Partially Approved Please provide sound of all pokemon's moves

[karankumargupta]

Please provide sound of all pokemon's move so it become more fun spatialy for visually challenged

 

[DaWoblefet]

I think this would be a really good feature, especially for folks with vision issues like you said. I also think it has a few problems you'd have to consider.

• Our animations aren't the same as cartridge. As a result, if we took the animation noises directly, it wouldn't line up, and the sound effects of moves would continue longer than the animation on Showdown.
  • I'm not sure if anyone has datamined move effect sounds. It's probably possible, but would require some effort.
  • Since we probably can't use cartridge sounds, that means someone would have to make them.
• Adding sounds to every move would increase the amount of data sent when loading Showdown by a lot, potentially increasing the loading time for people connecting with poor internet or a phone by a lot.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Since we probably can't use cartridge sounds, that means someone would have to make them.

Could also just use stock sound effects.

 

[Bufft Buffet]

I feel like it would make more sense if they added sounds to stuff such as status affects, normal hits, weather, and big hits such as z-moves or max moves would really be all we need to add a little more life to battles.
A sound for when you are hovering over a button would also be pretty nice for people who are visually challenged.

 

[DaemonChop]

I think another idea that could help the visually impaired is a narrator, a Minecraft-style text to speech voice that could read out what happens during a battle - with some modification, of course, because a lot of text can appear on screen. I'm not sure how difficult this could be to implement, but I think it could be very helpful.

 

[Zarel]

I think another idea that could help the visually impaired is a narrator, a Minecraft-style text to speech voice that could read out what happens during a battle - with some modification, of course, because a lot of text can appear on screen. I'm not sure how difficult this could be to implement, but I think it could be very helpful.

We already support screen readers, which do this for blind people. If you are visually impaired, I suggest you use one, like NVDA:

https://www.nvaccess.org/

 

[Zarel]

As for sound effects, I like that idea. We can use the sound effects from the games. I don't want to use too many of them, though, for bandwidth reasons. But if we can find like ten clips that can be repurposed for a variety of different moves, it would probably be a big improvement.

 

[alaserdolphin]

As for sound effects, I like that idea. We can use the sound effects from the games. I don't want to use too many of them, though, for bandwidth reasons. But if we can find like ten clips that can be repurposed for a variety of different moves, it would probably be a big improvement.

Maybe have sounds but have them off by default? Just make it one of the options in the drop-down settings menu?

I'm not very familiar with how compatible PS is with common visual-aid tools, so I can't really speak there too confidently, but I do have some people I know that could potentially be of help there.

That said, I've worked a lot with folks who suffer from various disabilities and I have a good bit of general background - I believe one potential tradeoff is make a labeled button (with alt-text and all) on the top bar that enables/disables "Accessibility Mode".

I think the best way to handle server-load issues is just by simplifying sprites/models under this mode. The sounds would be active, but as a result, you could probably afford to lower visual fidelity. There are definitely people who are not completely blind but still need the aid, so maybe make it a slider? One direction lowers the audio quality and the other the visual quality? I can help with the details here from a coding perspective too.

I cannot stress enough that a huge help for some people that's (usually) very simple to implement is options for mono/stereo. I think just a checkbox under an "Accessibility Menu" would do the trick.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this can get more and more complex/accommodating to help larger and larger groups of people, but as far as initial implementation goes, I think this could be a good start!

Another thing that wouldn't be necessary but could be a big help is recording analytics on how much the mode is used, which settings are used most often, etc. Depending on how that works, you might be able to just fine-tune the presented options so that they're more useful steps, etc.