pitermach

@pitermach@dragonscave.space

I'm just a blind geek who's main hobbies include sound design, accessibility especially of games, podcasting, books and movies/TV (mainly SCI-Fi and lit RPG), and programming. Regularly do let's plays with @talon as https://dragonscave.space/@pg13lp. Game database editor and newsposter on audiogames.net. Most of my sound design work can be found on currentlyuntitled.design and various games.

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fastfinge, to random
@fastfinge@social.interfree.ca avatar

And so it begins. Rusc and stingray, two services I use daily on are unavailable. I assume because the new app will only work with the three major streaming services. Already hearing that adding custom streaming urls will be forbidden after the upgrade. Goodbye to the dozens of those I have.

pitermach,

@fastfinge They're removing the option to add custom stream URL's? Oh that really sucks...

fireborn, to random

Has anyone got the Clicks keyboard case for iPhone? If you have, how is it? I've got one on order and I'm excited to try it but looking for other opinions.

pitermach,

@fireborn I don't but have been really tempted to get one so will be very curious to hear your thoughts. Especially re things like the exact keys that it has, whether there's bumps on F and J and how well it sinergises with VO. From what I read I don't think it has arrow keys so the number of commands you could do from the keyboard would be limited but it might be possible IE to turn quicknav on with a touch gesture and speed up web navigation in addition to just having a nice thing to type on.

pitermach,

@fireborn Me too, that's why I'm so tempted lol. My speed has really gone down after flicktype died and the other available options haven't really clicked (no pun intended)

menelion, to iOS
@menelion@dragonscave.space avatar

Dear blind users! Please note: in latest iOS betas there is an extremely nasty bug where several apps turn your phone into totally unusable state. You cannot reload VoiceOver, you cannot do anything at all besides restarting the phone. Be super mega careful! I know so far one German app (very important, it's PhotoTan app from which basically is needed for authorization of every significant bank operation), and one Russian app. I even don't know what to suggest if you have no sighted help and no spare device where you can run BeMyEyes or so. Anyway, if you encounter such an app, do the volume up — volume down — side button dance to force restart, I have no other idea. Again, be super careful! I'd like to CC @JonathanMosen because it might need to be spread for a wider audience, and @lynnskyi because I know you use only your phone, so again, be extremely careful, you'll never know what app will cause it to behave like this. Thanks.

pitermach,

@menelion @JonathanMosen @lynnskyi This seems to happen when an app declares a specific language, especially if your phone is in a different one. A workaround that doesn't involve a restart is before you go into the app, set your VO language rotor to the language the app is in (So for a german banking app set it to German), and it has to be the specific language and not just the "default language" option. Afaik it was reported by multiple people to Apple so hopefully won't be in 17.5 final.

pitermach,

@menelion @JonathanMosen @lynnskyi Have multilingual friends who are also on the beta so we just talked to each other and figured out the details.

FluidEscence, to random

Um so this is a huge problem. I basically won't be able to use my Sonos system when the new app comes out because yes, it's that bad.

pitermach,

@FluidEscence Oh great you’re really worrying me. I was a part of their closed beta once upon a time when they were implementing airplay, but left when they started asking for a lot of private information about me and the whole household. Then again I doubt it would have changed much… Ugh.

pitermach,

@FluidEscence Can you give specifics? Like what concerned me from the press notes for instance is the whole swiping up from the lower part of the screen to access room controls thing for example but have they messed up any button labels? I guess I’m kind of lucky my setup for now consists of just a play:5 and a playbar for the livingroom TV, the latter being used by sighted family quite extensively sometimes using the multiroom feature to beam the TV audio to upstairs, but it’s also why a homepod just wouldn’t work for me because I depend quite heavily on the line-in on the play:5 and the airplay, it also has much better bass response because it’s just bigger.

pitermach,

@FluidEscence That really does sound concerning. Perhaps the web controller will redeem some of this, it would be nice to have something that doesn’t suck on Mac but I somehow bet it will be missing basic features like keyboard shortcuts. Also the fact they’re replacing a desktop app which could talk to your speakers over the local network with a thing that needs a server has drawbacks, I’ve had a few instances when I had to control my speakers with the internet being down and I’m worried this new app might have issues doing this.

pitermach,

@FluidEscence Oh. Just saw this. Yeah this is really concerning.CC @podcast I think you might be interested in this conversation.

KaraLG84, to random
@KaraLG84@dragonscave.space avatar

Just been playing PCS' old games in DosBox, some of the first blind accessible games I came across in 1999. Ah the bad old days of audio games that could only play one sound at once and you had to wait for it to finish before they'd accept any input.

pitermach,

@KaraLG84 @matt How the PCS games handled audio was actually pretty crewed, given they just past control to an external program to play the sound, when games like Doom in the early 90’s was doing multichannel stereo audio and FM music at the same time. Iirc David greenwood was the only one who decided to use his own playback routines which could play sounds during gameplay in the dos version of lonewolf. And as a fun fact how this was handled in other countries, Spain had at least one educational dos game, a spin on where in the world is carmen sandiego iirc, that had FM background music for the whole game with digitised sound effects, while a few countries in the central eastern european block had completely self-voicing games that used the covox speechthing or its clones which were far cheeper than a typical sound card. There was a russian stockmarket simulation that was self voiced with samples very much like early 2000’s windows audio games, while in Poland we had a bunch of games like chess that included a software speech synthesizer. None of this is to knock the PCS games by the way they are overwelmingly the reason I now have a huge interest in retro computing and AT and I don’t want to think about how much time I spent playing breakout, shooting range and panzers in north africa in particular lol.

pitermach, to random

Remember how months ago I did an MK1 stream where I just played for a while and chatted to chat, well I wanna get back into the game again after some recent updates, so I'm gonna do that again in a few minutes on my twitch. Watch this space for a link!

pitermach,

And as promiced I'm now live with more Mortal Kombat 1 invasions! https://www.twitch.tv/pitermach

pitermach,

And after a brief pause we're now back for some the last of us 2 left behind! https://www.twitch.tv/pitermach

jscholes, to random
@jscholes@dragonscave.space avatar

So glad the Thunderdrop community Eloquence dictionary maintainers decided that "dos" should be announced as "dooz". It's wrong if the person meant "DOS", as in MS-DOS. It's wrong if they meant "dos", as in the Spanish for two. In fact, I'm struggling to think of a time when I would want the three letters D, O, and S next to each other to be pronounced as "dooz", and coming up with nothing.

pitermach,

@jscholes Brings me back to the days I used to use acapela Peter on Klango, talking about mis dues games on the forum. good times. The pronounciation not so much lol.

TheQuinbox, to random

I didn't see this advertised very many places, but it's saved my ass so many times. One of my friends wrote a C program for Windows that works like a pipe, and puts any output from a command line application into a multiline text field that you can search through and read. For example, astyle -h|show. https://github.com/samtupy/pipe2textbox

pitermach,

@TheQuinbox @matt @jcsteh I’m honestly surprised terminal screen reading is still as basic as it is especially in the age of GUI screen readers. There’s probably concepts that we’ve enjoyed for mudding that could be adapted for terminals. Like imagine writing a set of triggers for your favorite compiler that prevents most output from being spoken, except for warnings and errors which could also be accompanied with a sound and go to their own buffer for review. Don’t think it’s just Windows and NVDA users that would enjoy something like that

seedy, to random

I'm hearing that people are able to play Unreal Tournament 99 and 2004 accessibly. How are they doing it?

pitermach,

@rooktallon @seedy 2004 had an accessibility mod created for it. I don't think the dev added everything they wanted to, there weren't really many navigation aids from what I remember, but it had a basic screen reader that read most of the UI and messages during a match, some keys to check your health and ammo and there was an audio crosshair as well. I have no idea where you can download it now. As for 99 I haven't heard about anyone playing it blind.

MutedTrampet, to random

LGR buys a 25-year-old printer. I don't think I've ever seen him actively swear until this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aoBK-K_K-Y

pitermach,

@FluidEscence @MutedTrampet Yeah. I've been watching the guy for 14+ years and did a double take when I heard it, it was so unexpected and raw. Love it.

pitermach,

@FluidEscence @MutedTrampet well in my experience a day that involves anything to do with printers has a good chance of not being good lol

AppleVis, to random
@AppleVis@mastodon.applevis.com avatar

[Forum Topic] Introducing Tape It: a high quality audio recorder https://www.applevis.com/forum/ios-ipados/introducing-tape-it-high-quality-audio-recorder

pitermach,

Re last boost about the Tape It app this is looking pretty neat, and VoiceOver doesn’t start sounding quiet or start lagging when you record, I think this also may be the first app outside Voice Memos to support lossless recording. Not sure yet I like the UI, but definitely worth looking at if you record on your phone a lot

pitermach, to random

Love to see screen reader improvements mentioned in almost every Mortal Kombat 1 patch, and usually it’s something genuinely good, and this time is no different. We finally have a speed control! You could already do it on the system level on PC and Xbox but god this is a godsend on playstation. There’s also a new audio queue for fatal blow inputs

pitermach,

@objectinspace I think wbgames have an accessibility email or contact form so it should be possible to report easily enough, if it wasn’t fixed for this patch.

pitermach,

And now that the maintenance period ended and I was able to get in game it’s more than just the speed control, a bunch of other things were fixed as well. The combo strings in the tutorial are read. In invasions before you enter a challenge it tells you any modifiers and how big a tower is as well as if you’ve already completed this space, the elemental chart is spoken when you bring it up, the stat point allocation now speaks the number of remaining points correctly, and when you finish a tower the score and breakdown is announced (though this last one may not be new but I haven’t seriously played in a while). Lots of good stuff!

pitermach,

@ppatel @objectinspace They haven’t added a speedometer or other accessibility for telemetry, though there is now a user created app to give you that info. But they have added options to have your position spoken if it changes and the names of drivers ahead/behind of you which was another common request, plus some basic accessibility for painting your cars. They’ve also been fixing narration bugs when they come up. Now I think the biggest thing people want is some kind of audio queue or other feedback to tell you when you’re about to crash into someone, which ironically is also a common request by sighted players because it can sometimes be hard to see and other sim racing games have spotters (someone telling you over the radio when someone is directly behind or in front and which side you can pass them on)

KaraLG84, to random
@KaraLG84@dragonscave.space avatar

If someone dumped the ROMs of things like the braille N Speak, I see no reason why they couldn't run in MAME.

pitermach,

@KaraLG84 @datajake1999 The biggest blocker for that right now is lack of emulation of the speech chips I think. The BNS was based on the Z80 which in the 80’s was as common as Intel processors are now so it’s emulated very well, but the Votrax/Artek speech synthesizer the BNS used is from what I heard very complex. Mame is slowly starting to emulate the first generation of it, the SC01 because it was used in a bunch of arcade games like q*bert, but it still doesn’t quite sound right. The BNS used the second generation of this chip.

pitermach,

@KaraLG84 @datajake1999 Yup, that’s why.

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