Multi-user Interactive Fiction Interface Concept

ID:1842875
 
Apr 30 2015, 1:56 am
Disclaimer: This thread is probably just for people who like text games.

I would like to present an interface I've been working on for multi-user interactive fiction (text based games).

With this interface I tasked myself with creating an interface that would not accept textual commands unlike most IF games which do. This is not completely new but I really wanted to get it done right and in a way that someone from out of the BYOND community who plays regular IF games might actually think "Hey, that doesn't look too bad. I might like to try that."

What you typically get with an interactive fiction game is something like this:


What this suffers from players having to guess what functionality is available i.e. 'Can I pick this up?'. You basically continually hit your head against the computer until something cool happens. This is just horrible and no wonder no one likes them anymore.

What it also suffers from memorability. Eventually you're GONNA end up with a situation where you're remembering 50 different commands.

My solution as it stands is this:



With this interface you can simply right click an item to check what functionality is available for it, including items that might be on the ground.

It also allows you to easily tell the difference between two objects both named "chair" for example.

It ALSO stops you from having the situation where the story says "and so the sun shone" and someone types "examine sun" but sun isn't actually an object in the game that you can look at.

On top of all this BYOND is obviously Build Your Own Net Dream which means there's multiplayer functionality so you could create if you wanted a Multi-user Dungeon experience.

I don't know if anyone will even read this but if you did and have some comments or criticisms just post them below. I'd be interested to know what people think of the design.
Apr 30 2015, 2:49 am
Add color to the object types. Something you can fight is listed Red, something you can obtain is Green, etc. That's the only problem I've ever had with text games.

Also, text games aren't dead. There's loads of them on the Android play store.
May 1 2015, 12:40 am
In response to Maximus_Alex2003
Yeah I thought it needed some colour too, thanks for the help. Also I didn't know that, very good to know.

May 1 2015, 5:11 am
In response to Zecronious
I think the most-known text adventure is https://play.google.com/store/apps/ details?id=com.radstersoft.theforgottennightmare&hl=en

If you look at the screen-shots, there's a list of commands in a panel with buttons.

Also, you could probably send your output through a text-to-speech javascript or embedded browser object.
May 15 2015, 12:34 am
No one is probably gonna read this but I redesigned the concept and made it fitting for single player MUD. You could just add the talk bar again and poof it's multiplayer. I'm just thinking of singleplayer stuff at the moment which could be done with this.



May 15 2015, 12:20 pm
What about adding an options button to adjust text size, color, background color, etc.
May 15 2015, 6:02 pm
In response to Maximus_Alex2003
I suppose it's true that the first thing people do is edit the interface but that's built into BYOND so people can do it themselves if they really want to. It saves me adding extra complexity that isn't needed.
May 15 2015, 10:46 pm
Adding something custom to suit your needs would be better for the end-user. You said that you wanted to make something that users outside of BYOND would find enjoyable, but forcing them to understand how the dmf editor works is counter to that point.

Even something as simple as letting them change their text size and font, maybe the window and element colours can help them feel a little more in control and a bit more appreciated.
May 16 2015, 4:58 pm
In response to F0lak
That's a good point F0lak. Learning the DMF is hardly what an outsider wants to learn.

I agree there's a lot of pros to having some way to customize your interface but there's one main con which is 'time to implement'. Slight increase to usability, big increase to time spent. The trade off isn't in my favor right now until I run out of things that take little work and have big pay offs.