glad to know it wasn't entirely improbable. I suspect i just got lucky with the torpedoes. It only occurred to me mid-way through the scenario that the game actually prompted me to make evasive maneuvers, and I didn't have to come up with those manually. THere's only so much anybody can do with a program written in Basic, I suppose. The publisher indicated to me that the genesis of the simulation was a training tool for the USN, suggesting that I have a "somewhat de-contented and de-classified," version. All in all, I'm fairly impressed, peculiarities in the design aside.

Hi All, I've been messing with a few games from Simulations Canada lately, including Grey Seas, Grey Skies, which I mentioned at http://harpgamer.com/harpforum/index.php?/topic/25555-playing-hce-as-a-blind-gamer/page-3 On a lark, I decided to set up a scenario inspired by a sequence in Red Storm Rising, in which USS Chicago is ordered to attack a battlegroup which includes the battlecruiser Kirov, among others. In retrospect I didn't include all the ship classes given in the description of that sequence, and perhaps should have. I added an Alpha class submarine to the mix as well to make things interesting, and just commanded the Chicago versus what seems to my uneducated eye an overwhelming force. I was struck by how well I actually did. I managed to sink four ships, including the Soviet submarine, while more or less consistently dodging helicopter dropped torpedoes and RBU rockets. I was left with the battle cruiser alone, which was still quite dangerous on account of the helicopters. I was eventually struck by a torpedo, thus ending the scenario. My credulity was actually strained quite a bit, and that's why I'm writing to ask just how unrealistic the simulation actually was. I must have evaded something on the order of 10 torpedo drops. The ships arrayed agains me were: 1. Kirov class bc 2. Slava class Cruiser. 3. Kresta II class cruiser. 4. Sovremennyy- class destroyer. 5. Alpha-class submarine. Any comments appreciated. GS, GS assumes an area of around 8,000 square nautical miles, give or take.

Hi All, So I've been thinking about Harpoon and related matters recently, and one of the suggestions made was that I might want to get my hands on a copy of the paper rules in some form. I doubt i could actually play, but maybe it would help me get an idea of naval tactics, or at least understand what's possible a bit more. I can seem to find almost everything except the rulebook in an electronic form. I have the "Dance of the Vampires," scenario book, and can get a copy of the "High Tide," data annex. There are miscellaneous books from the Admiralty Trilogy Group available at various places. I suspect this is probably a lost cause, but does anybody have contacts who might be able to get me the rules material in an electronic format? Even if it isn't available to most people, if nothing else most books go through some form of electronic storage nowadays. I'm also wondering if an earlier version of the rules might be more accessible, so to speak. I've read mixed reviews about H4 in that regard. This is basically a shot in the dark. I suspect my best bet is going to be playing the computer game at some point, if access gets far enough along.

Double post for me, but I wanted to mention that I've got my hands on a game called Grey Seas, Grey Skies, from Simulations Canada. Harpoon seems much larger in scope, obviously, but I'm happy to have something to occupy my naval urge while it remains just out of reach. The textual nature of the game is, once again, the only reason I can play it at all.

Hey, Tony, Understood. I hope the work is at least engaging as well as busy.. The sim is called Begin, a Tactical Starship Simulation. I think it’s loosely based on the Starfleet Battles tabletop game. It’s only accessible to me at all because it has a text mode. The ability to (mostly) control a fleet of ships definitely reminded me of Harpoon, even if the details are a little less rigorous.

Hey, all. Just thought i'd write on the eve of my birthday and see if there was anything new to report. Here's hoping for something testable at some point soon. I was playing an old DOS space simulation game yesterday, which has a few similarities to Harpoon.

Thanks, TonyE. These seem like great first steps. If I can help with anything, feel free to hit me up. I haven't actually loaded up HCE in a while, so my memory is a little hazy.

Consider this pre-arranged cage rattling. One ping only.

Hey All, I was just reminded of this thread, and Harpoon, recently, and wondered if there had been any progress made on the accessibility front since I last looked? I haven't kept up with things as well as I could have, being distracted by real-life concerns. But I'm hopeful to be able to play a proper game of this at some point. Just wanted to ping this thread and see if it was still alive. Thanks for keeping the game going.

Yeah, if the button has a label it should be read when using Tab. That generally applies in dialog boxes. Same holds for other controls. There's a 40-minute demo of a couple of different screen reader's available,along with an open-source one at www.nvda-project.org. They're not all quite as suitable for playing Harpoon, but they might give you ideas about how the general interface is read and so forth. Tab works like you'd expect. Keyboard shortcuts are nice, but I don't need them to use most controls. Hope this helps, and happy to answer any more questions.

Hi All, So I have been getting into old computers lately as a hobby, and one of the things which is interesting to me is that many early games were playable for me under, say, MS DOS, whereas newer games often aren't. The one I'm thinking of this evening is called Red Sky at Morning, by Simulations Canada. It reminds me quite a bit of Harpoon in naval focus, if not scope—it's much more grand strategy than tactics. 99% of the game is perfectly accessible, though complex. I'm still unsure what some of the options are for, or how they interact. Has anybody played this game? I seem to remember reading something about Simcan still existing somewhere, I'd love to get in touch and see what other games might be playable for me. If anybody has played RSM, I'd appreciate tips. I find keeping track of the various theaters of operation kind of overwhelming, not to mention planning anything in detail.