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Making Strategery For All
Addressing Subgame Accessibility

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Hello everyone.

As some of you might or might not be aware, I'm blind. It feels strange posting to the "complaints" bored, as I'm grateful for the fun Sindome has provided me so far and do understand/appreciate the effort that maintaining a game like this takes.

However, there is an issue I feel needs to be addressed.

At the moment, there are very few things I couldn't do in game, if I tried. Some may be prettier than others but they're still doable. Sadly, strategery is not one of these things. The game is completely visual and, from my brief experience with it, revolved primarily around ASCII art. This means that, both as a spectator and a participant, I'm completely shut out.

I have no idea how to fix this issue, as I have no point of reference for what the game is actually supposed to be. This is why I'm posting here. It's my hope that we can engage in... some kind of discussion, and collectively figure out a way forward, by which Strategery can be made accessible for blind players.

Thanks.

By Waters at May 21, 2021 10:56 AM
I fully support all attempts to make Sindome and MUDs accessible to the blind. It is an important thing to do.

Waters, Strategery basically works this way. The game board is a grid of squares. It isn't uncommon to have more than 15 or 20 squares. A player claims a square, and then spends points from a budget to improve a square's "strength" value in each of the four cardinal directions. The square then "fights" each square adjacent to it in those cardinal directions, in North-East-South-West order, and the "strength" values are compared. If a player's square wins that comparison, the player takes over the adjacent square. The goal of the game is to control the most squares at the end of a certain number of turns.

This could all be converted to plain text. I imagine by doing something like 'look a4 on strategery' and getting 'unclaimed' or ' 2, 2, 4, 4' as a response, where the name is the square's controlling player and each number is the square's strength in the cardinal directions. A command like 'last turn on strategery' that gives a response like ' claimed b6 and c10. lost b5' would also be helpful.

It would be clunky, and would require a lot of individual looking at different squares to understand the game state and make good decisions. Unfortunately, it is a game that is very visual and spatial due to the relationships between squares.

Personally, I think it would be possible, but a big pain to play Strategery as a blind player if the game had plain text options. Another option would be creating a game that is less dependent on sight to quickly grasp the game state.

By geigerbunny at May 21, 2021 11:26 AM
I had some playername enclosed in tags in my last post, that the bgbb code ate.

The sentences should have been:

This could all be converted to plain text. I imagine by doing something like 'look a4 on strategery' and getting 'unclaimed' or 'playername 2, 2, 4, 4' as a response, where the name is the square's controlling player and each number is the square's strength in the cardinal directions. A command like 'last turn on strategery' that gives a response like 'playername claimed b6 and c10. playername lost b5' would also be helpful.

By geigerbunny at May 21, 2021 11:30 AM
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