2018-11-04 03:02:39 (edited by Alan 2018-11-04 09:56:22)

Hi there.
not sure if it has been posted here before, but I have found some info about this interesting tool on reddit. More details here
https://legendsoflocalization.com/wanderbar/

2018-11-04 04:28:44

next time when you go to pause to link, can you try to put on the separate one? And don’t worry, it automatically makes it clickable

2018-11-04 05:34:54

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let's rock!

2018-11-04 06:34:40

it can be found here
This is actually incredibly revolutionary; Super Mario Bros is actually one of the main games to which a plugin was made, I'll have to see if screenreader functionality was included since the developer did mention the Wanderbar having the potential to hook into a screenreader to speak in-game text.

2018-11-04 09:51:26

Oh sorry, I was posting from my iPhone and perhaps I pasted the link the wrong way.

2018-11-04 13:53:58

OK, I have downloaded the emulator, loaded a supported game and it seems some text is displayed on the screen, almost it is detected by the nvda ocr's, but I don't know how to turn on the screen reading feature yet.
It can be seen in action here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM-ZE3BnauI

Let's see if it can be used to read final fantasy Vi, or IV or Legend of zelda.

If someone knows where to start, please share!

2018-11-04 14:46:13

hi, are there any games that would become fully playable with this, such as turn based strategy games?

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2018-11-04 16:19:38

Always wanted to be able to read the dragon warrior series. That along with little ninja boy and a game by capcom that was about the 3 kingdoms series would probably be the the most playable nes rpgs

2018-11-04 18:42:57

Keeping an eye on this. Hoping it works.

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2018-11-04 22:08:29

I hope that this plug will work with all games.

2018-11-05 00:11:19

It's late and I haven't had time to download this program, but looking at the page this has absolutely huge potential for making games accessible, but it's not going to magically do it on its own.

The way this seems to work is you have 2 components, the NES/SNES emulator and the wanderbar software which can get the text out from the game as well as let you write plugins as lua scripts to do something with it. And for the uninitiated this is more or less how Pokemon Crystal Access works, there is a Gameboy emulator that lets you write lua scripts which can interact with the game.

So for accessibility a wanderbar plugin would need to be written for each game that would most importantly look at the memory to see when a menu or other prompt comes up and only read the selected menu option. This would already help a lot in many games (IE think selecting characters or reading story text in fighting games) but for things like RPG's you'd also need to write some additional support in the plugin to help with world navigation. This also requires looking at the game data to see what tiles are on screen now, and labeling the ones that are important as well as providing a way to help with navigation, either an automatic pathfinder like in Pokemon or something more manual that might provide additional audio queues to tell you where there are openings, NPC's or items.

I think the framework that Wanderbar provides can support such a thing. It would require a lot of effort and fine tuning for each game, but like I said at the beginning this has huge accessibility potential and I'd love to play all the classic JRPG's like FF6, Earthbound or Chrono Trigger as much as the next person here smile

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2018-11-05 01:41:00

The nes games I mensioned above already has wall sounds, but you can't spam the a button since that opens up menus. The squaresoft games like final fantasy series, chrono trigger  and mario rpg are harder to navigate the map due to limitted audio cues. I am very curious to see what comes of this.

2018-11-05 03:51:46

Yeah definitely keeping an eye on this too. I'd kill to have even 1 of the Zelda games in any playable form. Now to find the people that could/would actually be able to put in the effort. tongue

2018-11-05 04:03:25

Paging @tspivey

Take care, it's a desert out there.

2018-11-05 08:29:56

hmm, i can launch games, but after that i can't do anything.

let's rock!

2018-11-05 16:10:26

I think that some of the developers from our own community should take a look at this program.

I would have done it myself, but I still am learning programming, and I think that this will require knowledge of multiple languages.

When I complete my programming education, and this emulator is still around until that time, I will definitely see whether I could do something for us or not.

2018-11-05 17:50:35

@16 Why not save a copy some plave so you won't have to worry about it not being around? Nes and snes games aren't going anywhere.

2018-11-05 18:02:14

@17:

you are correct. the thing is, I was not in any position to download when I posted, since I was outside, and did not have access to my laptop.

but now I do, and your idea sounds wonderful.

2018-11-06 02:25:47

Well this looks pretty neat.  Wonder if anyone has made any other emulators, or has done the plugin for screenreader setup for live reading? @r3dux might be interested.

2018-11-07 15:57:19

WHoa, this is interesting, and I bet I know someone who might be able to htry something with this...

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2018-11-08 05:52:45

Very cool but like post 11 said it doesn't help us with being able to navigate the games, like the JRPGs which personally is the main thing I'd like to be able to play on SNES.  I've played FFVI, Chrono Trigger and all the classics, but would love to be able to revisit them in some capacity.  Going to keep an eye on this though, so much potential.

2018-11-09 03:21:08

looks promissing. would definitely try paper mario. lol. might just do that.

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2018-12-03 19:49:31

Wow! just wow, this is awesome, gonna check it out.
I was really hoping Dragon Warrior III was going to be one of the titles.

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