hold on a minute, isn't new releases strictly for new game/mod releases? Shouldn't non game related releases be in the off topic room?

@Dark
Ah, well I suppose that makes sense. My appologies for the mix up, heh.

@ambros86
Have you tried running it in Compatibility mode for Windows XP SP3, and Disabling Display Scaling on High DPI settings? Does the speech play properly? If it continues to be a problem I can email you a debug build to try and figure out whats going on.

Hmm, strange. I've uploaded a new build you can get here, could you open a command prompt and run Brushtone from it? When it crashes, copy paste the last few lines from the command prompt, if any.

The problem appears to be with Pywin32 and the Sapi5 drivers for the TTS engine. After some digging It seems like it could either be a COM access conflict between 32bit and 64bit calls, or a problem with the windows 8.1 Sapi drivers, which have been known to cause issues in the past. You could try reinstalling the Sapi5 drivers, another possibility could be conflicts with 32 bit voice packs, you could try the fix discussed here.

Also, though i'm not fond of the idea, you could also try upgrading to windows 10, previous tests on win 10 builds didn't present any issues.

I'm glad you found a solution to get it working.

When using Tools like Square, Circle, or Line, pressing Space Bar or the Left Mouse Button places an Anchor Point, you then move the arrow keys to determine the size of the square by its opposite corners, or the radius of the circle from its center, or each end point of the Line. When its the size you want, press Space Bar or Left Mouse Button again to apply it to the canvas. Other tools like Flood Fill or Pencil require only one press of the Space Bar or Left Mouse Button. You can also press and hold the Space Bar and Left Mouse Button with the Pencil tool, and use the arrow keys to paint continuously.

When loading files, when it starts saying the names of files, use the Up and Down arrow keys to select which file you want to load, then press enter.

Reading larger scale or complex images is a difficult problem to solve, you can view entire images by initializing the Sonifier, but anything larger than 64 by 64 loses detail when converting them to sound. There are a few work arounds though, such as using the Slice tool to carve up the image into evenly sized pieces, and then use the Sonifier with Batch enabled to scan each section one after the other. By cutting them up into smaller pieces, less detail is lost when converting them. You can also use the Select tool to select a region to exclusively scan with either the Window Scan or Sonifier. Alternatively you can also apply Transformations, like converting the image to Grey Scale, inverting the colors, resizing it, or any combination there of to try and make it easier to read.

Having said that though, art comes in many different shapes, sizes, and styles, as such some kinds of art may be easier to use and read with BrushTone than others. Line Art focuses on black outlines, Vector Art on judicious use of solid colors. Pixel Art may be the easier one to work with, as it uses limited colors and emphasises working on individual pixels to make small images, NES sprites are a good example. It can take time and patience to find a style and method that works for you. But more importantly, you should enjoy yourself and have fun.

Hmm, thats an interesting idea. I guess it wouldn't work that differently from the Window Scan in a way. Its difficult to convey all the necessary data in such a display though, such as the Red, Green, Blue, and Alpha values, and the level of brightness of each pixel. Though it may be possible to use a single Braille character to represent brightness and allow configuring it to display different color values like the sonifier. I might be able to implement something, but unfortunately I don't have a Braille Display to test it on and they can be rather expensive.

Its gotten me thinking though of a prototype tactile display from MIT called inFORM I heard about awhile ago, its consists of a grid of pins that raise and lower to create 3D shapes and displays of visual data. I think something like that could work well with BrushTone.

Looking around there seems to be a few Braille API's with python bindings, like libbraille and Liblouis*. I've tried using Accessible_output2 a few times, but the lack of documentation and dependancies makes it difficult. Converting to Braille may not be that difficult, I could output it as text to the screen. Could that be picked up and read by screen readers to be parsed by Braille Displays?

I think there would be room for a few different modes, putting the brightness of 3 pixels into a single cell along horrizontal rows as you suggest could work. Another way could also be to try displaying a single pixel on a single cell by using the horrizontal rows for red, green, and blue values too. Still, short of displaying each pixel across 9 to 12 or so cells there's no avoiding compromises in detail.

If you use a standard windows title bar, screen readers usually pick up changes and send them to any attached displays.

This program sounds cool. I'm gonna download it today
Hope it isn't confusing

Bleh, anybody else keep getting a "500 Internal Server Error" when trying to access audiogames.net?

Anyway, i've just uploaded v1.1, it includes a few minor performance fixes and Braile Display support for RGB and multi-row display. I'm not entirely sure if I got the braille symbols right, I looked up a chart for the keyboard braille symbols so I hope it doesn't read incorrectly. Press F6 to cycle through the 2 different modes and to deactivate it.

Here's how it works: In RGB mode the top, middle, and bottom rows of a single Braille cell represent the Red, Green, and Blue values of a single pixel. If the value is 0, then the corresponding row will have no dots. If the value is greater than 0 and less than 85 there will be one dot on the left. If the value is greater than 85 and less than 170 there will be two dots. If the value is greater than 170 and less than or equal to 255, there will be a dot on the right. For the sake of orientation, it will only display the pixels starting at the cursors position, moving to the right edge of the canvas.

For Multi-Row mode, the top, middle, and bottom rows of a single Braille Cell represent the top, current, and bottom rows relative to the cursor. It functions the same as in RGB mode, but the values represent each pixels overall brightness as opposed individual RGB elements.