I don't know when this is coming out, this just resulted from a mail discussion I had with niels. Sadly the developement for the access features in Empires and dungeons is rather stalled by the fact he hasn't had enough preorders and that he's waiting on a German publisher, but in the mean time he said he's working on smugglers five, and mentioned some of the features to me, but I get the impression that things are very much not fixed and developement is stil continuing.

Sinse i thought people would be interested to know, I asked if I could publish some news and he said it'd be okay, hence this post.

I'm actually playing Smugglers 4 again myself now, and having huge amounts of fun, ---- though to make things interesting I played as the outer rim, which is proving more difficult sinse they don't seem to get as good ships as the federationk, ---- well not for combat anyway.

As to nvda, as far as I've heard unfortunately not sinse the game requires heavy use of a virtual review curser for wandering around the screen and performing left or right mouse clicks on important areas of text, like the Hal's dolphin curser, Window eyes curser or jaws curser.

Last I heard nvda didn't have such a curser, and the last person who tried to play smugglers 4 with it said it didn't work, ---- though I confess I'm no expert on nvda, and the situation may have changed anyway.

As far as I understand it, for some reason the compatibility mode in E&d 2 was also tied to him making an expantion for the game rather than being in the initial game itself, which is why he wanted the preorders, though of course the problem is then he's asking Vi customers to effectively pay money for something they can't use.

In fairness he has offered people their money back, including myself, so if you wanted your preorder cash back I think he'd give it, though perhaps some reminders to him that we would! much appreciate E&D2 could be in order.

Understandably Tv manager two didn't work out as planned I think, because much of the fun of the game was in the artwork, and it also required dragging and dropping which isn't the easiest opperation to perform with a screen reader at the best of times.

I might indeed forward him a link to this thread so that he can know people's thoughts.

As to smugglers 5 though, he does seem to have taken to heart many of the cryticisms of the s4 combat. Crew combat is also getting a major change of some sort apparently. In his blog was a suggestions topic about combat improvements, and apparently s5 is to have far more of those, and also feature a lot more in terms of what he referd to as "mini story adventures" for each planet, which i take it will be something gamebook like, that sutes me indeed.

One thing though, is to Remember combat is only part of the smugglers games, and while some systems in S4 such as criminal flags never quite came out, as expected, mixing activities does change the game, though right now I'm going ful on as an outer rim mercinary.

Well, there are no actual buttons in the windows sense in S4, everything is the text. Nvda's review curser might not be as good when it comes to properly columnizing the info, but if it can mouse click on text it might stil work.

Did you go to game settings and set the compatibility mode to on?  That needs to be on before anything else, or lots of stuff won't have propper text lables at all.

@Hanif, one thing is sure, sinse it's a text game yes! it will need a virtual curser. I really don't see people's problem with using them myself.

@Bladestorm, you are jumping extremely to conclusions here and I personally think being far too negative given that the game isn't even released yet, indeed I get the strong impression that it's a long way from being released, niels was just kind enough to let me know sme of the features.

Niels is quite aware that combat in s4 becomes uninteresting after a while, but tht i why he is sticking in what sound to be more story like, and gamebook like elements on the various planets and for your character, as well as apparently more random factors in the combat to make it more reactive, and less a case of "just hitting the same buttons"

I personally disagree with you very much on Ce, sinse for me it's the background, and the resources that make the random activities interesting, but for Smugglers, I suggest that you start making positive suggestions, sinse this is the chance to actually influence what smugglers 5 could involve.

Myself, for me it's the flavour text and background I find interesting, the activities are like mechanics, the text is a reward, and yes, i do admit s4's combat system could do with improvement, but it was already an improvement over s3, so presumably s5's will be as well, especially if players give in put about what they want.

However being instantly negative probably won't be too helpful.

Hi there,

I´ve finally got around registering an account here, but I won´t have the time to regularly check it.

Regarding the comments above: Obviously I am going to refund all pre-order for E&D 2 as soon as it´s clear that it cannot be done. Alternatively everyone is welcome to request one anytime. I would have already done it, but it´s somewhat final, so I´ve been waiting whether I'll still be able to make the E&D 2 addon.

Like Dark mentioned I am specifically trying to make the Smugglers 5 game less repetitive, however if I understood bladestorm360 correct, he is basically looking for a different kind of game. That´s fine of course. I cannot make it right for everyone. Smugglers is and will stay a menu-based game. What I agree with him though is that basically it would be possible to make so much more for audiogames. Unfortunately nobody will really touch this, because there is simply - as harsh as it is - no market for it. I am adding a compatibility mode to it only because it was an interesting new thing to do and Dark and other´s asked me to do it. I am grateful for every sale of course.

You´re welcome to suggest ideas of how to make Smugglers 5 combat more interesting without changing the underlying game principle. Dark for example suggested different amount of APs depending on ship´s speed or letting sometimes the enemy having the first move. One of the things I´ve already done is giving every profession their own skill tree.

I agree with what you said dark. I would love to be able to play an accesible pokemon game for example, as it was always a great childhood game for me, and there is still a large part of me that wants to experience the full game unrestricted by inaccessibility. I also enjoy final fantasy style games, so this is to a hope for one day those games being accessible.