Airship Community

[Windows] On-Screen Keyboard (Accessibility) Issues

Technical Support
#1

I realize I am really late to the party, but I’ve been having trouble navigating the combat menus. I’m playing the Steam version on Windows 10, but I have a disability which limits me to only using mouse movement and the left mouse button.

To work around this limitation, I often use the Windows On-Screen Keyboard whenever I need to type specific keys. I have to do this in windowed mode, because otherwise the On-screen Keyboard would take cover too much of the game. For the most part, I can use combat by only clicking with the mouse. However, there is no clickable UI element that allows scrolling of the abilities menus (if one could be added, that would be amazing). Since that does not exist, I was trying to use the On-Screen Keyboard to navigate the battle menus using the keys, but it basically does not work at all. I also cannot use the mouse wheel, so I cannot access abilities beyond the ones initially visible on the screen.

I’m actually a game programmer, and worked at THQ at the same time as some of the developers of this game were working on the Darksiders franchise. I am not aware of any special support needing to be added in order for the Windows Onscreen Keyboard to function properly with a game. But if there’s anything I can do to help diagnose or fix the problem, please let me know!

#2

It’s been a week without any replies, so I just wanted to see if I could draw some attention to this.

#3

Hey, @light27,

I’m truly sorry to hear you’re having this issue. I tested the Microsoft On-Screen keyboard myself, and sure enough it does not function at all on Battle Chasers. I couldn’t say why for sure, but my guesses are that ReWired, our 3rd party input solution, may not work with the Windows On-Screen keyboard, we may have not set up an input source for a virtual keyboard in order to get it to work, or we implemented the game focus state in a way that’s cutting off input when focus moves away from the game window.

Unfortunately the ability select window in the combat UI screen is one of the only places where we missed fully supporting mouse navigation, and it remains a sticking point to this day. I apologize that that small neglect has made our game difficult for you to play.

I’m afraid we don’t have a good solution for you. Updating the game at this late stage is unfortunately not in the cards. Again, I’m truly very sorry, and if this situation changes or I find some way we can help you or make it up to you, I will do my best to do so.

Andres

#4

Hello Andres,

Thank you for your well-written response. I would like to do a little bit of research on this input system on my end to see if I can find out a way around this problem. As I mentioned before, I am a game programmer and I have been working for Volition for 15 years, so maybe I can come up with some clue to a workaround. And I truly regret that I didn’t bring this issue to your attention sooner I delayed in playing the game much longer than intended.

I did try moving the On-Screen Keyboard on top of the game window. It doesn’t take focus by nature, but I did this to make sure that the functionality wasn’t dependent on the mouse location being inside the window region.

Thanks,
Shawn

#5

Hello, Shawn,

If that is the case and the on screen keyboard doesn’t actually take focus, then it may be that ReWired isn’t receiving input from the On-Screen Keyboard.

According to ReWired’s documentation, ReWired only supports a single universal keyboard regardless of the number of keyboard devices attached to the machine.
http://guavaman.com/projects/rewired/docs/Controllers.html#keyboard

This leads me to wonder if the Windows On-Screen keyboard works with ReWired at all. I’m not able to find much in the documentation that either confirms or refutes this. If you do find any additional info, please do share it with us.

Andres