ID:154388
 
Which would you prefer for, say, a text MUD (or other detailed game world)--a unified text interface, or accompanying panels for stats and verbs? I think an all-text interface would be a lot cooler, but would be tricky both for coders and for players to display information as efficiently. In a more "cinematic" MUD, where the focus of the game is reducing the visible output to as natural a storytelling flow as possible, stat panels wouldn't be quite so important, but for your run-of-the-mill hack 'n slash RPG, it might be annoying to come up with, say, a quality stat prompt system or other alternative. Just HOW annoying would it be, in your opinion?
I'm working on a text game engine, and it uses stat panels for a lot of things, especially for the GM. The player needs stat panels less, as all information is stored in the GM's interface and they don't have to worry about it. If a player wants to know their health, the GM can decide to tell them "12 hp" or "you are hurt" or "you are fine". They could even lie to the player if they wanted to.

Oh, the beuty of text!
In response to Lord of Water
Lord of Water wrote:
I'm working on a text game engine, and it uses stat panels for a lot of things, especially for the GM. The player needs stat panels less, as all information is stored in the GM's interface and they don't have to worry about it. If a player wants to know their health, the GM can decide to tell them "12 hp" or "you are hurt" or "you are fine". They could even lie to the player if they wanted to.

Oh, the beuty of text!

Doesn't that take the fun out of it? If I ask how hurt I am and the GM says "You're fine", some little scrub comes over and pokes me with a twig and I fall over dead, id be pissed. If you dont know the statistics of your character, or you get some garbled up answer to try to trick you it not only complicates what should be relatively simple, but its more work for both sides to find a simple thing.

I would be very annoyed at any pen and paper RPG where I had to ask the gm how healthy I was, it simply takes the fun out of it. Especially if you plan to roleplay. Picture this


A walks into a bar
A walks over to barmaid and...."GM, whats my charisma?"
A "And, do I happen to have a rose on me?"
A "Oh, and how heavy is my wallet?"

It ruins it for me atleast

Alathon
In response to Lord of Water
If the players have no access to anything, then why would the GM need anything other than a set of dice (or die roller program), a notepad (or notepad.exe), and a chat program? The beauty of online tabletop systems like WebRPG and OpenRPG allow users to share their gaming resources, character sheets, monster descriptions, pictures, maps, sounds, and more. They only restrict players from sensitive information that the gamemaster or the owning player doesn't want openly shared.
I'd like the statpanel version more. In online games with only flowing text, I usually end up type look to see the room description anyway and try to read frantically as it scrolls off screen again.

You could always leave the choice up to the player, giving them the option of dumping information to the text window or to a stat display.

After a player moves,
if(!usr.RoomPanel)
usr << Room.desc
usr << "Visible exits:[Room.exits]"
// etc.

and in the Stat() proc
if(RoomPanel)
statpanel(Room)
stat("Descirption",Room.desc)
stat("Exits:",Room.exits)

When in doubt, let the player decide! (and make the designer do twice the work ;P )
In response to Alathon
Alathon wrote:
Lord of Water wrote:
I'm working on a text game engine, and it uses stat panels for a lot of things, especially for the GM. The player needs stat panels less, as all information is stored in the GM's interface and they don't have to worry about it. If a player wants to know their health, the GM can decide to tell them "12 hp" or "you are hurt" or "you are fine". They could even lie to the player if they wanted to.

Oh, the beuty of text!

Doesn't that take the fun out of it? If I ask how hurt I am and the GM says "You're fine", some little scrub comes over and pokes me with a twig and I fall over dead, id be pissed. If you dont know the statistics of your character, or you get some garbled up answer to try to trick you it not only complicates what should be relatively simple, but its more work for both sides to find a simple thing.

I would be very annoyed at any pen and paper RPG where I had to ask the gm how healthy I was, it simply takes the fun out of it. Especially if you plan to roleplay. Picture this


A walks into a bar
A walks over to barmaid and...."GM, whats my charisma?"
A "And, do I happen to have a rose on me?"
A "Oh, and how heavy is my wallet?"

It ruins it for me atleast

Alathon

I'm leaning towards a more automated system, assuming I can muster the diligence to get it to good working order--you wouldn't ask the GM for your charisma stat, or if you had a rose, or how much you had in your wallet, but you wouldn't be able to punch up a complete character sheet with a few mouse clicks or keystrokes, either--instead, you'd have a general idea of your charisma based on previous experiences, you could pull out your wallet and look through its contents, and you could dig through your inventory to find a rose.
In response to Shadowdarke
In light of this, is changing show_verb_panel after prevented? If so, why?

I tried changing show_verb_panel in a verb and it gave me this:

runtime error: Cannot write to client.show_verb_panel.

Might just be me being stupid though,
Alathon
In response to Leftley
Leftley wrote:
I'm leaning towards a more automated system, assuming I can muster the diligence to get it to good working order--you wouldn't ask the GM for your charisma stat, or if you had a rose, or how much you had in your wallet, but you wouldn't be able to punch up a complete character sheet with a few mouse clicks or keystrokes, either--instead, you'd have a general idea of your charisma based on previous experiences, you could pull out your wallet and look through its contents, and you could dig through your inventory to find a rose.

This is more or less what im working towards as well, although I guess it will stay in notepad until I get the base things set up :P

Alathon
In response to Shadowdarke
Shadowdarke wrote:
I'd like the statpanel version more. In online games with only flowing text, I usually end up type look to see the room description anyway and try to read frantically as it scrolls off screen again.

You could always leave the choice up to the player, giving them the option of dumping information to the text window or to a stat display.

After a player moves,
if(!usr.RoomPanel)
usr << Room.desc
usr << "Visible exits:[Room.exits]"
// etc.

and in the Stat() proc
if(RoomPanel)
statpanel(Room)
stat("Descirption",Room.desc)
stat("Exits:",Room.exits)

When in doubt, let the player decide! (and make the designer do twice the work ;P )

No, when I'm in doubt I usually just decide if the players don't like it they can make their own game, then brace myself for the whining.

That is an interesting use for statpanels I hadn't thought of. I haven't finalized all my decisions for how things are going to work, but there are some potentially cool things to be had this way--I'm planning on making my room output in general be pretty dynamic, and it makes sense to give players a constant, stable output rather than making them mentally keep track of everything that occurs in the room.
In response to Alathon
You can't change it at runtime. However, you could hide verb panels and have an optional stapanel called "verbs" (or whatever) that has clickable objects each named for a verb that it executes when clicked. It's up to you to decide if it's worth the extra effort ;)