Accessibility ModandClaude Opus 5
ce0f375a10
The research tree spoke only the node's name and whether you could afford
it. Everything that tells you whether it is worth affording -- the
knowledge cost, the recipes it unlocks, the description -- is drawn in
the hint windows beside the tree and was never spoken, so "cannot afford"
gave no way to find out what was missing or by how much.
states/research.lua now implements details(), the same = / Shift+= hook
the item grids use: cost with the shortfall spelled out, what it unlocks,
then the description, one block each so [ and ] walk them back. Shift+=
adds the name line and the whole knowledge purse across all four types.
The focus line also takes its name from the node's title instead of
humanising the id, so it is "Sewing techniques", not "sewing techniques".
Everything is read from the state's currentNode upvalue -- the display
table updateCurrentNode() assembles for the hint window -- rather than
models/research.lua, whose nodes table is file-local and whose unlocks
are recipe ids, which would have named the recipe instead of the item it
produces. The shortfall is computed against journalModel.knowledge,
required lazily because models.journal drags in much of the game.
The tree has no hotkey and the prologue may hold no writing desk, so the
testbed enters it the way the desk does: ingame.interface("research"),
the exact call in the desk's tryInteractFunction. Require it as
"states/ingame" and not "states.ingame" -- states.lua uses the slash
form, and the dot form loads a second copy of the module whose
levelWindow is nil, which research.draw indexes on its first frame.
98 testbed checks, 0 failures.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Accessibility mod — developer documentation
Making Sulphur Memories: Alchemist 0.4.2 blind-accessible.
Player-facing keymap and setup: accessibility/README.md.
Picking this up mid-stream? Read scratch.md first. It is the living handoff document: current state, every bug found and why, and the traps.
| Doc | Contents |
|---|---|
| scratch.md | Start here. Working state, bugs found, gotchas, keymap, how to run the testbed. |
| 00-dev-setup.md | Setting up. The two trees, prerequisites, building the dev tree, everyday commands, publishing. |
| 01-architecture.md | How the game is built: states, console, level model, keybindings. |
| 02-hooking-strategy.md | How the mod attaches with (near) zero edits to game files. |
| 03-implementation-plan.md | The original six-phase plan, with outcomes. |
| 04-open-questions.md | Questions raised; see 05 for answers. |
| 05-decisions.md | Decisions made, and the D4 correction. |
Status
Phases 0–5 complete. 23 state descriptors, 5 patches, 34/34 testbed checks, history unit tests passing.
Game-file footprint: one line in main.lua. Verify at any time:
git diff --stat vanilla-0.4.2 -- . ':!accessibility' ':!.gitignore' ':!CLAUDE.md'
The three findings that shaped everything
-
The game was already keyboard-complete. All 28 states implement
keypressed, with a full rebindable-keys system. The gap was that nothing announced what was focused — so the job was narration, not reimplementation. -
The game already writes the text.
console.printis a single chokepoint for all log messages;level.getCursorMessage()describes tiles;inventoryCursorPopup.setcovers four screens. Mostly we re-route existing strings to speech rather than writing a description engine. -
Everything is a
required singleton, anddebug.getupvalueworks. Module functions can be patched in place, and file-local focus variables (selectedOption, …) are readable from outside. Hence the one-line footprint.
Architecture in one breath
main.lua calls require("accessibility").initialize(). That patches module
singletons (console.print, popupStack.add, inventoryCursorPopup.set,
modules.slider), wraps states.switch / update / keypressed / textinput,
and installs a global hotkey layer. Per-screen narration lives in
accessibility/states/<statename>.lua descriptors, read via debug.getupvalue.
A startup self-test reports which patches and probes still resolve — the canary
for a future game version moving something.