Add on for visually impaired people

fingolfin · 04/08/14, 07:32 AM

Good afternoon everybody,

first I'd like to apologize for my very bad english, I hope I will be able to explain my problem.

I have a friend who is playing TESO and who is visually impaired. Just an exemple : it's very difficult for him to see when it's a simple NPC, an enemy, or a friend... The yellow frame above enemies is not big enough for his eyes.
There are probably a lot of other situations for him which are difficult. I must ask him for more details.

So I'd like to know, does an addon exist which could make it easier for him to play ? If it does not exist yet, do you think it's possible to make it ? I've no idea how much modding is difficult, and what can be done or not.

If somebody here accepts to try to do it, I will ask to my friends all détails about situations in which he get troubles.
That would be very nice if we can do something, and it could be very usefull to help people having vision handicap playing this beautiful game

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Thanks to people who take time to read this !

thelegendaryof · 04/08/14, 10:19 AM

Hi fin,

I already thought about creating an UI mod for that purpose myself
(however that 's always difficult if you yourself aren't visually impaired)

As as start it would help if you would collect all the difficulties he experiences and post them here in your first post.
We'll see if I or someone else might be able to help with it. Also it might help in forwarding that requests to ZOS
and see if at some point those adjustments get implemented as well.

Please also try to track down his Monitor and the Resolution he 's running the Game at as well as the Game-Settings. Especially those two under Settings -> Video (in the Login or Character-Selection Screen):

Maybe it 's something simply doable with the Native Settings and some
minor adjustments especially since he doesn't seem to be Colorblind.

Cheers!

fingolfin · 04/08/14, 06:23 PM

thanks a lot for your answer , thelegendaryof !

I'll ask as many details as possible to my friend. As you said, difficult to know exactly what to do, when we don't know exactly what are the problems.

What about the game settings, the gamma cursor is at maximum.

When I know all what we need, I will post it here.

i think if you want the add on is usefull for everybody, the best would be to allow them to choose the parameters like colors. But I don't know how much it is difficult, and if it's possible, so I let you judge

.

thanks a lot for your help, and I give the other details soon.

thelegendaryof · 04/09/14, 06:53 AM

Ok - Ill wait for your Infos then.

fingolfin · 04/11/14, 11:31 AM

Hi again.

I have some more detail about my friend and the troubles he can meet in game. I can give the original message in french, just in case a french modder would come on this topic. I hope I will be able to translate it in english well enough to make it understandable for you

.

So, my friend suffer from rétinitis pigmentosa (I put this link to wikipedia, it could help you to understand what we are speaking about, if like me you didn't know this disease : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinitis_pigmentosa ).

In real life, three main problemes are caused by this disease :

- Brightness : he needs much light. First characteristic of this disease is than he cannot see in darkness. For exemple, he's in the street in front of a building, all lights from flats in this building are off, he doesn't see the building. In the night, he only sees cars if their headlights are on.

- Reliefs and colours : He cannot distinguish reliefs. For exemple if you put a big rock in front of him, and small stones of same colour just before the rock, he will not see the small stones. Something else about colors : in some situations it can be difficult for him to distinguish red from orange, or green from blue for exemple.

- Tunnel vision : his peripheral perception of objects is reduced.

So, in game he gets difficulties to see the ennemies, because they fade into the background. He's often surprised by ennemies, and as he needs a lot of time to see them, he often dies because of that. And it's more difficult again with distants ennemies, like archers or sorcerers. The worst is ennemies in caverns or any other places in which brightness is low. About ground items, (for crafting for exemple) he doesn't see it most of time. he didn't take the crafting skill which make items more visible, but he doesn't think it will be useful, except night perhaps. He will try and say us the result. It seems there's a addon to show the craft items on the map, we must try it, and see if it's working with the ZrMiniMap.

What could help him in TESO ? He explained me what was helpfull for him when he played LOTRO, (Lord of The Ring Online). In this MMO, we could enable some options quite usefull for him :

- On LOTRO we can enable an option, which allow us to see a line showing the direction where is the ennemy, or the item than we targetted, like a line of sight. If you don't see what I'm talking about, I will take a screen on LOTRO, do not hesitate to ask

.

- A button which allow us to target automatically the closest ennemy or item, and if we push this button again, the next ennemy or item. This was really helpfull for him, because when he targetted an item or an ennemy, he can follow the line of sight.

- On LOTRO we can show the names above ennemies or monsters, even when we didn't targetted them, so it made them to be a lot of more visible.

- In SWTOR (Star Wars the Old Republic), our character automatically moved, and looked at the area where was the ennemy targetted.

I imagine some of these ideas will not be applicable in TESO, but perhaps we could find some other ideas to help ?
For exemple, in TESo, in the interface settings we can choose to show the health bar above ennemies, NPC, ..., even when we are not attacked yet. That could be really helpfull for him, with two other changes: first, the health bar is not thick enough, and secondly the problem is sometime a black health bar would be fine (in the snow for exemple), and sometimes a white would be better (in the night for exemple).

So what could be quite usefull would be to get thicker health bar and to be able to change his color based on needs. I say a health bar, but doesn't really matter what it is as soon as he can see it before to be attacked by them. I don't know if it's possible to do it, and how much difficult it would be.

If we get some more ideas we will tell, if you have other ideas, tell us here, and I will ask to my friend if he thinks it could be usefull

.

You also asked me for details about his screen and video settings. I know when it's the night he plays with gammas at maximum. The screen is a philipps 32 inches. If you need the exact reference I will ask. And videos settings are at maximum. Once again, if you need more details, just ask. And if there is something which is not clear, ask and I will try to translate it in a other way

.

Thanks again for helping.

thelegendaryof · 04/13/14, 05:24 PM

Hi fin,

ok I've dig out your post suspecting you'd be back with more details. I'm pretty tired right now but some short suggestions:

There is a keybind to target an enemy / toggle trough near targets.

You get an visual indicator around that enemy and all your skills are directed towards them (ranged only). If he 'd like a better visual indicator I could do something about it (like increase it 's scale, change it 's color, opacity or something like that). Test it out first thought. Maybe it 's already enought.
Turn Health Bars for Enemies and Players to 'ON'

Meaning switch them to "On".
This will always display a Healthbar above their head when they're in range (!) - not only when those are Injured but always!
Same goes as with the target indicator - if they're to small I might be able to increase their size for you.
Absolutely disable shadows (set them to 'OFF')

That makes the whole game a lot brighter! Also try to disable "Distortion", "Grass", "Sunlight Rays", "Bloom" and "Depth of Field".
You find all of that under Settings -> Video.
Get RadeonPro and SweetFX 1.4

Follow this Tutorial for ESO for that: http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrolls...o_sweetfx_you/.
It doesn't matter if he has a Nvidia or ATI Radeon Card. It works for both.
This prepares for further tweaks (if needed) ...

As my RadeonPro just froze and refuses to start (I'd have to reboot but I'm watching a movie right now) I'll update you on the settings I'd suggest later on. For example increased sharpness and contrast settings, together with way stronger colors.

Apologizes for the bad screenshot quality I'm using a custom anti-alias and as RadeonPro crashed those were made without any AA.

fingolfin · 04/14/14, 07:00 PM

Hi and thanks again for helping and answering. Sorry for delays, It takes time to explain your ideas to my friend, and time to translate his answers in english

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So, what about craft items, we think we got the solution. We use zrminimap and haverstmpa. As my character's level is a little bit bigger, I send him my harvestmap file evryday. And so he already has all spots on the map.

And what about your ideas :

1 .
It could help him to have a bigger visual indicator. what about the color, problem is always the same, it's depending on the baground color. White on white will not be fine, nor black on black , etc... If the indicator is bigger that will already be helpfull, but it's not enough, I'm gonna try to explain why

Most often, ennemies see him before he see them. For exemple he often run by their side and doesn't see them, until he see he's attacked by something. So what he would really need is something to allow him to see them from distance. And the second idea you mentionned is probably the best one.

2 .
If you could make the health bar on ennemies bigger, that would be the most usefull change for him. At the moment, he dies every five minutes just because he's always surprised by ennemies.
And I would add if you can make possible for him to change the color of the health bar depending on where he is (outside or in a cavern, in snow or in grass...) that would be really wonderful !

And I think the possibility to choose colors would make this addon usable for a lot of visually impaired people, especially people having troubles with ONE color...
I apologize I know I'm asking a lot but do you think that would be possible ?

3 .
He already tries to modify all these options and says that's not really helpfull. Sometime he modifies something, depending on where he is. but he didn't find settings that would be fine for everywhere.

4 & 5 .
We don't know this software at all, and so we didn't unerstand excatly what you planned to try to do with it, but we will try to find more informations to know how much it could be usefull. i don't know if he will agree to try installing it as it seems to be complex to install and to use. The other point is than he would prefer to keep most of graphisms from original game as he really find it beautiful. However we will try llok for more informations about it .

So if I want to summarise , the most important point in my friend's opinion would be the number 2 (health bars). And after that the number one (visual indicator of selected ennemy). And we will try to look for informations about sweetFX.

Thanks again for the time you take for us, and if you have some question, I'll be happy to answer. I hope you don't think we are too much demanding

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