Post series: Vocola - Voice Command Language

Vocola: Part 4 — Raid Healing and Communication

Phaelia in Hands-Free 6 Comments
  1. Vocola: Part 1 – The Basics
  2. Vocola: Part 2 – Group Healing, Abilities, and Multiple Characters
  3. Vocola: Part 3 — Movement, Mouse, and Camera
  4. Vocola: Part 4 — Raid Healing and Communication
Quick Links

In Part 2: Healing, Abilities, and Multiple Characters, I gave three examples of how you can heal a group without the use of your hands:

  1. Referencing group members by name or alias (difficult when players names’ include non-standard characters)
  2. Mouseover healing, cascading to target-healing, cascading to self-healing
  3. Referencing group members by numerical index (1-4)
first-aid-sign

Within a raid environment, approaches 1 and 2 serve reasonably well. The numerical index system used in a group can get a little tricky, though. Because, while it’s possible for you to heal the thirty-second member of your raid by saying, Mend 32 to issue the /use [raid32] Swiftmend command, it’s difficult and kludgy to identify raid members visually (it would also likely conflict with your group-healing macro, depending on where your group falls within the raid). But by leveraging any one of the many grid-style raid addons, it’s possible to solve both of these issues.

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Vocola: Part 3 — Movement, Mouse, and Camera

Phaelia in Hands-Free 4 Comments

This is post 3 of 4 in the series “Vocola - Voice Command Language”

  1. Vocola: Part 1 – The Basics
  2. Vocola: Part 2 – Group Healing, Abilities, and Multiple Characters
  3. Vocola: Part 3 — Movement, Mouse, and Camera
  4. Vocola: Part 4 — Raid Healing and Communication

Quick Links

It was obvious pretty early on when setting up my configuration that spellcasting was not going to be my biggest problem; movement was. Because while using abilities and casting spells, opening and closing interface panels, and even targeting other players are very binary actions, it is infeasible to play without the analog mouselook feature (I tried). I have had good luck using a SmartNav: EG head tracker at work, an assistive device I had purchased out-of-pocket to reduce my use of the mouse as a software developer. This camera tracks the movement of a small, reflective silver dot that you wear somewhere on the top of your head. That movement is then translated into mouse movement on-screen. Once I was certain of its efficacy, I requested that my work buy one for my use at the office so that I could take the one I had purchased home.

To hopefully pique your interest, I have created a short video of me demonstrating all of the techniques in this post:

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Continue reading “Vocola: Part 3 — Movement, Mouse, and Camera”… 4 Comments

Vocola: Part 2 – Group Healing, Abilities, and Multiple Characters

Phaelia in Hands-Free 2 Comments

This is post 2 of 4 in the series “Vocola - Voice Command Language”

  1. Vocola: Part 1 – The Basics
  2. Vocola: Part 2 – Group Healing, Abilities, and Multiple Characters
  3. Vocola: Part 3 — Movement, Mouse, and Camera
  4. Vocola: Part 4 — Raid Healing and Communication

Quick Links

In Part I of the Vocola series, I demonstrated several syntax features useful for creating flexible macros: alternative words, optional words, and variables. In a couple of examples, we looked at spellcasting macros that, while effective, would be difficult to maintain. In this post, I’m going to show you my latest iteration of how I am able to manage my many different abilities with minimal effort.

The key to the system I recently settled upon is recognizing that you have 3 distinct types of abilities:

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Continue reading “Vocola: Part 2 – Group Healing, Abilities, and Multiple Characters”… 2 Comments

Vocola: Part 1 – The Basics

Phaelia in Hands-Free 3 Comments

This is post 1 of 4 in the series “Vocola - Voice Command Language”

  1. Vocola: Part 1 – The Basics
  2. Vocola: Part 2 – Group Healing, Abilities, and Multiple Characters
  3. Vocola: Part 3 — Movement, Mouse, and Camera
  4. Vocola: Part 4 — Raid Healing and Communication

Quick Links

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is impressive software. It’s recognition accuracy is excellent. However, to unlock its full potential with macros and complex commands, you would have to purchase the Professional version for around $500, putting it well outside of the reach of many gamers. Thankfully, third-party software called Vocola can be used to replace — and in some cases, improve upon — the functionality missing from the Home and Premium versions of DNS.

Written by Rick Mohr, Vocola is available in two different versions: Vocola 2 works with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, while Vocola 3 was developed for Windows Speech Recognition. The syntax is slightly different between the two, but there is a primer of the differences available. (In most cases, you can use the same commands in either, but I will endeavor to point out the exceptions.)

Download and installation instructions: Vocola 2 | Vocola 3.

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Continue reading “Vocola: Part 1 – The Basics”… 3 Comments