Messages

Oh, but it's not

I feel like I recognise this scene but can't quite place it.  Is it an Ealing Comedy by any chance?

Yes it is.

Nope nopitty nope.

Is that actually a man in the screenshot though?  It looks like it to me, but it's hard to tell for sure because of the resolution...

Mayyybeee

Still no.

Nope nope nope

Mary Poppins II: Retribution?

I'd love to see that

Ohhh I can wait to play it

I started a bit but realized I wouldn't have time.

I'm really sad to hear that, that walk animation looks so fun.

Wish I Was Here

You had me searching all over Zach Braff's filmography

It's not Robin Williams.

Are you sure? I bet it's an alternate universe version of The Fisher King

That shape reminds me so much to the red demon/owl thing in the Great Giana Sisters

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/Ple8eI1.png[/imgzoom]

I'm baffled no one did one of those Furby monstrosities...

so, I fixed that:

[imgzoom]http://i.imgur.com/iXZfGhL.gif[/imgzoom]

While I agree that the 'inventory' solution (noted by you and Danvzare) is better, I fail to see what's so bad about using the wheel or middle button on a mouse. Plenty of games and applications use it, after all.

Middle buttons are great for shortcuts. But they should not be the only way to access a feature, because some laptops cannot access that input easily.
So, it's great if the mouse wheel let's you pick verbs or inventory faster, but if that is the only way to perform an action, you are making your game unusable for anyone using the laptop's pad.
(Or with a mouse with a faulty wheel, for some reason that is the first thing that breaks for a lot of people at my office).

Enjoy this time. When the evidence becomes undeniable you will be asked to add another letter to LGBTx for the poor paedophiles.

Ugh, don't, just don't.

I know you say this as a warning about society accepting paedophiles, but the gay community has had a LOT of people equating them to paedophiles.
Not only that, but saying this makes it look like you think the whole LGBT+ community are just other types of criminals of which paedophiles are the latest wave.

Interesting. I only found this screenshot here, is this what you mean?

I think that cascading context menus are hard to use (even in a windows environment).

Oh LSL7 has a lot of issues in usability.
They had this weird idea where you only get the most basic verbs, and by clicking on that "Other..." you type new verbs and if they are recognised, they get added to your verb list (like Break or Screw there).
The Use tab would let you pick from your items.

I agree that cascading menus can be bothersome, but I am curious on how good/bad would be to have a verb coin expand to show an inventory window in a more friendly manner (that is, better than having the menu disappear if you don't hover exactly where required).

I have a friend that once proposed that the LOOK verb to trigger on hover, so you could read all descriptions and leave the clicking for the actions. I'm not crazy about that, but it's an interesting concept.

Again, please have a look at http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/1359/ which uses something similar.

I did, I found it interesting to add the Look action into the verb coin.
I was also remembering LSL7 where the verb coin is a drop down menu that has access to the inventory as well for quick "use with" interactions.

Just to nit-pick: Don't use 'subject' and 'noun' in the same context; the former is a clause element and the latter a word class, which in turn can be both objects and subjects. It's like saying your cart was drawn by both horses and animals.

Yeah, I should have checked the right translations for the words I was aiming at, but at the moment I was busier looking at translations of different languages of the same phrases to see if I could find some exceptions.

For example, the number of verbs/actions has a huge impact on gameplay. If you have a left-right click interface on M&K and switch to touch using only single click, you will loose a lot of content. Of course you could go one step further and also make different gameplay for different devices, but at one point the question will arise: How much effort is this worth to put into?

The only example I can think of right now (and is by far not a perfect one) is the DOTT Remastered, where you can switch from classic SCUMM to a dial UI. The UIs are wildly different, but they both retain the same basic functionality. You already have an impact on gameplay when suddenly you lose the keyboard and the second click, and any hover functionality you could have.

I've found it kind of boring to routinely click "look" at every single hotspot in a room, just to read/listen to the author's attempt at dressing all these objects in interesting or humorous descriptions.

This makes me think about another option: what about not making the character look at an object and then telling what he saw to the player, but instead have the PLAYER take a closer look by providing closeups? I've seen this in various games and it is very exiting. Of course, this also means a lot more work for the artist...

Closeups sound like a nice idea when it comes to important objects.
Personally I believe that the art should tell you all you need about for any puzzle solving and the LOOK verb should mainly be used for things like reading or when you need more detail.
I mean, if you have to look at everything to advance int he game, then why not stick to text adventures?
I have a friend that once proposed that the LOOK verb to trigger on hover, so you could read all descriptions and leave the clicking for the actions. I'm not crazy about that, but it's an interesting concept.

Guess what, none of them used either left-right click or LA-verbs (let alone that terrible Sierra GUI). They were all using either single click interface or verb coin (and I think those two were distributed about 50:50 for point and click adventures. Of course, most of them were also showcased on mobile devices.

I think that is the main reason. With mobile gaming support becoming a must, creating interfaces that can be dealt with only one button (be it with double taps, holds, or hold and drag) become more common.
But honestly I think this is a mistake. If your game is going to be published in different platforms, you should give each the best UI controls they can have, instead of going for a lower common denominator.
That is, take advantage of keyboard shortcuts and mouses with two (three) buttons (and a wheel) in the platforms you have them.
Then again this does mean an overhead of thinking your game through with several UIs in mind.

The real question is, can we unsee it now?

[[subject][verb][noun]]

Oh, here's another interesting angle. The way the English language works is that the verb comes before the object (noun). So to players, it feels more natural to construct a command by clicking "look" and then "tree" (to have their character look at the tree), instead of the inverse ("tree" then "look"). Most players won't consciously note this, but will feel that the former is intuitive and the latter is not.

Note how the Sierra GUI enforces the natural sentence, how the LucasArts GUI allows both the natural sentence and its inverse, and how the verbcoin forces the inverse and does not allow the natural.

That... is a very good point.
Although now it makes me question how unintuitive the LucasArts GUI is in other languages.
And thus also how intuitive the Verbcoin must feel in other languages.

Unless I'm forgetting anything, all Latin based languages do have the basic [subject][verb][noun] logic. And if I'm not mistaken so does German and even Chinese.
A quick Google translate session shows me that Japanese on the other hand uses a less common [subject][noun][verb] configuration.
So the LA GUI seems to be quite intuitive for most western languages at least, with exceptions showing up as we go east.