Hi,
How about audio roguelikes, though? text-based roguelikes can be hard to come by with a screen reader, due to it being slightly tricky and tedious to find persissions of things easily. In adio a game like this would work better. For instance, try the demo version of entombed. It uses the wind as both ambience and as a source of direction, in a rather clever way.
Alternatively, it wold be nice hat as you move in a roguelike without sound, if the landscape around you is described somehow, with a configurable option on how it describes for instance: if you move to the right, it might say:
Here: sword North: hills south: orc east: hills west: hills

Aaron: Yeah, I've heard of Entombed and am interested in it and in how audio can be used to make games more accessible.  Very few traditional roguelikes have any sound.

I've been thinking myself for a while about making a game that would be a bit like a cross between a roguelike and Tonematrix, where the music loops over the map every few seconds making generative music based on how the tiles are changed and what occupies them.  But, uh, it's just an idea, and ideas are cheap 

Hello Grey.

The basic problem with roguelikes is that screen readers are intended to read lines of text. Thuss, interpreting ascii graphics is extremely difficult, because interpreting a screen reader saying hash hash hash hash hash dot hash hash hash is not particularly easy.

I have heard some people have used braille displays to play some roguelikes, especially the original rogue and nethack. A braille display is a device that will show a line (or less than a line), in braille. However, bare in mind we are talking literally a line here, perhaps 120 characters horizontally at most, thus meaning that you can look at a very minimal amount of information on the screen (also bare in mind you'd have to move the focus of your braille display around to read the stats etc too), so even playing with one of those, it takes a ridiculous amount of time to build up an overview of what is on the screen, thus decreasing play time to a crawl.

The fact that even a small, 40 character braille display is also about 4000 dollars doesn't help either.

of course, if as cae says some way to make large tactile displays that could show the hole screen, thus allowing a visually impared player to get a full scale overview by touch the way you would using a tactile chess set, this situation will change, but we don't unfortunately have that technology yet.

this is why roguelikes are not included in the audiogames.net database of accessible games even though things like text based brouser games or interactive fiction interpreters are, sinse though with a braille display they would be just about playable, the amount of time and effort involved is just not reasonable (plus the reliance upon such an expensive peace of equipment as a braille display that not all people own is not good).

The ultimate aime in roguelike access therefore, would be to utterly forget ascii reading entirely sinse it's such a difficult business, and create a game where the on screen text messages (or maybe some audio), could give you a sufficient overview of your surroundings to easily know what is going on and what is where.

a great example of this is the game kerkerkruip, which, though it features innnumerable roguelike conventions, heavy turn based combat, random (and often cursed0, equipment, a very variable dungeon surrounding,monsters, element effects etc, instead of using an ascii display is written in the glulx format as in fact an interactive fiction title, and has full text descriptions of rooms and combat as well as a simple parza based input system, despite the heavy roguelike influence.

The closest I've seen to an accessible traditional roguelike, and probably where you may have come across me before, is Angband. I initially started to play angband because I found that the large graphic tyle set plus my remaining vision and text that Supernova could read was enough to play the game (I've not unfortunately seen this in other roguelikes).

More than the big graphic tyles however, the look curser in angband is probably the most effective tool for limited vision access I've seen, the way it can for instance be directed to jump straight to nearest object of interest and direct a character straight there, the way it can targit specific monsters or options, or the way it can be instantly bought back to the characters' location, ---- indeed visually the fact that the look curser in the graphic set is a highly visible big yellow box helps extremely, sinse if I say want to see where my character is I can direct the look curser straight to them.

Angband also has some other nice features, like the ability to get a textual list of all on screen monsters and objects, and the fact that all shops and item handling work by menues rather than manipulating ascii graphics.

Angband is as close to I've seen as a fully accessible vi roguelike, and on several occasions I've attempted to play it just! with my screen reader and with my monitor turned off, but unfortunately it's not quite there yet, sinse despite all the abilities to interact with monsters and objects and know their position, you still can't clearly from the text know where the walls are, particularly sinse in Angband (particularly in the newer versions), the dungeon layout can get rather complicated in terms of corridors, vaults with random layouts of blocks etc, ---- not to speak of other varients that have features like trees, rubble, pools of water etc in the dungeon.

While I think such modifications might be possible, it'd likely take several interventions, for a start a directional look command that would tell you the distance betwene your character and the nearest wall or other object, and the ability to get over all information about your surroundings, for example whether in a corridor or a room what entrances that room had etc.

Entombed, while exceptional in quality, (I was a tester for the game), still it can't be denied uses a very simplified dungeon map composed of basic, one space wide corridors and square rooms with a number of entrances, and has fights that are turn based battles rather than being based on the sort of spacial logic found in most roguelikes, ---- though in fairness this does give the chance for multiple character battles too which is a distinct advantage.

you might actually want to try some audio games on this site to get some ideas of how to gain an overview, and what or what does not work. There are for instance several games like battleships, chess and even mine sweeper in the database. Then, though it is a ral time fps game, you might want to try shades of doom which is srot of the deffinative as far as audio navigation of a large, mazelike area goes, (shades of doom is a commercial game, but there is a freely playable demo available).

One interesting thing in fact, is that lack of overview and information can actually make games more! interesting.

Packman for example as an audio game I find much more satisfying to play than graphically, sinse where as graphically you can see the entire maze, where all the ghosts and dots are making the hole game an exercize in quick reactions and ability to predict behaviour of the ghosts etc, the audio version is a very different (and in some ways), superior experience, sinse being first person, you don't! get to see the hole maze and need to maintain much more mental effort in knowing where you are, and encounters with ghosts are far more surprising.

Also, if you were adding text descriptons to a roguelike, you could use the opportunity to say something about surroundings too. For example "this large chamber has an entrance on the north wall and an entrance on the east wall, the floor is sticky with slime and a fowl stench fills the air"

thus adding some extra atmosphere as well as informational content to the game.

That does not surprise me in the least Cae, sinse that's just what I found ofrom the times I've used a braille display, and roguelikes can have a lot! of information on the screen at once, which is again why they're not included in the db even for those with braille displays.

Of course, should the technology change and a fulscreen tactile display ever be useable, fully accessible roguelikes will be one of the first major bennifits.

Actually violinist, one advantage of angband is you don't physically need to know a monsters' position to targit it exactly. You can stick the curser on the monster and you will be told if you can select it as a targit (though usually if you can see it, you can targit it).

This is exactly why to my mind the big hurdle in roguelikes isn't the monsters, but the map, which is randomly generated and can be dam complex. Certainly, when I tried angband without the graphics, I found myself quite able to move to monsters, doors and items with the look curser, but knowing what was on the map in terms of corridors, columns etc was a nightmare.

To me, that sort of spacial information eg wall 14-6 tiles across etc is very hard to interpret, but I freely admit spacial logic isn't my best attribute, i even find battleships, chess and mine sweeper impossible to play with just audio information limited by square.

This is one reason the context sensative map in Time of conflict impressed me so much, sinse it completely changed the information needed, and you could effectively play the game as a bunch of timed events, eg, how long it takes your soldiers to get to point x from point y and whether they'll do that before the enemy gets there, but I don't think that ssort of system wouldwork in a roguelike without completely having to change the gameplay to a more traditional turn based system with no spacial logic needed.

The problem aaron, is that the shear amount of information in a roguelike is waaay more than in any similar audio game, plus of course your limited to text.

Only treasurehunt and night of parasite have the same top down perspective as a roguelike, and neither was completely successfull in letting you determine enemy positions or find out the location of objects around you before you just stumble into them, and that with a very simplified layout and quite limited selection of enemies.

In a roguelike you are talking about a very complex layout where you can move in all 8 directions, where some passages twist in diagonals, there are blocks in the middle of rooms etc. Also, you have archers who can shoot at you from a distance, spells and orb attacks that hit everything around them, and in general tactical gameplay that is far more like a stratogy game than an exploration rpg.

For example, on one occasion in Angband I was playing a paladin. I opened a door to reveal a massive hoard of goblins. Sinse I didn't want multiple goblins attacking me at once from all sides, I ran away to a narrow corridor. I then remembered I had a beam of light spell, and that goblins are weak to bright light.

I then retreated up the corridor with the hoard of about 20 goblins following me. When I got to the far end, I turned around and activated my beam of light spell. The beam went straight through all the goblins, doing major damage. i then repeated until all the goblins were dead.

This however required a distinct knolidge of the hole evnrionment around me, the corridor, the spacial use of the spell being a beam that went straight forward through enemies etc, and representing all of that in audio would be dam hard.

Hi grey.

unfortunately I no longer have a microphone, thus chatting on your podcast could be a little difficult.

As regards adaptation, while I agree a lot could be done, I'd myself prefer adaptations that didn't! simplify the essential nature of the gameplay such as changing from 8 way movement to 4. We have already far too many over simplified games, such as side scrolling platformers with no vertical dimention.

Rather, i would suggest a redesign of the system and concept to take advantage of the limited information available.

For example, instead of the dungeon being a continuous area which is mapped over a scrolling screen and created out of many interconnected chambers, have the dungeon be represented as many smaller sized but inclosed corridors and rooms each of which is separate from the others. Thus, a visually impared player would need to only comprehend the current, say 20 x 20 area, rather than the entire dungeon as a hole.

So effectively instead of the dungeon being a lot of massive 10000 x 10000 areas, it's a lot of small ones linked by doors and passages which could effectively be redrawn each time the player goes through a new door or passage.

In a small space, it'd be quite possible to have coordinates of many things, and some more complex layouts, but because you were only working with a small space you wouldn't overwhelm the player.

in addition, mechanics that take advantage of this smaller layotu could be introduced, for example rooms with elemental or magical effects across the entire! flor that would constantly affect the player, rooms that contained specific monsters themed to that room, like an earth golem in a room with many blocks and constant falling rocks, or a goblin's laire which also contained allies in the form of slaves who could be unchained and rescued (allies would be another concept that could work in this smaller space).

Monsters could even take advantage of specific room features that way,k for example you might have an evil necromancer and their skeletal hoard who tried to force you to the alter at the center ofthe room which, when you stepped on it would drain your life force.

this! sort of rethinking of roguelikes, to limit the information overload by limiting space on screen, and effectively to take advantage of that limit in the gameplay would I think produce a game which would be quite unique in terms of roguelike design and which many people would want to play, but also have a distinct advantage in it's accessibility.

Well part of my point in suggesting this change violinist was based on something I've noticed in Angband, namely that because of the twisting and complex terrain, while I regularly use ranged weapons to hit monsters at a distance within the same room or corridor, or perhaps at most in a room from! a corridor, usually trying to get a good shot on monsters in a different room or corridor isn't a good idea.

And of course, breaking things up into individual rooms would also let ranged weapons have other properties and mechanics, for instance a slingshot because it is twirled around and flung could be fired at enemies in a far wider radius than a bow or a crossbow, though have a shorter over all range and greater chance of missing, indeed whether you are facing! a monster or not could be another mechanic that plays a part in a smaller setup, where as it perhaps would not in a larger over all dungeon size.

Sounds Interesting, though I don't know whether modification would work, sinse a screen reader can only interact with actual text, not graphical representation of text, meaning that it might be the interface would need some tweaking, in addition to adding text messages describing the layout, position of monsters etc.

Hi Grey,
let me first say that I am glad to hear that some members of the roguelike community are interested in how blind and visually impaired gamers play roguelikes. I myself have enjoyed countless hours of fun with Nethack, Adom and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. On the subject of accessibility, I feel that most blind gamers who are interested feel that the ideal blind accessible roguelike would rely almost entirely on audio, as it can be very difficult to make heads or tales of a dungeon map for instance with a screenreader. However I have found that with perseverance I have managed to get quite far in the afore mentioned games. I did not come anywhere near to beating them, and inevitably things would get a little too complicated for me to handle with jas. Anyhow, I'd love to come on your program and talk about roguelikes in more detail, but I will warn you I am not really used to recorded interviews so I may tend to ramble a bit. I will do my best to resist the urge (smile). My schedule is a little scattered because of the way my classes worked out this year at university, but I'm usually free in the afternoons and evenings from 3:30 PM onward. I am in the eastern standard timezone, so 5 hours behind GMT. My skype name is hartnett54, so feel free to add me and let me know if you are interested in discussing roguelikes further.

Ah, fair enough. Yes, bloody mindedness is often the word as far as access goes, however this isn't necessarily an ideal situation, not compared to the access of things that have more conventional text, :d.

Thank you to everyone who replied here - I tried to incorporate feedback as much as possible into the episode, and Niall was great at explaining things and talking about his experiences.  The episode now online here:

http://www.roguelikeradio.com/2012/10/e … ually.html

Any comments or criticisms are very welcome!