[MUD-Dev] When the interface becomes the challenge.

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: Adam Martin [mailto:amsm2 at cam.ac.uk]
> From: "Travis Nixon" <tnixon at avalanchesoftware.com>
 
>> Point and click, that's the way to go.  A cross between diablo
>> and some of the more conventional adventure type games would be
>> best, I think.  Want to go somewhere?  Click on it.  Want to open
>> a door?  Click on it.  Want to sit on that rock?  Click on it.
>> Want to kick it to show frustration?  Well, then maybe you have
>> to right click on it and select something from a menu.  Or maybe
>> you "highlight" it somehow and then type /kick or something.  I
>> dunno.  That's where things start to get a little more
>> complicated, and where we start talking to somebody who actually
>> has some knowledge of interface design.  :)

> See
 
>   http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Teaching/2000/AGraphHCI/HCI/hcinotes.html
 
> for a very good serious introduction to interface design (I'm
> hoping you can access this - I've experimented from a few external
> sites and it doesn't appear to be IP limited to the university but
> apologies in advance if it turns out to be inaccessible).
 
> As for the pointing and clicking, Runescape has evolved into
> exactly the model you describe. You might want to go and check it
> out, and find out first hand some of the problems as well as the
> advantages of this design (the main problem I found is the
> excessive volume of clicking leading to increased problems with
> RSI). www.runescape.com

I actually caused myself some trouble playing EQ too much last
year. I ended up developing RSI from having to constantly hold down
the right mouse button to mouselook. Not good and easily addressable
if they'd spend 10 minutes make it toggleable rather than hold to
affect.

Going back to the point and click methodology for top down games,
there are a few limitations that might occur as a result. Since you
don't have proper control of your orientation, you can't really
design in any true line of site code (as opposed to room based), and
you also can't add complexity to combat based on
orientation. Actually neither is strictly true, but I have yet to
see an elegent solution to the problem. Diablo 2 does let you face a
monster, but only at the expense of not moving whilst you do it.

The Eurofighter is an interesting development of ergonomics. Most of
it is voice controlled, which might work very nicely if people are
willing to train the machine. If you want to see weapon stores in a
Eurofighter, you merely saw 'Show stores' and it pops it up on the
display. In addition, all targets are given a letter designation
when the radar finds them, to target a given plane you then just say
'target alpha' or whatever. Of course this might be a bit of a
fiction breaker in a medieval type game.

The link you gave works by the way. I'm part way through it now.

Dan

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