[Cobnat]

He DID say that maybe Yahtzee would see a word on this thread. Blame him.

Pffft... yeah, when something bad happens, everyone always blames Cobnat... but when Cobnat does something good nobody ever thanks... fucking hypocrites...

(Im joking, so no one get thier cock in a knot)

[Zazzo]

(Im joking, so no one get thier cock in a knot)

I did that once. Then I thought "Gee, I wonder what would happen if I got an erection like this?" and found myself in the hospital shortly after.

[Cobnat]

Good one... I got another question:

What would chairs look like if humans had thier knees on backwards?

[Zazzo]

They'd probably be skinnier, so you could drape your legs down the sides and wouldn't have to sit on them if you wanted to lean back.

But hey, I wasn't kidding about the hospital thing. Okay, yeah I was.

Incidentally, my favourite thing about TN (apart from the insane atmosphere!) was probably the text parser. People complain about synonyms and whatnot a lot, but I found it extremely intuitive; even if you couldn't think of quite the right way to say something it would usually recognize what you were trying to get at. I was a little stumped trying to get the chisel from the crewman, but the first thing I tried doing to the *chisel* (pointing) rather than the guy holding it worked immediately. I think it is true that everybody thinks differently, and some kind of public beta test with extemely detailed feedback would probably be needed to get a parser that doesn't make you "think like a machine with a limited vocabulary."

I'm probably biased in my love of an almost wholly keyboard-driven game in that I have no mouse attached to my computer.

[EkkieBurt]

It’s like the game I’m making at the moment. I’m trying to create an interface that has both mouse and parser system (maybe something like: clicking on an object, and then prompting the user for input) so that way, the player can still be specific about what they want to do, without having to spend needless hours trying to interact with something that can’t be. Because I find simple point and click games tend to create lazy players, who often resort to clicking everywhere, but with this system, it will say “okay, you’ve clicked here, but what do you want to do with it?”

Which is why I often prefer text parser games, and was pleased to hear that TN was one. I was also thankful that the game paused when you typed in the parser, because who here remembers the old sierra games where you had to frantically type some obscure command while a monster came looming towards you? Not fun… and very unrealistic for that matter, because in real life those actions should be instant.

[Yahtzee]

It’s like the game I’m making at the moment. I’m trying to create an interface that has both mouse and parser system (maybe something like: clicking on an object, and then prompting the user for input) so that way, the player can still be specific about what they want to do, without having to spend needless hours trying to interact with something that can’t be. Because I find simple point and click games tend to create lazy players, who often resort to clicking everywhere, but with this system, it will say “okay, you’ve clicked here, but what do you want to do with it?”

Yikes. So you're going to have your player switch constantly from keyboard to mouse? Bad idea. People won't like that. Consider making the game entirely keyboard controlled. Maybe if the player character is standing in front of an object and presses the 'interact' key the parser comes up.

[EkkieBurt]

See, and there’s my major problem. Trying to create an intuitive interface that is easy to use, but still lets the player be specific. While I did finish Trilby’s Notes, it wasn’t without its problem’s... a game of “Guess the verb”? But that isn’t saying a lot, because I haven’t encountered a text parser yet which recognized everything I’ve typed, and there’s been some retail games which were far worse. Catering for all the possibilities in the parser is thousands of code in itself.

Say yeah… dilemma.

[Aznpsycho]

Well, a mouse + keyboard setup is quite useful if you're not going to be typing things, just using the keyboard for shortcuts would easily do. Therefore, mouse + keyboard would have been good for 5 and 7 days, but useless for TN. Which was absent in both.

Also, I would normally be hoping that 'Dr Somerset' was coming back, but considering how batshit homicidally insane 'Dr Somerset' was at the end of 7 Days, I'm thinking not as the Player Character, but as maybe a side nutjob quest guy.

[Zewb]

Maybe you could take a Full Throttle approach, where the player can use letters on the keyboard to perform actions such as E for examine, I for interact, T for talk, etc..

[Zazzo]

See, and there’s my major problem. Trying to create an intuitive interface that is easy to use, but still lets the player be specific. While I did finish Trilby’s Notes, it wasn’t without its problem’s... a game of “Guess the verb”? But that isn’t saying a lot, because I haven’t encountered a text parser yet which recognized everything I’ve typed, and there’s been some retail games which were far worse. Catering for all the possibilities in the parser is thousands of code in itself.

If you're coding the engine yourself, I bet the princeton wordnet libraries could drastically increase the intuitiveness of any parser. Recursively walk through all related words until you hit the nearest one that has a coded response. Just an idea -- no idea how well it would work or hard it would be to implement.

[Willeth]

Well, you could map the four basic functions to ASDF or something similar, so you could point the mouse to look at something and have A be examine, S be grab, D be talk and hold F be walk to the place that you're pointing at, with a right click opening the inventory.

[SimeSublime]

Then it devolves into Monkey Island 3, where you just use everything on everything else until something works. The idea of the text parsar is to make the player spell out what they want to do.

[Spoon]

Maybe you could have a cursor that's controlled with the keyboard? Less convenient than controlling it with the mouse, yes, but maybe preferable to switching your hands back and forth.

[Cowd]

You guys ought to play Leisure Suit Larry 7, if only for the interface. It's one of the best interfaces I've seen (and a good game to boot). It combines the Monkey Island 3 "verb coin" with a text parser. Essentially, whenever you click a hotspot, a list of verbs pop up. Usually, only the obvious ones are listed - look at, pick up, use [item] on, talk to (in the case of a person), turn on (in case of a button) and some other intuitive ones such as, depending on the hotspot, "smell", "taste", "wash", "sneeze at", "undress", "milk" (don't ask, play the game ) which all make the game richer and would be hard to include if you used an icon-based or DOTT-style interface. In addition, you can select "other", which opens a box asking "what do you want to do with Annette's underwear"? and gives you a text parser. The same system is used for dialogues.

IMO, this system eliminates the weaknesses of both the traditional parser (the tedium of retyping "open door" 74 times, the difficulty of knowing where the hotspots are) and those of a simplistic point-n-click interface (not knowing whether "hand" means open, push, punch, pick up or leap to your death, and the unwanted tactic of "unthinkingly trying everything on everything until something works").

[Tek]

Then it devolves into Monkey Island 3, where you just use everything on everything else until something works. The idea of the text parsar is to make the player spell out what they want to do.

Don't insult Monkey Island 3's greatness.

It was the last good adventure game by Lucas Arts.

Seeing as Monkey Island 4 was a steaming turd compared to 3.

Although, I do say that the Trilby set of games (including 7 days) are real gems in this day and age, because the internet is the only place where adventure games remain.

Although with the next Trilby game, it would be nice to have some light hearted fun again but that would ruin the atmosphere so I guess that's out eh? =/