Frontend Accessibility: DirectDraw Magnification, Wormnames and Backgrounds

[vtatila]

Hi,
I'm a legally blind Uni student and long time WOrms fan ever since the original game came out back in 95. I do have a bit of sight left, which has been good enough for playing many of these Worms games including Armageddon, with sighted friends.

One of the great things in the original Worms, accessibility wise, was that the menus had very big and relatively easy-to-read text so I could customize the game on my own and play the single player matches, too. I still have an ancient Pentium II running the original game.

Worms 2, on the other hand, had a relatively standard Windows GUI in it. It ment that with screen reading software, the user interface was even more accessible, and quicker to read than in the first game as it is faster for me to listen to speech than read magnified.

Now, Armageddon is a great game in many ways, wonderfully supported and all, but the biggest problem I have with it is that the GUI is not as accessible as it used to be in the earlier games. Text is small and controls are highly non-standard to begin with although the keyboard interface and focus handling have had some nice updates according to the release notes I read. I do have to switch the game to 640x480 and kill most of the background detail, but after that the game is fortunately about as playable as the original one apart from the Weapon and ingame menus, but there are the F-keys. Still, I would very much like to configure the game on my own even when other sighted players aren't around.

I do have a screen reader and magnifier app here called Dolphin Supernova. IT uses GDI hooking and display chaining drivers to full-screen magnify everything in garden-variety Windows apps and even includes something called a DirectDraw (GDI+) compatibility mode. Unfortunately, trying to run WA with Supernova running crashes wa.exe even before it has started to read the CD let alone show the intro. One of the games in which the magnification does work in the menus would be the original Half-Life, for example.

I read in the release notes WA does use directDraw so I wonder what's wrong and if it would be feasible to make the WA frontend work with DirectDraw capable magnifiers? Another possibility would be to run WA in a window and use Microsoft magnifier to get around, is that possible? That tac works great in the DOS Box emulator, which I also use to run the original Worms here and other old games as well.

Last but not least, how well is it known what the front end actually does, I.e. would it be possible to write an alternative front end with most of the core functionality but using standard Windows controls with a proper keybord interface, logical tab order and sensible focus handling.

My second question is sort of related to the first. One of the things I find difficult in WA and earlier games is that though the worms are large enough to trakc, their labels I.e. names are too small for me to read. I have very poor color vision, as well, so telling the teams apart by hue isn't easy. When playing against sighted folks, I can always ask which worm is which, the names though they are just arbitrary strings to the computer, are very important and up the funfactor in the whole game, I think. In single player, in which the computer cannot tell me which worm it is <grin>, I've resorted to using various prefixes or suffixes that are easy to spot e.g. a leading number and a space in my worm name. It is unlikely the other team's worms would start with some word char and a space.

Still I was wondering if there are any other solutions. Increasing the font size or making the names stand out by letting you specify team colors numerically as RGB triplets would be the natural and desired choices here, I guess. What does the DPI value do in WOrms, what if I increase it in WIndows to something like 150 dots per logical inch? It would be even cooler if the game allowed for some kind of hooks when events take place, though this would be a security and cheating risk, too. If that was possible, it would be quite easy to get the closest worm name and hand it off to COM and SAPI to speak it out loud. XP has got SAPI 5 support and the Microsoft voice sam built-in, for instance.

Finally, one of the things that doesn't prevent me from playing but makes game play somewhat difficult in some terrains would be the background. That is true even in the original worms. SO the ability to simply kill everything you canot collide with I.e. only water, "earth", projectiles, explosions and objects like mines should be rendered would be a trivial solution for the problem and easy to implement I guess. I was in a Uni project that had to do with games and it only took an hour for the lead programmer to implement a conceptually similar accessibility command-line switch that made our game playable to me. The trouble with WA is that other than the few sight impaired players out there. I know there's at least some other guy in England in a similar situation, the demand for an option that makes the graphics look uglier would be virtually nil. Still, I'm relatively optimistic about minor accessibility tweakss, seeing that some of the tweaks made to the game are usability improvements that borderline on accessibility:

QUote VA release notes:
· Scrollbar functionality is much improved. Before, dragging the scrollbar to the end of a long list wouldn't actually go to its end, which could cause frustration when slogging through long scheme lists, map lists and message histories. <snip>
· The colour scheme used for allies (red, blue, green, yellow, purple, cyan) can now be modified to allow those with certain types of colour deficiency to be able to easily distinguish problematic colour pairs. <snip>
End quote.

Which reminds me I found one problematic change:

Quote the same source:
· It is now possible to scroll through message chat lists via a mouse wheel; the list must be initially clicked upon and the scrolling is set at one line per wheel bump.
end quote

Errm, that's a nice default, admitted, but shouldn't that respect the user preferences and be as many lines as the user has set in Windows or a pageful, as that's an option, too. Just a minor niggle, I know.

Well, any help greatly appreciated. In addition to replying here, you may also contact me off-list if you'd like. I'm primarily a news and mail guy due to accessibility reasons. I had to try the image recognition quiz half a dozen times to even get here, <insert sad emoticon.

[SilPho]

Woah that's a long post.

You may be in luck when version 4 comes out, but that is still a very very long way off. Version 4 will (if all goes well) include a redesign of the WA front end which may or may not may it easier for you, but now that you have brought this to the attention of the patch makers they may make extra considerations for you.

On the subject of removing the backgrounds, press the insert key on your keyboard, backgrounds, falling debris and most of the water is removed from view, this was designed so that the game would be less taxing on computer processors, but I guess it will work well for you to.

Hope this helps.

Edit: Thanks Melon

[Wormetti]

The next beta patch is supposed to have command line options for joining or hosting an online game. It will be easy to create a frontend for that or modify one of the existing snooper programs to use those command line options.

A completely new frontend is planned aswell but that's a much larger task, so I wouldn't expect that anytime soon.

[Melon]

On the subject of removing the backgrounds, press the delete key on your keyboard, backgrounds, falling debris and most of the water is removed from view, this was designed so that the game would be less taxing on computer processors, but I guess it will work well for you to.

Hope this helps.

That'll be the insert key, not the delete key.

[bonz]

You know, Deadcode implemented the new color scheme for protanomalous color deficient players because he himself is one.
He once asked around to find people with other color deficiencies to make color schemes for those people too.

Yes, it is planned to revamp the frontend completely, allowing for windowed mode and multiple screen support. Also, the current paletted colors are dropped in favor of 32bit color support.
I guess this should allow your screen readers to work properly.
The only drawback is that it could well last many, many moons until the advent of v4.0.

In the meantime however, if you have a Linux compatible screen reader, you could try out running WA in Linux under WINE (http://www.nanacide.com/wahelp/installguide-original4.php). That's the only current way to run it in a window.

[KRD]

Definitely nice of you to make an effort with such a detailed explanation.

Like Hurrell said, plans of making the front end easily customisable have been discussed already, but the mentioned version 4.0 is definitely going to take a lot of time and effort to complete. Since there are only two programmers working on the project in their free time, there is no release date set in stone.

One of them happens to suffer from a colourblindness of a sort, though, so in a way you're in luck; visually impaired people are considered in the process of creating new updates. Version 3.6.26.5* already has an alternative team colour set accessible from the options menu. You enable it by clicking the coloured stripes left to the resolution box. Not sure those will be of any help to you personally, but they've worked reasonably well for two or three colourblind people playing this game that I know, so they're worth trying out. Changing the size of the worm and team names, however, isn't possible yet and I'm guessing it wouldn't be too easy to implement due to the way WA deals with colours [it runs in 8 bit mode]. But I'll let someone more knowledgeable confirm that.

People above also mentioned the insert key's functionality. Most serious players play with the background turned off for better performance and clarity already. You can also remove the floating stars/pencils/wrenches in the menus by editing their picture files in the Data|Graphics folder.

* http://www.nanacide.com/wahelp/ tells you exactly how to properly update the game to the latest beta version.

[DragonQ]

I think the darker colours for those with sight impairments are better than the original pastel colours anyway :)

[vtatila]

Hurrell, you mentioned the later corrected ins-key for toggling background detail. Thanks a bunch for the adfvice. I never read the manual as it didn't come in an electronic form and as its been quite some time since I've played WA, I had forgotten the shortcut. This lower detail level helps greatly in terms of contrast and also in spotting the worms.

Incidentally I tried the del key, too, which toggles the name detail level the max being team, worm and health, I think. Well, that might help in spotting in which team a worm belongs. Although it does not make the worm names any more readable, if there's a difference in length or big differences in spacing, that would let me conclude which team it is. Nice.

One question about keybord shortcuts, in which category do the utils appear in terms of F-keys? This is something the manual addressed rather vaguely and I think I've had trouble before trying to keyboard select the jetpack. The weapons menu is too small for me to use comfortably, unlike the one in the original Worms.

Lastly. I found the manual on-line in PDF form at at:

http://www.trygames.com/manuals/aff=t_02sem/

Not surprisingly, its accessibility is not very good. It hasn't been tagged and using my Acrobat Reader overrides for white on RGB 80 dark blue gives white on white in most pages, ouch. Fortunately, the speech works OK here. Not much new in the manual at this point, but nice to have it still.

[vtatila]

bonz, nice info on the new frontend, windowed mode does mean almost every magnifier should work with the game, provided that they can still trakc the mouse cursor when it enters the window. That's a problem in some windowed titles as screen readers work from Windows events, hooks and accessibility APIs.

You suggested Wine wrapping in Linux to get magnification. that does work but its too big of a hassle for a single game at this point, installing a new OS that is. Another thing is that full-screen magnification in Linux is still a bit of a hack, where as Windows magnifiers are able to do fancy stuff like redraw truetype fonts on the fly to prevent aliasing as they can intercept and modify graphics calls. Still Ubuntu Edgy speaks at bootup and Feisty speaks Finnish even, so Linux accessibility is getting better.

To get back on topic, though, I was thinking along similar lines only using Virtual PC, Win 9X and my Windows magnifier for the windowed effect. Still, that's still a bit overkill if you ask me.

I've been looking at the WA GUi some more and it would seem to me I can detect the presence of most focusible objects its just that I cannot see their shape or their text in sufficient detail to see which is which. As there's the status bar help, though, the ability to magnify that font, say double its size, would make many UI choices indirectly accessible, too. And once the game would run in a window, you could set up a hooked magnification area to monitor the status bar particularly.

If the new frontend might have true type fonts used so screen readers can intercept the calls, then it would be pretty trivial to write an app specific map file, that polls the status bar and reads it aloud. AS things stand now, though, the screen reader only sees bitmaps at best and the magnification side does not like the palettes I guess, though they are efficient.

Last but not least you mentioned color vision. My sight impairment is a bit unique, you can take a look at my attempts of describing what and how I see, at my home page under personal stuff. Still, there are some trends. For me, it is important that colors be distinguishable by luminance difference primarily or else some strong differences in hue might work.

I've found that I tend to mix up certain colors, though. To take a wormy example in the ancient PC game Tank Wars, for instance, the green and yellow tanks are a bit difficult for me to tell apart. The colors are close in terms of .luminance but for sighted folks there's an obvious hue difference. Still, I don't mix say blue or green that often, even at low luminance values.

For more info on sight impairements and color, you could try going here:

http://www.lighthouse.org/accessibility/effective-color-contrast/

And here are tips on icon design:

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/hig/2.0/icons-design-accessible.html

This is somewhat OT here, but before writing here I started a big thread on game accessibility in general. WOrms got mentioned several times and will be, too:

http://www.game-accessibility.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=1044#p1044

[Melon]

The utilities don't apperar on the F-keys, but they do appear on `, which should be under the Esc key.

[vtatila]

<big snippage>

Definitely nice of you to make an effort with such a detailed explanation.
You can also remove the floating stars/pencils/wrenches in the menus by editing their picture files in the Data|Graphics folder.


Thanks for the tip, though I'm a bit unsure as to how much those are on the way. Could you go into more details here. Which files are those and being a lazy person in a good way, is there a method for batch Processing all the files at once e.g. replacing with background color or empty files. I've got Irfanview and an ancient Paint Shop Pro 4.x here. No layers I know, but I hardly ever need those for taking and cropping screenshots mostly.

And this ending collectively:
Wow this one has been a busy and friendly forum so far. I mean, many good replies in twice as fast as in the average newsgroup. When I would ask about cheat codes to make Half-Life 2 playable, which is too hard for me it turned out, I never even got a reply and had to figure out the effects of the visual cheats on my own.

Actually this forum isn't bad from an accessibility point of view, either. I tend to collect all messages in plain text in one tab and then write replies in another. I seem to be able to find the next one very quickly by looking for the regexp match

#\d+\s+

in my text editor.

Thanks to everyone who've replied so far. I'll be polling this one for further replies in the coming days.

[vtatila]

The utilities don't appear on the F-keys, but they do appear on `, which should be under the Esc key.

I'll try that, good stuff. But before that a silly Q:
I'm using the finnish keyboard layout here and the key under esc left to the number 1 would be the section § not ` at least as far as Windows goes. So should I try to produce a ` on the FInnish keybord or use the key that would be in the same location as the one you suggested?

My understanding is that keybords can send scan codes to the OS which can then be interpreted in software to mean different things based on language. Which key I should press depends on how low level the input is that is whether WA matches the scan code or the resultant character. I've read up on WIndows programming but having never written an app that does anything beyond basic accelerators and mnemonics, all this is a bit rusty and possibly incorrect. YOu have been warned, <grin>.

[SilPho]

As a note about the Del keys functionality, it switches the game between viewing Worm Health, Health and name, or health, name and team.

One suggestion would be that if you cannot pick out what the team names say, perhaps make the team name very long or very short, along with very long or very short worm names, at least that way even if you can't read it clearly you can pick out the general shape of the boxes above their heads. (Very short might work better so as not to obscure a lot of the landscape around them).

[bonz]

If the new frontend might have true type fonts
AFAIK, the current frontend and game uses a simple sprite sheet to create a single font.
IIRC, there was once some talk about switching to Unicode to support other characters than Latin.
I don't know how much that would affect the in-game engine, but I guess the frontend will be a standard Windows GUI, like the one of W2.
I'm using the finnish keyboard layout here and the key under esc left to the number 1 would be the section § not `
On German keyboard layouts it's the key with ´ and ` on it, which is located left of the backspace. Maybe try that one for now.
Fully customizable key settings will be supported some time.

[CyberShadow]

Hello,

I am one of the persons writing software updates for Worms Armageddon. So, I have some good news and bad news.

The bad news is, that the current way the front-end interface is designed makes it quite hard to customize it without breaking anything. The front-end infrastructure was written to allow a speedy design of the game's interface, and is thus a concoction of standard Windows controls and DirectX, called DXMFC. It wasn't written to be portable, stable, fail-proof or accessible, and trying to extend it in either of these directions isn't a trivial task without some major code rewriting.

The current front-end's limitations, along with other restrictions of the present code, has led us to the conclusion that in order to deliver the best experience for the players, we'd need to rewrite most of the code around the game's engine. Unlike the original developers at Team17, we will not be restricted by a time limit, so we will be able to concentrate on the quality of the code. That would, of course, mean that the development could take a long time - especially when considering that we're doing this in our own free time.

As for the features you suggested:

Magnifying the "status-bar" text in the front-end might be problematic, mainly because some text, when magnified, will no longer fit in the allotted space. Of course, some readable text would be better than no readable text at all, so I'll see what I can do.

Using a larger font for worm and team names and health labels shouldn't be too problematic. I'll look into adding it as a registry-enabled option.

As for future plans: on the contrary to what bonz said, we plan to implement our own widget system which would be rendered to a single surface. This would make porting much less painful, as integration with the OS's native controls would vary radically from OS to OS. Thus, since GDI won't be used for text rendering, GDI-hooking screen readers wouldn't be of too much help here.

Of course, 4.0 will run in a window, so screen magnifiers should still be actual. As for SAPI/screen reader hooks, that's a great idea and shouldn't be too hard to implement as well - the game would speak out important events as they happen in-game. Of course, implementing this feature would need someone like you by our side to guide us :)

For now, I'll remark that the game does use Windows controls for most of the interface stuff, but it's just that they're not visible. DXMFC, a layer on top of MFC (Microsoft's framework for using Windows controls), renders the Windows controls to a DirectDraw surface. Thus, it may be possible that some screen readers would be able to read the text on the controls "behind" the DirectDraw surface. You may have better luck with other screen reader software, but of course I can't promise anything.

I'll post in this thread later, regarding how successful I was at implementing some of the accessibility options I mentioned.

[franpa]

can a hotkey be added like shift-end that will overlay team health with a numerical representation?

[vtatila]

Hello,
I am one of the persons writing software updates for Worms Armageddon.

Hey great to see the developers here, too. As I'm in the middle posting, I hope copy-pasting the quote tags Works as intended.


The bad news is, that the current way the front-end interface is designed makes it quite hard to customize it without breaking anything.

Oh OK, that was sort of expected, I'm mainly placing my hopes on the new front end. I can play local multiplayer games Ok with sighted helpm, the hard bits are managing some of the single player options, creating new teams on my own and making new weapon schemes and other playing modes.


The front-end infrastructure was written to allow a speedy design of the game's interface, and is thus a concoction of standard Windows controls and DirectX, called DXMFC.

Interesting, I've heard of both of course but am more familiar with the Win32 API myself. I'vemade some toy apps mostly and read most of Petzold but never got into MFC: I wonder if the dot NET stuff has been adopted by game developers, I've herd of managed DirectX.


Magnifying the "status-bar" text in the front-end might be problematic, mainly because some text, when magnified, will no longer fit in the allotted space.

Ah I see, is there any screen real estate left to make the area larger when the font size is changed? I suppose not. If not a couple of choices come to mind. Truncating the text is one, I hope the most important stuff is near the beginning then. Another would be auto-scrolling or buttons for browsing the message in several screens.


Using a larger font for worm and team names and health labels shouldn't be too problematic. I'll look into adding it as a registry-enabled option.

That would help a lot, too, great. I mean, the Worm names are a big part of the game. Someone mentioned differenciating team names by length when creating those and that's a tac I've been using. Spacing, prefixes and caps can help, too.

About the new front end:


we plan to implement our own widget system which would be rendered to a single surface. This would make porting much less painful, as integration with the OS's native controls would vary radically from OS to OS.

Ah portability, does that mean the game Might run in Linux and possibly OS X in the future, too? Good stuff. Ah few custom controls are as accessible and have as good a keybord interface as OS native controls, but often people make custom controls when they want portability. The same thing is true in music software, too.

Any chance of these new controls having keybord focus, hotkeys for manipulating their state including sorting and typeahead for list items as well as a proper tab order. Selecting stuff from the keyboard would be faster for me, too, although its not that big a problem with custom controls as in Worms.


As for SAPI/screen reader hooks, that's a great idea and shouldn't be too hard to implement as well - the game would speak out important events as they happen in-game. Of course, implementing this feature would need someone like you by our side to guide us :)

This would be extremely cool and some sighted players might or might not like the feature, too. I could do testing at least and possibly code as well. I suppose the speech support could be extended to cover the status bar text optionally, too.

Here are some technical considerations.


Firstly, there are currently at least two major speech interfaces the old SAPi 4 built into Win 2k and the new and backwords incompatible SAPI 5 built into Win XP. One could abstract both behind a single interface or simply require that if speech support is desired, the SAPI 5 runtime should be installed in the OS. There are variosu speech interfaces for LInux, the most prominent at the moment seems to be Speech dispatcher, though apart from hacking Espeak support for it I don't know much about that. Then Aple has their own speech interface, too, but I've only seen that from the user point of view.

About Voices, the only voice is is the MS SAPi 5 voice Sam although the rest of the Microsoft voices namely MIke and Mary are freely available, too. Most speech enabled apps, the flight sim X-plane comes to mind, simply speak everything in English and I think that could be the default in Armageddon. If the locale is changed, or the user specified WOrm names are not in English, then it would be nice if ARmageddon would search for voices in other languages, too. they have enough metadata to make that feasiblem, though most multi-lingual synths are commercial. Maybe the choice of team sound bank could optionally imply the language, too, though I must say that even if I use FInnish names from time to time I still like sets such as Angry Scotts, Soul Man and Whacky. Team specific voices might or might not be cool, they would at least easily tell you which team is in question.

About parameter adjustments, XP has the concept of a default voice, speed and volume which could serve as quite nice starting values. The ability to preview and adjust the voices further would be cool, though, and suitable rates and volumes tend to be somewhat speech synth specific, anyway.

One thing that occurred to me would be how the spoken audio is mixed with the rest. SAPI 5 let's you generate audio asynchronously and in addition to choosing an output device can render to a file. AS SAPI 5 is a COM component and COm has the concept of an interface, maybe some new kind of output conforming to the same interface could serve as Worm's ARmageddon's access to the spoken audio data. It would also be great if it could be further processed a bit, I.e. resampled to the game's rate (the rate depends on the engine 11, 16 and 22 kHz being normal) and it could be normalized to the game volume, too.

I've mostly been coding recreationally in Perl and Java and have used SAPI 5 audio via COM myself. Still regardless of language the interface should be the same as long as COM is used. I know bits of C++ and some C, too, but generally have gotten used to these high-levle langs that do automatic memory management and other fancies.


it may be possible that some screen readers would be able to read the text on the controls "behind" the DirectDraw surface. You may have better luck with other screen reader software, but of course I can't promise anything.

I'll try. Actually with DirectDraw compatibility mode and old Ati Mobility Radeon drivers the machine throws a blue screen of death now, if I try to run ARmageddon and the reader. I just learned in another list that this is an Ati driver issue and should be fixed in a newer release. SO perhaps there's still hope. I could also ask Dolphin if they could try writing a map file for WA specifically, as I'm doing beta testing for them and they have another list for requesting application support.

Very good tech info, thanks for this post.

[vtatila]

AFAIK, the current frontend and game uses a simple sprite sheet to create a single font.
IIRC, there was once some talk about switching to Unicode to support other characters than Latin.

Cool, not a problem with Finnish but there aare plenty of langs in which double-byte character support would be a must. That might require code changes if Any string routines assume a one to one or fixed length mapping beteween characters and bytes, though. Its great that the umlauts work, though.

AFAIK, the current frontend and game uses a simple sprite sheet to create a single font.
On German keyboard layouts it's the key with ´ and ` on it, which is located left of the backspace.

I have the exact same key here so that should do it, nice.

[AndrewTaylor]

the hard bits are managing some of the single player options, creating new teams on my own and making new weapon schemes and other playing modes.
Have you had a look at the external team and scheme editors the community have produced? They're mostly more Worms 2-like, so they might be an easier way for you to customise the game than the inbuilt editors.

[bonz]

external team and scheme editors
Scheme Eddy 2 (http://www.blamethepixel.com/filedownload.php?id=2487)
TeamED (http://www.blamethepixel.com/filedownload.php?id=0029)

[AndrewTaylor]

I just realised, it sounds a bit like some Worms cleaning product...

HI! I'M BARRY SCOTT, AND I'M HERE TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE AMAZING POWER OF NEW CILLIT BANG EXTERNAL TEAM AND SCHEME!

[DragonQ]

Stupid shouty Barry Scott <_<

[KRD]

Thanks for the tip, though I'm a bit unsure as to how much those are on the way. Could you go into more details here. Which files are those and being a lazy person in a good way, is there a method for batch Processing all the files at once e.g. replacing with background color or empty files. I've got Irfanview and an ancient Paint Shop Pro 4.x here. No layers I know, but I hardly ever need those for taking and cropping screenshots mostly.

I don't imagine those get in the way a whole lot, but since I was going to do this on my own installation anyway, I'll just link to the blank file to this post and you can try it out if you like.

The three files you'll be replacing are in the Team17|Worms Armageddon|graphics|Background Stuff folder. You know this already, but for the record, backing the original files up is a good idea. They're called chalk.bmp, spanner.bmp and stars.bmp, while I called my edited version KoreanRedDragon_blank.bmp [due to being unable to find a file host that doesn't rename my files, sigh]. Just rename it to match the above three and it should get rid of the falling background stuff, as T17 appropriately named it, in the front end menus.

Here's the link: http://www.laene.nl/fb/uploads/KoreanRedDragon_blank.bmp

[CyberShadow]

Well, I seem to have made some progress on this.

I've made the status bar font larger in the front-end. The static itself tries to exand in all directions, so it could fit more text at once - thus, it may sometimes overlap other controls.

http://thecybershadow.net/dump/2bb03e963b87cb1d07e6cab0875ff09c/screen0133.png

I've enlarged the worm and team labels, as mentioned above:

http://thecybershadow.net/dump/84544af5c60d53ef876d8411e1fa0d56/screen0137.png

If the large labels get in the way, you could turn them off using the aforementioned Delete key, or you could make them translucent by pressing Alt+Delete.

These changes can be activated by importing a registry file, which will be shipped with the update. You will be able to use these when the update is released, which is expected to be soon.

[vtatila]

<Replying out-of-order>

about the editors:
Scheme Eddy 2 (http://www.blamethepixel.com/filedownload.php?id=2487)
TeamED (http://www.blamethepixel.com/filedownload.php?id=0029)

Have you had a look at the external team and scheme editors the community have produced? They're mostly more Worms 2-like, so they might be an easier way for you to customise the game than the inbuilt editors.

again, great tips fellow wormers, I mean that's another aspect that I just didn't think of. The teamEd editor is especially good and almost accessible eliminating the need to use the WA frontend for the job. My only major complaint is that I cannot close the child dialogs that pop up using hotkeys like enter for the default button, alt+f4, ctrl+f4, alt+space or any other method of closing a regular window or dialog box in Windows. One change I'd make would be to dock a list view of teams on the left, as there's plenty of space, compared to the list box on the top. A list view would be easier to use and more visually distinct for me as you can easily see many values at once.

Though Scheme Eddy gives me much more accessibility than the front end right now, I find its logic harder to grasp. How do you create a new scheme, for example? I'vve used Windows since 95 and like it so I rarely need advice on basic usage these days but this one beats me, for some reason.

I use Windows mostly by keyboard and with synthetic speech so menu bars and dialogs are my thing rather than say tool bars and drag drop both of which are keybord inaccessible without screen reader or app specifics. Scheme Eddy has no menu bar and its tab order, I.e. the route in which the focus moves through the UI is a bit quirky, too. I do realize it is a very visual and graphic editor, the pseudo table control that is, and gives most screen readres a hard time. FOr one thing, the color scheme is custom and doesn't respect my custom high contrast scheme I've set up in Windows. Another thing is that I don't seem to be able to find any tabs or buttons that do functions like switch pages. last but not least, in the WIndows GUI there are no easy means of specifying to which control a piece of text is attached to as a label, so screen readres have to do some guess work and mine gets it wrong in this case.

I would find the table easier to use if it was an Excel-like spreadsheet control or a multicolumn list view with separate dialogs for editing, as you cannot move in rows and columns in a regular dialog from the keyboard. Stilll these are keybord and user interface issues that are not really the fault of the editor for the most part.

Where could I find specs for the file format used in the Weapon and other scheme files in WA? I'm thinking of creating a quick Perl script, purely for my internal consumption, that would make it easy to change the stuff I usually do based on an existing scheme file.

I very rarely change the strength or any other attributes of the weapons apart from starting counts. One exception to this would be a mode me and a sighted friend of mine came up with. We'd create levels for super sheep flying. IN which the only objective by which we measured winning, was who got the sheep race track built into the level through first or the fastest. In such a setup, having unlimited super sheep that can go as long as possible are highly desirable, of course.

PS: Sorry about the programmer jargon that has to do with keybord control and names for the various controls in Windows. Screen readers use those terms so they tend to stick, even in non programming contexts. If this is a real problem, just ask and I'll clarify what I ment, <smile>.

[SilPho]

Information about scheme files is here
http://wiki.thecybershadow.net/Game_scheme_file

Information about team files is not currently available.

[vtatila]

Well, I seem to have made some progress on this.
I've made the status bar font larger in the front-end. The static itself tries to extend in all directions, so it could fit more text at once - thus, it may sometimes overlap other controls.
http://thecybershadow.net/dump/2bb03e963b87cb1d07e6cab0875ff09c/screen0133.png

I've enlarged the worm and team labels, as mentioned above:

http://thecybershadow.net/dump/84544af5c60d53ef876d8411e1fa0d56/screen0137.png

These screen shots look good to me. As I run at 1024x768 but the game runs in 640x480 for me I had to be a little creative in trying to enlarge the shots to test them. I tried using Paint in compatibility mode 640x480 but WIndows would not let me do that not even after WIndowes enabler. Then I computed the ratios I need to stretch and using paint viewed the image stretched 160 percent on both directions. That correctly fills in the screen in full screen mode. The text is about the smallest print I can read with my nose almost touching this monitor but it does mean both the complete worm names and the status bar text are readable for me for the first time. This is about as good as it gets, before the new frontend. I'm eagerly awaiting the patch. The WOrm names have never been this big and I've had the original here and played Worms 2 as well as WWP elsewhere.

Well, I seem to have made some progress on this.
These changes can be activated by importing a registry file, which will be shipped with the update. You will be able to use these when the update is released, which is expected to be soon.
[/QUOTE]
Cool. A quick Q about the patch, though. I used the great update wizard to automagically patch my European release to first V3.0 and then the beta version which appears to be 3.6.26.5 judjing by the readme. Now., is that update wizard smart enough to notice a fresh and related file as far as date goes, or will the update to the latest patch be a more manual procedure? Either way, I guess I'll learn about it in the forums when it does come out. Once again thanks for the time and effort you put into this. I'll be sure to mention this thread in the accessible games forum if you don't mind. I might even add a Worms accessibility page on my site at some point.

[vtatila]

Information about scheme files is here
http://wiki.thecybershadow.net/Game_scheme_file

Thanks for the link, I'll do some link navigation and URL hacking to see what other interesting data about the game is out there. I'll report back if I come up with something useful.

Information about scheme files is here
Information about team files is not currently available.
No prob, I think the team editor is good enough from the accessibility point of view. There are minor annoyances but nothing that would prevent me from using it. The scheme editor can be used, too. its so visual an app though that I would need to spend most of my time in the screen reader's virtual focus to make much sense out of it. And so I'm thinking of quick personal hacks in Perl or possibly Ruby.

[vtatila]

About the falling stuff in the frontend:
I don't imagine those get in the way a whole lot <snip> I'll just link to the blank file to this post and you can try it out if you like.

The three files you'll be replacing are in the Team17|Worms Armageddon|graphics|Background Stuff folder. <snip> They're called chalk.bmp, spanner.bmp and stars.bmp, while I called my edited version KoreanRedDragon_blank.bmp
Here's the link: http://www.laene.nl/fb/uploads/KoreanRedDragon_blank.bmp

Got it, so you can remove it now if you'd like. I'll start patching and will back up, too, unless the original files are also on the CD somewhere easily accessible. I've been gathering stuff on Worms accessibility and this bitmap also got copied to a folder together with the Worms updates and some sound banks I've found.

This bitmap patching thing is relatively minor but once again if I can get rid of something that I don't need, I will. I do that for Windows toolbars, too, and would gladly kill most icons if it was possible (Eat Icons won't run in XP).

Once again quick action and good info about WA.

[Muzer]

I'm no expert on this, but you could replace the frontend button .bmps with ultra-large text saying things like "Single Player" etc, if you see what I mean.

Other people have used this method to reskin the WA frontend so I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to do this.

[bonz]

Thanks for the link, I'll do some link navigation and URL hacking to see what other interesting data about the game is out there.
That's CyberShadow's Wiki (http://wiki.thecybershadow.net/Main_Page), containing The Worms Knowledged Base and a wiki-fied version of Run's Worms Unlimited page.

[MadEwokHerd]

The next beta will use the same update wizard, and it is smart enough to detect whether it needs to install the 3.0 patch or not.

[robowurmz]

A useful feature (just as a side note) is that in Internet Explorer 7, there's a magnification button down at the bottom right, enabling you to zoom in if you can't read something.

You probably already knew this, but I hope it helps.

[AndrewTaylor]

A useful feature (just as a side note) is that in Internet Explorer 7, there's a magnification button down at the bottom right, enabling you to zoom in if you can't read something.

That's true, but I would have thought Opera would be a better choice in this case. It has all kinds of high-contrast, big-print skins (for webpages and itself), and it's had a zoom feature for years.

[vtatila]

I'm no expert on this, but you could replace the frontend button .bmps with ultra-large text saying things like "Single Player" etc, if you see what I mean. Other people have used this method to reskin the WA frontend <snip>

When I replaced the falling stuff with the blank bitmaps I also spend some time looking at the rest of the bitmaps magnified. Sometimes even knowing the name of the bitmap under the mouse cursor Would tel you enough to figure out which choice it is.

The font idea is a good one and I could actually probably do that, and distribute the patch files on my site. The only major issues I see with it is that some buttons are graphics only, and that it would require a huge amount of time for graphics processing. IF there's some graphics app that would be smart enough to automagically, givne a piece of text and font style, figure out which font size matches the image, blank the bitmap and paste the specified text on top of it, that would make things very easy. NOrmally this is a very mousy operation that requires the use of toolbars and drang and drop, as well as the ability to see the big picture I.e. where the rect holding the font is placed exactly.

I've actually modified my Winamp skin to make it more accessible, but that was a pretty huge effort. MOst graphics apps are just not designed with magnification users in mind, which is hardly surprising. As the magnified viewport is very small at the high mag levels I use given a choice, you cannot see the rulers while you select, to give but one example. I'm also pretty clumsy with the mouse in general, mostly because I use Windows 99 percent from the keyboard. I mainly use the mouse to trigger some inaccessible context menus, pan the magnified view around and midle click to route virtual focus on a Web page.

Update: about customizability, I spend quite a while reading the Cybershadow Wiki about the games. Lots of very good and detailed info. The scheme file format seems beautifully simple to work with so I'll soon code
a pair of Perl scripts that convert the scheme file to an ini-like text representation and back. If this thing works and I find it useful on my own, I might consider adding a Gui and distributing the thing somewhere. But that's still open.

I've tried the rest of the scheme editors, too, but none was very accessible, actually. So coding my own seems the easiest option.

One minor niggle about the Wiki:
Some pages are not there yet and if you go there, it starts editing asking for a login. It would be nice to be able to tell apart links leading to such pages in browsing. MAybe some attributes could be used to distinguish them. SOme appendix in the link name would be even more accessible e.g. (not present).

[vtatila]

Ah good old browser wars, I'll comment accessibility a bit here, before we get back to the most accessible way of having worm wars, with custom settings, that is.

A useful feature (just as a side note) is that in Internet Explorer 7, there's a magnification button down at the bottom right, enabling you to zoom in if you can't read something.

Thanks for the tip, though as you suspected, I already knew this one. Actually I find it easiest to work withh the magnifier app independently of the browser as it let's you easily pan around the screen using the mouse and change the colors on the fly, for instance.

If that option is not available, though, e.g. on a stock XP system, then the IE7 zoom can be quite nice, too. THe easiest way to activate it is with ctrl+wheel. That's a zooming convention that's been around since the Intelli mouse and Office 97, I think.

That's true, but I would have thought Opera would be a better choice in this case. It has all kinds of high-contrast, big-print skins (for webpages and itself), and it's had a zoom feature for years.
that's right, opera seems better for pure magnification use. One thing It does which IE does not seem to do, is the ability to actually rewrap all the text on a page while you zoom. This eliminates pesky horizontal scrolling.

Although I do use magnification and am able to play games like Worms, I'm still primarily a Screen reader user, however. FOr such stuff IE rules for most readers. Opera does not have an accessibility interface, at least didn't have a couple of years back, and FireFOx does have one but it is not as widely supported. Most, though not all, assistive technology authors put most of their effort into IE as almost everyone will need to use it at some point, its built-in and any apps using the HTML control are using IE in disguise. Its sad but true.

Given a free choice I would probably use FireFox and Thundder Bird. But my reader doesn't support T-bird and FF is so badly supported that no matter how good the browser is, it is hardly accessible using this particular screen reader. and that's the screen reader authors prioritization mostly. Not that FIreFox would yet be particularly accessible in Linux either, but at least the Orca authors are heavily developing the support.

Still I don't particularly hate IE7, and OE is usable if your needs are basic and you have utils for fixing the quoting and editing plain text externally in multiple tabs. Nough said.

[franpa]

a thought, if W:A gets made to work in a Window, then couldnt we just use the magnify button feature provided by MS intelli point to magnify what we want?

[AndrewTaylor]

a thought, if W:A gets made to work in a Window, then couldnt we just use the magnify button feature provided by MS intelli point to magnify what we want?

Possibly, but I wouldn't count on it.

[AndrewTaylor]

Why not use Firefox. It's open source and you can make your own plugins.

The thing is, though, that 99% of the population can't make their own plugins. And they can't take advantage of its open-source status either, just because they lack the expertise to do either. You might as well say "why not write your own browser?".

[thomasp]

We're getting off topic. Please stop it.

[vtatila]

a thought, if W:A gets made to work in a Window, then couldnt we just use the magnify button feature provided by MS intelli point to magnify what we want?
Hmm, I'm not totally sure about this, but I'd give a tentative nope. I mean my understanding is that INteli POint is just the marketing title for a range of MS rodents plus a bit of software to give the mouse extra functionality. Ever since Intelli POint was around there has been the ctrl+wheel shortcut to zoom, however the infrastructure needed to do this zooming is app specific, and is not provided by INtellipoint or WIndows for that matter (unless you count very low-level GDi calls to stretch bitmaps).

So OK Worms Armageddon could implement zooming with ctrl+wheel but the game would need to have the logic in itself to either stretch or shrink the image, or redraw it at a different size. Integer values like 2x, 4x and so on should be easy, but even the most advanced Windos magnifiers have hadded fractional magnification fairly recently. It requires interpolation which is potentially slow and or ugly, and might up the system requirements quite a bit. Again, I'm no graphics guru, being legally blind to begin with, <smile>.

[vtatila]

Err, I'm going to reply to myself without quoting, as I couldn't yet figure out on the main page how to add a new post in this thread, without making it a reply to someone.

Hi,
I'm now in the process of writing some scripts to read and write WA schemes as ini-like text files to make the scheme editing easy for screen reader users. I could probably experiment but as I'm not quite there yet, a quik tech question before I get to printing all the fields:

In the Cyber SHadow wiki about the WA scheme format there's the Boolean datatype. Is a true Boolean stored as 0x01, 0xff or something else? I suppose most apps and langs use the latter all ones representation. Fortunately there are no endianness issues, as the scheme format doesn't try to save individual bits, and there are no multibyte quantities, either.

also, is it possible to use illegal values as game hacks. For initial ammo in a weapon, can you set the amount larger than 9 and what's the representation for unlimited? what if the falling damage is say more than the Worm's max energy, will stuff like that crash the game? I'm going to take the lazy way out and assume the user, me that is, knows what he is doing, but thought I'd ask anyway.

[thomasp]

Err, I'm going to reply to myself without quoting, as I couldn't yet figure out on the main page how to add a new post in this thread, without making it a reply to someone.

There's a "Post Reply" button just beneath the last post, on the left hand side of the screen: http://forum.team17.co.uk/images/retropurple/buttons/reply.gif or http://forum.team17.co.uk/images/buttons/reply.gif

Or click the "Quick Reply" icon next to the quote icon on the last post of the thread and use the Quick Reply box: http://forum.team17.co.uk/images/retropurple/buttons/quickreply.gif or http://forum.team17.co.uk/images/buttons/quickreply.gif

[CyberShadow]

Boolean values are usually stored as False=0 and True=1, and read as False=0 and True=anything that's not 0.

You can change most scheme parameters outside of the bounds that the game's editor allows you - most 3rd-party editors allow you to do just that. Of course, this could cause inconsistent, unpredictable behavior and may even cause the game to crash, so use these at your own caution.

[MadEwokHerd]

Can't say for sure about the booleans off-hand, but knowing wa it's probably 1 and 0.

Initial ammo of 10 means unlimited. Values greater than 10 are allowed.

Out-of-range values for weapon power are also allowed, with strange results.

And I thought fall damage was a boolean.

[vtatila]

Can't say for sure about the booleans off-hand, but knowing wa it's probably 1 and 0.

That seems likely and makes writing the script even nicer at my end. I find the format beautifully simple. It works and although it wastes some bits that just makes the parsing job easier, without having to go into masking bits and such. That representation might be faster, too, as you'd only have to flip a single bit to change true to false.


Initial ammo of 10 means unlimited. Values greater than 10 are allowed.

Makes sense, I think this should go in the Wiki, by the way.

Can't say for sure about the booleans off-hand, but knowing wa it's probably 1 and 0.
And I thought fall damage was a boolean.
[/QUOTE]
For a second I thought it was my fuzzy memory again. But I actually checked and my plain text copy of the spec Wiki page a couple of days ago reads.

0A - Fall damage (the level of damage done by falling a long way) (1 byte)

Thanks for a very fast reply.

[vtatila]

Hi,
OK, now I've got the game settings dumped apart from the weapons, as far as my scheme to text idea goes (the excellent Perl function unpack saved the day). reading in the whole structure is as easy as saying something like:
(l-valuesHere) = unpack 'A4 C (C7 x C28) (A4)*', $input;
Which will extract the header, version byte, all game settings as a long list, and all weapon settings as a list of strings of 4 bytes (chars) respectively.

Now, I can answer my own question by saying that MadEwokHerd and CyberShadow were right, true values are one in the supplied game schemes.

Yet another Q, sorry about this many:
Where can I find all the schemes in the game? I've searched both the CD and my game dir but the only schemes I found were:

List:
WormsLeagueAM.wsc
EliteLeague.wsc
WormsLeaguePRO.wsc
Shopping.wsc
RopeLeague.wsc
End list.

Is that all or did I miss some files? It's been a long time I've had sighted help, having returned to WA and other wormy stuff recently. I do however recall that at least Worms 2 had the classic Worms settings, too, and many other schemes. Might the core files be built into some WAD:ish file housing a number of others inside it? Just a thought.

Any help appreciated.

[vtatila]

Hi,
Another status post I guess. Its midnight local time and after fumbling with the binary format some more, my unpack code was still a bit buggy, I now seem to have a working converter from scheme files to ini-like text, W00T. 35 lines of Perl, most of it human readable names for settings and weapones lifted pretty directly from Cyber Shadows Wiki.

If all goes well, I can go in the other direction in a day or two, as well. Though currently I can only test this by checking if the file format is OK and the values make sense. Once it Works in both directions, I can check if converting to text and back produces the same binary file. In other words, I cannot yet select a scheme independently to try it in-game. To make that happen I'll have to wait for the double size text patch. Still, I'm very greatful to everyone whose posted in this thread, I mean Worms Armageddon has already been made much more accessible than I've dared to realistically dream of as a pesssimist, <grin>.

Lastly, hope you don't mind another question:
Someone mentioned command-line options for net play. I generally only play on the LAN as I cannot read chat text in games and would need to communicate using audio e.g. Skype. Anyway, what other interesting things can be controlled from the command line? In particular, can I select a scheme file for the game or start a quick match bypassing the frontend? Curiously, I didn't find anything about command-line parameters while quickly browsing the on-line manual.

[bonz]

command-line options for net play
That is referring to a feature of the upcoming beta update and is limited to hosting and joining direct IP games:
•People hosting Direct IP games may now offer links in the format wa://address-of-host, and launching this link will cause W:A to automatically launch and join the hosted game.
•The command line "WA.exe /host" (or "WA.exe wa:host") will cause W:A to automatically launch and host a Direct IP game.

[MadEwokHerd]

The built-in schemes are stored in wa.exe as resources (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_%28Windows%29).

[CyberShadow]

Here are the extracted standard schemes, renamed according to their in-game name: http://thecybershadow.net/dump/b7af092e1c5bf53d105aa839c8f066dd/Standard%20schemes.zip

[Lex]

The font idea is a good one and I could actually probably do that, and distribute the patch files on my site. The only major issues I see with it is that some buttons are graphics only, and that it would require a huge amount of time for graphics processing. IF there's some graphics app that would be smart enough to automagically, givne a piece of text and font style, figure out which font size matches the image, blank the bitmap and paste the specified text on top of it, that would make things very easy. NOrmally this is a very mousy operation that requires the use of toolbars and drang and drop, as well as the ability to see the big picture I.e. where the rect holding the font is placed exactly.Your issues and positive attitude have inspired me. I may manually create a high-contrast frontend some time. I was thinking of, for example, using a mostly-monochromatic theme. It would be pretty easy to do and probably wouldn't be very aesthetically pleasing for sighted users, but would be a lot easier for you to use. I checked out that "effective icons" tutorial you linked to, and it explained some good techniques nicely. I would be looking at it again, were I to start creating some more-accessible frontend graphics. I would have to stick to the original image sizes, so the graphics would have to be very obvious-looking. I was thinking, for example, the single player menu button could be very simple by having merely two giant characters on the button: "1P".

A long time ago, I started writing a frontend graphics replacing program, which would have allowed users to easily scroll through all the frontend graphics and replace them with their own versions. I never finished my project, unfortunately, and it got lost on some old hard drive. Besides, it sucked as it was written in my Visual Basic newbie days anyway. <smile> (By the way, I decided to use your text-written smilies, as those are probably much easier for you to interpret than the horribly-tiny smiley images on these forums. <smile again>)

Update: about customizability, I spend quite a while reading the Cybershadow Wiki about the games. Lots of very good and detailed info. The scheme file format seems beautifully simple to work with so I'll soon code a pair of Perl scripts that convert the scheme file to an ini-like text representation and back. If this thing works and I find it useful on my own, I might consider adding a Gui and distributing the thing somewhere. But that's still open.This sounds like a really good idea. Go for it. Also, I agree with CyberShadow's opinion that you would do well working alongside the developers to point out points for improvement on accessibility. I guess that's what this thread was for. <smile>

I would find the table easier to use if it was an Excel-like spreadsheet control or a multicolumn list view with separate dialogs for editing, as you cannot move in rows and columns in a regular dialog from the keyboard.I was telling Etho this exact same thing when he was showing us his pre-release prototypes for SchemeEddy 2! You may find the old versions of SchemeEddy (before version 2) much more accessible than SchemeEddy 2. However, it is still probably not very accessible. I have been a little disappointed with the scheme editors for WA in general, after SchemeEd was made by James Heather (Fudge Boy) so many years ago. They all seem to lack the sort of ease of use an spreadsheet-style scheme editor would have. I really encouraged Etho to work a little harder on the ease of quick scheme editing for SchemeEddy 2, but he seems to have wanted to release it without that ease of use I imagined. However, I don't blame him too much. He doesn't really have the technical skills for that. I can't really complain much, though, because I haven't made any sort of effort toward the creation of a well-designed scheme editor. All my ideas have just been fantasies.

I've tried the rest of the scheme editors, too, but none was very accessible, actually. So coding my own seems the easiest option.Oh, I just responded to this.

One minor niggle about the Wiki:
Some pages are not there yet and if you go there, it starts editing asking for a login. It would be nice to be able to tell apart links leading to such pages in browsing. MAybe some attributes could be used to distinguish them. SOme appendix in the link name would be even more accessible e.g. (not present).Actually, for the links that don't link to existing articles, the links are red instead of the normal blue. Can you detect that? I don't exactly know the extent of your visual impairment. However, if there's some way you could make out that a link is red instead of blue, you could find out easily that an article doesn't exist before trying to visit it.

what if the falling damage is say more than the Worm's max energy, will stuff like that crash the game?No. Non-standard values will not crash the game, fortunately. However, they do cause the game to do wacky things, like if you set a weapon power to a non-standard level (above 5), really strange weapon powers appear in-game. You may be interested in reading the following page, which should probably be entirely ported to the Worms Knowledge Base at some point, but hasn't yet: http://www.nanacide.com/wahelp/info-factoids.php. We've ported bits and pieces from it to appropriate articles, but the WKB (Worms Knowledge Base) is a huge project and there are only 4 or 5 people actively working on it, to my knowledge.

Another status post I guess. Its midnight local time and after fumbling with the binary format some more, my unpack code was still a bit buggy, I now seem to have a working converter from scheme files to ini-like text, W00T. 35 lines of Perl, most of it human readable names for settings and weapones lifted pretty directly from Cyber Shadows Wiki.Awesome. When you're done your project and it works nicely, someone (possibly me or you) should add an article on the Worms Knowledge Base about your script, including a link, version number, how it works, etc. Basically, including all the things written on other third-party program articles. You could use that article for your script's active development, updating the download link there. I'm sure CyberShadow would provide some easy web space for your program/script on his wiki's server.

Still, I'm very greatful to everyone whose posted in this thread, I mean Worms Armageddon has already been made much more accessible than I've dared to realistically dream of as a pesssimist, <grin>.Yes! Like I said, it's inspiring to see someone like you around, genuinely wanting to play a game that normally-sighted users play, and enthusiastic about helping out.

Lastly, hope you don't mind another question:By the way, we don't mind your questions. Bring them on, if you have them! <smile>

Someone mentioned command-line options for net play. I generally only play on the LAN as I cannot read chat text in games and would need to communicate using audio e.g. Skype. Anyway, what other interesting things can be controlled from the command line? In particular, can I select a scheme file for the game or start a quick match bypassing the frontend? Curiously, I didn't find anything about command-line parameters while quickly browsing the on-line manual.Unfortunately, the only command line switch in the current beta (3.6.26.5) is "/nointro", which skips the game's 3 intro screens. A few more have been introduced in the private alpha versions (of which I am a tester), which Bonz has already mentioned a few posts up. Unfortunately, even the current alpha version can not currently bypass the frontend altogether in any way. WA must go through the frontend at some point before starting the game, currently. There are plans for improving this, though, so don't be too discouraged. <smile>

By the way, you can should be able to find a local electronic manual in rtf format in your WA installation directory. The file name is "readme.rtf". This should be easier to read and navigate than the pdf you've been trying to use.

You mentioned something about your own games accessibility web site, and you may make a Worms Armageddon page. Where is that site?

It took me a long time to read this thread since I found it earlier today. I'm very very glad you arrived. You've pointed out many things that people seem too lazy to write about, including me. I often find myself reading these forums and wanting to write so much, but thinking, "What's the point? Most people don't think much about these things anyway." I found it hard to write this long post, even, responding to everything I wanted to respond to. It's very worth it. I don't know how you managed to write so many amazing long posts in this thread. All in all, I like you. Stick around. We need more people like you. Enough said, there. <smile>

[xJoEx]

Click me, Lex! (http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/)

[Lex]

Ah. Thanks, JoE. Vtatila, please come to #worms some time. It's a channel on GameSurge (irc.gamesurge.net) where a bunch of wormers hang out.

[Etho]

I really encouraged Etho to work a little harder on the ease of quick scheme editing for SchemeEddy 2, but he seems to have wanted to release it without that ease of use I imagined. However, I don't blame him too much. He doesn't really have the technical skills for that.

I have to say that I found this comment quite offensive. You make it sound like the fore mentioned flaws in my program exist because I didn't want to fix them and/or because I lacked the programming skills to fix them. Yes, in a perfect world, I would have liked to make every aspect of my scheme editor please every single person. But this isn't a perfect world. People have different preferences, opinions, and abilities.

The reason I left things the way they were was because I honestly felt and still feel it was best the way I had it. I didn't use your suggestion because I didn't think it would have been beneficial to, not because I wasn't capable of using it. I do know how to use a MSFlexGrid.

I'm not saying your suggestion was a poor one or that your opinion is wrong. I'm just saying that it made more sense (for many reasons) to leave things the way they were.

Personally I like to use a combination of the mouse and keyboard in Windows applications. I find using only the keyboard or only the mouse a lot more time consuming. This is why I would rather use a scheme editor that allows you to use both than one that focuses on one.


vtatila: It is unfortunate that my scheme editor doesn't suit your needs. Please feel free to PM me if you have any questions about how the scheme format or scheme logic works. I would be happy to help you with your editor.