v0.8.8

[0.8.8-beta] — 2026-09-04

Reachability read-outs on the exploration cursor, conversations that no longer skip themselves, and an installer that explains a missing C++ runtime.

Added

• Walk-there checks on the exploration cursor — P turns on a reachability read-out for the grid cursor. Each tile then also says whether the selected ranger could get there: "reachable", "no route", "nothing walkable nearby", "behind Cell Door, closed, locked, at 42, 17" when a shut door is what cut the route, or "through Sewer Grate, at 120, 88" when the thing is in a part of the level you travel to rather than walk to — the coordinates are the door's own tile, so you can send the cursor straight to it. Reaching means being able to walk up to the tile within the game's own interact range, so a container or corpse you can stand beside counts as reachable even though its own tile is not walkable. Line of sight already told you whether you could see a spot; this tells you whether you can reach it, which on the far side of a closed door is a different answer. It runs the same navmesh tests the game runs on a move click, so the verdict matches what pressing ] would do. Also in the Shift+S settings menu.

Fixed

• Pressing Enter to advance a conversation no longer skips a part of it. Two separate faults were doing this. The game often gates a whole group of lines behind a single "click to continue" and emits them a frame apart; each new line was cancelling the previous one's pending read, so every line of the group except the last went unspoken. Reads are now queued and delivered in order. Separately, Enter is bound to the game's "Attack Current Target" button, whose release the game treats as a click to continue — so one tap advanced twice, the second advance landing on the next line the instant it appeared and cutting off its voiceover. The release of an Enter press the mod has already acted on is now claimed rather than left for the game.
• Conversation lines the game delivers as barks are now read out. Dramas stage multi-speaker exchanges with barks rather than ordinary dialogue — asking Howdy at the Rail Nomad camp about the Desert Rangers a second time sets off an argument between him and Jill Yates — and those lines take a different route out of the game that the mod was filtering as a duplicate, so the whole exchange passed in silence. While one is playing the mod no longer calls it "loading"; Enter skips the current line instead of being swallowed.
• Attacking with a grenade or RPG from an enemy's target menu no longer reads "unavailable". The game rejects area weapons on any per-target attack, so that entry could never fire; it now opens tile aiming with the blast already centred on that enemy, and announces who the throw would catch — including yourself — before you commit, rather than only at the confirm step. Precision strikes, which no area weapon can use, are no longer listed there.
• The installer now checks for the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2022 x64 runtime and says so when it is absent. MelonLoader's version.dll and the speech bridge (Tolk.dll, nvdaControllerClient64.dll) are MSVC-built natives that link the redistributable CRT; without it MelonLoader never loads, the game starts silently unmodded, and nothing in the log explains why. All three required DLLs are checked by name — a machine carrying only the 2015 package has two of the three and still fails — and the warning names the download. It warns rather than blocks: the files are still laid down, and the runtime is only needed before the next launch. The installer itself now links the CRT statically, so it still runs on the machine that needs the diagnosis.
• installer.exe --check > log.txt no longer writes an empty file and prints to the screen instead. Attaching a console repointed the standard handles away from the redirect; the inherited handles are now restored afterwards.

v0.8.7

[0.8.7-beta] — 2026-08-01

Braille output, Ranger Lockers, dismissing companions, throwable weapons in free aim, and a batch of inventory and character-sheet fixes.

Added

• Braille output — a new Output mode setting in the Shift+S menu sends everything the mod says to a Braille display as well as, or instead of, speech (Speech / Speech and Braille / Braille only). Braille goes out through Tolk alongside the existing screen-reader support and falls back to speech if the display can't take it. The startup log now reports whether a Braille display was found.
• Conversation give-item screen — the screen an NPC opens when they want something handed over is now readable and navigable.
• Ranger Locker deposits — a Ranger Locker is the one container in the game that takes items back, and its deposit half was unreachable. Your ranger's backpack now sits at one end of the usual Left/Right container cycle, so Enter stores from the backpack and still takes from the locker. The announcement says which of the two happened. Refusals that vanilla showed silently — items flagged as someone else's property, a party switch blocked during combat — are now spoken.
• Dismissing party members — only companions can be dismissed, and neither of the game's two routes was usable. Shift+D on the character screen now runs the game's own dismiss action, and every reason it would be unavailable (not a companion, in combat, unconscious, on the world map) is spoken instead of shown. The "would like to join your party" screen, which doubles as the roster when the party is full, gets a proper named list with each follower's rogue chance — a number vanilla only exposes through a mouse hover — plus I for details and C for party space.
• Large steps for sliders and steppers — Shift+arrow and Ctrl+arrow move a slider 10% and 25% of its range, and an attribute or skill 5 and 10 points, instead of one notch or one point per press. Works with the plus/minus and numpad keys too. Reaching either end of a slider is announced rather than repeating the same number.
• Throwable and area weapons in free aim — grenades and RPGs could not be fired from the free-aim cursor at all; with one equipped the action was hidden outright. Both cursors now aim them, and the tile read-out previews who is inside the blast using the same call that applies the damage. A blast that would catch a party member, a friendly NPC, or the thrower warns and asks for a second Enter.

Fixed

• Free aim now hits shootable objects instead of reporting "No target on this tile" — props often put the collider on a child object, which the old lookup missed. Indestructible cover warns and asks for a second Enter rather than aborting, so AP is never spent without you hearing it would be wasted. (This was listed under 0.8.6 in error; it landed after that release was cut.)
• Perk requirements on the character sheet were checked against the party leader instead of the ranger whose sheet is open, so on anyone else every skill-gated perk read "requirements not met" — Bear with Assault Rifles 6 was told Full Metal Jacket, which needs 4, was unavailable. Trait-driven stat bonuses and base hit/crit in the stat details browser had the same fault.
• The inventory read-out now refreshes on any change, not just ones the mod made. A quest item granted by a script, a consumable used elsewhere, ammo spent, auto-stacking, and mouse drags mixed with keyboard navigation could all leave it describing items that were no longer there. The cursor now follows the focused item rather than its position, and says so once if that item disappears.
• Backing a stackable item out of a trade no longer leaves a permanent duplicate stack in the ranger's inventory.
• "Use item" on a creature that accepts one (the flipped tortoise at Rail Nomad) was dropped silently. Plain Interact no longer auto-uses a held item on an object that offers an interaction of its own — which was burying that tortoise alive, and firing the shovel for Brute Force and Animal Whisperer too.
• The buried cache the Rail Nomad tortoise reveals was missing from the scanner in every reveal mode, because the script that unhides it leaves the object's hidden flag stale. Hidden state is now read from the same field the game's own click test uses.

v0.8.6

Wasteland 2 Accessibility Mod v0.8.6 (beta prerelease)

Persistent location labels, a universal Drop action, and a batch of fixes across the world map, scanner, combat, and settings.

Added

• Location labels (N) — name the cursor's tile so you can recognise a place on a later visit (the teleporting door among five identical "Door"s). Named places cycle in the scanner with distance and direction, and the tile read-out speaks the label first. Labels are keyed to a tile and stored in UserData, so they persist across saves and sessions.
• Drop for every backpack item — the inventory context menu now offers Drop for any carried item, not just books. Equipped gear and quest-critical (no-drop) items are left out.

Fixed

• Jumping to a scanner location with Home on the world map no longer locks the cursor — POI targets sat below the walkable navmesh, so the arrows reported "Blocked" in every direction. The jump now snaps onto the navmesh and the arrows move normally.
• The Shift+S settings hotkey no longer goes dead for the rest of the session after a conversation.
• Disarmed land mines and tripwires drop out of the exploration scanner, so the live threats are easier to pick out.
• Free-aiming at destructible cover now hits the cover instead of falling through to a ground miss; static, indestructible cover is announced instead of silently wasting the shot.

Changed

• The Shift+S settings menu gains a Clear all location labels action after the sound glossary. It reports how many labels are saved and asks you to confirm (Y to delete, any other key to keep) before removing them from every area.
• Documentation now headlines the one-download installer as the primary install method, with the manual MelonLoader steps kept as a fallback.

v0.8.5

Wasteland 2 Accessibility Mod v0.8.5 (beta prerelease).

0.8.1 Beta

Cover awareness, plus a batch of exploration and combat fixes.

Added

• Cover scanner category — the exploration scanner and the combat cursor can now cycle nearby cover positions (short / tall), each with distance and direction. Exploration lists visible cover around the party; combat lists cover within 50 tiles of the acting ranger. Home jumps the cursor to the selected cover.
• Readable books get the standard item menu — pressing Enter on a book now opens the usual submenu (Read, Flag as Junk, Drop, Give to) instead of opening the book directly, so books can be dropped or handed to another ranger. Quest-critical (no-drop) books stay protected.

Fixed

• Free-aiming at a destructible piece of cover now sends the shot at the cover instead of missing at the ground — for both the combat and exploration cursors.
• The "cursor stops at walls" option no longer makes containers, doors, and other interactables that sit on obstacle tiles unreachable.
• The game-over screen's options are now read and selectable; the party-member death screen now closes with Enter as well as Escape.
• Visible, interactable NPCs are no longer hidden from the exploration scanner.

Install

Extract into the game's Build folder (mirrors that layout): the mod DLL goes to Mods\, with Tolk.dll and nvdaControllerClient64.dll next to the game exe. Requires MelonLoader 0.5.7.

0.8.0 Beta

Exploration awareness update: sound cues, a nearby scan, movement notifications, a cursor option, and conversation fixes.

Added

• Scanner category sounds — a short cue plays when a new item enters the exploration scanner, with a distinct sound per category (characters, containers, objects, exits, examine, loot, and a generic cue for miscellaneous). Party members get no cue. Toggle in settings (Shift+S).
• Sound glossary — the last item in the Shift+S settings menu opens a preview browser: arrow through each scanner sound to hear it and what it means.
• Nearby scan (L) — lists every scanner-visible item within a radius of the grid cursor, nearest first, each with its direction. Comma/period shrink and grow the radius.
• Party stopped notification — announces when the party finishes an ordered move and comes to rest, in exploration and on the world map. Ungrouped members that stop are named individually. Toggle in settings.
• Cursor stops at walls (setting) — optionally confine the exploration grid cursor to walkable ground.
• The NVDA controller client (nvdaControllerClient64.dll) is now bundled in the archive, so NVDA users get speech without fetching it separately.

Fixed

• Cutscene-driven conversations (e.g. the radio-tower toll shakedown) were unreadable and unnavigable — dialogue options now read and arrow-key navigation works during them.
• Multi-step dialogue no longer says "Loading, please wait" while waiting for the player to advance; arrows say "Press Enter to continue" and Enter advances the line.
• Attribute debuff sources are announced reliably on the character sheet.

Install

Extract into your Wasteland 2 "Build" folder (next to WL2.exe) after MelonLoader 0.5.7 is installed: the mod DLL lands in Mods, and Tolk.dll + nvdaControllerClient64.dll land next to WL2.exe. See README.md for full steps.

0.7.5 Beta

Follow-up to the first public beta: a new settings/help layer, richer announcements, and a batch of fixes from beta feedback.

Installing

Extract the archive into your Wasteland 2 Build folder after MelonLoader 0.5.7 is installed: Wasteland2AccessibilityMod.dll goes in Mods\, Tolk.dll sits next to WL2.exe. See the bundled README for full steps and requirements.

Added

• Accessibility settings menu (Shift+S) — a modal, navigable on/off list of every mod setting, available anywhere.
• Help key (Shift+/) — reads back the controls for the current screen or cursor, with per-context text. Accepts the numpad slash too.
• Global help/settings hotkeys that work across contexts.
• Screen-reader support for the weapon field-strip result popup.
• A loading cue during the conversation pre-input dead zone.

Changed

• Enriched buff/debuff and stat announcements in the character screen.
• Inventory and shop item-info browsers now share one full item-info block.
• Grace cap for voiced-dialogue lines that are pending but never play.
• Robustness pass: surface errors, de-duplicate announcements, quiet routine logging.
• Docs: Tolk.dll now bundled; controls consolidated; hotkey/version references corrected.

Fixed

• Menu input lag from per-frame scene scans (now cached).
• Tamed-animal conversation options were not navigable.
• Main-menu version announcement clobbered by focus.
• Funeral intro now reads the NPC description and click-to-continue prompt.
• Pokable door teleporters revealed regardless of destination fog.
• Invisible scripting triggers filtered from interactable announcements and on-tile lookups.
• Menu wrap cues, Home/End coverage, and start-up and scanner behavior.

v0.7.0 Beta

First public beta of the Wasteland 2 Director's Cut Accessibility Mod — a screen-reader and keyboard accessibility mod for blind and low-vision players.

This package now bundles Tolk.dll, so you no longer have to source the screen-reader bridge yourself.

Requirements

• MelonLoader 0.5.7 Open-Beta — do not use 0.6.x or newer; they crash with this game.

Installation

1. Install MelonLoader 0.5.7 (Open-Beta) into your Wasteland 2 Director's Cut folder (the one containing WL2.exe).
2. Extract the zip. It mirrors the game's Build folder layout, so you can drop its contents straight into your Build directory, or place them manually:
   • Mods\Wasteland2AccessibilityMod.dll → <game>\Mods\
   • Tolk.dll → next to WL2.exe (bundled — included in this zip)
3. NVDA users only: also place nvdaControllerClient64.dll next to WL2.exe. It is not bundled — grab it from a Tolk release. Without it, NVDA falls back to SAPI speech.
4. Start your screen reader (NVDA, JAWS, or SAPI), then launch the game.

See README.md (included in the package) for full controls, configuration, and troubleshooting.