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Dareon posted:So this is a good time to mention Katawa Crash, a fangame with a concept based off Nanaca Crash, a fangame of another light novel. Specifically, it is a fangame where you launch Hisao through the air to bounce off the girls and a large number of memey characters. (Content Warning: TVTropes) God I haven't thought of Katawa Crash in years, when I read your post the background music immediately rushed back into my brain. https://youtu.be/50mfm9YzFDo
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Sep 21, 2021 21:27
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| # ? Jun 2, 2024 17:26 |
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I don't know how much more I'll have to say going forward, but just in case, consider this blanket permission to use anything I have said or will say here however you wish for this project.
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Sep 21, 2021 21:33
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If you think anything I say in this thread is worth archiving as relevant to the subject, then go ahead. I'll strive not to make an rear end of myself since I'm not speaking with an insider's perspective on disability and most related matters.
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Sep 21, 2021 23:44
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haven't said much so far but yep you can have "you grant me permission to use your posts in this thread going forward unless you specifically say otherwise"
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Sep 22, 2021 00:56
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The ending of Hanako's route has always felt a little abrupt. I think it was mainly that I wanted to see a bit more of Hanako and Hisao together after having worked out their feelings for each other. Fiction usually has a bit of a tail after the big climax, and it's kind of chopped off here. It's still my favourite route though - I think. Like I've said before, I have a hard time being objective when it comes to anything related to Hanako because I relate to her far and away the most out of all the characters in Katawa Shoujo.
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Sep 22, 2021 07:07
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Did you know that Elvira tipped a pot of boiling water over on herself when she was little and had 3rd-degree burns over a third of her body? She underwent extensive reconstructive surgery that saved her life, but she still came out with extensive scarring. Part of why she kept her hair long was to drape it strategically over her shoulder to hide her scars (that and she liked the look and it was the 80s). Her autobiography is excellent, by the way, and I highly recommend it. You wouldn’t expect that Hanako has a lot in common with Elvira, of all people, but I guess it goes to show how common the stuff we talk about in the thread actually is.
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Sep 22, 2021 14:53
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Update 59: Hanako, Agency, and Assumed Helplessness College was… Stressful. Back home, I had a support network that was almost unhealthily intense; at college, it vanished and left me kind of unstable. I remember one time where I ended up cramming a particularly depressing book right before class, and as I reached the end, I felt something shift in my head. When I say I’m not sure what happened next, I’m not saying I don’t know what happened (it was probably a dissociative episode featuring depersonalization with a dose of stress-based amnesia). I mean I literally do not remember the presentation I had to give that day. I thank my lucky stars I decided to draft out a structure to the presentation beforehand, since the only memory I have of it was looking at my notes and realizing I had no idea what I’d covered more than a few seconds ago – but I knew what I was currently talking about, so I just wrapped it up and moved to the next topic. I felt like some kind of puppeteer halfway in control of not only my body, but my mind; my sense of self was so profoundly divided I wasn’t even in full control of what I was saying, like I was giving orders only for someone else to interpret them. Had something catastrophic happened, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to react. I might have sat there screaming internally as my body failed to respond. My memory kicked back in shortly after I finished the presentation. More amused than anything else, I sat back down, participated in class, and went home and played Crusader Kings II. I got a B+. This particular flavor of resilience, the ability to take symptoms or issues that would stop many people in their tracks and just shrug them off, blows a lot of abled people’s minds. I mean, we’ve already talked about how many people see just being alive while disabled as some kind of profound act of bravery; the fact that we see our issues as just another element of our day-to-day lives often just doesn’t register. I’m not saying that most disabled people barely notice their disability, or that the resulting issues can’t be huge problems, or that we don’t have to take great care to make sure everything altogether, just that that struggle is a part of our lives instead of all of them. I haven’t talked as much about the pitfalls of misguided help, though. Which is frustrating to talk about, because I don’t want to convince anyone not to help! Lots of people choke at the opportunity, whether it’s because they fear criticism or just because they aren’t sure they know what to do (reminder: ask and respect their answer and you’re golden). But there comes a point where help just… Isn’t appropriate. Even if they do everything right, there comes a point where relating to us as people in need of help instead of relating to us as just people gets infuriating. It’s a fine line to walk, and one that defines Hanako’s route. So today we’ll talk about that. As with most routes, the last few choices you make in Hanako’s are the ones that determine your ending – in this case, deciding whether or not to go into the city and whether or not to listen to Lilly’s advice. If you go into the city but don’t take her advice, you get the Neutral Ending: Hisao and Hanako fail to engage with each other and start to drift apart. The final scene ends with them playing chess again as Hisao convinces himself that a platonic relationship is for the best. If you don’t go into the city, though? It doesn’t matter whether or not you listen to Lilly’s advice: no matter which option you pick, the game tells you you can’t bring yourself to listen to her. Instead of letting her take her time and come out on her own, Hisao oversteps his bounds and goes to her room to pry her out. He condescends and condescends and pushes and pushes and pushes until Hanako finally lashes out: A hypothetical Update 55 posted:HISAO: "Hanako...?" Bad Endings in KS are usually like getting punched in the throat, but hers is especially bad. It’s also highly instructive. It’s culmination of a bunch of factors that all boil down to Hisao – and the player – not paying attention. I remember someone describing this route as fetish porn with anxiety instead of feet, and while that’s the sickest burn I’ve ever heard someone deliver this game, it’s also the result of how the route writer structured Hisao’s internal monologue with a goal in mind. Up until the culmination of the Good Ending, it consistently infantilizes Hanako. He likes her, appreciates her, tries to do right by her, and even has a crush on her, but he doesn’t really respect her, and his narration reflects that. But it also doesn’t reflect what’s really going on. The whole route is littered with little moments calling his belief into question that get drowned out by everything else going on. If you don’t pick up on those clues, you (as the player) fall into the same trap Hisao does and get spanked by the Bad Ending. If you DO look for those clues, you get the impression instead of a woman who’s constantly pushing her boundaries while gradually emerging from her (extremely thick) shell. Most of these hints are well hidden, easily overlooked, and ambiguous, which is by design. Alone, they’re easily dismissed. Together, they point to something bigger. Let’s take, for example, something I called out back in the very first update of this route: Update 36 posted:After seeing Hanako's reactions to me over the past couple of days, I can understand why that is a boon. That, and Lilly being able to get some quiet away from her class as well. I take my seat last, after Lilly's poured the tea for us and sits down. A few people in the thread pointed out that from that angle her hair covers up most of her scars. That’s true. It’s also true that she could have sat across from him and spent her time looking to the left to the same effect, or tried to beat him to that spot, since it’s easily the best place for her to sit if she wants to hide everything away. But no, she sits next to the boy she just met. Likewise… Update 40 posted:
It’s not particularly bold, at least not at first glance, but you wouldn’t expect competitiveness out of someone who seems so nonconfrontational. And as we learn later, once she comes out of her shell even a little bit she starts kicking his rear end. Update 41 posted:
Update 41 posted:As I take a bite, I notice Hanako trying her hardest to not look like she is looking at me. It's nothing special, but then again I can't really complain. I'm pretty lazy when it comes to cooking for myself. Remember, at this point she hasn’t known Hisao for more than a week or two. She already trusts him to some extent, something which has to be a leap of faith given how little she interacts with anyone who isn’t Lilly, but then he casually insults her ability to do something she seems to enjoy. So what’s her response? She tries to prove him wrong, putting effort into using the ingredients he poked fun at to create something for him – making herself vulnerable in the process. Judging by Lilly’s reaction, not only does her cooking not always turn out edible, but she knows this is the case. Hanako, who was bullied so thoroughly as a kid she only ever talks to like two people, took a big risk on him. Sure, it may have been a calculated risk given what she knows about him, but it’s not what you’d expect from her if you’d only paid attention to her social anxiety. And then, of course, we see the big reveal. Update 43 posted:Every ten or so seconds she peers over the top of her book, but when our eyes meet she quickly ducks behind the covers. I guess she did want to talk about something after all. The event she describes is the most traumatic thing she ever lived through. Its aftermath changed everything in her life for the worse. She can’t relive it casually, and if I remember right she hasn’t even told Lilly. But, as she says later in the scene, she brings it up to him because Lilly spilled the beans about Hisao’s heart condition and she felt she needed to even the playing field. And even though Hisao encourages her not to go through with it, she forges ahead and tells them anyway. I know I must sound like a mad prophet connecting all of this, but these masked risks on her part show up over and over again throughout the route – hell, all these are from the first two acts alone. Whenever I spotted one, I deliberately screenshotted it and used the space break to draw attention to it. Maybe it worked, maybe it didn’t. But one moment defines her ability to venture out: Update 48 posted:The girls' dormitory is especially rowdy today, with a number of girls loudly playing games and watching the television in the common room on the first floor. I can hear their voices even now, standing in front of Hanako's door. It's an odd contrast to the emptiness of the floor she's on. The voices from below make the emptiness feel all the more lonely. I had hopes Hanako would be in class today, especially after the talk Lilly and I had with her last night, but I feel like I shouldn't hold it against her. It was a pretty awful episode, and to have experienced it firsthand must be all the worse. We just watched her have a breakdown in class and refuse to leave her room for days. Hisao’s savior complex is in full overdrive. And she just… Recovers. She isn’t done yet, but she’s clawing her way out of the trauma pit on her own. The author even got a neat detail most people would miss: during a serious depressive episode, personal hygiene is one of the first things to go. Hanako showering symbolizes her making her own way out and handling her issues on her own, even if she turns to others for help when she can’t (I mean, it’s also there because it turns them on a bit, but this game isn’t shy about linking sexuality with deeper themes). It also, not coincidentally, gives Hisao a blueprint for how to behave the next time something like this happens, one that dovetails with everything else we’ve been seeing: give her support and friendship but listen to her when she tries to set boundaries, supporting her AND her decisions instead of just generically supporting her. That’s how you give help and respect agency. And then the worst – and best – choice in the route blindsides you. Update 52 posted:Lilly gives her farewells to the both of us with a fair measure of reluctance. On the one hand, presenting these options like this was a bad design decision because of how disconnected they are from the results. KS has a nasty habit of leaving the wording on some of its most important choices ambiguous (with a particularly egregious instance coming up I’ll point out). While we know Hanako enjoyed her last outing to the city, it happened under different circumstances and there is no guarantee it will go as well this time. Plus, the idea of going into town comes out of the blue – it’s so abrupt the narrative stops to call attention to that fact if you choose that option – and since Hisao hasn’t gone to town on his own initiative since Act 1, it feels a little fake. And then this awkward, unforeshadowed decision determines whether or not you get the Bad Ending. It feels bad, the whole situation just doesn’t jibe narratively. On the other hand, it’s an excellent design decision on a mechanical level, one that makes use of the visual novel format. Someone who doesn’t already know what’s going to happen next and hasn’t been paying attention will probably just decide to go home, and then the Bad Ending will kick them in the emotional balls. If they’ve gotten invested in the story, they’ll revisit various decisions to figure out what went wrong, ideally examining everything they read based on what they learned when Hanako finally snapped. That is when everything I’ve talked about so far becomes clear, when players start spotting their own misconceptions and reevaluating everything they believed about her and her life, driven by the knowledge that the standard visual novel structure guarantees a better ending. At some point in early development, somebody leaked a beta version of KS now lost in the bowels of the Internet. Apparently, this early version of the game deviated wildly from the finished product. I didn’t mention it last time because Emi’s route didn’t change much, but apparently every other route underwent major revisions – Hanako’s most of all. Sometimes, those differences were relatively minor: Hanako, for instance, went to a foster home instead of an orphanage and had a previous love interest who died in a car accident immediately after confessing. But instead of the standard Good/Neutral/Bad Ending structure, by default her route had three Bad Endings in a row, some of which killed you or her. The players had to go through Lilly’s route and take a hidden off-ramp to get to her Good Ending. And honestly, thank gently caress they changed that: unless the devs found a way to warn you beforehand, most players would probably just assume she couldn’t be saved and give up on the route entirely. Instead, they changed the route in the finished product, keeping its structure meta in in the way I covered above. Instead of punishing players for not exploring the rest of the game, it compels them to go back and replay the route while looking at it from a different perspective, deepening their investment in and appreciation of the storyline. It's a great way to get players hooked, and if you ever need an example of whether videogame mechanics can enhance a narrative experience, you can just point to how this route forces readers to engage with Hanako’s character. Of course, that doesn’t mean every player got the memo, and I bet plenty of people just tried things at random and made it through the route that way or approach it some other way: I’d be interested in hearing how the thread experienced Hanako’s route and if I missed something. It also doesn’t fix the awkward writing necessary to accomplish all of these goals at once, among other things kind of burying the lede on the romantic side. But it still manages to hook readers and drive them along, leaving it immortal in a lot of players’ minds. As with last time, I skipped over plenty of possible subjects: Lilly’s influence in Hanako’s life, for better and for worse; the symbolism behind Hanako’s dolls and Lilly’s blindness as they relate to her appearance; the contrast between Hisao and Hanako’s approaches to their conditions and the differences between visible and invisible disabilities; how Hanako and Emi, despite being very different people on the surface, had their lives shaped by trauma directly related to their disabilities, and how Hanako’s dealing with hers better than Emi; whether making Lilly able to hold her liquor is racist against Scottish people. But speaking of disabilities, just like with Emi, Hanako’s scars are mostly a big plot device. Her issues do not revolve around the scars themselves. Instead, they revolve around the horror of losing everything in an instant and the way she was bullied and isolated by those around her. Her injuries were never the issue: other people’s judgment was. I won’t go into how shame creates and enforces prejudice against disabilities because that’s a whole other essay and this thing’s pushing how long I can make a post before it gets too big for me to edit all at once, but it’s worth noting that, just like last time, her disability did not define Hanako. It only defined the circumstances around her, ones she’s coming to terms with on her own. Creating a vulnerable-seeming character that both triggers someone’s protective instinct and earns their respect is a delicate art. Usually, you have to underlay a cute exterior with some kind of exceptional inner strength: I’m thinking Nanako’s almost tragic maturity in Persona 4 or Nunnally’s (another disabled character!) incredible resilience in Code Geass. When done right, that character can lodge itself in the hearts and memories of readers, players, or viewers - just like Hanako has, with her peculiar combination of vulnerability and boldness. She regularly tops character popularity polls (usually followed closely by Lilly), gets the lion’s share of fanart posted in the still very active KS subreddit, and is the proud namesake of https://hanakoisbestgirl.com. As always, with the route over discussion of the route, including parts we haven't seen can now be discussed without spoilers. I'd love to hear whether this all sounds on-base to everyone. Our next focus character has a… More contentious reputation. I'll be taking this Friday off, but on Monday, we’ll kick off the most anime route in the game and get to know Shizune Hakamichi. Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Sep 22, 2021 |
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Sep 22, 2021 19:24
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I like Hanako has a character, but I think that this route is probably the one that feels the most incomplete. So much of it is defined by obliviousness and missed cues that you feel like you've barely scratched the surface of what their relationship would actually look like. Emi wasn't being fully honest or emotionally invested in the relationship, but you get the sense that there's no huge change in how she'd act after the ending, she's just like that. Hanako route feels like the one that really goes ham on the "look behind appearances, player!" message, and I for one would have liked to see a bit more of what's behind, actually. I understand that Hanako is a much more introverted character and any relationship would still be a lot of small progresses, but getting past that initial hurdle of "I like you, ok?" seems like something the other routes actually deliver on, and which would have been a particularly important payoff here. OTOH, this route's Bad End is particularly effective at getting a rise out of you, you just wanna slap the guy. e: That site reminds me, it's probably worth mentioning that KS fanart tends to have its fair share of  content mixed with more innocent stuff (rtil being a particularly prolific exemple), so people should be a bit careful looking it up.
YaketySass fucked around with this message at 19:51 on Sep 22, 2021 |
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Sep 22, 2021 19:38
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Falconier111 posted:Our next focus character has a… More contentious reputation. I'll be taking this Friday off, but on Monday, we’ll kick off the most anime route in the game and get to know Shizune Hakamichi. Shizune is one of the two routes I got through before getting distracted by something shiny. (The other was Emi.) I'm looking forward to revisiting it, I recall it as a pretty interesting and involved story. It's also got what I remember as one of the more infamous bad end routes - and I'm not saying this in a "wink wink, I know stuff, ha ha" way but rather as a warning. I strongly suspect it's going to be one of the easiest for a person to accidentally spoil themselves on if you go looking for much of anything on the game, because there were a lot of jokes and fan chat around it at the time.
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Sep 22, 2021 19:52
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I'd be lying if I said Hanako didn't bring up any protective instincts in me, and I'd probably mess it up, but in a very different way than Hisao does in the story. Hisao's pretty good at reading social cues and guessing people's emotions and feelings, and I'm not. That means that I'd cross all sorts of red lines with Hanako. And that makes me sad. I'm autistic, and being bad at those things is what makes me feel disabled. That far more than any of my other problems.
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Sep 22, 2021 20:08
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My favorite part about Hanako's route is how Hanako is easily the most aggressive about her interest in Hisao of the five girls (and is the only one to be overtly interested in him from the very start, as we see in her Act 1 behavior), but because Hisao is an idiot in her route, it goes mostly unnoticed (especially by people unfamiliar with how people with anxiety handle crushes, as I've learned in this thread). The juxtaposition of personality and behavior makes me wish there were a version of the route from Hanako's perspective, to get her take on events.
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Sep 22, 2021 20:29
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Hanako's route involves various votes about how forward you are - you must be max forward otherwise you get friendzoned - the lesson is "boys are bad at taking hints"
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Sep 22, 2021 20:36
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Not gonna lie as much I appreciate that the routes are as much Hisao's story and his growth as they are about the girl's stories and growth, Hisao so far has absolutely been the worst part for me. Maybe especially so for Hanako's route as the lass herself is the only one of people presented I will probably be able to relate to in any way, though I certainly have not had to deal with as intense issues personally. Hisao just feels so... unreal? Of a person. Like an adult writing a teenage character with the hindsight of the knowledge they have now as a grown up and going back to write a "what if" version of the earlier parts of their life. I'm sure part of this feeling is related to the fact this is a VN with good and bad ends, different writers for each route with different takes on how Hisao would grow as a person but man, he's so strangely mature in really weird ways sometimes that it's off-putting. Those moments are then contrasted by how I'd actually expect a teenager to act in those settings which only further enhances how weird Hisao is for me. I'd be willing to be a lot of my reactions are being colored by the fact the LP is only focusing on the Good Ends when I'm sure more often than not most people playing for the first time will hit Bad/Neutral ends where Hisao is far more like a teenager all the way through. May also just be a skewed view due to my own personal experiences though. 
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Sep 22, 2021 20:47
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Part of that is also the routes we've done so far. Shizune and Lily's routes both feature a much more 'immature teenager'' Hisao in comparison to the rest even on their good endings.
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Sep 22, 2021 21:02
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Looking forward to those then! I will say I'm writing my opinions (of Hisao) with a big dose of appreciation for the writing in the game. What we've seen so far is really well done and consistent, on top of doing a bang up job in terms of it being an Unreliable First Person narrative.
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Sep 22, 2021 21:17
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Falconier111 posted:It also, not coincidentally, gives Hisao a blueprint for how to behave the next time something like this happens, one that dovetails with everything else we’ve been seeing: give her support and friendship but listen to her when she tries to set boundaries, supporting her AND her decisions instead of just generically supporting her. That’s how you give help and respect agency. Good essay and well put. Given that blowup, it was clear his response was overblown and that he didn’t notice it. I admit to noticing his general actions as correct, but the feelings behind them to be reactive towards responses he couldn’t have known were too much, but still were. This part speaks really differently to me, when this comes off the back that the only way we can go down this route is to listen-and engage Hisao’s agency-into listening to someone who didn’t care for either his or Hanako’s. Lilly manipulated and drew them both into a situation that was designed to make Hisao realize those things-which has a positive-but still required both them to be drawn into someone else’s action and not expressing their own. If this is about respect of agency, falling into line behind her doesn’t strike me as expression, but more following someone who admitted to doing wrong, and-in that bad ending and even the good-isn’t made to account for it. And on that same point: I am good to hear that she sees a therapist…but she probably put up boundaries to them too. You need to also be able to try and deal with them while respecting them. There is a non-zero chance that she would not have come out of the room, and by respecting her boundaries by the blueprint, she doesn’t engage with him at all-that would be her decision as well, and would also be unhealthy mentally and physically. Like….I agree with the sentiment you put forward. I also recognize that if it was that simple of allowing her to push boundaries on her own, support those boundaries when nescessay and she can’t deal, and give over choice and your own agency so that she could express her own moreover, she could just withdraw. And she did. Thankfully she came out of it, but I guess that doesn’t get discussed. Edit: This route is a story about agency. This whole thread has elements and stories about people who feel like they cannot make decisions. Part of my job description requires engaging with that. And then the story decided to cut two of them out, by the actions of a third, to make the point it wanted to make about respecting it. That seems a bit of a problem, storytelling-wise. Psycho Lawnmower fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Sep 22, 2021 |
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Sep 22, 2021 21:17
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On Lily: Yes, trying to wingman your friends together requires you try and manipulate your friends into situations and thoughts they haven't chosen. Thats because plenty of people, even non-teenagers, need that done to them for them to actually get together because they won't make that move under their own agency alone. Judging when that is and isnt appropriate is part of being a good friend.
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Sep 22, 2021 21:26
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Falconier111 posted:And then the worst – and best – choice in the route blindsides you. This particular moment really ticked me off when I played this. See, my insticts were that continually asking someone to go out with you would be annoying, regardless of some secret narrative of treating the other person like a fragile porcelain doll, so I thought I was doing the polite thing by not saying "HEY LETS GO OUT AGAIN COME ON IT'LL BE FUN". Also as somehting of an introvert I would personally really hate someone that wanted to drag me out when I didn't feel like it, and Hananko's wishy washy "I don't know" sure makes it sound like she's not feeling up to anything.
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Sep 22, 2021 23:45
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Maybe this is a me thing, but am I the only one who read the whole 'are you okay with that Hanako' thing to be a little condescending? I mean, I can respect Hisao's willingness to confirm with Hanako that she wants something and I don't think that it's done with bad intentions. It's just...the asking in general is a thing I mostly see with children. To me, it implies that the person asking doesn't believe the askee is willing/able to state when something has become/is getting to much for them and they won't protest without being prompted. It sticks out all the more because I don't recall Hisao asking Lilly or Akira about their comfort levels either, though to be fair, Lilly is usually the one making the suggestion so that makes sense. The thing is, Hanako has already done this by being allowed to leave class when she feels uncomfortable. Just the fact that the teachers let her do this means that it's something she had discussed with them before, either on her own or perhaps with the support of her therapist or maybe someone from the orphanage. I had something similar set up back when I was in high school, where I could leave class and go down to sit in an empty room to compose myself if things got to be too much for me. Sometimes it takes more strength to stand up and leave than it does to sit in class and pretend everything is fine. Maybe that's why it bothers me. Hanako has shown she is willing to extract herself from situations that she feels she is unable to handle in most cases and Hisao appears to view that as running away. Sorry if this ruffles anyone's feathers; I don't mean to offend. Great LP Falconier, and I'm looking forward to Shizune's route!
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Sep 23, 2021 00:30
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I think it's interesting that, while Emi's and Hanako's backgrounds are the most similar, their routes are opposites. Emi was kissing on the rooftop by Act 2; Hanako takes until the end of act 4. Emi is active, at least partly as a way of avoiding her trauma; Hanako is passive, largely due to her trauma.
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Sep 23, 2021 01:30
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SimplyUnknown1 posted:
This is the impression I am given as well-support staff would be informed of such a need, and continue class without interruption unless it was a significant disruption. Which is why Matou’s response this route got to me. He’s doing the “I need to prepare you for the future.” speech when what happened to Hanako needed someone who wasn’t Hisao or Lilly to show more concern. Hisao didn’t need him or that pep talk-communication and general support for Hanako was needed. Because that would have handled a good amount of Hisao’s concerns as well. Like-HIPPA breaches aside-Emi had staff.
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Sep 23, 2021 04:11
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I'd never actually seen Hanako's bad end before but drat I can definitely relate to it. I've had plenty of friendships just fade away because the other person knew I had issues with anxiety and didn't want to push me into doing anything which ended up with me having to initiate every interaction. If it's not obvious this is really exhausting for someone with anxiety and doubly so because if they never initiate anything it just fuels my anxiety and makes me worry that they're just humouring me and don't actually want anything to do with me.
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Sep 23, 2021 04:33
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Hanako is best girl.Falconier111 posted:...whether making Lilly able to hold her liquor is racist against Scottish people... Scots and Irish are some of the most accepting and easy-going about their specific racial stereotypes. While it's good to stamp out stereotypes when you notice them in your own cognition, worrying about the portrayal of those two specifically is way down the list of racisms to fight. I feel bad about saying that, all racism is bad, but when someone shouts "Where's your trousers?" at a man and they come back with "Ring ding diddle iddle eye dee oh" you can safely lower that priority. That said, on a different but tangential topic that popped up in my ADHD brain, my mother's side of the family is from Clan Douglass, and when people hear the name Douglass the first person they usually think of is Frederick. Ever since I began paying attention to my racisms and prejudices, I was a bit worried that maybe my family had owned his. To my discredit, I let myself worry about this for several years before actually googling it and learning he took the name in honor of the kind Mrs. Douglass who took him in after he fled.
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Sep 23, 2021 05:54
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EclecticTastes posted:My favorite part about Hanako's route is how Hanako is easily the most aggressive about her interest in Hisao of the five girls (and is the only one to be overtly interested in him from the very start, as we see in her Act 1 behavior), but because Hisao is an idiot in her route, it goes mostly unnoticed (especially by people unfamiliar with how people with anxiety handle crushes, as I've learned in this thread). The juxtaposition of personality and behavior makes me wish there were a version of the route from Hanako's perspective, to get her take on events. Nothingtoseehere posted:Hanako's route involves various votes about how forward you are - you must be max forward otherwise you get friendzoned - the lesson is "boys are bad at taking hints" I dunno, now that I'm seeing this route again I'm starting to feel like "Hisao is an idiot who doesn't notice Hanako's interest" is being rather mean to the guy. Hisao doesn't notice because he's GOT HIS OWN DEPRESSION here. Let's not kid ourselves, the guy's own mental problems here are definitely shaping his responses in this route. I tend to suspect his wavering on reading Hanako is because his emotional intelligence is clashing hard with feeling like an idiot/weakling, so he's recognizing the interest then immediately doubting his read on things because internally I expect he doesn't feel terribly attractive or lovable so getting romantic signals clashes with that and leaves him confused and tentative. It's probably not a coincidence he makes more "progress" in this route right after he starts coming out of his own shell and thinking about his own future again. The relationship in Emi's route probably matured faster just because all the exercise helped reduce the depression symptoms as well, you could see how active and engaged he was relative to this one. Definitely in retrospect I'm starting to recognize just how much Hisao's own personal anxiety and depression is playing a role in the game here and how each route goes. Routes where he manages it better, his relationship goes a lot smoother and quicker.
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Sep 23, 2021 06:14
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Falconier111 posted:At some point in early development, somebody leaked a beta version of KS now lost in the bowels of the Internet. Apparently, this early version of the game deviated wildly from the finished product. I didn’t mention it last time because Emi’s route didn’t change much, but apparently every other route underwent major revisions – Hanako’s most of all. Sometimes, those differences were relatively minor: Hanako, for instance, went to a foster home instead of an orphanage and had a previous love interest who died in a car accident immediately after confessing. But instead of the standard Good/Neutral/Bad Ending structure, by default her route had three Bad Endings in a row, some of which killed you or her. The players had to go through Lilly’s route and take a hidden off-ramp to get to her Good Ending. And honestly, thank gently caress they changed that: unless the devs found a way to warn you beforehand, most players would probably just assume she couldn’t be saved and give up on the route entirely. Yeah, I've read the beta (maybe it was kind of a reconstruction/restoration of it - can't remember), and Hanako's route was awful compared to the final thing. Just miserable. To give an idea of where it goes, it contains a scene with Hanako in a straight jacket in a padded cell. And like you said, it was structured like a trap: once you were in it, it was all bad ends, including characters actually dying. I found it pretty upsetting at the time, considering my own struggles with social anxiety disorder and depression. Falconier111 posted:Instead, they changed the route in the finished product, keeping its structure meta in in the way I covered above. Instead of punishing players for not exploring the rest of the game, it compels them to go back and replay the route while looking at it from a different perspective, deepening their investment in and appreciation of the storyline. It's a great way to get players hooked, and if you ever need an example of whether videogame mechanics can enhance a narrative experience, you can just point to how this route forces readers to engage with Hanako’s character. Of course, that doesn’t mean every player got the memo, and I bet plenty of people just tried things at random and made it through the route that way or approach it some other way: I’d be interested in hearing how the thread experienced Hanako’s route and if I missed something. It also doesn’t fix the awkward writing necessary to accomplish all of these goals at once, among other things kind of burying the lede on the romantic side. But it still manages to hook readers and drive them along, leaving it immortal in a lot of players’ minds. For my part, on my first time through Katawa Shoujo I naturally fell into Hanako's route, and arrived at the good end just as naturally. Maybe I was just lucky! It's tempting though to think that again, since I relate to Hanako so much, the right choices were obvious to me. (Except for that one I complained about where you ask if she wants to help out with student council stuff, I guess: I still think the wording of the choices there was too vague.) Like, the "call it a day?"/"do you want to go into the city?" choice; there I thought that if she was anxious about Lilly leaving, she might appreciate going and doing something, rather than immediately also being left alone by Hisao. I am kind of surprised that it's a binary bad end/good end choice, though; that does seem a bit harsh. Looking forward to the discussion around Shizune's route. It's... certainly something.
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Sep 23, 2021 09:14
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Evil Kit posted:Not gonna lie as much I appreciate that the routes are as much Hisao's story and his growth as they are about the girl's stories and growth, Hisao so far has absolutely been the worst part for me. Because this game was written by committee, Hisao feels like a completely different guy each route. Keep this in mind. Sometimes I like that guy and other times that guy should be thrown out a window.
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Sep 23, 2021 12:43
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Psycho Lawnmower posted:This is the impression I am given as well-support staff would be informed of such a need, and continue class without interruption unless it was a significant disruption. Yeah, I think one of this route’s greatest weaknesses is how it struggles to balance story content and structure, so you get stuff aimed at the player that doesn’t actually fit how characters should be acting, or in-character actions that don’t dovetail well with the choices players make. Antistar01 posted:I am kind of surprised that it's a binary bad end/good end choice, though; that does seem a bit harsh. I only touched on it briefly, but you can get a Neutral Ending if you go into the city but don’t listen to Lilly; Hanako doesn’t renounce Hisao and he doesn’t invade her space, but he doesn’t emotionally connect with her and lets their mutual crushes shrivel on the vine. The route ends with the two of them playing chess and Hisao going “yes, keeping this relationship platonic was the best decision, this is the best I can hope for”. I hear the route writer (who has a website where he posts KS content) considers that the canon ending.
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Sep 23, 2021 19:47
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For all the "master of romance" jokes, the fact is that Hisao is bad at romance, because he's completely inexperienced. The closest he got to a relationship was the interrupted confession. He doesn't even have any deep friendships. Add to that the crisis of dealing with a new illness/disability, moving to a new school, dealing with new people...
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Sep 23, 2021 20:18
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Which is why I’m interested in pointing out his successes, despite social problems. Like I said earlier: His awareness and consideration of agency on the Good Ending route, before things went bad? On point-I wish peers of people I worked with had as much empathy as that. Like, if you had this attentive and observant Hisao back with Emi? I don’t think he would have really screwed the pooch so hard. This route’s Hisao had a different problem-largely “know when to step back”, but it wasn’t “support within reason.” Like…Emi needed support, and wasn’t reaching out. His response-as long as it was careful and coordinated with other natural supports and not Nurse-would have gone over better.
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Sep 23, 2021 20:45
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IMHO he has a relatively consistent character - it's just that his big weakness is that he often takes the girl's persona at face's value, and since each one is a different archetype he has a tendency to overreact accordingly. Similarly, his good qualities are often magnified by his new friends' influence, which isn't all that unreasonable given his circumstances and need to find some new grounding.
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Sep 23, 2021 20:54
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Disability Corner: Dictation Software, a Practical Demonstration This disability corner, unlike the previous ones, is going to be as much a demonstration of how this sort of thing works in real life as an exploration of theory. Think of it as a window into my life instead of an excuse for me to talk about my workflow, which it also is. So, anyway, dictation software. Five-ish years ago, I managed to damage the tendons in my arms through repeated misuse and overstress. It isn’t really a standard case of tendinitis: my grip is just as strong as it’s always been and my movement isn’t inhibited, but any extended use causes me increasingly severe pain. I can, say, type for short periods without issue, but five or so minutes of typing leaves my arms feeling wrong; if I double that, I end up in significant pain, and if I double that again I have to stop because the pain’s gotten so bad I can’t focus on whatever I’m doing. I used to be a far more active gamer, but now anything that requires rapid or frequent inputs is off-limits: no shooters, no action games, no clickers, no intensive strategy games that have you making a bunch of decisions in a row. And since my skill set consists almost entirely of my ability to write and communicate? That hasn’t made it easy to find or hold down a job. At all. I lucked into a diversity program that swung me a chance to try out for a job, and I lucked out again when the program manager spotted my communication skills and took me on as an advisor even though I didn’t meet the original job’s requirements. I kind of despaired when I first learned about the tendinitis, not just because it felt like my future was slipping away, but also because I treasured recreational writing. I’ve spent my whole life writing for fun, it shapes how I approach the world, and I thought I’d lost it. I was… A bad time. The only upside? I can now sometimes predict oncoming storms; turns out that old story about old people feeling it in their bones is true because my tendons ache more or less depending on air pressure. Hooray! But there’s a whole world of assistive technology out there, one I tapped into. I'm writing this sentence (as I have the whole LP) using a program called Dragon NaturallySpeaking. As I speak into my laptop’s microphone (or a set of headphones), the program converts the speech into either text or commands, depending on the situation and what program I’m trying to work with. It’s a complex piece of software, one with quirks and flaws and one that isn’t cheap (90 bucks for the home version  ). But I could not LP without it, and, honestly, it’s kind of been a blessing; I find it easier to write this way then by typing, in spite of where it falls short. So let me show you how it holds together by walking you through the update process.First, I play the game.  Despite the fact that KS is specifically about disabled people, it lacks the backend support my dictation software needs to interact with it. Dictation software can’t just navigate anything; just like screenreaders, it interfaces with code instead of visuals, so I can’t navigate the program directly. That doesn’t mean I can’t interact with it at all, though.  Dragon switches between entering text and taking commands depending on context, and some of those commands work independently of whatever program you’re using. Saying “mouse grid” divides my screen into nine numbered parts, and saying one of those numbers moves the mouse into that portion and subdivides it nine times again. I can do this as many times as I like until I reach a point where I know clicking at the center of the selection will get me something I want (like pressing a button), in which point I just say “click”. So if I wanted to open the Russian version of Wikipedia in the example above, I’d say “mouse grid one two seven click”. I probably wouldn’t say it all at once, though; the software’s intentionally biased towards natural language and precise commands like this tend to go awry pretty easy, so I’d say the first two words together (to activate the command) and the next few with pauses to let the software work (which also lets me verify that I’m going where I want to). I also can’t just say “click” at the start, since that’ll just write the word, and I definitely can’t say “mouse grid click” because the command doesn’t work like that; the software will interpolate whichever number it thinks most closely matches the tiny pause I left between grid and click and click there. That shouldn’t be too much of an issue with KS, though. So I open KS, say “mouse grid”, and it minimizes KS to show the grid  .This is something you have to get used to as you use any kind of accessibility software: it’s not always obvious how a given command works, so every time you try to use a new program or function you’ll usually run into issues. Yeah, I know that goes for a lot of programs, but good luck finding a tutorial for any given program; there’s too much out there for the devs to anticipate what any given program will do, and the vast majority of programmers either don’t know or don’t care about accessibility enough to do anything about it. Fortunately, there’s a way around this. There are two ways to make KS go to the next line of dialogue: clicking or pressing space. We now know the first one is off-limits, but just saying “space” has the software interpret it as a command and advances the dialogue. Same goes for most of the game’s shortcuts, and since shortcuts save you ridiculous amounts of time when you enter commands, you’ll probably quickly grow proficient in them anyway. The problem? There aren’t any shortcuts that directly save your game, and without the ability to click on choice, no matter what you do you’ll never get past that first choice when you get into the school. And so, we’re reduced to using the mouse manually, which kind of defeats the purpose of using dictation software in the first place. It’s tragic, it’s infuriating, but as I mentioned earlier, I still have enough used in my hands to do this manually as long as I’m careful and don’t go for several hours in a row. Fun fact: speaking of things that get in the way of LPing, for sighted users (they have other options for non-sighted users) Dragon marks whatever you last said in a little yellow box. It’s useful when writing but it displays over whatever program you’re using, which means any screenshots I take with the software on don’t look so great. I had to redo Emi’s Act 2 movie because I forgot to turn it off because every shot had it in the middle of the screen.  Doesn’t look great. So anyway, I have to play the game manually. Knowing that, I boot up KS, Word, my browser, the directory where the screenshots go, and Dragon.  Next, I make sure I have the KS wiki pulled up. When I started my first LP, I had to read every line off my Switch then check what I wrote for errors. That was… Well, it actually wasn’t as bad as you think, but it was very time-consuming. Fortunately, one of the thread’s most standout posters (you are credit to your country, Black Robe  ) found me a script I could copy lines out of, just editing in any additional lines when I needed them. That was a narrative LP, though, which meant I needed to put in new dialogue or commentary pretty frequently, but that’s not an issue here. Some extremely dedicated souls typed out the entire script for Katawa Shoujo on the obligatory fan wiki, conveniently subdivided by scene with ways to locate the right following scene depending on which choices you made. With the right scene selected, I turn off Dragon’s microphone so it doesn't get in my way and get started. And now I’m finished! Playing through an update’s worth of content and doing basic formatting takes me maybe 1-2 hours, a little longer if I need to go back and redo something or it contains a bunch of images, music cues, and scene transitions. I took a screenshot of it and marked it up to taste, labeling the first time any important features popped up: 
(Fun fact: the colors I used in that image are (the closest Paint can come to approximating) the Color Universal Design palette, a set of colors specifically designed to be distinguishable for people with just about every version of colorblindness. Feel free to use it in your own work  !)Just about all of this is done manually; while Dragon is technically still active, I’ve turned off speech recognition and hidden the control bar so it doesn’t get in the way of screenshots. It won’t come back on anytime soon, because it would just slow down the next phase.  The three steps after setting up the script don't have a fixed order, but I usually – oh gently caress, had to stop and go back to take something here. I have to be careful when saying things that start with the word that can be interpreted as a command; starting a phrase with “cut”, for example, might go back and remove a phrase from earlier in the document, or starting a phrase with “read” might read me back what I just wrote or several lines above (Dragon has screenreader functionality on top of everything else). Here, I just said “I usually” (pause) “go for” (pause) “putting in screenshots first”, and it interpreted “go for” as “go up four”. So I wrote the next couple sentences in the middle of the last paragraph before I caught it. Frustrating. (E: The next part is a bit outdated but I'm leaving it in for context anyway, I'll cover how it's changed a bit later) Anyway, I usually go for putting in screenshots next. Clicking on the screenshots in the directory opens them up in Paint, which I put up with for a while, but, see the button next to the palette and word “open”? If you select an image, click the arrow, and pick “Photos”, it opens it up in an app that lets you just navigate between images using the left and right arrows. Press control-S and it’ll open up a window that shows you where it’s going to be saved with the filename selected and ready to be overwritten; go through the menu on the left to find the folder where you want to save your screenshots, give it whatever name you want, hit enter, and it will take you back to the image, that screenshot now safely in the folder you picked and the process set up to save the next image to the same place. I used to have to make notes in the word document to help me remember where to put images, but these days I can usually tell where every image has to go, especially since I name and upload screenshots in batches of nine. Every nine images I save, I head to LPix to upload them. LPix is free for everyone with an SA account, has no image limits, and spits out everything you upload with both a full-size image for reference (SA auto-resizes it if it’s too big to fit on a screen) and the BBCode you need to just copy and paste it into the document. Only problem? You can only upload images one of the time. That drags things out. One time I had to do 120 images for a Shield update. That was… An endeavor.  This is what it looks like when I’m done adding images: not a big change, but it will certainly make a difference once we get to the posting stage. Unlike the recording stage, I could use Dragon here, but I don’t. Why? Here’s what it takes to get a single screenshot from my screenshot folder to the word document:
If I were to use Dragon, every one of those steps would have to be voiced separately, processed over a second or two, and redone if something goes wrong. And while saving and uploading images in batches drastically cut the overall number of steps down, my need to doublecheck what I saved and where it’s going (and fix something when I inevitably get things mixed up) pushes the command count back up. While there are ways to automate this by setting up macros in Dragon, that would involve programming, which I generally regard with the superstitious disdain. It’s just easier to do it this way, comfort and efficiency be damned. Anyway, next I handle music links and portraits by using programming – wait no no don’t go way, I promise this isn’t as bad as you’re thinking. Let me walk you through what I did. It requires zero programming knowledge and as long as you don’t let your eyes glaze over in fear you can do it too. First off, go to word and right-click anywhere that isn’t a button on that banner of options that includes the name of the font you’re using and such. Click “customize ribbon”.  You see that box that says “developer”? Make sure it’s checked and head back to the main screen.  In the banner you clicked earlier, there should be a line of options on the top that say home, insert, etc. One of them should now read “developer” (I circled it in orange). Click that. You see that “record macro” button, the one in green? Click that. Enter an indicative name (without spaces) where it tells you to name the macro, a description of what it does in the description section (in this case, it adds in portraits and music links), and click okay. Then take your hands off the keyboard, this next part is by far the most delicate.  Press control H; that will open the find and replace function. Enter text in both spaces; it doesn’t actually matter what you put in there as long as it’s different, so just put a couple letters in there. Click “replace all”, click “okay”, enter a few different letters in each space, click “replace all”, click “okay”, and finally click “close”. Then go to the upper left and click on the red square that says “stop recording”. And you’re done with this step! Now click the button labeled “Visual Basic” a couple buttons to the left and try not to be overwhelmed.  There’s a bunch of options in this page and it might look different from what I have, but you can ignore all of that. Just look at the text you have there. You should only have one block of text, and it should look something like this: code:code:code:Now let’s look at how you do portraits: code:code:quote:[]afternoon … I could run it through what we just put together… quote:Katawa Shoujo OST - Afternoon … And get this. Go ahead and click the link; it’s usually worth verifying your links go to the right place. Plus, due to how I formatted it, you can run what we put together multiple times in the same document without worrying about anything getting overwritten, easier to add or move around portions that way. Adding in more links and portraits is easy; click Visual Basic (to the left of Record Macro) to go to what you put together just now, copy a music link or portrait subsection that looks like what I showed you above, paste it between the end of the last subsection and End Sub (make sure you keep everything indented in the same way!), and switch out the words and links as appropriate. But there’s one last step to go before we’re done. Go all the way up to the part at the top of the text where it says Sub (whatever you named it). Type Public in front of it. That way, every document on your computer can use what you just put together; otherwise you’d have to copy and paste the whole drat thing every time you open the new document, which is not ideal. And then you’re done! E: With some advice from the thread, I was able to update my image uploading process for efficiency. Explopyro posted:I'll do my best, for better or worse. Here's the way I've been doing it with [url= https://getsharex.com/]ShareX[/url]. I learned about ShareX long before I started this LP, but while I’ve tried to use it with past LPs, a mixture of unclear instructions, difficulty using Dragon and/or my poor, abused tendons to experiment until I got it working, and inertia since my previous method worked kept me away. But now it works! Except when I upload images like this I get links that don’t have BBCode, which would mean I’d have to go through and add it to every image manually if I didn’t have access to this: code:Uh, okay, that was a detour, but notice how I didn’t mention dictation software again. I could have used Dragon to write all of this code; in fact, coding with text-to-speech software is a whole thing that people give talks on. Unfortunately, getting that functionality working requires at least some programming experience just to get it off the ground, and what I just showed you is the extent of my programming knowledge. In order to use that programming functionality, I need to understand programming, and in order to understand programming, I have to go out and learn how to do it – using interfaces that AREN’T text-to-speech friendly. I just do not have the time, energy, and physical condition to do that.  Okay, anyway, here’s what it looks like once we’ve run everything through. Now all we have to do is add the commentary, and finally, FINALLY it’s time for Dragon to shine. See, here’s the thing about how I write: like many people, I do it best in motion. For years, I would stand up, pace for a few seconds, and sit back down to type a couple sentences, rinse and repeat for an hour maybe. But with dictation? No sitdown phase, no time lapse between me thinking and entering those thoughts, no physical exhaustion caused by standing up and sitting down. Between the time it takes for the program to process my speech and my need to periodically go back and correct mistakes, I can only enter maybe 150 words a minute, half as much as I can type. But I can also go much, much longer. Before Dragon, I remember 600 words a day was about my limit; anymore would start pushing my body and my brain. Last winter I pushed out 1500 words a day, every day, for four months: by the end there was enough original text in my Shield LP to fill a full novel. I used to think it was impossible for me to write long-form anything. Now I know that’s not the case, and I’ve written more in the last year and a half than in the rest of my life combined. 10 years ago, the few hundred words it takes to write the commentary for this update would have been about as much as I could handle over the course of a day without pushing myself. Now it’s something I can do almost without thinking.So, what can we put together out of all of this? I think we have a couple takeaways. First, as we’ve talked about before, the world tends to ignore disability issues, and resources for them, when they exist, are often expensive, limited, and hard to use. Between the program and various pieces of equipment, I’ve easily blown 250 bucks just getting the software to the point where I can use it comfortably, and that’s not the kind of money many of us can spare. Even with it fully functional, there are certain things it just can’t handle (which closes off big chunks of the Internet from me), and of the stuff I can use, lots of it is awkward, time-consuming, or requires technical proficiency I may not be equipped to learn. I mean, there are ways I could handle just about everything I mentioned with the right plug-ins and equipment, but that would require finding the right stuff, spending money on it, and sinking enough time into it to get everything working. When faced with that wall of inconvenience, it’s easier to ignore the software sometimes, even if it sucks and defeats the point. And on the other hand it's absolutely vital. Without dictation software, I could not have written this disability corner. Or any other disability corners, or this LP, or anything at all longer than a couple paragraphs. The dictation software constantly gets in my way, trips over itself, and fails to perform vital functions, but the difference its presence makes in my life is almost immeasurable. If you needed an example of what assistive technology can do for a person, look at the trail of LPs I’ve left behind me over the last year and remember it made them possible. As a postscript: please feel free to use everything I’ve laid out here in your own efforts it’s not like there isn’t more room for screenshot LPs out there. If you have any problems using it, get in contact with me and I’ll set aside time to help walk you through it (or tell you to go to the tech support fort if I can’t handle it). Falconier111 fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Sep 30, 2021 |
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Sep 24, 2021 20:50
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Ah, Dragon. It annoyed the crap out of me when Nuance stopped supporting Mac. I’m glad you can make it work for you. I’m pretty sure batch uploaders exist for LPix— I’d have lost all patience if I had to upload all my image by hand. Try ShareX or Rightload?
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Sep 24, 2021 21:13
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You may want to edit your Word screenshots to redact some personal information from the title bar if you care about that stuff.
Space Kablooey fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Sep 24, 2021 |
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Sep 24, 2021 21:20
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This thread was an incredible surprise. Thank you for the LP and all of the discussion here, I am learning so much.
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Sep 24, 2021 22:05
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Quackles posted:I’m pretty sure batch uploaders exist for LPix— I’d have lost all patience if I had to upload all my image by hand. Try ShareX or Rightload? I came here to say something similar - uploading images manually would make me lose my mind. ShareX is what I've been using and it's very easy once it's set up, though I'm not sure how easy its UI will be to use with Dragon's mouse grid. I'll grab the links to these from the sandcastle thread for you: the sandcastle thread posted:There is a Rightload plugin available here, for which you will need the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable installed. Set your username and password and (optionally) a gallery in the options. NEW! There is also now a script code for use with ShareX, you can follow the instructions here to add it to ShareX's options.
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Sep 24, 2021 22:09
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Space Kablooey posted:You may want to edit your Word screenshots to redact some personal information from the title bar if you care about that stuff.  Done.Explopyro posted:I came here to say something similar - uploading images manually would make me lose my mind. ShareX is what I've been using and it's very easy once it's set up, though I'm not sure how easy its UI will be to use with Dragon's mouse grid. I'll grab the links to these from the sandcastle thread for you: I've never been able to get either of them to work, mouse grid or no. Maybe they're easy to comprehend if you have a little programming experience, but I don't; the only reason I know how to use the code I put in the thread is because I know what the VBA window is and I'm just automating find and replace. Between information processing issues keeping me from understanding unclear aspects of the instructions as they exist (autism and anxiety) and difficulty experimenting until it get it right (tendinitis and Dragon's limitations), getting them working is way harder than you'd think. Unless someone can produce step-by-step instructions, I'm kind of sunk .For what it's worth, I usually only have to upload about 15 images an update, so it's not exactly the end of the world. If someone could produce those instructions, though, I'd slap them in the update for posterity. Stoop Kid posted:This thread was an incredible surprise. Thank you for the LP and all of the discussion here, I am learning so much. Remember to vote 5  . But really, thank you for reading! It's a little humbling to look at the size of the Our Stories section in the OP.
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Sep 24, 2021 23:02
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Falconier111 posted:I've never been able to get either of them to work, mouse grid or no. Maybe they're easy to comprehend if you have a little programming experience, but I don't; the only reason I know how to use the code I put in the thread is because I know what the VBA window is and I'm just automating find and replace. Between information processing issues keeping me from understanding unclear aspects of the instructions as they exist (autism and anxiety) and difficulty experimenting until it get it right (tendinitis and Dragon's limitations), getting them working is way harder than you'd think. Unless someone can produce step-by-step instructions, I'm kind of sunk I'll do my best, for better or worse. Here's the way I've been doing it with ShareX. To set up ShareX to upload things to LPix (you only need to do this once): 1. Go to this page and copy all of the text in the white box to your clipboard. 2. Open ShareX. 3. Go to Destinations -> Image Uploader and pick Custom Image Uploader. 4. Go to Destinations -> Custom Uploader Settings. 5. Click Import -> From Clipboard. (On the left panel, partway down.) This should add lpix as a custom uploader. 6. On the right side, you should see the username, password, gallery fields. Fill these in with your credentials appropriately (for your LPix account, not your forums account). I usually make a new gallery for each update (and change the setting here before I upload), but organise things how you like; if you're just using the default gallery, leave Default here. 7. Close the window. You should now be ready to upload images. To upload images: Upload -> Upload File (to upload a single image) Upload -> Upload Folder (batch upload an entire directory at once). It will ask you to confirm ("do you want to upload 100 images?") before starting. Once the images are uploaded, they'll show up in the main window, you can right-click them there and pick "copy URL" to get the link to the image. Although what I usually do is just open the LPix gallery in my browser and copy the URLs from there, I name them sequentially so I can just go down the list and paste them into the appropriate location in my post. I hope that broke it down enough to be helpful, maybe? The program is more powerful and does other things than this, but this is all I need from it, so I haven't really experimented with other features. When my average update is 150-200 images, it isn't really practical to do them individually. If you're only doing 15ish images per post and your current methodology is working for you, you might not want to go through the hassle, but IMO it's worth it at any point beyond single-digit numbers of images.
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Sep 25, 2021 04:59
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That is all making me think about how it might be possible to make OpenTTD playable for mouse-impaired people. Some parts could work relatively simple, selecting commands from the menu bar would "just" require naming them all and having those translated as part of the game translations. The hard part would be things like navigating around the map and building tracks and so on. Those parts would definitely need inventing new interfaces.
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Sep 25, 2021 16:18
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nielsm posted:That is all making me think about how it might be possible to make OpenTTD playable for mouse-impaired people. Some parts could work relatively simple, selecting commands from the menu bar would "just" require naming them all and having those translated as part of the game translations. The hard part would be things like navigating around the map and building tracks and so on. Those parts would definitely need inventing new interfaces. One thought I just had is that the player could name two sets of coordinates, and the game paints tracks between those two points. Not sure how well this would work in practice, as the first challenge that I can see is actually displaying the coordinates without cluttering the view, but this could be a staying point. Maybe the 9-grid that dragon uses could be ported to the game itself and be used to home in to a specific starting point in the screen? The next challenge would be to tackle tools that work on sub-cells, like the road tools and diagonal train tracks. Tools that operate on the vertices, like the landscaping tools might require a slightly different interface too. On top of this you might want to build some general qol features, like building signals every x track cells at the same time you're laying them on the first place.
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Sep 25, 2021 16:35
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Is there a reason why a dictation software is preferred over alternative hardware? Functionally there should be mouse-equivalents operatable with the feet, or the tongue, elbow, or some other novel method that does not involve the wrists or hands. I doubt they would be as useful for, say, typing, but I imagine a trackball operated by foot or something like that would be effective for moving a mouse around the screen.
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Sep 25, 2021 18:23
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