I'd like to take a moment to recognize Pfanston for all his contributions to the game over the years as well as mention something he is doing right now that I find quite impressive.

Over the years Pfanston has been a particularly helpful player, back in the day when death matter and folks needed dragging you could count on Pfanston to come drag your behind to wherever it needed to go. Those days are mostly gone but it's still good to note how consistantly helpfull he has been over the years

Once we got him into the mentor society he hit the ground running. He holds a record of sorts in that he placed well over double the required amount of hours per month for his first two to three years straight as part of the Society. During that time he specialized in true new players. I saw him work to the level where it was scary how many actual new players he managed to cycle through, setting them up and moving them along.

A few years ago one of his side projects was helping out a buddy of his who had very poor eyesight. He wrote up a series of scripts that enabled his buddy to function reasonably well and get a decent level of training done. The fellow in question was an older gentleman who had lost his wife and children and was looking for a hobby to fill out some time.

When that fellow passed away a couple years ago I sort of worried about Pfanston, he had spent so much time working on the sight impaired stuff I wasn't sure if he'd be able to keep focus on things without his buddy around. Pfanston however kept fiddling with the stuff, trying to perfect all his earlier workings.

Pfanston has since stumbled onto other sight impaired players and has been able to roll out his stuff to the point that it works very well. It turns out that it worked so well that there has been an influx of sight impaired players as of late. A couple of those players liked what was here so much that they ran out and posted to bulletin boards specially for sight impaired folks to come try the game that has an element designed especially for them. At this point I think we've seen 5 to 10 sight impaired players wandering around and I think that is pretty neat.

So thumbs up to Pfanston for all the time he spends working towards other people being able to find a fun lil niche in life. A+ in my book.

Leucius

Never argue with an idiot, they bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

Thank you player of Leucius for telling us of this.

And of course Thank you Pfanston for all your work with the new comers and doing something spectacular, that is allowing someone with a sight handicap to be involved in a game that is to me entirely visual (I at least use no other sense, other then the rare epp to warn me of a few things), that just seems so wild, and also awesome.

Thanks,
Andrew

_____________________________________
Victory Over Lyras, on the 397th year and 156 days since the Victory of Lanival the Redeemer.

I'm amazed and impressed. Thank you Pfanston for all that you do.

- Felicini

very cool Pfanston, very cool indeed. Thanks for all you've done!

Blackguard Danoryiel

"Sogan udazama umbunor fau arrazoi inishatu seiremisai. (Only the fallen have nothing to despair)"

Out..freaking...standing. Good for you Pfanston. Simu..step up and give this fellow a pat on the back.

"pat on the back" = couple months free.

Madigan

Pfanston is a good guy :)

~Leilond
http://tinyurl.com/Leilond-Portrait
http://drzeal.forumotion.com Learn How to PvP!

That is truly incredible.

What kind of enhancement has he done? Does it work with different font sizes or audio or what? I am completely curious. Either way, very impressive and many kudos!


-- Player of Eyuve

Pfanston is the real deal :)

<<What kind of enhancement has he done? Does it work with different font sizes or audio or what? I am completely curious. Either way, very impressive and many kudos!>>

Most of the new blind folks are using what is called VIPMUD from GMA GAMES (http://www.gmagames.com/). Its a sound oriented version of a front end similiar in some ways to ZMUD in that its event driven not linear. I have been writing scripts and such to help them get around and do some skill training. They are unable to read the maps put out for most of us as they are graphic in nature. So I'm attempting to set up scripts to take them to all hunting areas, and in the process set up scripts that will get them out the hunting area where ever they happen to be. Thus giving them the ability to get most places in the lands. Course that means I spend most of my time in the lands, logging every room in DR, so I can work the stuff up. And I've been learning more about all the guilds than I really wanted to know, Heh I'm a ranger, not a wizard! In addition, Ive been trying to set up a file that captures alot of the training messages that folks create when they train to eliminate it so it is not cluttering their sound software, and making it easier for them to participate in groups. A very large ongoing exercise. Kinda wishing I had logs of every room in DR so I could eliminate some of the time logging and spend more time putting things together.

Ranger Pfanston and his soggy puppy.

Genie has a mapping tool that, I believe, has room descriptions for a vast majority of rooms in the game.

You may want to look into seeing how hard it might be to capture from those since the work has MAYBE already been done.

Wow. Just wow, huge kudos for this. Well done, Pfanston.

Having recently interacted with one of of these blind players. There's really nothing different. :) They might react a little slower? but there was a lot going on in the room also.

---
Inauri

Impressive. You are truly a gentle soul player of Pfanston. The world needs more people like you.

Eh, he's ok.

:P

---

Weapons for Sale:
http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Caraamon#Wares
Hunta Talna Kortok, built by Gor'Togs, for Gor'Togs
http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/caraamon/home.html
Combat Balance List:
http://tinyurl.com/DRBalance

Very amazing contribution, keep up the good work.

Now if only someone could come up with some code to help terrible roleplayers...

"Now if only someone could come up with some code to help terrible roleplayers..."

Start:
Put Quit
goto Start

-Serc

""It's a hell of a thing, killing some text. Take away all the numbers and letters and punctuation it's got, and all the numbers and letters and punctuation it's ever gonna have." -- Clint Eastwood, Unforgiven."-- Bahb.

>Now if only someone could come up with some code to help terrible roleplayers...

Aww. Just be patient with yourself. The rest of us are. ;)

===
My spathas at hand,
From the ashes I rise,
With resolve in my heart,
And fire in my eyes.