Hi all,

So what are these games, and why should I play them?

X3: Terran Conflict, and its expansion/DLC Albion Prelude are giant, sandbox space sims available on Steam and Good Old Games. They're kind of like souped-up, elaborate versions of the Smugglers games, only with much more going on under the hood and requiring the use of NVDA OCR to play. They normally would be inaccessible for us, except for the fact both feature a lot of spoken audio, a very robust autopilot system, and scripting.

Note: FOr ease of maintenance, my scripts primarily target Albion Prelude first of all. THis doesn't really matter except in the area of hotkeys, which are a little harder to assign in Terran COnflict.

The basic premise of the game is probably familiar, you start in a small, inadequate ship and can gradually work your way up to larger and more powerful ones with a combination of trade, combat, and doing missions for any of several factions. What distinguishes the X series from similar titles is its depth, and the emphasis on a dynamic economy you can fully participate in. You can end up owning not just ships, but space stations and factories and whole fleets, which you can use to fight for you, become rich, and potentially even conquer entire sections of the universe, depending on the mods you have installed.

The reason I mention these games here is largely their modibility. You can write scripts to do pretty much anything, automate almost any task, print out information from the game to log files, and a lot of other things. I'm working on making a series of accessibility modifications to help with certain sections which aren't as nice as they could be with OCR alone.

Even without these modifications, you can do a lot purely by hand. THere are keyboard controls for almost everything, ranging from hotkeys to menus, and you can easily control multiple ships by giving them orders remotely, a feature rather unique to this series. There are software upgrades your character can buy for his ships which automate everything from trading to combat and exploration.

If there is a flaw in the games, it's that the audio isn't quite as complete as I wish it were. Space combat is a bit opaque, as there are lots of explosions but it isn't always clear what's going on. There are also inaccessible symbols used for missions and such, which I will hopefully be able to address at a future date.

FOr anyone interested, here is a stream I did in January 2019, outlining how I do things and what's still problematic. I note that there are a lot of updates since then, and things have become easier all around. If I can find the time, another, more up-to-date stream or recording will be forthcoming.

Below are some links to resources i've either created or discovered:

X Universe Plugin Manager: DOwnload this, as you'll need it for the scripts below.

X3 Accessibility Scripts, V 0.40: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/aksyo70hn05p … 1Dnfa?dl=0 DOwnload these scripts and copy the .pck files to the proper scripts folder. Install the plugin Manager, run it, and point it to your X3 folder. Finally, set the save game mode to "modified," and you should find a trade log whenever you dock at a station, in log file 0150 in the DOcuments\Egosoft\X3TC or x3AP folder.

Note: already pre-installed in the Albien prelude add-on. Move to COordinates Mod, V1.00: https://www.dropbox.com/s/z0khysehniz2n … 9.spk?dl=1 Download this, install it using the plugin manager, and buy some navigation software for your ships. You will be able to ask the autopilot to move to specific coordinates, which is very handy in unknown sectors.

X3 TC Stats Compendium: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3p44xmfgyku50 … xlsm?dl=1. This file contains a bunch of statistics about ships, sectors, missiles, and a ton of other information. It's got spoilers in some parts, but is hopefully useful to someone.

X3 AP Keyboard Defaults, compiled by Malechai: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5siuu8shglqgo … docx?dl=0. This is useful for getting oriented to the Controls menu, which is quite complicated, but needs to be used to assign at least one accessibility hotkey.

More info wil be posted as I find it or write scripts for it.