2019-05-08 13:33:08

Hey all!
Yesterday i found a new incremental game, called evolve.
It is relatively new, was posted on reddit about 2 3 days ago.
It is a game, where you evolve, starting from protoplasm, and you can evolve in to the three evolutionary forks, like animals, plants and mushrooms.
After you evolve from protoplasm you start your own settlement, do researches, battle things and stuff. After you finish your settlement, there's a space part coming in. This gamre is still in developement, the developer is pritty active. Last update was released today. The main thing is, the layout of this game is somewhat inconvenient. Like you have to do mousovers to know what a thing does, and what it costs, like it was in trimps.
The game is very good, and maybe we all can contact a dev via reddit or something, and maybe we can invite him here so he can do accessability updates on the game if he wants to?
Find the game here.
https://pmotschmann.github.io/Evolve/
And the subreddit of this game can be found here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/EvolveIdle/
I've been playing this thing and i like it a lot, the main thing is the layout which can be improoved like it is in trimps.
Your opinions?

2019-05-08 14:47:21

Had a quick look at this but yeah,the layout needs some fixes, especially since you don't even get told "clickable" about what resources you have to go around. Its a potentially fascinating idea, especially for me who loves bio chemistry, but at the moment its a miner pest to play.

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.)

2019-05-08 15:27:06

actually it's not that bad, but it could be way more easier and better.

2019-05-08 21:07:08

Finally, a game like this. I have been waiting for something similar for a while now, and I'm glad that this is actually under active development unlike the other civ building clickers.

I used to be a knee like you, then I took an adventurer in the arrow.

2019-05-08 22:12:42

@4, yeah same. The only sad thing is that it is a bit clunky and too damn sloooooow. It is really, just, slow. Like, arg. It would be good if we can get a dev on this forum and ask him about changing interface a bit?

2019-05-09 14:26:55

For those who have a reddit account, could we try contacting the dev via reddit? I unfortunately don't have such an account yet.

2019-05-09 17:54:00

It doesn't have a thing to do with biochemistry once you choose the path you want to  evolve along, but that's another thing. The reset button doesn't show up, which is a bigger problem.

Languages don't influence the way we think, but they still have a world and worth in themselves. Celebrate your mother tongue, the world is a diverse place.

2019-05-10 17:33:40

It sometimes show, but only sometimes with playing with enable reset buttom in settings.

Ja volim samo kafu sa Rakijom.

2019-05-13 06:38:40

Also, I have contacted dev, because of multiplification keys issues.
There is also another option, Github. So, We can post issues too.

Ja volim samo kafu sa Rakijom.

2019-05-25 11:57:57

So the dev has been unrestricted, and i hope the accessability will be improved. Currently i stopped playing not cause of accessability issues(there's almost none), but cause the game is to waaay slow for my liking.
Like you work hard and wait much time to get only +2 max citizans? this really makes me bored and i really don't have any patience or motivation to play a game cause it's tooo slow. I'm sorry if this was harsh, but yeah, it is what it is.

2019-06-24 15:54:53

Hello, I'm Demagorddon the developer of Evolve.

How can I improve accessibility for the game? I've tried out NVDA and this might just be due to my inexperience with it but to be honest I don't understand how you manage to play the game at all. Before I can make a plan to make any serious improvements for accessibility I need to understand the issues better as well as the tools you use to play it, so I'm here to ask you what the issues are that need to be solved.

Are there special hot keys you use for navigation? I see there was concern about the multiplier keys used for buying things in stacks. Is control, shift, or alt being bound to a game function interfering with your own shortcuts? If so which one is the problem?

Are the biggest issues navigation related or lack of context when an action is focused? Which elements are the most confusing to interact with?

Is the general layout with the tab containers navigable? What about the popovers are those a problem? it was suggested to me that a separate accessibility interface could be necessary but i'd like to avoid that if possible as if the problems can be solved with a unified interface it makes maintaining the game much easier. I may add a screen reader option to the settings if it becomes necessary but I'm looking to first try and fix the existing interface to be more screen reader friendly.

Are there special shortcuts used commonly by screen readers which I can incorporate into the game to make it easier? For example I see some elements like H tags might be given special weight, however i'm not sure if incorporating them into the game code would actually be useful.

I look forward to hearing from you all on how to best improve the accessibility of evolve.

2019-06-24 17:01:08

I can say for sure that separators, lists, and headers are useful for screen readers

Every day is a good day!
When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade!
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2019-06-24 17:30:26

Hello @Demagorddon,
I'm very, very glad that you are writing here!
Well, first off, i'll try to give an accessibility feedback and i hope it will be useful.
1. I'm using NVDA.
2. Headings for each resource would be very helpful. For example:
heading level 1 $
113.2K / 113.2K
23.84 /s
Heading level 1 (the name of your race.
Etc.
That would help navigating resources of the game.
2. I guess you have weather on pictures, right?
It would be super helpful if you could display a text information on weather.
3. Tooltips. To check the price of an item, or the descryption of an item, you need to mouseover the item. The trimps developer somehow made buttons next to the item, and instead of mouseover you press this button, and it auto speaks the item info. I don't know nor html, nor javascript so i can't tell you how he made this.
4. Headings again
You also should make a heading with the name of the tab you are in now, cause that again would make navigation more comfortable. The heading should be below the tab list and resource list.
5. Evolution flowchart.
When i went to the evolve wiki, i found out that there is an evolution flowchart so you could control the process of your evolution, but to my disappointment it was inaccessible. The screen reader just reads it out like graphic evolution flowchart and that's all. It would be cool if you'd make the html file with a table or something like this to navigate the evolution paths so we too could choose what we'll be evolving in to.
6. Action multiplification. Sighted could hold ctrl, shift or alt to multiply an action and press the left mouse button to confirm, while we can't do this. The way you did the market multiplification is pritty accessible, btw.
I think that's all i found out for now. Keep up your great work!

2019-06-24 17:36:04

Hi.

Firstly, welcome to the forum and thanks for  looking into access.
Many screen reader users use NVda, that is none visual desktop access, the open source screen reader for windows, which you can Find here (though most people have better voices than the default ones).

As a rough guide, headings can help navigate a page quickly, buttons or links can make it firstly clear what to click on and secondly quicker to navigate, whilst alerts or popups can be useful for displaying information.

I did not play Evolve extensively myself, from what I remember the chief troubles I was having were that it wasn't exactly clear which elements were and were not clickable or the costs for each, but I might be wrong since as I said I didn't get too far in the game.

As regards your suggestion about keys, most screen readers use letters for navigation, EG h to go to the next heading on a page and shift h to go back,so shift is less useful with letters, likewise capslock is a common modifyer key for screen reader commands, whilst control often serves with space or other keys for general windows navigation, EG ctrl down arrow skips paragraphs, , so alt is probably your best bet as long as it doesn't conflict with browser keys.

For most net situations it's usually quicker to use specific page elements to navigate between than try to hit keys.

Hth.

I'll have a further look when I can and try and make a few more concrete suggestions, though its likely people who have played more extensively might beat me to it.
Thanks again for the interest, as I said the game idea looked fascinating to me, especially because of the cellular biology.

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.)

2019-06-24 18:04:54

It's actually pretty accessible, the only thing I really notice is prob the info from hover. I have no idea how much of what I need for what.

Every day is a good day!
When life gives you a lemon, make lemonade!
Opinions are like arseholes - everybody has one, and they all stink.

2019-06-24 20:10:49

Garr wrote:

It's actually pretty accessible, the only thing I really notice is prob the info from hover. I have no idea how much of what I need for what.

Alright, I guess this will be the first thing I try to improve. I had a feeling the popovers (tool tips) were a problem.

I'm also going to look into adding headers to the game.

The weather icons are pictures, they also have text... however it's in a popover. These popovers seem to me to be the largest accessibility problem with the game currently as a lot of information is given out in them.

The evolution flowchart was made by a fan, the wiki itself is rather underdeveloped at the moment and has been a back burner project. At some point I plan to build it up but I haven't yet because the game itself is rapidly evolving as it's developed and I didn't want to waste a lot of time making something that would quickly become inaccurate.

2019-06-25 17:44:03

Okay I've had a look at the game and gone beyond prehistoric (I laughed at the evolved plant species).
The good news, is it seems a lot of the access work as regards basic page elements is already there. All of the basic page elements, EG the stuff you can evolve into, the options to gather stone and research etc are actually links, so its easy enough to go between them.
Mouseovers  are a bit of an irritation with a screen reader, since what you need to do is use keys to navigate the page, EG arrows or k and shift, use the key combo to bring the mouse to the position of your screen reader on the page EG NVdA key and numbpad / to move the mouse, then go and find the mouseover text itself, since it rarely shows up at the curser position.

The good news, is in evolve the mouseover text shows up at a relatively logical poibnt below the links leading to gather/evolve etc, you can even use N with NVdA that is skip past links to find it relatively quickly.
The bad news this means in order to find out what a new thing is when you see the new thing, you need to get to it read the mouseover text and then find it again, which can be a miner pest when there is a huge list of links.

I would suggest either adding the mouseover text to the link, perhaps as alt text so it is read when you go through the links with a screen reader by default, adding it in an alert, perhaps with an info button, or just writing it onto the page itself under whatever the respective link is in manner of a listt.

Headings would be helpful, indeed were it possible to skip straight to your list of stuff to do and the mouseover text with a heading, it would  generally speed matters up.
Also, if the event log at the top of the page changes and matters become a bit more of a serious real time crunch, then quick navigation might be very necessary.

Thanks again for the interest in access, the game looks like fun and I'll be interested to see where my creatures 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.)

2019-06-25 18:01:48

what is thsi mouse over thing you guys are keep talking about?

2019-06-25 18:52:23

Mouseover is a text that appears only when the mouse pointer hoverse over something on the page. its handy for sighted people, but less good with a screen reader, since you don't get the text otherwise, and need to use some odd steps to read it.
Evolve, as with trimps, kittens game and several other incrementals, uses mouseovers to explain what the various things you can buy are. For now though, you can find it in NvdA by using nvda numbpad slash in the default layout, then hitting n to read the text.

In Supernova it was Dolphin F5 to move the mouse, I am not sure what it is in Jaws.

Okay, having played more of the game and  more resources, I believe weather is the reason my food situation seems to fluctuate so much, so obviously with that currently inaccessible it would be helpful to know, since right now I'm not %100 sure what my food output is, or whether its better to build  farms or recruit farmers, indeed if there is a mouseover text for the various workers on the civics page telling you what they do I'm afraid I haven't seen it.

Btw, speaking of the civics page I'm a tad confused why the labels for "add soldiers to campaign" and "remove soldiers to campaign" seem to be on the wrong buttons.

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.)

2019-06-25 18:59:11

yes, add soldiers and remove soldiers are swapped lol.
Also dark, build farms and recrute farmers. Everything will help.
I've reached titanium now. The game is freakin' interesting!

2019-06-25 19:19:47

what is taht keystroke for laptop layout, i'm asking too many things but,

2019-06-25 20:06:06

@Omar, its NVda shift M in the laptop layout.
For future reference if your ever stuck for an NvdA keystroke, check the commands quick reference under the help section, it has all the keystrokes for desktop, laptop and touch screen layouts.

I use the laptop keys myself, well when I'm on a laptop big_smile.

@Skylord, yeah, the game is fun, it reminds me a little of kittens game though the layout is friendlier and the difficulty much less harsh in terms of seasonal changes and different factors.
I will say though, as I get more and more different types o of resources, I'm more and more wanting a way to look through them quicker, EG a table, list, headings etc, especially when I need to check what resource I'm specifically lacking when I want to try and buy something.

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.)

2019-06-26 15:13:51

I have an update coming out later today that contains some accessibility improvements, nothing too major yet. I spent a lot of time trying to use NVDA and I'm still getting the hang of it. The add soldiers and remove soldiers labels are getting fixed in 0.4.13 as well as some improvements to the resource list which should help you know how much you are making per second. There is also a change to help identify the power on and off buttons on some buildings later in the game. Finally the event log is now a live region so it should read off events when they occur.

The mouse over issue is proving to be more difficult to find a working solution for then i'd anticipated but there is work being done to fix this problem. I have not yet added headers to the game but those are also coming in a future update.

2019-06-26 15:47:00

@23, great! Thank you for taking accessability issue seriously.

2019-06-26 19:42:41

yaaaay, thanks!