Using Bots for Eve Accessibility

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82

I imagine another benefit to the alternate UI is that the window layout is less critical.

83

Hello there,

I have recently heard of Eve online and I have looked through the previous post of your conversation with another blind player. I am having some trouble running your alternative UI with Eve. For some reason I get this message: m"Search the address of the UI root in process" The number is quite random as the process is different each time. Might need some help with this one.

Thanks in advance.

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84

Hello Thomas,

Thank you for sharing your experience.

So it shows you the message ‘Search the address of the UI root in process X’

When the alternate UI displays that message, it is still progressing automatically. You don’t need to do anything manually. It just means that the alternate UI is busy processing the contents of the memory of the game client to find a particular object. This setup step is necessary for each new instance of the game client. The number in that message should match the Windows process ID of the EVE Online game client. That means it is expected that this number changes when you start a new instance of the game client and then restart the alternate UI.

The message also implies that it has identified an OS process with a matching name. Otherwise, it would display the message ‘Looks like there is no EVE Online client process started…’

You will see this message disappearing automatically when the software has completed the search for the UI root. How long this search takes depends on your hardware and how much memory the game client is using. (Memory usage can be tuned by settings in the game client)
I think the median duration is less than 20 seconds.
How long does it take on your setup to continue?

85

Hmm, I would have to check the next time I run it. Unfortunately I had to recover my computer so I will have to get everything installed again, but once I do I will report back immediately. Thanks for your reply.

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86

Hi there. Sorry it took me a bit to get back. I would have to say it took around perhaps 30 seconds to approximately a minute, but I get this new error when attempting to run the alternate UI program from a web server.
Failed to search the UI root in process 11740: BadStatus: 500 ()
Might need a little help with this one.

Thanks much.

87

It might be running into a timeout there. We could expand the program code to display more details in that scenario (‘BadStatus: 500’)

88

Hey there.

Happy New Year! :slight_smile: Long time no see.

I just decided to get back into this, and discovered that I’m also running into that timeout/status 500 error.

Unfortunately there is no useful output in the console. It just claims to be searching the UI root in process xxxx, and then after about a minute, it gives the failure message.

I wonder if something in the newer client versions is causing the search to fail, or if the process is otherwise freezing and not actually doing what it says it should.

This is a little frustrating, needless to say :slight_smile:

Any help would be very much appreciated.

89

Welcome back @BLindGuyNW ! A happy new year to you too!

Thank you for sharing your results.
I looked into this problem and learned a few things: You are right about the ‘newer’ versions of the game client. More precisely, the probability of this problem happening increases with the amount of memory used by the game client process. With the increased memory usage in newer versions, more setups run into the timeout.

In general, memory usage also depends on the settings in the game client. For example, there are options to reduce graphics to lower quality. Lowering texture resolution should reduce memory usage, but it might take restarting the game client to be effective.

But there is also a robust solution to the problem independent of how large the game client gets. I can always change something in the program code to avoid dependence on the one-minute timeout in this place. I may get to adapt the program next week.

90

Hey,

Thanks for the confirmation. :slight_smile: I’m still very itnerested in revisiting this, so please do let me know if you manage to update the program.

Best,
Zack.

91

Hi Zack,
Today I got around to fixing the timeout issue.
The new version shows how long it has been searching for the root address. It displays the search duration in seconds in the HTML UI.
The new version no longer fails after 60 seconds, so slow CPUs should not cause a failure anymore.

Below is the command to run the new version:

elm-time  run-server  --public-urls="http://*:80"  --deploy=https://github.com/Arcitectus/Sanderling/tree/cc21ccfdf949b82f4e3703f0e18519c64c522d10/implement/alternate-ui/source

You can download the executable file for the elm-time command from https://github.com/elm-time/elm-time/releases/download/v2023-02-27/elm-time-bin-v2023-02-27-win10-x64.zip
(https://elm-time.org/downloads)

Cheers,
Michael

93

hi,
can someone explain how i can use the alternate ui to play eve online as blind player?
thanks.

94

Hello Maik :wave:

The alternate UI app contains an interface designed to be easily accessible with assistive technologies such as screen readers. It offers interaction via buttons that are explicitly labeled as such.
When you have an overview window open in the game client, the alternate UI contains two buttons for each entry/row in the overview: One for sending a left-click and one for sending a right-click to that particular overview entry.
When a context menu is open in the game client, the alternate UI shows buttons for sending left mouse clicks on each of its entries.
When you want to approach an object represented in the overview window, you can do that by using a right-click on the overview entry and then a left-click on the entry labeled ‘Approach’ in the context menu that opened after the first interaction.
The process outlined above is the variant where you control it explicitly and use two steps to initiate the new maneuver with your ship. Another variant would be to use a higher-level command where you only issue a single command and then have the program execute a sequence of interactions with the game client.

95

hi
can i do the character setup with the alternate ui? i tryed it but nothing happend.
i have an other problem.
When i start the server the client and the alternate ui on the same computer i cant read the alternate ui window with my screenreader it jumps in the eve client window.

thanks

96

No, character setup is not picked up by Sanderling and therefore not represented in the alternate UI.

That sounds like your screen reader might be confused when the input focus switches to the game client. We could change the alternate UI to focus the game client less often. But ultimately, input focus will be needed to send a command to the classic game client.
An alternate solution would be using the new game client introduced with ‘EVE Anywhere’. That one will not need input focus. What do you think about switching to the web-browser-based game client from CCP? Does that work for you?

97

i can test it where can i download it? and use it sounds too?
thanks for help

98

Hello Maik,
At the moment, I have too much on my plate to be able to explore this.

99

hi,
i think i must finish the tutorial to see the overview and other thins to try to play it.
first i must find someone to finish it for me.
i see there is a new version of elm-time? is it nessesery? or can i use the older?

greetings

Maik

100

As far as I remember, some tutorials run alongside game content, so some tutorials might only be at a later stage when the overview is already available.
But the overview will only appear when you are undocked, not docked at any station or structure.
For the first experimentation with the interface, it might be easier to use something available when docked because when docked, the environment is less busy and noisy.
Inventory windows are good candidates. You’ll need inventories for many in-game activities, and they are available both inside and outside a station.

Yes, there is a version 2023-04-20 of Elm-Time, but I just tested and confirmed the Sanderling Alternate UI app also works with Elm-Time version 2023-04-10.

In general, if there is a problem with the version too old, it will either crash already at startup or show an error message when you select ‘From live game client process’ as the source in the UI.