TriadCity Message of the Day
2014-10-17
A new TriadCity interface designed for blind and visually-impaired players in now in alpha.
Designed with no screen text, menus, buttons, or graphical controls of any kind, the new UI talks to you as you navigate, reading you the Room descriptions, narrating the events, speaking the chats aloud. It's a radical change from the kinds of computer interfaces we're all used to, greatly simplifying non-sighted interaction.
We like it a ton, and are increasingly using it ourselves in our day-to-day relationship to the game world.
Here are the limitations, as of today:
- The technology works correctly only with Safari on the Mac. Chrome has an implementation for all platforms, but it's buggy. Hopefully they'll sort that out asap! Meanwhile, the Mac's our alpha sandbox.
- You're not yet able to speak to the client. Still have to type. That's evolving rapidly as well. We'll keep you posted.
It's a very rapidly moving technology, so - we hope! - these limits will be sorted quickly.
We have a lot of work to do to fully adapt the game engine to spoken clients. One trivial example: the game frequently displays Dinar quantities with a $ (dollar sign) as a simple demarcation: this is currency. But, because of that leading $, the reader will read "$250 Dinars" as "two hundred fifty dollars dinars". We have to hunt them all down, and there are doubtless many other corners such as this to uncover.
Additionally, we have to ensure that every formerly GUI-centric command or display has a textual equivalent. Now you can check your Energy level by typing "energy", instead of relying on the graphical display. Stuff like that.
Interested in alpha testing? We're recruiting volunteers! Lotso game bucks, houses, premium Items, Reward Points, and other spiffage available. Chat us up! We'd love to have you involved!
Watch this space for ongoing developments.
Meet you in The City!
Back to the current MOTD index.
Not yet a member? Get started today!
