[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface and who the hell is supposed to be playing, anyway? (Was: PK Again)

[Adam Wiggins]

[Maddy:]
> Previously, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote....
> > Given that the availability of documentation is so restricted (not 
> > downloadable or printable), chances are that I've built my first character 
> > without a clear understanding of what will work best in the game. Ever go 
> > to a gaming convention and seen a guy running some game say "Who's the 
> > cleric?" -- and the whole group raises their hands? Or *nobody* raises his 
> > hand at all? Bad situation. Same thing when you start up a character on a 
> > MUD... you log on as a troll, and the first thing you see is thirty trolls 
> > running around. Screw that, I want to do something different. What do you 
> > mean, 'no'?
> 
> Well I've never been to a games-con (missed the last local one) so I can't
> really say I've seen that, but the kinds of games I play don't have clerics. 
> There might be players with healing skills, but they're refered to the
> player with healing skills.

This raises a valid issue for any mud, actually.  Not sure if this is
what Caliban was aiming at originally, but I find it incredibly annoying
to get a character creation sequence that goes something like this:

Welcome to X mud, enter your name or 'new'> new

Enter a name for this character> Ji Indur Dawndeath

1 - Human    2 - Dwarf   3 - Elf    4 - Troll

Choose a race> 4

1 - Warrior  2 - Thief  3 - Cleric  4 - Mage  5 - Shadowdancer

Choose a class> 5

Sorry, your race cannot be that class.

Choose a class> 1

1 - Midgaard  2 - New Thalos  3 - Land of Shadow and Illusion

Choose a hometown> 3

Sorry, your class cannot start there.

...etc.  Besides the triteness of this example, *why* in the world couldn't
I have found out what classes I could be first so that I could choose the
'right' race to be the interesting class?  And *why* do I have to enter my
character's name first, frequently before I even know what the theme of the
mud is, or anything about what kind of character they're going to be?

The morals being: character creation should ask questions in the correct order
- general to specific; and second, documentation about character creation
should be availible before you actually waste your time creating a character
that you'll decide to redo an instant later now that you know what your
choices are.   This gets even more important as your character creation
process gets longer and more involved (which I vastly prefer).

> No - they're not, but they are simple sentences.  "pick up the banana from
> inside the chest on the table and insert it quickly up the orc's bottom" is
> the far extreme my parser can cope with.  Well it can't actually handle
> "orc's", but that is because I've not gotten around to it yet *8).

Hrm, that's one of the first things I did.  It's super easy and makes
your parser look a whole lot smarter than it really is. :)

> Well I'll treat "get" to mean pick up the object and hold it/put it rucksack
> or whatever.  Unless of "get" is followed by a preposition, in which case
> it's a different situation.  "get on the horse", "get out of the pit" are
> valid examples of how "get" isn't "get" any more.

Get is possibly the worst verb in the english language as far as this goes.
How about:

> get down
You boogey down.
> get high
You whip out a fatty and light up.
> get busy
You get to work.

Pretty pointless discussion, IMO.  NLP has plenty enough problems without
trying to make endless use of such an ambiguous verb.  More importantly,
most of these 'commands' are irrelevant on a mud, so why would the parser
bother dealing with it?  I have a hard time envisioning a mud where 'get
laid', 'get down', 'get high' and 'get busy' are all valid commands that
cause your character to do something.  Although it might be funny..

> get laid
You go to the store.
You buy some make-up and a tight miniskirt.
You spend an hour making yourself up.
You squeeze into your new miniskirt and a tight top, showing plenty of clevage.
You drive your car down to the local pub.
You order a drink.
You wait.
You see a man with a cute pair of buns.
You approach him and begin making flirtatious small-talk.
He buys you a drink.
He buys you another drink.
You leave the bar together.
He drives you back to his place.

etc.  While I'm all for getting rid of super-atomic commands, I think that
this is taking it a tad far. :)

> The elf can repeat what the human says (ie say "Ifmmo xpsme") and because
> the mapping from elf to human reverses almost perfectly the human will see
> "Hello world" from the elf.  Now that example is very simple and with the
> little experiments I've fiddled with you do get mistakes when the
> translation is repeated.  Not nice mistakes like whole words transposed or
> even the wrong word, but simple mistakes like "hello" becomes "hillo".

The only thing I don't like about this is that the text output on 'say'
looks ridiculous - not even pronouncable.  We wanted each language to
have a distinct feel to it, ala Tolkien's stuff.  This has the downside
of being unrepeatable, but I don't really mind.  My experiences with attempting
to have someone who is completely unfamiliar with a certain language trying
to repeat something someone said in it after only hearing it once tell
me that it's damn near impossible for them to get anywhere near what
was actually said, especially given the way that spoken language of any sort
generally comes out very slurred compared to the 'correct' pronunciation.
Plus, I don't like people being able to log an entire conversation that
they don't understand one whit of and being able to repeat it all without
error to someone that does know the language.

> I can't remember who it was, but someone mentioned sign language.  Now that
> is a perfectly acceptable way to pass on the message.
> 
>     > roar loudly
>     Bubba roars loudly.

I've always wondered - how does one roar softly, exactly?

>     > act like a dragon.
>     Bubba acts like a large creature with wings.

Hum, now this is certainly interesting.  I like this idea a lot, and not
*too* difficult - just a list of nouns which map back to more general
concepts.  Thus 'act like a dragon' might get the same or similar output
as 'act like a bird', depending on the viewer's perception, and perhaps
the actor's acting ability?  (Wow - a new skill!)  People could sit around
and play pictionary if they were really bored...

> > I dislike that myself. I prefer short descriptions.
> 
> Like...
> 
>    >look
>    You are .... [blah blah blah]
>    There is a man standing at the bar.
>    >wait
>    A tall man enters the tavern.
> 
> I'm certainly only thinking of listing the least ambigious name.

This is tricky.  Up until now we've had two different names for each
person, long and short.  Long shows up when they arrive or when you
look at the room, and short all other times.

So if you don't know someone:

A one-armed, bearded elf with green eyes is standing here.
>
The one-armed elf says, 'Hello.'

The long description uses the three most 'noticable' adjectives, while
the short only uses one.  The noun is usually the race of the person.
Names are just tacked on as another adjective, if you know them.
Last names are left out in the short name.

Cormac Mac Art the one-armed, bearded elf is standing here.
>
Cormac says, 'Hello.'

However, I've been considering a way to, as you say, come up with the
minimum name necessary to avoid ambiguity.  Thus, given a room full of
elves and a human, you might see:

The bearded elf says, 'blah'
The green-eyed elf replies, 'blah'
The human says, 'blah!'

If it were a room full of humans with one elf, however, you would get:

The one-armed man says, 'blah'
The elf says, 'blah'

Of course, managing this is a bit trickier than it first seems.  Still
torn on how far I want to take this.  I'm definitely interested in
minimizing unnecessary clutter (like, who gives a damn if the elf has
green-eyes?) but on the other hand I don't want to rob too much detail,
and I definitely do not want to make it so that you can't tell anyone apart
without looking at each one to determine their special traits (== keywords).

> Yes but as someone else pointed out, they'd end up with a load of poles
> sticking out of the ground.  The mud has no concept of telephone poles and
> even if the player named them as being telephone poles, only she would seem
> them as such.

That was me.  Yup, if people want to make a row of posts, who am I to stop
them?  Of course, the tree-hugger ranger might happen by and not like
it too much...