Derek Haslam has posted a link to his expanded old Acornsoft game Gateway To Karos for Archimedes emulators. Details are on his web site at:
http://www.boulsworth.co.uk/intfict/
Canalboy
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RiscOS, 6502OEM… I feel less freacky.
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Actually Jade I don’t know much at all about the RiscOS. I downloaded RPCEmu as a bundled package a while ago and eventually managed to get the game to run. More by luck than judgement I think, the main stumbling block was that I had to copy the unzipped game to the hostfs file and unzip it inside the application using InfoZip which was already installed in the Archive folder as part of the bundle. For ages I was trying to unzip it using 7zip and extracting the file into the RPCEmu package which doesn’t work.
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I have finally finished play testing the new expanded Gateway to Karos and I can thoroughly recommend it as both fascinating narrative and puzzle fest. The latest version (2.77) is available from Derek’s home page given above. I tested it on the Archimedes emulator RPCEmu but it will happily run in any RISC OS environment.
I have uploaded a map in Trizbort to CASA which should hopefully be visible soon.
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I’ve read the background info on this title and it sounds like a game I would really enjoy. However, As a visually-impaired player, tracking down an emulator that will either play nice with my native screenreader or has built-in text-to-speech capabilities is not going to be easy.
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You have my sympathies. Is it text size that is a problem?
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Stop press. !Sparkplug which is pre-installed on the RPCEmu package under Apps is another utility used to unpack files in RISCOS.
Unfortunately it’s not so straightforward—I have no usable vision and rely on text-to-speech output when using my computer. Mac OS has a built-in screenreader called Voiceover which is designed to work with native apps and accessible third-party software, but would almost certainly not be able to handle an emulator.
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You would imagine that modern technology could provide something for you to use. It is unfair that a lot of research in modern aids for people like yourself seems to be so slow in development.
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Well, to be fair retro system emulators are already fairly niche, and most developers probably aren’t aware that there’s an even smaller subset of people with accessibility needs who might be interested in utilizing such software.
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I know that voice recognition software has been around for more than twenty years and I remember testing it with one of JFK’s speeches. I believe it was manufactured by Dragon way back then and it wasn’t very good.
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Was it Dragon Dictation by any chance? If so, I believe it’s supposed to be pretty good these days—many people who struggle with fine motor skills use it in place of typing.
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It was indeed. It must be almost two decades since I saw it last; how good it is now I have no idea but it sounds like it might be worth a try.
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I would if it weren’t for the fact that it’s almost the exact opposite of what I need 
. Typing into the parser is not a problem as long as I receive audio feedback for what I’ve just entered; the primary issue is the inability to read the game’s output, which won’t be compatible with (in my case) Mac OS Voiceover because that’s not something an emulated environment would know how to handle.
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I believe that Thaumistry by Bob Bates is supposed to have audio responses to keyboard input but I have no empirical knowledge of it. Considering that there are an estimated 253 million blind and visually impaired people in the world the availability of such games is lamentable.
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Yes, Thaumestry is what would be considered accessible third-party software because it has been intentionally designed to work with screenreader technology. I actually own the game, but unfortunately was never able to complete it because the text backlog eventually caused Voiceover to become so bogged down that it became practically unplayable. Not really the developer’s fault—this is a bit of an ongoing issue with Apple accessibility which visually-impaired users have been complaining about for years. Thaumestry is written in TADS, so I reached out to Bob Bates and asked if it would be possible for me to access the straight game file without all the fancy application packaging to run through an interpreter, but never received a response.
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Old Infocom Master Bates eh? That’s pretty poor if he couldn"t be bothered to respond to you.
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Definitely a bit of a bummer, especially since I remember reading something about accessibility being one of the game’s highlights. Plus I paid for the app!
In that case it isn’t poor; it is disgraceful. I suppose Apple will blame Infocom and Infocom will blame Apple like two schoolboys denying having broken a window.
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Or maybe my map will stay in their inbox for several months…