2016-03-20 19:56:31

Hi All,

I don't often post on this board, but I recently encountered a new game which I thought was worth mentioning. It's called Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, or CDDA for short, and it's essentially an open-world, zombie survival roguelike.

Basically, you're an average survivor in a near future version of New England, and you wake up one day in an emergency shelter. You have to figure out how to find food, defend yourself, and in general just stay alive. The game has an amazingly detailed crafting system, dynamic world map, and no overarching goals to speak of. You can be anything from a guntoating survivalist to a martial artist to some kind of mutated scientific experiment. There are vehicles, which you can make and repair yourself, tons of weapons, and, of course, zombies.

There's a catch. This game isn't as accessible as it could be yet. There are some annoying display issues, and the current "experimental," version is working on fixing them. I play on Linux with Speakup, but there's a Windows console version too, which should be playable as well.

It can be found here. A forum thread i started for accessibility help is here.

This game definitely isn't for everyone, and is very in depth, but I think there are at least a few folks on this board who might be interested in something in this style. I'm happy to answer what questions I can.

2016-03-20 20:23:16

Yeah, not at all a fan of roguelikes, but others might enjoy.

Take care, it's a desert out there.

2016-03-20 20:35:03

Hi.
wow it sounds interesting. Is it text only like a mud?

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
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2016-03-20 20:38:40

Hey there,

It's text-based, but has more in common with the recently-discuss Dungeon Crawl Stone SOup than a mud. You use single key commands to navigate rather than typing in sentences, and it's turn-based, which is good for us because otherwise we'd have trouble getting anything done. smile

2016-03-20 20:46:38

Moderation!

I'm moving this topic out of new releases sinse the game's access is in doubt at the moment, indeed "access" in terms of roguelikes is a difficult thing owing to the amount of on screen information anyway, playable yes, playable with the same effort as a sighted person who can just look at the screen? perhaps not.

For people who are wondering about what a roguelike is and what the access issues are, I did answer some of those questions and wrote a brief explanation in post five of This thread

suffice it to say ascii graphics in an overhead view with lots of looking around to be done, near impossible without a braille display, and slow work with one, also requiring massive spacial awareness to remember where everything on the screen is (especially I imagine if zombie hoards are involved).

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.)

2016-03-21 22:29:00

I tried it. With nvda, it's bad or i can't use well the nvda's cursor. With jaws it will be good i think, i'll try tomorrow.

Hail, Daughter of Hatred. Creator of Sanctuary. Hail...Lilith.

2016-03-21 22:37:03 (edited by zkline 2016-03-21 22:38:36)

I'm glad other folks are at least interested in trying it. There's a lot of aspects which could be better, but there are so many games which are totally inaccessible that finding one which can at least be played somewhat is noteworthy. I intend to keep talking to the developers about what they can do to improve things.

2016-03-21 22:44:31

I can't go trough the main menu, so i can't say much, but the concept is very good, and i want to play it. I'm new at nvda so i can't use the nvda cursor, because it's hard for me, i want to use jaws, but i have a nvidia card and it's not supported. Oops, a little of topic, sorry.

Hail, Daughter of Hatred. Creator of Sanctuary. Hail...Lilith.

2016-03-21 22:48:45

Some tips for people who are interested:

The build which has some accessibility improvements is the daily experimental one. The stable version isn't as friendly.

The main menu can be navigated with shortcuts, "n," for new game, and so forth. There are other menus which use arrow keys and tab. Characters move with the number pad or the "VI keys," h for left, j for down, etc. It takes a bit of getting used to.

IF more people are interested I'd suggest signing up for the forums, their email notification system is broken but the community sis friendly.

2016-03-21 22:59:22

Oops, i downloaded the stable version. Check it out, thanks.

Hail, Daughter of Hatred. Creator of Sanctuary. Hail...Lilith.

2016-03-23 16:03:27 (edited by brad 2016-04-11 06:50:52)

Hello. I've tried both versions and they do not work with NVDA.

I tried the console version with JAWS; It didn't work either.

I'm gone for real :)

2016-03-23 18:19:59

Yeah, i tried too.

Hail, Daughter of Hatred. Creator of Sanctuary. Hail...Lilith.

2016-03-23 18:30:52

Damn. I've tried the latest experimental version on Windows too, and you're right, it's not as friendly as it is under Linux. I'm not sure if that's because the code just hasn't shown up in that release yet, or if it's a subtler problem.

I'll bring this up on the Cataclysm forums. Note that you'd have to use the Jaws or NVDA cursor to play, since the game runs in a console window.

I'm sorry to get people's hopes up. It works pretty well for me, but I guess I shouldn't have jumped the gun.

2016-09-17 11:34:46

I heard on a recent podcast from Touch Arcade that blind gamers are playing this.
Any more accessibility news?

2016-09-17 17:08:56

Is it this game accesible for pc or not?

2016-09-17 20:16:19

Hey,

I'm probably the person who recorded the podcast you mentioned, and unfortunately there is nothing new on the Windows front. I'm only able to play this thanks to Linux. It is available on iOS and Windows as well, but not accessible on either platform, as far as I know.

This is a shame, as the game itself is as deep as ever.

2016-09-18 01:10:47

Oh, that's too bad. I only have Windows, and I am always on the lookout for complex open-world games.

2016-09-18 07:37:42

Would this be playable with the windows subsystem for linux in windows 10?

2016-09-18 10:38:43

Such a great shame! This has been the type of game i always look for!:(

Why do ghost hunters have to hunt ghosts? Well, there's a fear of being ghosted out there. They may need therapy as well as their ghost hunting kit.

2016-09-18 20:33:59

Victorious wrote:

Would this be playable with the windows subsystem for linux in windows 10?

I actually don't know. I suspect it might, since the Linux version is just a Curses program, and the requirements are pretty minimal. But I haven't messed with that subsystem myself.

2016-09-20 01:28:57

But can any contact developer and sugest them what he need to do to improve accesibility for vindows?

2019-09-04 18:45:47

I'm also interested in the game. i wood play on linux. can give some advice. what for example is it possible to do and what is not?

2019-09-04 21:04:24

Does this game have music and sound effects?

2019-09-04 22:21:22

THe text-base version I played didn't, unfortunately. Some of the graphical versions do, but they aren't accessible.

2019-09-05 05:18:19 (edited by blindndangerous 2019-09-05 06:27:07)

This is also on Android, but unfortunately doesn't work with Talkback.  Might be able to get in touch with the dev though.
I did find this for building it on a raspberry pi. It's currently building on my 4.
https://www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/c … cataclysm/
I couldn't get the linux builds to run, so found the github for the game itself.  That is here.
https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA