alchemist-accessibility/accessibility/docs/scratch.md

SCRATCH — current working state

Read this first on any handoff. Living document: update it whenever state changes, before ending a turn.

Last updated: 2026-08-01 · Currently: Phases 0–3 done + menus/dialogue. Phase 4 mostly done. Phase 5 (status, popups) next.

Game is playable start-to-finish by ear from main menu through the intro conversation into gameplay — verified by the testbed, 13/13 checks.

Run the testbed (do this after any change)

cd "D:/code/Sulphur Memories Alchemist 0.4.2 sanctified"
rm -rf ~/AppData/Roaming/LOVE/Alchemist        # start from a clean save
"C:/Program Files/LOVE/lovec.exe" . --a11y-test

It drives the game by code via love.event.push, navigating by reading focus rather than counting keypresses. Every bug listed below was caught by it.

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What this project is

Blind-accessibility mod for Sulphur Memories: Alchemist 0.4.2 (LÖVE 11.5, Lua/LuaJIT), extracted to D:\code\Sulphur Memories Alchemist 0.4.2 sanctified. All mod code lives under accessibility/. Design goal: change as little game code as possible so the mod re-applies cleanly to new versions.

Full research is in accessibility/docs/ — read README.md there for the map.

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Confirmed decisions (do not relitigate)

#	Decision
D1	Dev uses system LÖVE at C:\Program Files\LOVE\ (lovec.exe for console output). Distribution deferred.
D2	Tracker hierarchy: category (Ctrl+PgUp/Dn) → kind (PgUp/Dn) → instance (Shift+PgUp/Dn), Home = distance+direction.
D3	Small explicit patches to game files are allowed where they simplify things — but every state descriptor also carries a probe spec so we can flip to zero-edit debug.getupvalue mode if the game ships fused on Steam. render is shared by both backends.
D4	Six tracker categories confirmed and coverage-verified: Creatures / Items / Exits / Interactables / Terrain features / Alchemy.
—	Screen reader: NVDA. Running the game via lovec during dev is approved.
—	User is blind — all verification must be describable in text; don't rely on screenshots.

Still-open questions (in 04-open-questions.md)

Answered: Q1 (dev LÖVE), Q2 (tracker hierarchy), Q3 (augment, not relay), Q4 (speak everything queued, cancelled by explicit action), Q5 (wall tones on step, stop-and-replay — confirmed working by ear), Q7/Q10 (patches allowed, probe backend kept open for Steam), Q9 (NVDA, lovec approved).

Still open: Q6 (integrate our keys into the game's rebinding UI, or keep a separate scheme) · Q8 (full keyboard-reachability audit as an explicit deliverable?). Neither blocks Phase 4.

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Key facts worth not rediscovering

• console.print(msg, colorTemplate) in modules/console.lua is the single chokepoint for all game log text. Repeated identical messages coalesce into "msg (x3)" via a times counter. Buffer entries expire after 3s — useless as history, so we keep our own.
• level.getCursorMessage() returns the description under the examine cursor (actor first, then top visible tile). The game already has a full arrow-key examine mode: states/ingame_observe.lua.
• inventoryCursorPopup.set(...) — one patch narrates focus in inventory, craft, refine and trade. ⚠ levelCursorPopup is deliberately not patched: it fires from an animation-completion callback and lands a keypress late. ingame_observe polls level.cursorX/Y instead.
• All 28 states already implement keypressed. The gap is narration, not reachability.
• modules/tile.lua:234: tile.tryInteract = (self.loot or self.tryInteractFunction). ⚠ This is not a "worth tracking" signal — wall has a flavour-only tryInteractFunction. Structural tiles (blocksMovement and blocksVision) must be excluded first. See the D4 correction in 05-decisions.md.
• Template counts: 231 tiles, 40 actors, 344 items. Parent inheritance is already flattened by modules/tile/preprocess.lua during love.load, so read fields directly.
• 6 un-nameable mechanical templates to exclude: blank, throw_blocker, movement_blocker, fire_detector, wall_features_position_dummy, ladder_down_hidden.
• debug.getupvalue works on this Lua build — verified reading selectedOption / optionsList from a state's keypressed.
• Tolk constraint: ffi.load("Tolk") uses the OS loader, so DLLs must sit next to love.exe — they can never live inside a .love archive.
• tolk.lua calls Tolk_Load() at require time with no error handling, and Love2talk.lua leaks backend as a global. Always pcall the require.

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Current status

Done

• Full architecture research → docs/01-architecture.md
• Hooking strategy → docs/02-hooking-strategy.md
• Phased plan → docs/03-implementation-plan.md
• Open questions → docs/04-open-questions.md
• Decisions + category coverage proof → docs/05-decisions.md

Done — Phase 0 (bootstrap) · commit 5c581ed

• git init, pristine tree committed and tagged vanilla-0.4.2 (commit bbb70d0, 1838 files, accessibility/ deliberately excluded so the tag is genuinely clean).
• love2talk vendored to accessibility/vendor/love2talk/ — see VENDORED.md there for the five local modifications.
• DLL elevation problem solved. Tolk.dll etc. live in accessibility/lib/ and are loaded by absolute path via love.filesystem.getSource(), with SetDllDirectoryA pointing at that folder so Tolk can find its own screen-reader clients. No admin rights, no copying into Program Files. Tracked in git via a !accessibility/lib/*.dll un-ignore.
• accessibility/speech.lua — pcall-guarded, frame-queued, logToConsole = true.
• accessibility/init.lua — patch registry + states.switch / states.update hooks
  • startup self-test.
• accessibility/stateNames.lua — spoken names for all 28 states.
• One line added to main.lua. Nothing else in the game touched.

Verified working via lovec.exe .:

[accessibility] TTS initialised
[accessibility] TTS: available
[accessibility] speech channel: yes
[speech]! Main menu

Done — Phase 1: console history + review keys · + wall tones

• accessibility/history.lua — unbounded (1000-entry ring) history. Mirrors the game's (xN) coalescing so speech matches the screen. Review cursor holds still while new lines arrive and only follows the tail when not being used.
• accessibility/hotkeys.lua — global key layer in front of states.keypressed.
• accessibility/patches/console.lua — wraps console.print (calls the real one first, so a mod bug can't swallow an on-screen message) and console.clear.
• accessibility/walltones.lua — see below.
• accessibility/tests/test_history.lua — 16 assertions, all passing. Run with: lua accessibility/tests/test_history.lua (pure Lua, no LÖVE needed).

Auto-speak policy (Q4, answered): speak everything, queued and joined in order at end of frame. Any keypress that reaches the game counts as an explicit action and silences the pending backlog (hotkeys.onGameKey → speech.silence).

Verified in-game by the testbed (console capture + (x2) fold + review keys) and by Talon at the keyboard (wall tones).

Keymap so far

Key	Action
[ / ]	Previous / next console history line
Shift+[ / Shift+]	Oldest / newest line
\	Repeat current line
Shift+\	Copy current line to clipboard
/	Scan all 8 neighbours, clockwise from north (terse)
;	Where am I — level, in-game time, coordinates
Ctrl+numpad 1–9	Probe that direction without moving (Ctrl+kp5 = standing on)
Ctrl+PageUp / Ctrl+PageDown	Tracker: previous / next category
PageUp / PageDown	Tracker: previous / next kind
Shift+PageUp / Shift+PageDown	Tracker: previous / next instance
Home	Tracker: distance, direction and path length to current instance

Game keys worth knowing: x enters examine mode (not e), f finds exits while examining, j journal, i inventory, c character, a actions menu.

Reserved for the tracker (Phase 3): PageUp/PageDown, Home, with Ctrl/Shift.

Free scancodes (game binds none of these): [ ] \ ; ' , / - =, h k l m n o p u v w, F1–F12, pageup pagedown home end insert, kp0 kp. kp+ kp- kp* kp/.

Game-claimed scancodes — never bind these unmodified: . 0-9 \ a b backspace c d delete down e escape f g i j kp1-kp9 kpenter lalt lctrl left lshift mouse3 q r ralt rctrl return right rshift s space t tab up x y z`

⚠ keybindings.getCommand() dispatches on scancode alone and ignores modifiers. Ctrl and Shift are held modifiers in game (moveCamera, repeatAction/adjustByFive). So Ctrl+Up is seen by the game as plain "up" — a movement. Never bind a modifier combo over a game-claimed scancode. Combos over unclaimed scancodes (e.g. Ctrl+PageUp) are safe. Always consume our keys.

Wall tones (Q5, answered: on step, 3D-positioned, radius 5)

Key design point, in walltones.lua: direction and distance are decoupled. The game's listener sits at the camera, 4 units above the plane, with an inverse distance model. Placing a tone at its wall's real position would (a) make far walls quieter — the opposite of what was asked — and (b) collapse the pan toward centre, since the 4-unit vertical offset dominates a 2-unit horizontal one.

So: the source is placed at a fixed radius from the listener in the wall's direction, at the listener's own height (pure horizontal pan, constant attenuation), and volume is computed explicitly from distance. Positioned relative to the listener via love.audio.getPosition(), so panning stays correct even while the camera is panned away.

Step detection polls playerActor.x/y each frame instead of hooking movement — free, and covers walking, pathing, portals and pushes by construction.

⚠ config.louderWhenFurther = true as requested, but this inverts the usual convention (proximity cues normally get louder as you approach, and a near wall is the more urgent fact). Flip the flag in walltones.lua if it reads backwards.

Respects FoV/rememberedFoV — never leaks unseen map geometry.

Done — Menu narration (Phase 4, pulled forward) + testbed

Pulled forward because menus were a blocker: Talon could hear the screen name but not the selected option, so the game could not be started at all.

• accessibility/menus.lua — descriptor driver. Supports both D3 backends (probe via debug.getupvalue, patched via injected announce calls); the per-screen render is shared. Includes the probe self-test.
• accessibility/states/{main_menu,settings_menu,load_game,new_game,narration}.lua
• accessibility/testbed.lua — drives the game by code. lovec.exe . --a11y-test

Verified end to end: main menu → new game → name entry → intro narration → gameplay, 8/8 checks passing. Console patch smoke-tested including the (x2) fold and review keys.

Three real bugs the testbed caught

1. love.keypressed was bound to the pre-wrapper function. states.setup() does love[callback] = love[callback] or states[callback], capturing by value, and it runs before us. main.lua defines love.load/update/ mousepressed/mousereleased/quit but NOT keypressed/textinput — so those were frozen to the original. Replacing the states table field alone did nothing. Fix: reassign love.keypressed/love.textinput after wrapping. states.switch/states.update were fine — looked up on the table at call time. ⚠ Any future callback we wrap needs the same treatment.

2. Focus moves with no keypress. main_menu.mousemoved assigns selectedOption straight from cursor position, so wherever the mouse rests silently overrides selection — including at startup. Fix: poll focus in the update hook rather than announcing only on keypress. announceScreen now speaks only the screen name and lets the poll add focus a frame later (justSwitched makes that first one non-interrupting so it appends).

3. Probes may need chaining. narration.keypressed doesn't touch displayData/currentPage/currentLoadedLine — it only calls continueNarration(), so they are upvalues of that function. The descriptor reaches continueNarration as an upvalue of keypressed, then reads through it. Expect this pattern in other states.

Also learned

• states.lua loads states via require("states/"..name) — a SLASH. require() caches on the exact string, so require("states.main_menu") would load a second independent copy with its own upvalues. Always match the slash.
• Plain movement is silent — actions/move.lua only prints when a move fails (bound, immobilized). Walking proves nothing about the console patch; drive console.print directly to test it.

Done — dialogue narration + wall tone retrigger fix

ingame_dialogue descriptor. Speaks speaker + message on a node change, but only the response on a selection change (re-reading the whole speech every time you move between responses would be unusable). Responses can also be picked directly with number keys 1–0, which the game already supports.

Two more bugs found and fixed:

4. Nested states.switch announced in reverse. ingame.open() sees world.pendingDialogue and switches straight to ingame_dialogue. Since we announce after realSwitch returns, the inner announcement ("Conversation") fired first and the outer ("Game") then interrupted and clobbered it. Fix: after switching, if states.getCurrent() ~= newState, stay quiet — a nested switch already announced.

5. Double numbering. The game already prefixes response text with its number ("1. (Continue)", matching the number key that selects it), so adding ours gave "1. 1. (Continue)". Now only added when absent.

Wall tones — retrigger fix (per Talon: "stop previous tones and play new ones"). Tones are 2.33 s, mono, 44.1 kHz. Steps land far faster than that and up to four directions sound at once, so they stacked into a continuous drone. Now each direction stops its previous source before starting a new one, so it reads as a per-step cue layered over footsteps, and the volume you hear always reflects where you're standing now. playing is cleared on level change.

(Mono matters: OpenAL only spatialises mono sources. Stereo would not pan.)

Done — Phase 2: tile examination + surroundings

• accessibility/describe.lua — shared spatial formatting. 8-point compass, Chebyshev distance (the game moves 8-directionally, so Euclidean would overstate diagonals), and tileFacts() / tile(). Verbosity setting (terse/normal/verbose) since sweeping 8 neighbours and inspecting one tile want different amounts of detail.
• accessibility/states/ingame_observe.lua — narrates the game's examine cursor.
• accessibility/surroundings.lua — probe/scan/where-am-I without moving.
• accessibility/patches/popups.lua — wraps inventoryCursorPopup.set, covering inventory, craft, refine, trade in one patch.

Q3 answered by default: augment, not just relay. The game's descriptions ("A wooden chair.") carry no position — fine on screen, useless by ear. We append distance + direction, and blocked/has-items/water at normal verbosity.

Design note: why examine mode is polled, not popup-driven

levelCursorPopup.set is called from an animation-completion callback, so unless the player enables the game's quickExaminationPopup option the text lands a full keypress late — in testing you heard the previous tile while standing on the next. The ingame_observe descriptor polls level.cursorX/Y instead: same-frame, setting-independent, no game edit. levelCursorPopup is therefore deliberately not patched; only inventoryCursorPopup is.

(The level model is a closure instance, not a module, so it can't be patched at require time — reading its public fields is the decoupled route.)

Testability seam

hotkeys.isCtrlDown / isShiftDown are overridable fields, not direct calls to love.keyboard.isScancodeDown. Real hardware state can't be faked by love.event.push, so without this seam every modifier-gated hotkey would be untestable. The testbed swaps them per keypress.

Done — Phase 3: object tracker

• accessibility/categories.lua — flag-first classification into the six categories, plus the 6-template exclusion list and reuse of the game's exit tag.
• accessibility/tracker.lua — scan, cache, three-level navigation, announcements.

Verified in the starting house:

Interactables, 12 kinds
a bed, 1, nearest 1 tile south-west, 2 of 12
an open door 1 of 1, 2 tiles north-west
an open door, 2 tiles north-west, 2 steps by path      <- Home

Caching: signature is level name : player x : player y : turn. Position matters because everything sorts by distance; turn matters because creatures move and containers empty. Scans run on keypress only, never per frame.

FoV respected — creatures only when currently visible, tiles when visible or remembered. The tracker never reveals what a sighted player couldn't see.

Home reports path length, not just offset. Straight-line distance is badly misleading indoors: a chest 3 tiles north through a wall can be 20 steps away. Uses the game's own calculatePathFromPlayer.

⚠ Correction to D4 — tryInteract is NOT a clean "worth tracking" signal

wall carries a flavour-only tryInteractFunction ("You touch the wall. It's cold and rough."), so flag-first classification promoted every wall segment into Interactables — 13 in the starting house, burying the chest and cauldron. Fix: exclude structural tiles (blocksMovement and blocksVision) before the tryInteract test. Containers and furniture block movement but not sight, so they survive. 13 kinds/32 instances → 12 kinds/19 instances. docs/05-decisions.md D4 has been amended.

(Not a bug: Items/Alchemy are empty in the tutorial house because chest_tutorial literally prints "find nothing of use for now" — it has no loot yet. Verify against a later area before trusting those two categories.)

Done — Phase 4 (most of it): menu descriptors

16 states now have descriptors — all registered in describedStates in init.lua, all resolving in the startup self-test:

main_menu · settings_menu · load_game · new_game · narration · ingame_dialogue · ingame_observe · actions_menu · worldmap · alchemy_table · journal · character · inventory · menu_text / ingame_message / menu_message (shared _textscreen.lua)

Verified live: Journal. Quests, A simple commission, 1 of 1 · Character, 1 of 3 · Actions. Interact, 1 of 1 · Inventory. All items, empty, slot 1. 21/21 testbed checks.

Two driver improvements (both prompted by real failures)

• menus.getAnyUpvalue — finds a file-local across all of a state's functions plus one level into inner closures. Safe because a Lua file-local is a single shared upvalue, so any closure referencing it sees the same variable. Needed because actions_menu and worldmap build their lists in open() and never mention them in keypressed. The generic probe path now falls back to it.
• menus.hasUpvalue — checks a local exists rather than holds a value. getUpvalue can't tell "no such local" from "declared but nil", which made the self-test cry PROBE BROKEN on worldmap (whose local options is nil until the screen opens). Self-test now reports ok (unset until opened).

Ownership rule: descriptors beat the popup patch

patches/popups.lua now stands down for any state that has a descriptor. inventoryCursorPopup.set only fires when there is an item, so on an empty slot or empty tab it said nothing — you couldn't tell whether the cursor moved. The inventory descriptor reports item-or-empty plus slot and tab; letting both speak would double up on every item.

Known gaps (next up)

• Phase 4 remainder: research, config_menu, keybindings_menu have no descriptors. craft / refine / trade are covered only by the inventoryCursorPopup patch — so, like inventory was, they will be silent on empty slots and say nothing about the quantity slider in the confirmation window (modules/slider.lua, Left/Right adjusts, Shift for ×5).
• Phase 5: player status key (HP, statuses, current action), popup announcements (popupStack.add), damage alerts (ingame.checkInterruptions), mod settings.
• ingame itself has no descriptor.
• Unverified against real content: tracker categories Items / Alchemy / Exits / Creatures / Terrain (tutorial house has none), and inventory item names (inventory is empty in the prologue).
• worldmap, journal, character, research, inventory, craft, refine, trade, actions_menu, alchemy_table, keybindings_menu, config_menu, menu_text, ingame_message, menu_message still have no descriptors.

Next — Phase 2: tile examination

Patch views/levelCursorPopup.set to narrate the game's existing examine mode, augmented with distance/direction/passability. Then the surroundings explorer (Alt+numpad to probe a direction without moving). Needs Q3 (verbosity) answered.

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Invariants for all mod code

1. Every wrapper calls through to the original and returns its results verbatim (return realFn(...) — preserve multiple returns).
2. Speech must never throw. Missing DLL ⇒ silent no-op, game still runs.
3. No behaviour change for sighted players.
4. Never reveal information outside FoV / rememberedFoV — the tracker must not become a cheat.
5. Grid scans (xMax × yMax) happen on keypress or turn change, never per frame.
6. Our keys fall through to the game handler unless we own them.

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Modified game files (keep this list exhaustive)

File	Change	Why
main.lua	+1 line: require("accessibility").initialize() after console.prepare()	Sole mod entry point. Placed there because templates, keybindings, states.setup() and the console canvas are all ready by then, and it's before the first states.switch().

Verify this list is exhaustive at any time with:

git diff --stat vanilla-0.4.2 -- . ':!accessibility' ':!.gitignore'

Currently: main.lua | 1 +.

How to run

cd "D:/code/Sulphur Memories Alchemist 0.4.2 sanctified"
"C:/Program Files/LOVE/lovec.exe" .

lovec (not love) gives the console, where [speech] lines mirror every utterance — speech is verifiable from the log, not only by ear. ! after [speech] means the utterance interrupted.

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Scratchpad / notes

• .luacheckrc uses std = "min+alch" with an explicit globals list — add mod globals there to keep lint clean.
• Upstream quirk (not ours to fix): modules/tile/preprocess.lua flattens parents in a single pairs() pass, so a grandchild may inherit from a not-yet-flattened parent depending on hash order.
• Tolk DLL sources on this machine: D:\code\cafe, D:\code\dragonrpg-mapmaker, D:\code\DragonWarriorAccess.