1. Dragon Awaken Mini Client
2. Dragon Awaken Guide

In October 2018, Nuance announced that it has discontinued Dragon Professional Individual for Mac and will support it for only 90 days from activation in the US or 180 days in the rest of the world. The continuous speech-to-text software was widely considered to be the gold standard for speech recognition, and Nuance continues to develop and sell the Windows versions of Dragon Home, Dragon Professional Individual, and various profession-specific solutions.

Dragon Awaken Mini Client

This move is a blow to professional users—such as doctors, lawyers, and law enforcement—who depended on Dragon for dictating to their Macs, but the community most significantly affected are those who can control their Macs only with their voices.

What about Apple’s built-in accessibility solutions? macOS does support voice dictation, although my experience is that it’s not even as good as dictation in iOS, much less Dragon Professional Individual. Some level of voice control of the Mac is also available via Dictation Commands, but again, it’s not as powerful as what was available from Dragon Professional Individual.

TidBITS reader Todd Scheresky is a software engineer who relies on Dragon Professional Individual for his work because he’s a quadriplegic and has no use of his arms. He has suggested several ways that Apple needs to improve macOS speech recognition to make it a viable alternative to Dragon Professional Individual:

• Support for user-added custom words: Every profession has its own terminology and jargon, which is part of why there are legal, medical, and law enforcement versions of Dragon for Windows. Scheresky isn’t asking Apple to provide such custom vocabularies, but he needs to be able to add custom words to the vocabulary to carry out his work.
• Support for speaker-dependent continuous speech recognition: Currently, macOS’s speech recognition is speaker-independent, which means that it works pretty well for everyone. But Scheresky believes it needs to become speaker-dependent, so it can learn from your corrections to improve recognition accuracy. Also, Apple’s speech recognition isn’t continuous—it works for only a few minutes before stopping and needing to be reinvoked.
• Support for cursor positioning and mouse button events: Although Scheresky acknowledges that macOS’s Dictation Commands are pretty good and provide decent support for text cursor positioning, macOS has nothing like Nuance’s MouseGrid, which divides the screen into a 3-by-3 grid and enables the user to zoom in to a grid coordinate, then displaying another 3-by-3 grid to continue zooming. Nor does Apple have anything like Nuance’s mouse commands for moving and clicking the mouse pointer.

When Scheresky complained to Apple’s accessibility team about macOS’s limitations, they suggested the Switch Control feature, which enables users to move the pointer (along with other actions) by clicking a switch. He talks about this in a video.

Unfortunately, although Switch Control would let Scheresky control a Mac using a sip-and-puff switch or a head switch, such solutions would be both far slower than voice and a literal pain in the neck. There are some better alternatives for mouse pointer positioning:

• Dedicated software, in the form of a $35 app called iTracker.
• An off-the-shelf hack using Keyboard Maestro and Automator.
• An expensive head-mounted pointing device, although the SmartNav is $600 and the HeadMouse Nano and TrackerPro are both about $1000. It’s also not clear how well they interface with current versions of macOS.

For Dragon Essence, you need a Hoe, which you'll get one free to start, and you can get more from the Brave shop. You can get 20 per day, for 5 seals each. Alternatively, you can use 200 amber for an advanced attempt. You'll get either an elemental gem, or shards to synth one.

Regardless, if Apple enhanced macOS’s voice recognition in the ways Scheresky suggests, it would become significantly more useful and would give users with physical limitations significantly more control over their Macs… and their lives. If you’d like to help, Scheresky suggests submitting feature request feedback to Apple with text along the following lines (feel free to copy and paste it):

Because Nuance has discontinued Dragon Professional Individual for Mac, it is becoming difficult for disabled users to use the Mac. Please enhance macOS speech recognition to support user-added custom words, speaker-dependent continuous speech recognition that learns from user corrections to improve accuracy, and cursor positioning and mouse button events.

While using: Choose whether your Mac performs the action only when you're using a particular app. Perform: Choose the action to perform. You can open a Finder item, open a URL, paste text, paste data from the clipboard, press a keyboard shortcut, select a menu item, or run an Automator workflow. Use the checkboxes to turn commands on or off. Download and Install Awakening of Dragon on Your Favorite PC (Windows) or Mac for Free Save Arcus If you are looking for an MMORPG with a rich fantasy background, intricate storytelling, mythical creatures, and quests that have your character hack & slash through hordes of enemies, (AOD) Awakening of Dragon for PC and Mobile might be worth trying. Use Bootcamp, which comes with Mac OS X. Besides, any given game will run quicker and more efficiently in Windows than in Mac OS X, on the same hardware. The rendering and graphics processing in Mac OS X is clunkier and slower than Windows. Running the game in Windows on Bootcamp is a better option even if there was a Mac native version. Dragon Awaken is a browser MMORPG that was created in the spirit known from League of Angels and has many borrowings from other titles. However, contrary to appearances, this title boasts a unique feature that distinguishes it from similar titles.

Thank you for your consideration!

Thanks for encouraging Apple to bring macOS’s accessibility features up to the level necessary to provide an alternative to Dragon Professional Individual for Mac. Such improvements will help both those who face physical challenges to using the Mac and those for whom dictation is a professional necessity.

Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening is the expansion for the role-playing video gameDragon Age: Origins. Awakening adds a new campaign that takes place during the aftermath of Dragon Age: Origins. The game features new class specializations and skills for the player to develop. Awakening was released for Microsoft Windows, OS X, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on March 16, 2010, in North America, March 18 in Europe, and March 19 in the United Kingdom.^[1] It was released for the Mac on August 31, 2010.^[2]

Gameplay[edit]

The player has the option to either import their character from the main game or start over as a Warden from Orlais, starting a new origin story. If a new character is created, the story from the main game is set to a default ending. If the character is imported, the story in Awakening will continue from that determined by the player in Origins and the character will retain their attributes, skills, spells etc. as well as certain equipment. The expansion continues the story, including five new recruitable party members and Oghren from Dragon Age: Origins, new spells and abilities, a raise in the level cap, new enemies such as the Inferno Golem and the Queen of the Blackmarsh, and new items.^[3] There are no romances available.^[4]

Synopsis[edit]

Plot[edit]

Set six months after the events of Dragon Age: Origins in the land of Amaranthine, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening places the player in the role of a Grey Warden trying to rebuild the order while also dealing with political matters as the Arl of Amaranthine.

Named the Warden Commander, the player travels to Vigil's Keep to assume command of the Grey Wardens there. However, the keep is discovered to have been assaulted by Darkspawn, and something amiss is noticed as such an organized attack would have taken an intelligent leader to direct, something thought impossible without the presence of an Archdemon. The player is able to clear the keep with the aid of Mhairi, an able female warrior and prospective Grey Warden, and two others: Anders, an apostate mage who seeks refuge away from the Tower of Magi, and Oghren, a Dwarven berserker returning from Dragon Age: Origins. A new, talking Darkspawn, a Disciple, is discovered to have been the leader of the enemy forces and is defeated. With the keep secured, the player then sets forth on a journey to help garner support for the Grey Wardens and new recruits to join the order's ranks while also looking for clues as to solve the mystery of the intelligent Darkspawn. Mhairi, Anders and Oghren all undergo the Joining - Mhairi dies while the other two survive.

Throughout the game, the player journeys to several locations and recruits party members who may undergo the Joining ritual to become Grey Wardens. These members are: Nathaniel Howe, an assassin and son of Arl Rendon Howe from Origins; Velanna, a Dalish Mage exiled from her clan; Sigrun, a dwarf and member of the Legion of the Dead; and Justice, a spirit trapped in the body of a deceased Grey Warden, Along his or her travels, the player meets the 'Architect', a strange darkspawn figure whose intentions remain unclear until the end of the game, and learns about the 'Mother', who is a sentient broodmother, a breed of darkspawn capable of spawning thousands of other darkspawn.

After recruiting all available party members, the player learns of an oncoming war, as Darkspawn advance towards the city of Amaranthine. The player travels to the city with a small band of allies, but soon learns of another Darkspawn force that is headed for Vigil's Keep. Depending on his or her decisions, the player may either order Amaranthine to be burned down after deeming it too late to be saved, causing all the Darkspawn and civilians inside to die, and head back to the Keep, or stay and fight to rid Amaranthine of Darkspawn forces, thus forcing Vigil's Keep to be on its own against the Darkspawn attack there.

Regardless of his or her choice, the player aids in the destruction of the enemy forces and then travels to Drake's Fall, where the 'Mother' is presumed to be residing. The player meets the 'Architect' once again, and learns of his intention to free the Darkspawn from the impulse to commence a Blight and annihilate the corrupted 'Mother.' The player may either ally with the 'Architect' or kill him. He or she then locates the 'Mother', where he or she learns of the ongoing antagonism between the 'Architect' and the 'Mother' and finds out that the 'Architect' had been the one who had awakened the archdemon from the main game after a failed experiment. Ultimately, the player kills the 'Mother.'

After the Mother is defeated a slideshow detailing the outcomes of the player's choices will be shown, which includes the states of Vigil's Keep and Amaranthine, the fates of each of the companions, and the ultimate fate of the Warden Commander.

Dragon Awaken Guide

Reception[edit]

Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening received mostly positive reviews. It received a score of 8.0 out of 10 from GameSpot, complimented for its combat and questing but criticized for its 'disappointing story' and less memorable characters.^[8]IGN gave the expansion a score of 8.5 out of 10 stating that the game has 'an epic story that has loads of surprises and lots of momentum, but too bad it doesn't feel that good compared to the original.'^[9]

References[edit]

1. ^ ^ab'Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening - Valenna Trailer - New character introduced'.
2. ^'TransGaming brings the Bioware epic Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening Expansion Pack to Mac'. Archived from the original on 2010-09-20.
3. ^'Dragon Age Origins — Awakening'. Archived from the original on 2010-01-14.
4. ^'Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening FAQ'. BioWare. Retrieved 2011-06-03.
5. ^'Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening for PC Reviews'. Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 2018-12-12.
6. ^'Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening for PlayStation 3 Reviews'. Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 2018-12-12.
7. ^'Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening for Xbox 360 Reviews'. Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 2018-12-12.
8. ^ ^abVanOrd, Kevin (2010-03-16). 'Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening Review'. GameSpot. Archived from the original on 2010-03-14. Retrieved 2010-03-17.
9. ^ ^abButts, Steve (2010-03-16). 'Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening Review'. IGN. Retrieved 2010-03-17.

External links[edit]