(Help needed) Ymirheim for the blind and visually impaired

General
1

Hi Ymirheim community,

First of all, please allow me to thank you for continuing work on perhaps the best MMO RPG to many.

I would like to add some modifications to Ymirheim, to allow a more immersive environment for the blind and visually impaired, since there are no high-quality MMO RPGs presently, and I found that Ragnarok Online has very detailed audio already. This would be free to anyone, of course, with the exception that one could donate to cover server costs (if allowed), if private server hosting is possible.

My main goal is to make the client as compatible to the original as possible, so that blind and visually impaired players could also use the official Ymirheim server, once it becomes available.

For this to work, the server does not need to be modified, however, the client needs some extensible changes (which I donā€™t mind coding). I have a few questions, if you donā€™t mind answering:

  1. Is the Ymirheim mod/client source going to be available to the public to modify? If not, do you think we could have a way to arrange something to help me realize this project?

  2. How much of the client can be modified, e.g. is it possible to add new keyboard events, new audio, retrieve drawn text (for example for menus, statuses, etc.), call functions from external libraries or to use IPC?

Here are a non-comprehensible list of changes that Iā€™d like to make:

  • Menus need to be navigable via the arrow keys, and enter to activate an item (if required).
  • New hotkeys need to be added, for example to read attributes, statuses, etc, or to auto-target a monster, or to read the current zone name so that the player knows where they are. If there are too many, perhaps this is better to do in a menu.
  • Everything that is accessible via the mouse only needs to be accessible via the keyboard as well. This includes clicking on buttons like ā€˜Continueā€™, accepting quests, etc.
  • I noticed that monsters do not have an idle sound by default, this needs to change as knowing that a monster is nearby without vision is quite essential.
  • If possible, graphics can be completely removed, as speech or even braille is going to be the main output of the client, likely via an existing screen reader (Jaws, NVDA, etc).
  • Other things that will be only clear when I see how client things are laid out.

Please feel free to ask if you have any questions. Iā€™m also available on Discord, if youā€™d like to chat privately.

Any comment is immensely appreciated.

Erion

2 Likes
2

Hello and welcome!

Actually RO2 has pretty decent keyboard navigation support, at least among other MMO games that Iā€™ve played. Most of the windows/menus can be navigated via the keyboard, there a lot of keyboard shortcuts and the combat is doable via the keyboard only too. But it has a lot of problems, Iā€™m aware of that and trying to improve keyboard support whenever possible.

Indeed, the sound in this game was implemented pretty well. There is even a nice 3D audio support. But yeah, monster and combat sounds have to be improved. Some monsters do have idle sounds, but very few of them. And the range of the sounds is far from being realistic.

Screen readers is something that I would really like to implement in the client. But I have no idea how to do that.

To answer your questions:

  1. Iā€™m afraid our client source code wonā€™t be ever published. Itā€™s a huge ā€œno-noā€ in terms of copyright law, it would violate not only Gravity copyright, but also Epic Games, as it contains source code of Unreal Engine 2, which is not published. Although, there is a leaked source code of the older version of the RO2 client available on the Internet.
  2. Yes, with some effort we can modify any portion of the game. Itā€™s just a matter of our skills and time.

And yes, please contact me on Discord if you can. :smiley:

2 Likes
3

Hi @neris,

Thank you very much for your quick and detailed reply.

Iā€™ll contact you on Discord :relaxed:

All the best,
Erion

4

@erion Hello!

Iā€™ve just released a new update that includes screen reader support and a bunch of accessibility improvements for the game client. Please check it out if youā€™re still interested. I know itā€™s been a long time, but I was very busy. :ani_swt3:
And please let me know if you have any problems with it or any suggestions. Would be great to hear the feedback from you.