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. 

Welcome back!

We're still here, though tempo of operations has dropped off quite a bit.

You might say we're in a bit of a loiter mode at the moment.

Indeed welcome back.  Brad sums it up well, I've done some small exploratory projects adjacent to the game, the current one is in hopes of making an add-on/ExportDLL available that draws players to the US Naval Institute (USNI).  

I continue to be very interested in your findings with Harpoon and thoughts on what would make it easier to play.  I'd welcome a voice discussion at some point when you have some thoughts assembled.

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.

21 hours ago, BlindGuyNW said:

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. 

I'm thinking this won't help much but you can click any point on the map to get the latitude and longitude.  The status bar at the bottom of the main GE/Harpoon window will show text like "Range is 42nm, Bearing is 263 degrees [from (69.67, 0.16) to (69.57, -1.83)] VDeep".  That gives you range and bearing between the previous clicked position and the new clicked position, then the previous lat, lon and current lat, lon in parenthesis followed by the depth at the current point.  

One partial quick-fix would be if I added the lat/lon to the Weather Report dialog Ctrl+w.

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.

Wow, Friday already, yes, the status bar text is fleeting, next week I'll post up something for you to try to get positions.  

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

What screen reader are you using with Harpoon these days?

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.

Good deal, I've downloaded them and will install them tomorrow.  I dusted off the code for the add-on I was working on in 2017 as well.  Incredible how time flies!

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. 

Installed NVDA and Golden Cursor, no clue what I'm doing :).  I'll ask for help once I've given it a decent attempt.  I'm still on track to post something up for group positions this week.

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.

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.