Toby Accessibility Mod - DOOM for the blind [V8.0 RELEASED!]

[Alando1]

Hey guys, sorry I haven't been as active as I would like. I have some personal matters going on which has been the reason for my brief communication silence. If anyone has any questions, feedback, or suggestions, any of my team members will gladly respond to you in case if I am unable to reply in a reasonable amount of time. I hope all of you are enjoying version 7.0 of the Toby Accessibility Mod.

-Alando1

[stormdragon2976]

@Alando1 7.0 is awesome! I hope everything turns out wel for you. Sending good thoughts/vibes your way.

[Alando1]

@stormdragon - Thank you I'm definitely going to need those positive vibes If you'd like to, you can still work with the guys on tweaking anything that needs fixing or optimizing. Once things have settled down on my end, I'll hop back into action

-Alando1

[t_doom-shroom-5440]

@Alando1:
Heya there from the land of Slackware Linux.
I responded to your video a bit ago, and just wanted to echo Stormdragon's sending of good vibes and thought to ya during this time of testing.
Take that well deserved break with the blessings of me, my wife, and our big ol' red Golden retriever, who really digs Lucky!
Take care and be well!
Guns Up!

[stormdragon2976]

Because of This topic on the audiogames.net forum, I remembered I hadn't added co-op to the AutoHotkey script I wrote. I added that earlier yesterday, but haven't actually been able to verify that it does co-op like expected. I'm pretty sure it does, it at least launches like it is supposed to, but I didn't get to test an asctual session. The new version is available at https://stormux.org/downloads/doom-autohotkey.zip and as before contains both the executable and the source code.

I hope someone out there finds it useful. I think at this point it is complete unless someone reports a bug and I am able to fix said bug.

[Proydoha]

Because of This topic on the audiogames.net forum

People are loading other mods with it. That's super cool!

I don't remember if its documented anywhere but some of the systems were built with a possibility of addons in mind.

For example if some mod has some custom menu options it is already possible to attach a narration to them via separate addon file that is loaded on top, without doing any changes to Toby Accessibility Mod or original mod.
For 7.0 we still need to ask someone (Alando1 ) to do the narration but in my local branch I've added second output type that will grab menu text strings where possible and print them into console with [Toby Accessibility Mod] prefix. Some menus will still need human touch though (for example main menu items are often made of graphic lumps instead of text).

Same thing can be done for ammo checkers, armor checkers and area scanner. I've seen in that thread the you've linked that people were loading gameplay mods. For example if ammo checker button is pressed with some unexpected mod it will narrate amount of ammo but will not say its ammo types. It is possible to create an addon to add ammo type narration to a modded weapon.

Toby Accessibility Mod itself is now modular. Every system that could be somewhat universal is loaded with TobyAccMod_V7-0.pk3, the rest can be mixed and matched. For example if you're loading it with Xim's Star Wars you don't need to load TobyV7_Decorations.pk3, TobyV7_Guns.pk3, TobyV7_Monsters.pk3 and TobyV7_Pickups.pk3 because Xim's Star Wars is already replacing decorations, weapons, monsters and pickups.

And if you're loading something else, some mod that only replaces monsters and not touches any of the decorations/items/weapons (thread) - you can load TobyAccMod_V7-0.pk3, TobyV7_Decorations.pk3, TobyV7_Guns.pk3, and TobyV7_Pickups.pk3 excluding TobyV7_Monsters.pk3.

[stormdragon2976]

@Proydoha That is very cool. So for something like Project Brutality, a lot of the pk3 files could be left out. It also has extra menus, would be nice to get that narrated. I wonder if not including some of the pk3 files when loading Project Brutality would also make it so that the extra ammo and weapons would start showing up? Currently the only way to get them is by using the all weapons and ammo option.

Also, unless I am totally missinhg something obvious, there's no README.md in the git repository. Could one be added with instructions for building the source?

[Proydoha]

@stormdragon2976 Yes, without loading extra files project brutality weapons/items/monsters should spawn.

The load order matters, I think (I think) whatever you load last is what gets spawned in game. In your scenario it sounds like you were loading Project Brutality first and Toby weapons later and Toby weapons overrode everything else.
But its less error prone to just not load parts that conflict with each other.

Will add README.md at some point. But the rule of thumb for GZDoom mods hosted in git repositories is that you can just download an entire repository as .zip, load that .zip and it will work most of the times.
We do have compile.ps1 powershell script, all it does is creates "compiled-pk3" folder if it not exists, clears it if there are previously compiled files in it and creates .zip archive with folder contents excluding .git, .gitignore, itself and compiled-pk3 folder and then renames resulting archive into .pk3.

It is also possible to load folders without packing them into an archive. This is useful during development. You just load your repository folder directly into GZDoom.

[Proydoha]

@stormdragon2976 I've made very quick and dirty compatibility mod for Project Brutality.

It should cover everything except monsters in terms of area scanner. Armor checker will narrate armor you're wearing, ammo checker will narrate weapon you're holding and its ammo counts. Targeting beeper will have different beeps when aimed at barrels. I haven't went too deep into rendering submenus of project brutality but the rest should be narrated. Narration done by windows TTS voice (I think?).
Google drive link

[stormdragon2976]

@Proydoha you are my hero lol. I just came to the forum to ask how hard you thought adding Project Brutality would be, and you have already done it. Wow you are awesome, going to try it now. Thank you!

[stormdragon2976]

@@Proydoha this is as awesome as I thought it would be. I have a couple of questions though. Including pickups and guns from Addons stops the Project Brutality weapons from randomly spawning, so the only way to get one is when one gets dropped. Also, there are no sound indicators for when the weapons are available, which means you have to hopefully find it by accident.

Would you be able to add a sound for when something is available? I know there's a ton of stuff, and adding an individual sound for everything would be a massive undertaking, so a single sound for everything, just some sort of indication that something is there and where it is would rock.

The other question is, the TTS voice is much quieter than the rest of the game. Could those be normalized so they come out near the same volume as everything else? I would be happy to do that part if you want to send me a folder of the sounds.

Thanks again for doing this. My friends and I are having so much fun.

[Proydoha]

@stormdragon2976

Here's same addon but 10 dB louder: Google Drive Link
Technically I don't even need to send you files if you want to normalize it yourself. .pk3 is just a renamed .zip, all files are inside.

Here's a prototype for universal pickup beacon: Google Drive Link
Beacon works more or less like beacons from Toby Weapons Addon. The sounds it uses are same sounds that items make when they are picked up.
If you can't pick up an item but standing right on top of it it will make a sound indicating that.

It is probably horribly incompatible with Toby Weapons Addon and Toby Pickups Addon, will work on integrating it properly sometime later.

[Alando1]

Hey guys, I found some time to pop in and say hi

@Alando1:
Heya there from the land of Slackware Linux.
I responded to your video a bit ago, and just wanted to echo Stormdragon's sending of good vibes and thought to ya during this time of testing.
Take that well deserved break with the blessings of me, my wife, and our big ol' red Golden retriever, who really digs Lucky!
Take care and be well!
Guns Up!

Thank you I definitely needed those good vibes. With a combination of computer problems (turns out my graphics card is going kaput) and other personal matters, I was in desperate need of positive vibes.

I hope to be dedicating more time to the Toby Accessibility Mod soon. I was in the process of working on new levels until my graphics card crapped out on me. I am unable to use Doom Builder for the time being and playing with GZDoom is a crap shoot. I will be seeking computer help this coming weekend to see what my options are regarding this issue. More than likely, I'll just replace the graphics card but it all depends on its compatibility with my computer. If push comes to shove, I will either gut my entire computer and put in a new hardware while holding onto the hard drive and RAM or I'll have to get an entirely new computer unit.

As always, if anyone has any suggestions or feedback, feel free to share them My team and I are always happy to answer any questions or concerns any of you may have.


-Alando1

[stormdragon2976]

@Proydoha Project Brutality is working great now. I have modified the script that launches it to read the things not covered in the addons. I was up until 05:00AM playing it lol. Thanks for doing both of these addons. The weekend is nearly here, which means even more time to spend with Project Brutality! The target system doesn't work, so no using the z key with it for now, so it's like playing in the old days. Sometimes if you press z it will actually face you away from the enemy allowing them a free back shot.

@Alando1 it's great to hear from you. We'll keep those positive vibes coming, and everything will turn out awesome. Computer problems suck, but new hardware can be fun, so hopefully there's a silver lining there too.

[Proydoha]

@stormdragon2976
The reason why snap-to-target button rotates you all over the place is that corpses of enemies that you've killed in project brutality are valid targetable "enemies". The reason for that is that corpses in PB have hitpoints and can be damaged further up until they are minced into smallest bits.