Mimic Access

Mimic Access makes Mimic Party playable with the NVDA screen reader.

About the game

Mimic Party is a small online party game. A sound plays, everyone imitates it into their microphone, then the game plays the imitations back and scores them. Between rounds a wheel of fortune hands out sabotages and bonuses. You play in rooms with friends or with strangers, using sound packs from the game or from the Steam Workshop, and you can build your own packs. A game is a few rounds long and takes about five minutes.

What you need

- Mimic Party from Steam, up to date.
- NVDA running 
- The .NET 6 runtime. The installer checks for it and offers to install it.

Manual installation

This ZIP is for people who prefer to install by hand. Everything else in this guide is the same as with the installer.

1. Install the .NET 6 runtime, 64-bit, if it is not installed: https://aka.ms/dotnet/6.0/dotnet-runtime-win-x64.exe
2. Install MelonLoader from the official page: https://github.com/LavaGang/MelonLoader/releases
   Run the MelonLoader installer, choose Mimic Party.exe in your Steam folder, and pick version 0.7.3.
3. Close the game. Copy the folders inside this ZIP (Mods, UserData and MelonLoader) into the game folder, next to Mimic Party.exe. Replace files when asked. The MelonLoader folder in the ZIP contains repaired game files that MelonLoader needs for this game; without them the mod does not load.
4. Start NVDA, then launch the game through Steam.

To update, download the new ZIP and repeat step 3. This ZIP was made for Mimic Party 0.2.3.

Starting

Launch Mimic Party The first thing you hear is "Mimic Access" with the version number. If you hear nothing, the mod did not load: see Troubleshooting.

The main keys

- F1 reads the keys for the screen you are on. Every screen has its own list, so press it whenever you are unsure.
- Up and Down move through the current screen. Enter activates. Escape goes back or closes a window.
- Left and Right switch between the columns of the bigger screens, for example the players and the packs in a lobby, and step through the actions of an item, for example Preview and Remove on a pack.
- Left bracket and Right bracket read the players one by one: name, status, and in a match their rank and points.
- S starts the game from the lobby when you are the host, and reads the scores during a match.
- M mutes and unmutes your voice chat. Your round recordings are never affected.
- F8 turns the mod off and on.

Your own sounds

Drop WAV files into UserData, MimicPartyAccessibility, cues inside the game folder to add your own cues: wheel-start, wheel-stop, target-start, target-pick, reveal, your-turn. They are never touched by updates.

Troubleshooting

- Nothing is spoken: make sure NVDA was running before the game started, and that the .NET 6 runtime is installed. Copy the ZIP contents again; that repairs missing files.
- The game freezes for half a minute right after a Steam update: MelonLoader is rebuilding its files. Wait, close the game, then get the matching update ZIP.
- For any other problem, send the file MelonLoader, Latest.log from the game folder. It contains everything the mod said and did.
To remove the mod, delete version.dll and the Mods folder from the game folder.
