2017-10-09 13:22:59

Hey hey! I got a stupid question. Can you somehow download the game so you dont have to play it in your Browser? Or is it totaly browser based?

2017-10-09 17:07:36

Hey Dark, you might have caught it in between updates. I realized that there was a bug last night, which I fixed. Could you try again as it works for me?

@firefly82 - It's a browser only game at the moment. The beta will eventually be on Steam, but that is a long ways off.

2017-10-09 17:38:31

Steam is pretty much painful for us to use. But i will see if i can overdome my dislikes about browsergames!:-)

2017-10-09 19:27:33

Hi.

I'm afraid it's still not working, it just sits on the main page with all resources at zero and says @loading event log@
this is with Ie,  it was fine yesterday but today I'm afraid it's just not loading.

As to future plans, the browser version is fine for me, though for a stand alone or commercial version etc steam is very horrible in terms of accessibility so eventually an alternative distribution method would be nice, either that  or just have some way of the  ful game experience being available in the browser version, perhaps with an account system or similar.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-10-09 20:58:43

@Dark - What version of Internet Explorer?

2017-10-10 02:36:05 (edited by Virtuosi Media 2017-10-10 06:16:29)

Ok, I think I found the bugs in Internet Explorer. Try clearing your cache and let me know if that works for you. Just as a heads up, I won't be able to support Internet Explorer for the beta. It'll need to be Chrome or Firefox. Edge might potentially work too, but I'm not sure yet at this point.

@everyone For those of you who don't care for Steam, is there a similar service that is more accessible? Are you able to start games with Steam at all?

2017-10-10 08:57:57

Hi.

Thanks for the fix, things are working fine now, though I'm a wee bit disappointed about lack of ie support in the future, still more my personal preference though and nothing to do with access specifically.

As to Steam, unfortunately Valve have zero interest in accessibility, meaning that Steam is a nightmare to use requiring lots of guess work, ocr and other such unreasonable mucking about.

To be honest you'd probably be better  having a steam independent version of the game for people who don't want to use it, perhaps still running on the browser.

As regards the game, love the new hotkeys and messages, that will make life a lot easier.
Since I lost my game save file when I cleared my browser history I'll need to get back to economy and science, but I should do that today, at which point I'll let you know about   fixes for the research and other windows go.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-10-11 09:37:36

Hey, glad that fixed it for you! I look forward to hearing your additional feedback.

Unfortunately, Internet Explorer is getting on in age, with IE 11 being over four years old now. There are a ton of features that I wouldn't be able to implement, so, unfortunately, supporting it for the beta version of Junction Gate isn't really an option.

As far as distribution, other options might include GOG Galaxy and itch.io. How are those platforms in terms of accessibility?

2017-10-11 09:52:43

Shame about Ie, hopefully ms will get around to updating it in the future, still as I said that not really an accessibility thing, it's more that I've been using ie for 18 years have favourites etc configured to work with it and find firefox a bit of a hog.

As regards platforms, itch.io might be a possibility since if I remember rightly you can just download stuff from  the website without any complex custom clients  or stupidities with login the  way Steam or other services have.

Gog I'm less sure about since last I checked their service for buying games was a bit of  pest though I'm not sure.

Generally if distribution works by standard  webpage it should be okay, the major problem with Steam is their stupid client  and Valve's utter disregard of anything to do with accessibility (really they simply ignore anyone who wants to discuss it, though that's about standard for large games companies).

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-10-19 11:34:21

I cannot wait to play this.
Have always wanted to play a 4x game. 
I remember for instance when star traders 4x came out and it was unplayable, this looks exactly like the thing I;ve wanted to be able to play for years.

2017-10-19 14:17:57

@Dan C, I can highly recommend it, it rocks, actually I need to get back to Junction gate myself.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-10-21 16:31:01

I wonder how soon I'll accidentally destroy myself? smile
Only issue I'm having at the moment are the constant energy alerts interupting speech.  luckily they go away after a while so I can move about and fix things. smile

2017-10-21 17:57:25

Yep, it seems a bit odd you get constant alerts about energy the way you do food and air rather than just when you try to build something, unless having  lack of energy will have a bad effect if it goes on too long.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-11-01 00:34:10

Junction gate has a Db entry found here which also includes a short guide on page layout which should help people get into the game as well as highlight the really  great job that has been done with accessibility.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-11-01 17:06:04

Hi,DOes anyone
know if the beta/steam version will have accessibility?

2017-11-01 17:24:00

Not sure at the second, though at least if the beta version can go through ich.io rather than Steam that should solve one problem.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-11-07 05:26:46

Just checked back in on the thread and realized I wasn't subscribed. I should hopefully get new message notifications now.

Regarding eventual distribution, I'll need to evaluate options again once I get closer to that point, which will be quite a while yet. Steam is a must because it has the biggest market and also has mod support and some other features that I'd like to integrate. After that, I'll need to look what makes sense. Each new marketplace may mean another version of the game to maintain. Because it's just me, I'll need to be smart how I go about it.

@dan_c Those alerts for energy are frequent because you won't be able to build new buildings without adding more energy facilities.

@dark Thanks for adding the DB entry!

@aaron I want to make the beta accessible, but it's too early in development to make that promise just yet. The game is moving from a text-based game to more of a 3D one. I'm not 100% sure what the gameplay is going to be right now because I'm working through some technical prototypes. Depending on what I'm able to accomplish, I have some ideas about how I could make things accessible, but I'm don't know how that will translate or how hard it will be to implement.

So, no promises at this point. However, making the alpha accessible has been a good experience and it has made me realize that I need to be thinking about accessibility from the beginning if it's going to be in there. It's on my radar, both for this project and future projects as well.

2017-11-07 05:55:49

Hi all, I've yet to actually play much of this as the music or background  music is far too loud for me to hear what's happening with my screen reader. Don't get me wrong I dig the music and its affect, but its just too loud.
My SR of choice is Jaws 18, and I'm still using at the moment IE 11. I was just going to ask if there was a quick way to turn down the volume on the background music and sounds? but maybe I can do that with the volume mixer as part of windows.

Also, the tabs, as they are, throw me off a little bit as I'm not quite sure how to interact with them. As its not a tipicle web page element I'm used to dealing with. When I click on a tab, does it act like a combo box? Or what behavior should I be expecting?

Thanks for the help and feedback.
smile

Also big thanks for building accessibility into this title, and for thinking about it and us in future projects from the ground level. That's awesome!
big_smile

2017-11-07 06:59:48

@MikeFont

The sound and music can each be toggled separately on the loading page or in the game itself, but unfortunately there is no volume control in the alpha. (Volume control is added in the beta). I'm not sure if there is a way to selectively adjust volume in Windows.

To the best of my knowledge, all tabs should function as normal tabs. The tab panels in the information panel section will display various stats and allow you to assign workers. The main navigation tabs will change the main content area. Here is a full list of in-game hotkeys that might make interaction easier:

Main Menu Hotkeys

  • Alt + Shift + c - Open the command tab in the main menu

  • Alt + Shift + d - Open the diplomacy tab in the main menu

  • Alt + Shift + e - Open the economy tab in the main menu

  • Alt + Shift + l - Open the log tab in the main menu

  • Alt + Shift + r - Open the resources tab in the main menu

  • Alt + Shift + s - Open the station tab in the main menu

  • Alt + Shift + x - Open the exploration tab in the main menu

  • Alt + Shift + y - Open the science tab in the main menu

Information Panel Hotkeys

  • Alt + Shift + 1 - Open the resource panel

  • Alt + Shift + 2 - Open the production rates panel

  • Alt + Shift + 3 - Open the workers panel

Settings Hotkeys

  • Alt + Shift + m - Toggle Music

  • Alt + Shift + p - Toggle Play/Pause

  • Alt + Shift + u - Toggle Sound Effects

  • Alt + Shift + z - Cycle Game Speed

Screen Reader Hotkeys

  • Alt + Shift + a - Get current air stats.

  • Alt + Shift + f - Get current food stats.

  • Alt + Shift + g - Get current credit stats.

  • Alt + Shift + h - Get current helium stats.

  • Alt + Shift + j - Get current energy stats.

  • Alt + Shift + n - Get current population stats.

  • Alt + Shift + o - Get current ore stats.

Hope this helps.

2017-11-07 07:48:51

@Virtuosi Media, obviously if the Beta could be accessible that would rock, though I know that is more difficult with graphical games as opposed to text based ones.
if the beta is not going to be accessible, I do wonder if perhaps the textual version of the Alpha could receive at least some final end conditions or hard to complete achievements similar so that it is a complete game people could play from start to finish.
I'm afraid Steam is probably the worst plaform choice access wise owing to Valve being scuzbags regarding accessibility and forcing people to use their stupid software to access games, that is why something like Itch.io might be a better bet since it's a standard website so no access issues, but obviously as you said these questions are a ways off.

@Mike, if you look on the audiogames.net db page, I attempted to provide something of a layout guide for Junction gate because the page elements it uses aren't necessarily what people are used to.

"tab" in this case just means an informational panel you can  switch to have the page display a different area of the game. For example if you want to read the log, you just hit the item marked "log" and scroll down, while if you wanted the top display to show your workers rather than your resources you just hit "workers"

hth.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2017-11-07 13:16:44

Thanks to you both for this, I'm sure this will be of a great assistance once I get some time to play after work.
I'm looking forward to it very much.
smile

2018-09-14 16:48:41

Hello, I've started to play this game recently.. Could someone help me? I'd like to gain more credits faster..

2018-09-14 18:43:29

i think its grate, lets test it
can you give me summery about this game?

2018-09-14 21:39:46

@caio - The easiest way to gain credits is to invest in stocks that have good CEOs and then just collect dividends. If you want a fuller overview of economic gameplay, check out the tutorial.

@mahdi-abedi - It's a largely text-based incremental/4X game in a sci-fi setting. There is building, a full stock market, trading, diplomacy, research, ship building, exploration, and combat. It's not perfect because it's in development, but I'm currently working on a newer version that will be better and have more features.

2018-09-15 01:11:35

Its wonderful to know the game is still being worked on.. How can I view a ceo's stats?