AG Interface Studies

[ildu]

I'm currently doing an ags-unrelated project for a uni course that has got me interested in the nuances of adventure game interfaces. I'm not going to go into what the project is exactly about, because I can't be arsed, but I'm looking to go through a number of games in thorough detail to study the approaches of different developers.

Hopefully this stuff will be useful for you readers as well. I personally haven't seen anyone go through these yet, at least not with any great amount of effort. I would of course wish that others would do their own studies and share them here. They can be from famous games, your personal favorites or even games that you've made/participated in yourself. The main point is to get a nice variety of studies, from a variety of sources, so that indie developers can look 'em up when designing one themselves.

I've started with Curse of Monkey Island, because it's one of my favorite games and sports a nice personal interface. I tried to be as thorough as possible, so if you see any glaring errors, please bring them forth. The points have been divided into four different categories; interface, anims, menus and dialog - it seemed logical that way. I just back from the bars, so I can't be arsed to explain which items means what - you'll just have to figure them out for yourself . I think I'll be doing Full Throttle and Discworld Noir next, too. Anywho, thanks in advance for anyone who participates in this!

Here are the points in case you can't make them out: - off hotspot: cursor white - off hotspot click: move to mouse - off hotspot non-walk click: move to closest point in walk area - on hotspot: cursor to red, title at bottom of screen - on hotspot click: move to xy - on hotspot hold: verbcoin appears, cursor to white - on verbcoin release: move to xy - on verbcoin icon release: speak/do action - on exit: cursor = arrow - on exit click: move to exit, exit scene - rightclick: open inv - rightclick inv: close inv - on inv item: same as on hotspot - on inv item click: cursor = item - item on hotspot click: speak/do action - item on exit: item = arrow - item on exit click: move to exit, exit scene, arrow = cursor - item rightclick: item = cursor

- 8-way walking, left/right idles replaced by frontleft/frontright - right leg begins walkcycle, excluding right/upright/downright - subsequent walkframes used for turning, as char direction rotates - pickup anims often custom - some random direction-relative idle anims - SPACE pauses game - ALT+F4 opens quit dialog - F1 opens menu: settings and options - settings: effects/voice/music volume, voice/text/object line flags, text speed - options: save/load/return to game, quit - return to game/ESC closes menu - dialog mode opens by selecting mouth verbcoin icon while on char hotspot - while in dialog mode, everything except dialog options is inactive - on dialog line: dialog turns red - on dialog line click/rightclick: dialog options diappear, speak dialog line - dialog options disappear for duration of spoken dialog - ESC skips spoken lines - dialog lines usually disappear after being selected, unless important - lowest dialog line usually closes dialog mode after it has been spoken

[Trent R]

Should

- on verbcoin icon release: speak/do action

be - on verbcoin icon release: speak/look/do action ? It's been a while since I've played CMI or any Verbcoin game, so I could be wrong.


~Trent
PS-That was a crappily written post. Hopefully you got what I meant.

[Babar]

I have some course like this(GUI design or something it was called) in my department which I am now not going to be able to look into because most of our option courses have been removed.

What you've done seems interesting and all, and forgive me if my question sounds stupid, but what exactly is the purpose of it?
Is it some overly complicated How-to guide? Is it to show how detailed CMI was? Or is it an example?
To help find trends? Shorten the list as much as possible for a better game? Add as much to a list for a better game?

[ildu]

Should

- on verbcoin icon release: speak/do action

be - on verbcoin icon release: speak/look/do action ?

It's written in a purely structural manner, so speak simply means 'print a dialog line' whereas do action would be an animation or character movement, or something else. It's irrelevent, really, which icon is being used, though one would imagine the 'use' icon would lead to more actions than the other two .

What you've done seems interesting and all, and forgive me if my question sounds stupid, but what exactly is the purpose of it?
Is it some overly complicated How-to guide? Is it to show how detailed CMI was? Or is it an example?
To help find trends? Shorten the list as much as possible for a better game? Add as much to a list for a better game?

It's basically a detailed structural study of how the interface works in this example game. The purpose of it is to provide an example on how to design/code an adventure game interface. So, basically if someone for example would like to replicate the interface of Curse of Monkey Island, for whatever reason, this might help in doing so. My personal angle here is to learn what actually made the interface so good, and if it could be redesigned better. In the end, I hope I'll be able to pick and choose the exact interactions that I want, and implement/code them into my project.

As to if this is to show how detailed CMI was, I'd argue that most adventure games have more or less the same amount of interactions, just implemented differently. After all, the points are all quite core functions.

[Trent R]

I always figure that you should design a game based around the interface. If a game has a verbcoin, then you design it for that. If it has the Sierra 5 icons, then you design it for that. If it has a parser, you design it for that.

I think that looking at a bunch of interfaces and saying, "This is the best possible, my games (and all others) should be like this because it's the best" is bull. That's my opinion at least.


~Trent

[Ghost]

I always figure that you should design a game based around the interface. If a game has a verbcoin, then you design it for that. If it has the Sierra 5 icons, then you design it for that. If it has a parser, you design it for that.

Aye, totally true. And in fact CMI cheated a little by having the verbs mean totally different things in certain circumstances- I remember that the "talk" parrot beak was changed to an "eat" verb at some point, and even "blow". Maybe this shows that sometimes a simplistic approach isn't the best.