Yeah, I surrender. I implemented a "look at" button instead of "read" to my main gui. And I never felt myself so boringly redundant : There's a desk in the screen. Over the desk, the mouse will tell the player that this is a desk, and if the player look at the desk what I'm I suppose to say?
- "It's a desk - just open it for further info"?
- "It's a dictionnary definition of a desk
- put a joke about desk
- Make an historical background of the desk, even if it's useless for the story and kill the beat?
I know, this is a very common feature nowaday. Not to mention, a lot of recent games who have more than 1 option, feature olny 2 cursors/clicks/verbs :
Look at / Do everything else in the world
Back in time, in text adventure, this was necessary. But now? I understand that some sleuth stories need it. Or game sets in totally weird gameworld like The Dig. But is it a little superfactory ?
But here's the point : is it a little paradoxal that graphical adventure games all have "look at" feature? Mostly when it's linked to descriptive label telling what's under the mouse?
Discuss.
Well, this is why I tend to use only one action in most of my games. There isn't necessarily a need for a separate "look" and "use" descriptions for every single hotspot.
I find this very elegant:
* Left-click on ground: walk there
* Left-click on hotspot: interact with it
* Left-click on character: talk to it
* Left-click on yourself: open inventory
This is very elegant indeed.
That means that you specially design the game in order to need olny 1 (+use inventory at) interaction by object/thingie/gizmo.
D'you have any insight of where you need to overturn that to avoid a problem? And how d'you solve the situation.
You could script a function that makes player say "I see nothing special." and call that function for every self-explanatory item in your game.
Other than that - it may be a stupidly mannered line, something like "the desk's shape mysteriously looms in the dimmed light of the room..." :P
Sorry for double post.
I do not know if you may consider changing your controls on current point of development; but if there's actually a problem of some verbs not much used, I may suggest this: swap the order of commands - make object go first and verb second. I.e. player selects an object and a Gui appears with only those verbs shown that are truly useful. This will also allow you to introduce specific verbs only usable at limited number of occasions.
But, ofcourse, that will require more difficult scripting.
[AGSer pride] Don't worry, Crimson, my unhandled events are sets. [/AGSer pride] But even with random "Nothing important about that" variation it makes me sad. Maybe I'm too stuck in the Zak McKracken / Maniac Mansion pattern where if the verb apply, it must be working.
(http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w128/danthedanuniquely/scrnshot-3.png)
In other hand, I'm trying very hard to avoid this stupid post by PetuniaCon1413 (http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=30259.0) where she wants Zak to answer "Use Bed: This is no time for sleeping! It's the middle of the day!" while in the original version the player can actually USE the bed and back to sleep.
Heh, posted the same time...
There was another suggestion I made in the second post above, but I now see that you are making the Maniac Mansion style game? Then, unfortunately, it cannot be used. Unless you rework the game style :)
Even relatively mundane 'look at' responses add detail to the environment and the protagonist. "Looks like mahogany." or "Reminds me of the one my grandfather had."
One of the fine things about adventure games is the act of exploring every nook and cranny of the gameworld. Use your imagination and give everything a base level of detail and interaction, and it will go a long way to creating a rich experience for the player.
Quote from: LUniqueDan on Tue 19/07/2011 17:17:19
D'you have any insight of where you need to overturn that to avoid a problem? And how d'you solve the situation.
Stock responses.
The only reason LucasArts can get away with so many verbs is to use stock responses. For example, trying "Look At <foo>" gives the stock response "Nice <foo>." for over half of the hotspots in Monkey Island II. In Maniac Mansion, most hotspots respond with e.g. "There's nothing to read on it", "It doesn't seem to open", and so forth.
To cut your development to a reasonable timeframe, you'll need one of (1) few hotspots, (2) few verbs, (3) many stock responses, or (4) more spare time than most people.
I can think of a couple of different solutions, depending on the situation and object in question:
- Reduce the number of hotspots. If it's not relevant enough for the player to even comment on, should it be a hotspot in the first place? To me it seems that the classic silly responses of the Look-At command are remnants of an era (namely the early Sierra point-n-click games) before cursor highlighting became standard, and pretty much anything on the screen could be clicked on.
- If it's possible to interact with the object, it should be possible to examine it first - very few games have a high enough resolution, or descriptive enough hotspot names, to make it perfectly clear what you're interacting with and why. The Look-at text should at least provide the motivation for the player to want to interact with the item, and possible even hint at its use.
- Make Look-At a useful and necessary feature, expect that the player uses it. Some times it could lead to close-ups of items, but always offer useful information - e.g. add details to the story or a sub-plot, help establish the game world, offer some insight into the NPC who owns the item, or express the personality of the player character. I thought Gemini Rue was a brilliant example of how to build atmosphere and depth through Look-At comments.
Yes I feel that the 'Look at' verb is indeed a paradox. You already see the image on the screen, and the mouse over will tell you what it is. In fact your mouse cursor can be seen as the focal point of the character, this is what he will look at.
So, lets get rid of the lookat verb?
I say no!
In my perception it actually means 'Examine'. When looking at said desk you might just see it's basic structure, it has drawers, a desktop, just a desk but at closer inspection you might notice there is a small blood stain on it, or there is a small compartment that is hidden to the naked eye. If the desk is simply a desk and nothing more well then you could do one of three things: make a joke, explicitly describe it or use a stock answer.
Some would say, if it adds nothing to the game just leave the hotspots out but personally I'm a fan of a lot of hotspots. It gives my curiosity way, and I really enjoy reading the descriptions. Besides, it is not entirely without influence on the gameplay:
- Sometimes a certain object in a room draws attention but when examining it it turns out it is nothing special, this is a sort of micro red haring; it wakes you and makes you think that what you're looking for might in fact be in a less obvious place. It is mind games like this that make descriptions awesome.
- In other occasions it might tell us more about the setting of the game or reveal something about characters, even the playing character. In this case the descriptions can be totally optionally, and people who want to spend a lot of time to get really deep into the story can read them, whilst other can simple skip over it.
Obviously the two approaches do not mix in one game; that's where games usually fail and people get frustrated. People who don't want to read all descriptions but have to because there might be a hint needed in one of them. Well if the game does this consistently I think it might actually work just fine. Just change the verb from 'Look at' to 'Examine' :D
The same goes for inventory, you don't snug something in your pocket without having a look, but the 'Examine'verb will do a closer inspection: hidden compartments, actually read something, notice certain details that give a hint or notice that something is not what it seems to be.
A bit much, but I've actually put a lot of thought to the subject lately so it needed out. :P
For the game I'm working on I've basically taken it to mean 'be inspired to spout off a hint by' or 'make a tortured joke about'.
A bit of a leap, maybe. But it sure keeps things more fun than a dude saying 'there's nothing special here' or 'It's a desk!'.
Honestly I'm slowly coming around to the views in the VinceTwelve article (http://americangirlscouts.org/agswiki/Why_Your_Game_Is_Broken) that less can be more in terms of verbs and actually kind of have been since the very first Telltale Sam and Max episode turned out not to suck.
Frankly, Point n click games in general could do with less forms of interaction. Generally there are way too many ways to interact with items in point and click games, which in my opinion truly breaks immersion and only serves the purpose to frustrate and confuse the player. I see now in the vincetwelve article (http://americangirlscouts.org/agswiki/Why_Your_Game_Is_Broken) that me and vince seem to share the same thoughts here. Though perhaps I would argue that it can be taken one step further. To me, once I opened up the box of "left click does almost everything", I figured I might as well go all the way and call it "left click does everything". It does wonders for flow and immersion.
That said, I do find the right click = "examine" a nice feature in many games, but only where it actually serves a real purpose and is used consistently. Generally 95% of hotspots won't benefit from this feature and thus as a whole the feature adds more confusion and badness (as the feedback will likely be "I see nothing special about it") than goodness to the overall game experience.
The desk is a good example of interaction redundancy. If the desk where in JD and I wanted the player to get a clue from its looks AND be able to open a drawer to look for contents, I'd either have two hotspots, one for the drawer and one for the desk surface, and have bwana open the drawer when clicking the draer, and talk about the surface when clicking the surface, or I'd go for my old JD trick of simply having a Game.DoOnceOnly on one single "desk" hotspot. This is a great way of making the first click be the desired "action" and the following clicks be an "examine", where this for gameplay or story reasons is necessary. I do it all over the place in JD and it works beautifully. This second solution should be used with caution though, specifically if the hotspot has an obvious "verb" use to it, but the character talks about it instead of doing the desired action - this will frustrate the hell out of the player.
In short: In general I'd rather have more hotspots than mouse modes. It's less obscuring and hence, better.
Yeah this is a pretty interesting topic, and I like what everyone has to say about it. I particularly agree with Wyz and Trapezoid - I like the idea of not only having a lot of hotspots for numerous reasons, such as creating a fuller world and more points of exploration which in turn can help disguise the otherwise obvious puzzle design (ie this needs to be clicked to solve something), but also as Trapezoid said, just using basic interactions to try and tell something about the character or story. That was a poorly written sentence, too lazy to rewrite though 8)
Now with that being said, I do feel a bit torn since I also completely agree with where Theo is coming from. I found myself loving the one click format when playing games like Journey Down and Ben304's numerous iterations of it. The one advantage that only really comes to mind with verb choices is that, since they are mostly redundant, youre able to surprise the player with original uses of it, such as using the talk icon in Monkey Island to chew the gum or eat the biscuit. Not sure if thats much of an argument to make for it though ;D
EDIT: man I dont even know what I'm talking about, really shouldnt respond to things like this when I'm tired. I talked about two different things there - hotspots to begin with and then mouse modes. *shrugs*
I'm not sure I like the "many hotspots" on one thing (e.g. desk) approach. It can lead to serious pixel hunting. How should I know I have to move the mouse above different parts of the desk?
Also, a description can add a lot to the atmosphere. You can get details not only about the thing itself, but also about the PCs relation to this object and thus about the PC himself.
I think it was in 5DAS where you could look at the doors and you would get a different answer every time (my favourite being something like "I once dated a girl that had the same door")
I like giving the player plenty of choice, but most authors don't really consider whether a particular action will have enough uses to justify it. Take the smell and taste actions in the Space Quest games. They were almost entirely worthless aside from some novelty/joke value, and these days something like that will just confuse the average player. I do think there's room for separate actions like talk and interact, since you might want to have interact do something different from talk when clicking on an npc (like have you perform some action appropriate to the conditions, like punching or helping someone up). I think context is more important than limiting your actions. For instance, you might look at a the cover of a book while it's on a desk, but in your inventory you read it with the same action, so a better way to label the verb would be 'examine' since that covers the bases of both a casual look and a more detailed study. If you use the right images/names for your actions you can get away with them doing more. If you really push it, talk, interact, and examine could be used for everything you need while still giving you a good range of actions that could be performed on each entity. You could talk to a person, interact with them (based on context or inventory) or examine them for a description. With a book you could examine it for a description, interact with it to pick it up, or talk to it (pointless).
Sometimes less is more, but sometimes it can be downright confusing, too. It's important to keep that in mind when trying to boil down the actions/verbs to the basics. I don't personally mind a game that uses multiple actions so long as they are not one-off uses and cannot be logically reduced without losing some key functionality (open and close can be easily combined into interact, but something like 'kick' or 'shoot' would need special distinction since they perform very specifically).
Oh man, Progz just reminded me of something that's in direct conflict with my crumbling resistance to one-click.
EXAMINE and READ being two separate verbs is one of my favourite things about text adventures.
READ sign
"Trespassers will be prosecuted"
EXAMINE SIGN
"It's decorated with flowers, little smiley faces and a winking rabbit."
EXAMINE BOOK
"It's leather spine looks on the verge of crumbling to dust but some malevolent force seems to hold it together."
READ BOOK
"Ooh! Cupcake recipes!"
I also love OPENING and CLOSING books to switch between reading the cover and the contents. Omnomnomnomnomnominteraction.
Quote from: Eggie on Wed 20/07/2011 11:16:30
EXAMINE and READ being two separate verbs is one of my favourite things about text adventures.
Well, that usually works in graphic adventures, too. Eye icon = examine, hand icon = read.
Great thread.
I'm a big fan of simple control schemes, I abandoned the seperate walk/talk/fondle cursors a long time ago, but I'm not sure I'll give up on the look option yet, mainly for character development reasons. For every stupidly obvious desk interaction there is a wealth of LookAt interactions to be had with other things, like characters. If any click on a character initiates Talk, you miss out on the opportunity to have the player comment of that character. The way the protagonist describes him/her might be indicative of how they feel about that person. Plus if the purpose of a metal sign hanging somewhere is to be picked up so you can use it to wedge a door open, clicking on it will never tell you what the sign said (except with Theo's DoOnlyOnce method, which does sound very ingenious, though it relies on the fact that the player will think to click on the sign again). Besides, though probably few and far between there might be games that do not have a cursor overlay that already tells you what you're poking at.
I suppose it depends on what you are going for with your game. If it's a simple game, a one-button scheme might suffice. I remember I found it a breath of fresh air that talking to characters in Death on Stage involved no branching dialogue of any kind. So straight-forward clicking might make things easier to process. I did an action-based adventure one time with no dialogues or LookAts, and it didn't feel out of place. But at the same time I found some TellTale games very empty and bland because there were only two things to poke at in every room and that was it.
Quote from: Radiant on Tue 19/07/2011 22:49:26you'll need (4) more spare time than most people.
That's the killer. I absolutely love the freedom of the old games like Zak and Maniac Mansion. But to do it for anything beyond the simplest game (or without a reasonable sized team of people) is just not practical.
I found that with my first four games. I allowed any character to interact with any object in any game (the games linked together). This meant millions of possible interactions. The only way to do it was to have very generic dialog, spend very little time on it, and ignore times when cutting corners gave odd results. The games suffered as a result: they generally looked unpolished. I've learned my lesson with the latest game (Monte Cristo): it has ONE hero and ONE kind of click. As a result I can spend far more time on the story, and produce a much better game.
I don't like one click interaction with games. Too linear. Eventually you can just click on everything until every puzzle is solved without having to really think about the progression, your options, and what you can and can't do. Some games managed to still get away with difficult puzzles with it, but most of the time I don't like it. That said, I'm open to new methods of playing adventure games. I'm a huge fan of parsers, especially difficult ones in text adventures where you have to be more specific. I like huge difficulty. I like getting stuck. I like trial and error. I like the long list of verbs in early Lucasarts games. I really don't share vincetwelve and theo's opinions at all. I get the immersion thing, but I never had a problem with that in adventure games. I want to play a damn game, not a damn movie. Telltale lost me after they started simplifying things too much. Now you can't even explore outside boundaries in their damn game. I mean, boundaries are good, but not when they confine you to the space of a puzzle or item giving you no choice but getting every puzzle right immediately. No, the Sierra method of game design which requires trial and error and has dead ends and deaths and ways to get stuck, and the same with text adventures, are the kinds of adventures I like the most.
Not every puzzle has to be difficult though. Sometimes memorability is better than difficulty, and that's what makes Lucasarts' and Revolution games and games like the Journey Down or Legend of Kyrandia great. They're not blister your brain difficult, with the exception of Maniac Mansion and The Dig, but they're lovely and memorable. Actually, I think The Dig was a one click interface, but I can't remember. If it was, it's a rare instance for me where it was hard as nails, and incredible in its design, and really underrated, but still used a really simple interface.
Quote from: Secret Fawful on Wed 20/07/2011 18:44:02
No, the Sierra method of game design which requires trial and error and has dead ends and deaths and ways to get stuck, and the same with text adventures, are the kinds of adventures I like the most.
But that's a ctually almost as limiting - you have to be at the right location atthe right time, you have to try different ways because you die...all the time you have to repeat your actions or save often, but even if you save your not exempt from a dead end, nor are you ever aware that you actually are at a dead end. Instead of not being able to do much, you are able to do lots of things but are not really allowed if you want to finish the game and see what happens and see new puzzles...as I write this, I think it's actually worse than "limiting" gameplay. ::)
The other thing where you have like 9 verbs/commands to choose is tempting at first because it's kind of "realistic", but in reality you have to do 2 clicks for EVERY action you want to do, even worse if you want to try more than one inventory item, exponencially growing if you want to try multiple verbs with multiple objects.
I still stand with a combo like right click for descritpion, left click for use/push/talk (depending on object), or similar. And when you hover above an item (and in this case there should be some items you won't ever use, they just have a short description or "nothing important" message) that shows a name of the object. The end, streamlined and simple yet emersive enough and leaving room for artistic choices.
Or maybe a version of GrimFandango keyboard use, but put like Q, W, E for talk, examine, use etc. and arrows for movement, also that option that character has a sort of autolock on interactable items.
Quote from: anian on Wed 20/07/2011 19:07:52But that's actually almost as limiting - you have to be at the right location at the right time, you have to try different ways because you die...all the time you have to repeat your actions or save often, but even if you save you're not exempt from a dead end, nor are you ever aware that you actually are at a dead end. Instead of not being able to do much, you are able to do lots of things but are not really allowed if you want to finish the game and see what happens and see new puzzles...as I write this, I think it's actually worse than "limiting" gameplay. :)
The other thing where you have like 9 verbs/commands to choose is tempting at first because it's kind of "realistic", but in reality you have to do 2 clicks for EVERY action you want to do, even worse if you want to try more than one inventory item, exponentially growing if you want to try multiple verbs with multiple objects.
Any experienced adventure gamer should be looking for dead ends or possible ways to lose in an unfamiliar game. Mazes have dead ends, and solving them requires finding the route that goes from one end to the other. So I compare adventure games to mazes with obstacles in the right path. A maze without dead ends would be a straight line. One click, okay two click games are really, to me, like a maze with less or no dead ends and only obstacles, making it incredibly linear and easy. I also consider dying a dead end, btw. There's no such thing as a non-limiting adventure game, because even mazes are limiting no matter how difficult they are. There are just easy adventure games, and hard adventure games, and no matter what the open-endedness comes to a halt at a point, and most adventure games have an end. And I prefer hard adventure games, hell, even mindnumbing tear-your-hair out ones. It's possible to make an open-ended adventure game I guess, but by the time you solved all the puzzles, you'd just be wandering around doing basic stuff like looking at that guy again or talking to that dragon and re-reading the dialog options you already exhausted. Well, I guess there could be more to exploring it all after the main story, but adventure games are more fun to me when they have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and a more open, but not open-ended, approach to getting through it.
You could also have an adventure game like a maze that has obstacles in the right path and obstacles in the wrong path as well, but THAT I would consider bullshit design because the game had you to do a bunch of work in a puzzle designed to send you to a dead end, and that would piss anyone off. It's like a puzzle where you do something difficult only for the outcome to be to lose all of your inventory for good.
EDIT: Well, okay, you can have dead ends in two click games, and the amount of verbs or a parser only affects the difficulty and amount of things you can choose, not so much dead ends, but my comparison on mazes and adventure games still stands.
EDIT EDIT: I think any dead ends should be intentional though, and unintentional ones are also bullshit. Keeping gameplay balanced is also important.
Let's not turn this into another debate about walking deads (even if your maze metaphor is pretty crap because you can work your way back from a dead end in a maze butyouknowyeah).
Quote from: Eggie on Wed 20/07/2011 20:28:40
Let's not turn this into another debate about walking deads (even if your maze metaphor is pretty crap because you can work your way back from a dead end in a maze butyouknowyeah).
Yeah, that's called restoring a save game. := You'll not put egg on my face, Eggie!
Seriously though, working your way back from a dead end in a maze is cheating unless you start over from the beginning in my opinion. In an adventure game, the only way to work your way back from a dead end should be restoring a save game or restarting.
I like the Trapezoid method (also, hello Trapezoid! :D). One of the things I love about adventure games is the exploration, and the LOOK interaction really helps with that. Instead of just describing the item to the player, you could perhaps use the player character's response to give an understanding of the character.
Since the conversation has moved on a bit from the original problem with "Look at", I'd like to mention that for me the idea that "Oh, this object only has 1 possible interaction that is relevant?" isn't necessarily followed by "then I should simplify my interface to only have 1 action!"
I don't quite see how that follows. It doesn't break immersion for me to have a choice between "Push Desk" and "Open Desk". It breaks immersion when I start thinking of the game mechanics with having only "Use" and wondering what will happen if I "Use Desk".
It's like those "interactiveness games" I played on the computer as a kid, where you could click random objects on the screen, and each different object would have a different result: a sound effect, an animation, some colourful graphics, etc. Half the fun was clicking on things to see what would happen (the other half was clicking repeatedly on one particular thing and laughing at the repeated sound or animation). Those were fun, but I didn't really consider them adventure games, and I'm not really sure people would want that to be the motivation in an adventure game.
It's like someone at some point looked at games with their plethora of stock responses and said "Why do we have 9 verbs here, when more than half of them half the time give a stock response and have no result?" and figured the answer was "Simplify and reduce the interface" rather than "Be creative and inventive, and think of situations where you'd need to both push the desk as well as open it".
Now sorry to digress even further, but recently for a game I was working on (which uses the 2 button look/walk & interact interface) I came across a situation where I'd want to be able to USE a character (or more specifically something on him) as well as talk to him. And I couldn't think of an all-inclusive, easy to use interface that would allow that! Verb-coins block the screen, require delay (of either extra clicks or waiting time) and thus really annoy me, having a verb-list for 3 verbs seemed a bit silly, and having to swap between different verbs constantly by right-clicking Sierra style also seemed distasteful to me. So then it came down to some technical method....
I was first thinking of utilising the middle-mouse button somehow, but those irritating laptoppers stopped me. Then I thought of combining it with the keyboard, but that seemed like it could be a bit unintuitive. Finally (with some agreeing voices), I decided on a double-click==talk, single-click==use thing.
So...if you figured you HAD to have at least 3 verbs (excluding inventory and walking, of course), how would you handle it?
I am only a player, but I think that you can't throw the „look at“ away for every game, it depends on the game itself.
I love to explore the gamesworld and the option to „look at“ gives much more possibilities, like a "zoom in" to explore more details by the player or something funny as response, when the char is telling, what he's thinking about the item/area or simply a hint how to go on.
If this verb isn't needed for the atmosphere or the gameplay/puzzles I don't mind, if the option is missing. It is possible to be done without any of the options of a GUI and an inventory (like they did in Samorost (http://www.langeneggers.ch/Spiele_d/Samorost/samorost.htm)), but it needs an other kind of puzzles to work propper.
So if the verbs are useless for a game â€" I prefer them to be omitted, instead of reading/hearing the same (sometimes dumb) response over and over again. :P
@Babar: I didn't realise, that I am irritating ??? Using the middle-button works very well and I never had probs with it on my laptop (neither while using the touch-pad, nor when using my beloved mouse). ;D
Double click doesn't sound that bad, although it might be better to use it for a function that's not used all the time - like when you click on a character you talk, but if you double click you "look at" it - and not the other way around, because throughout the game you're more likely to look at a chracter once but talk to it multiple times.
Same could be for an item - like single right click is "open" desk, while double right click is "push" or some other function that actually gets "unlocked" after you look at the desk or know something is behind the desk.
On items one left click could be "It's an old desk", but if you twice left click it's more descriptive "The desk looks very old and dusty, it's covered with documents and there's a set of drawers under it".
A book would be left click "It's a Tolkien Lord of the rings book" doubleleftclick "It's an old copy of LOTR wrapped in black leather covers", 1 right click is reading "I open the book, there's an inscription on the second page "To Madeline forever, Mark"...must have been a gift", double right click is taking the book - or a similar combo.
I don't know about middle mouse button, I don't use it that often (browser page scrolling, PS paning tool, 3dsmax and Sketchup rotate etc) but a lot of people don't even get why it's there. There's this one woman in my 3dsMax class that was all bewildered by me using the middle mouse button to do something (and in 3dsMax it is used for roatating and panning views...so it's like the most used thing in the whole software).
Quote from: Secret Fawful on Wed 20/07/2011 20:36:52
In an adventure game, the only way to work your way back from a dead end should be restoring a save game or restarting.
You have a weird view of having fun there. I personally hate going to a restore point, especially when I don't know what happened and I loathe restarting a game because of a dead end, maybe if there's some auto-save, that might be ok, but otherwise, it's just becomes work and not fun.
It would be good to have a number of verbs which can easily be assigned or reassigned to the left and right mouse buttons. They could be rotated on a GUI or by key commands. This is no different from selecting weapons in a FPS-- people don't seem to have trouble with that.
Quote from: anian on Thu 21/07/2011 01:46:16You have a weird view of having fun there. I personally hate going to a restore point, especially when I don't know what happened and I loathe restarting a game because of a dead end, maybe if there's some auto-save, that might be ok, but otherwise, it's just becomes work and not fun.
Oh, you'll get no argument from me on the fact that I probably have a strange sense of fun, but I think things like this are often looked at through the eyes of someone who can only remember the frustration and not the reward on solving the correct path. Also, I'm definitely not saying every game has to be this difficult, or that games that aren't are broken and bad. I'm simply saying I prefer them that difficult. As I said before, sometimes memorability is better than difficulty.
Amazing topic. I'm having two interactions: use and look . I always found that look was useless so right click now it does a ''compromise''. It brings the description of the item in question and the inventory.
Quote from: anian on Thu 21/07/2011 01:46:16
Double click doesn't sound that bad, although it might be better to use it for a function that's not used all the time
Well, you'd have to test this, but I think this makes it too easy to accidentally perform the wrong action (either because the player is confused which is which, or because he double clicks too slowly and it registers as two single clicks).
Quote from: Dualnames on Thu 21/07/2011 12:48:13
I'm having two interactions: use and look . I always found that look was useless so right click now it does a ''compromise''. It brings the description of the item in question and the inventory.
Wait, so if you look at something then you subsequently have to close the inventory window? That does not sound very convenient.
Quote from: Dualnames on Thu 21/07/2011 12:48:13
I'm having two interactions: use and look . I always found that look was useless so right click now it does a ''compromise''. It brings the description of the item in question and the inventory.
Wait, so if you look at something then you subsequently have to close the inventory window? That does not sound very convenient.
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That's not how it works, the DESCRIPTION of the item in question (CHARACTER, HOTSPOT, OBJECT) + the inventory, are (in) the same GUI. And you open the GUI by right click. Now whether you'll read the description, use an item, or both it's up to you.
I like how they handled it in Alpha Polaris (http://www.turmoilgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/12.jpg), where the cursor is appended with two symbols when over a hotspot, one for the left button and one for the right. This way you can see beforehand what will happen when you click. Some hotspots only have one, some have both. In AP they only employ USE/TALK and LOOK, but in theory you could contextually map any number of common interactions to the buttons. It's rather elegant.
Quote from: Tabata on Wed 20/07/2011 23:04:02I am only a player, but I think that you can't throw the „look at“ away for every game, it depends on the game itself.
Yup. It really is that easy. In many games, complex interactions are awesome, in many, they suck. It totally depends on the type of puzzle and how the setting and mood is being delivered to the player. All I'm lobbying for is to use multiple interactions with caution and to first ask yourself if you, as the designer, are in fact going to use them. If not, throw 'em out! Obviously it's also a matter of taste. Fortunately we don't all have the same preferences, and as a result all sorts of different kinds of games are developed. ;D
Quote from: EnterTheStory (aka tolworthy) on Wed 20/07/2011 16:57:47I've learned my lesson with the latest game (Monte Cristo): it has ONE hero and ONE kind of click. As a result I can spend far more time on the story, and produce a much better game.
Yeah, this too is a BIG DEAL when designing a game. For shorter games, it's not an issue, but when you start piling up on the lines it gets to be one hell of a lot of work. Not only writing all the specific dialog, but scripting it and recording the darn lines becomes a gigantic project. (I'm talking from experience, Bwana has no lookats, but has over 1300 lines) From a broader "what makes a good game" perspective, I suppose this isn't relevant, but for us small-time developers it makes a world of difference.