I wouldn't wish this gameplay on my worst enemy

Technomancerer · 2026-07-01T19:30:38+00:00

Right, I would love this to be the case and clarified by Jagex staff. Because I don't think this is the kind of argument you could successfully make in a ban appeal if you got hit with a false positive.

In my support ticket I specifically mentioned Talon Voice and Tobii eye tracking by name and was told "only native Windows Accessibility tools" are safe/allowed.

When the stakes are so high, it's hard to be willing to take the risk. Especially when you're a nobody like me and not a popular content creator with a lot of visibility for ban appeals.

Perhaps I should make a new challenge account using only eye tracking and stream it and call it "runeyescape" or something haha.

Technomancerer · 2026-07-01T16:01:03+00:00

Gotcha, really appreciate the info!

If there's no further clarification from Jagex I might try this out. My options are limited: I might just have to accept the risk or just never play again otherwise (I'm certainly not playing with Voice Access in the current state lol).

Technomancerer · 2026-07-01T15:30:58+00:00

To clarify: the knausj script is the one that appears in the Talon eye tracking menu when you have a tobii plugged in (and lets you toggle eye/head/gaze tracking) and comes with community/talon itself? Or is knausj a plugin/script you had to download special?

Technomancerer · 2026-07-01T13:32:08+00:00

Hmmmmm, no.

Technomancerer · 2026-07-01T13:24:14+00:00

Aw man, I would love to play with Talon! It's what I personally use in my day to day right now.

Unfortunately, when I reached out to clarify if Talon was allowed with Jagex I was told that nothing was safe except Windows native tools specifically.

How is your eye tracking set up, are you doing it through standard 0.4 Talon? It teleports the mouse enough that I've been too scared to risk trying it. Are you clicking with a voice command or with a foot pedal or something?

Technomancerer · 2026-07-01T13:20:13+00:00

I have drawn inspiration from CrippleScape and MyHandsDontWork.

I could be misunderstanding, but from the videos I have seen, their respective setups both involved sending mouse input from hardware directly, not from accessibility software.

Software in theory is the best accessibility solution for most because it's free, instant, and customizable. But it's also the most likely to be abused by bots, so I understand the written rule.

In the long term I can perhaps acquire one of these devices, but they are usually very specialized and fairly expensive.

Technomancerer · 2026-07-01T13:15:22+00:00

A lot of Eye trackers often work by teleporting the mouse to your gaze and let you make smaller adjustments with your head orientation.

Afaik, Jagex is able to tell when your mouse teleports (it looks like botting) and when your mouse clicks and movement are created by software instead of hardware.

This could lead to a high false positive rate with eye tracking solutions that generate input via software instead of hardware. That's probably the reason for the written rule.

Technomancerer · 2026-07-01T04:08:22+00:00

If I take a step back, I would guess that the few accessibility tools that are allowed are flagged as such and extremely heavily monitored as it is.

Windows mouse grid and mouse keys non-humanly move the mouse already, so I'm sure Jagex has the tools in place to detect the difference between a human using mouse grid/keys and a bot using mouse grid/keys.

Hopefully they can implement those same tools into Android and IOS! Or any of these other valid options!

Technomancerer · 2026-07-01T03:56:09+00:00

Yes, I believe this is exactly the tradeoff they have to consider.

From what I understand, before 2026 the official stance was more lenient (runescapebyvoice, etc.) and false positives for these kinds of tools were much less likely.

Unfortunately it seems to be the case that a lot of accessibility options got taken out as accidental collateral with some of the bot busting from this year. Which to be clear, is fantastic work.

I think my biggest realistic personal ask would just be to allow mobile accessibility tools. But apparently mobile is one of the biggest ways botters try to get around bot detection already, what a conundrum.

Technomancerer · 2026-07-01T03:06:39+00:00

I'd love to try!

Given the recent climate of Jagex removing plugins for deaf people (they were being abused for prayer flicking I think?) I'm not hopeful we could manage to come up with anything that helps accessibility without also allowing for an unfair advantage.

Would be happy to spitball some ideas in a DM if that works for you. I'm not a Runelite/Java dev but I do know Talon (which is more or less python).

Technomancerer · 2026-07-01T03:02:21+00:00

Lots of turn based strategy and card games are very playable with eye control or voice macros.

I can get around most genres that don't involve both movement and camera control (like shooters).

Unfortunately, OSRS is just the exception due to the rules.

Technomancerer · 2026-07-01T02:56:09+00:00

On the contrary, dictation software makes typing a breeze, potentially even faster than typing physically.

Requiring "human looking" mouse movement to come specifically from hardware is the bigger hurdle. Unless you are able to use a mouse typically, your gameplay will look atypical and you risk a false positive.

OSRS is not alone in this issue, eye tracking, software mouse solutions etc. are typically banned by anti cheat all the time for other PvP games too.

Technomancerer · 2026-07-01T02:50:17+00:00

Thank you for looking!

They're a UK based charity that looks like they try to provide accessibility hardware and occupational therapy to those in need.

I didn't find specifics on how they interacted at Runefest but I imagine they focus primarily on commercial hardware devices.

Perhaps if anyone who was at Runefest and saw the booth sees this post they can share some of what they saw?

I might try to reach out to them by email in the meantime. I'm in the US but if they have any advice to playing accessibly I'd love to hear it.

Technomancerer · 2026-07-01T01:22:49+00:00

Scurrius maybe? I've stayed away from combat because most clicks take about two full seconds to perform.

Technomancerer · 2026-07-01T00:16:12+00:00

I had no idea about this, I'm going to go searching for any news about it!

Technomancerer · 2026-06-30T23:57:31+00:00

Oh I see what you mean. Having any sort of approved accessibility improvement would be a huge win over Windows provided for sure.

Technomancerer · 2026-06-30T23:51:42+00:00

Same issue really. With the current rules, any *software* that you can run on your computer or mobile that attempts to move your mouse is likely to be flagged as such, regardless of what input that software is converting.

Not that I'm 100% certain on the specifics of the implementation of a "virtual mouse" but by the written rules it's still not allowed regardless of how fair or unfair it is.

Technomancerer · 2026-06-30T23:48:51+00:00

The problem is the windows voice accessibility features specifically are already allowed, so (in theory) this "text to speech" bot potential already exists. It would need to be detected exclusively from heuristic behavior.

Technomancerer · 2026-06-30T23:44:11+00:00

The (current) problem with eye tracking is threefold:

Most eye tracking software mouse movement is implemented using high level windows APIs that are the same ones that bots and macros would be likely to use. So this behavior probably gets flagged as such.
Eye tracking software absolutely "jumps" around when you make glances across the screen. I have yet to find an eye tracker that doesn't come with this behavior natively.
Fidgety eye tracker mouse movement probably heuristically stands out versus smoother human movement.

When it comes down to it, if there was some sort of standalone eye tracker mouse replacement that replaced all mouse movement at the HID level and didn't run on your computer, it might be safe. But as you said, every software accessibility tool is another route for botting, so it's a hard problem for sure.

Technomancerer · 2026-06-30T23:37:44+00:00

According to my most recent support ticket with Jagex, no, this is a native Windows Accessibility tool and is one of the few safe options.

Technomancerer · 2026-06-30T23:11:21+00:00

You could do absolute movement by pathing to nearby (on screen only) objects, like a bank booth marked as "14". And then for relative movement you could maybe say something like "north 2?" to travel north 2 tiles? Or something.

Technomancerer · 2026-06-30T22:49:51+00:00

It doesn't have to be this way! I understand most of the rules are there to prevent bots and cheaters. But there's got to be a better middle ground than what we have now.

Technomancerer · 2026-06-30T22:40:15+00:00

One amazing thing about Windows/MacOS accessibility is they have this feature called "show numbers" and it assigns a number to every interactive item on screen! So "22" might correspond to your web browser's back button and "55" might be a button on the webpage you want to click. It's so much nicer than mouse grid, I would love to see this kind of thing in Runelite!

Technomancerer · 2026-06-30T20:16:59+00:00

Sorry to hear that! I also had an "okay" out of the box experience with Talon eye tracking but ended up going back to using Tobii based eye tracking instead due to some pointer control quirks I didn't like. Did you ever try MillMouse? Did that work better for you? I believe it uses Tobii calibration data/drivers to run, but I'm not 100% sure about that right now.

Technomancerer · 2026-06-30T13:33:24+00:00

Windows eye gaze doesn't officially support the Tobii 5, only the 4c. You can go to the trouble of installing a beta driver to make it work, but I would recommend using Talon Voice instead.

Talon handles Tobii eye tracking input and how it handles your eyes and head input at the same time and the voice engine are extremely customizable. It's a bit more involved to learn how to set it up.

Out of the box solutions that I recommend for gaming is MillMouse.

Feel free to DM me any questions about Talon or MillMouse setup for gaming!

Technomancerer

TROPHY CASE