Developing a blind accessibility mod for Prince?

[Tschapajew]

Hello.

My name is Richard, a legally blind from birth, child of the 90s.
1993, I Played Prince of Persia 1 on my fathers 386s machine, on a monochrome Screen with my nose pressed against the glass, cause my sight was under 0,1 percent these days already.
Though being nearly blind, I had fun with the first computer game of my life and beat it without cheating.
As years passed by, technology evolved and my rest sight vanished, but memories of the Prince, saving his beloved Princes, remained in my head.
Then, almost 30 years later, I stumbled uppon the SDL port of Prince and was quite flabbergasted. The original sounds, the music, even the clumsy controls were back.
I tried to play the first level from memory and, yeah, succeded after a few deaths. Playing Prince only with its sound effects as hints for game actions was quite different from what I was used to regarding the game. ^^
Already in level II, my memories seemed to differ from the actual layout of several rooms and I put it down, quite emberassed and angry about my self.
A few weeks ago, I stumbled uppon another classic from my childhood, DOOM! The old 1994 DOOM, ported to Windows, Linux and the Mac was now blind accessible, due to the work of some friendly developers, who implemented some mechanics, representing in game actions and information, using sound hints. Walls were audible, position of items and enemies are represented by audio clues, positioned in the stereo field, telling direction and distance via changes between the two stereo channels relative loudness and the strength of the signal. I was in heaven.
Suddenly, all feelings were back.

Now my question in particular:
Would it be possible, to find some willing and able developers on this forum, to work with me on an accessibility patch for Prince as well? As far as I am conceived, Prince SDL already has a function to print out levels and thair rooms with symbols, representing in game objects, such as walls, switches, guards, spikes and so on.
I am thinking about some feature, making position of all these elements audible, using distingt sound samples.
With my experience as a blind computer gamer, I would be so glad to assist in the development of this addition to the game.

So, if there is a soul out there, able and willing to fulfill this burning wish of mine, I would be happy as one can be.
Reach out to me and lets do something funny, helping and astonishing together, making the retro game sector a bit more inclusive for disabled folks.

Looking forward to hear from You,

Richard

[Norbert]

Hi Richard, welcome to the Princed forum.
Nice work on completing level one without sight.

Your suggestion to help blind and visually impaired people play the game is interesting.
Unfortunately, we are a very small community, with only a handful or so active people.
And even these people seem to visit less and less.
So, don't get your hopes up.

Having written that...
As you know, SDLPoP, the open-source port of Prince of Persia, has mono audio.
However, two coders have modified that port to include positional, stereo audio.
These coders are Falcury and dmitry_s.
I don't think their modifications include relative loudness, nor are all objects audible from a distance.
These two coders rarely visit this forum nowadays.
And, while you currently could play their modifications, there are hurdles.
One mod has modified level layouts, while the other has no ready-to-use executable.

Still, for what it's worth, I've just now posted in the two forum threads that discuss their work.
To suggest adding either or both of their audio modifications to SDLPoP.
Theoretically, if that would happen, a future release of SDLPoP could include a toggle to enable these changes.
That might be a good first step towards making the game more accessible.

[Tschapajew]

Hi Norbert.

Thanks for picking my idea up. As long as we talk about the topic, at least something happens. Would You be so kind and provide me with a link to the threads you asked for stereo implementation in POPSDL? Maybe I check in there and add an explanation for why this is important.
By the way: How do I activate E-Mail-notifications on new forum posts here?

Thanks and best regards.

Richard

[Norbert]

Hi again Richard.

For my convenience, I will answer your questions in reverse.
First about activating email notifications, then about relevant forum threads.

Our forum uses software called "phpBB".
I will explain separately:
- how to enable receiving email notifications, and
- how to subscribe to topics and boards.
I will not go into bookmarking, which is another option the software provides.

How to enable receiving email notifications.
While logged in, visit Edit notification options of the User Control Panel.
That page vertically lists all notification types, each as a line of text.
To the right of each line, there are two checkboxes.
The first checkbox is to toggle notifications.
The second toggles receiving emails.
Relevant on that page are the following three lines:
- "Someone replies to a topic to which you are subscribed"
- "Someone creates a topic in a forum to which you are subscribed"
- "Someone replies to a topic in a forum to which you are subscribed"

How to subscribe to topics and boards.
While logged in, perform actions on relevant pages.
I will give two examples.
Example one.
This page's topic is "Developing a blind accessibility mod for Prince?".
Search on this page to find "Subscribe topic".
Example two.
One of the forum's boards is SDLPoP.
Search on that board page to find "Subscribe forum".

As for the two forum topics, not including yours, that discuss positional, stereo audio.
I will discuss them one by one.

The first topic.
It is about a mod and has 175 posts, most not about the mod's customized audio.
Of the two topics, it is currently the least relevant.
For completeness, I will give you two links to it anyway.
The first link is to the topic start, here.
The second link is to my on-topic post in the topic, here.
The latter may be relatively difficult to parse, because I included quotations.
As a reminder, this topic discusses modifications made by forum user dmitry_s.

The second topic.
It discusses directional sound.
This topic is currently the most relevant.
I will again give you two links.
The first link is to the topic start, here.
The second link is to my on-topic post in the topic, here.
As a reminder, this topic discusses modifications made by forum user Falcury.

Since your previous post on this forum, there have been on-topic developments.
I will summarize these.
Forum user David is, among other things, the maintainer of SDLPoP.
He has merged the changes Falcury made into a new, separate branch of SDLPoP itself.
The branch is called "directionalsound".
David then made code changes, to amplify the effect, and to fix a small bug.
As before, there is still no ready-to-use executable.

[David]

The branch is called "directionalsound".
David then made code changes, to amplify the effect, and to fix a small bug.
As before, there is still no ready-to-use executable.

I compiled the current state of that branch.
It's attached to this post.

[Tschapajew]

Hello ya good folks.

Wow! Just Wow!.
I grabbed the linked version and imediately had an auditory moment of awakening. Having all objects on the screen play thair sound on a panned position in the stereo field is just ... wow!. As I still had sight, I had a feeling how many steps the Prince needed from one side of the screen to another, til the depicted scene wrapped. As it seemed, I forgot, how many steps it really were and therefore unintendetly walked over the border to the next screen and so lost orientation. with this version, I always know where I am regarding the X axis. Also all the moving elements, such as gates, doors, spikes and so on play where they are, wich makes the image I remember reapear. So I was able to play through level 1 and half through level 2, just from my memories and with the audio cues already present. Folks, this is so promising. Will You keep working on my idea?
Many thanks for picking it up so far and for You all kindness.

Best regards.

Richard

[Tschapajew]

@Norbert

many thanks for your explanation. I now turned mail notifications on. Regarding sucscribing to this topic, I didn't find a element with the mentioned label. Could it be, that I am automatically subscribed to this topic, cause I created it?

Best

Richard

[David]

Hi Richard,

Regarding sucscribing to this topic, I didn't find a element with the mentioned label.

In visual browsers, the link for subscribing a topic is behind a drop-down button with title="Topic tools".
You may have to click that first.

I don't know if your browser allows finding an element by its title attribute.
In case it doesn't, the "Topic tools" button is directly after the "Post Reply" button.

Could it be, that I am automatically subscribed to this topic, cause I created it?

You can check whether you are subscribed on the Manage subscriptions page.

However, for example, I am not automatically subscribed to any topics which I created.

Also, if you are already subscribed to a topic, then there is an "Unsubscribe topic" link instead of the subscribe link.