[MUD-Dev] Usability and interface and who the hell is suppo

[Shawn Halpenny]

On Thu, 25 Sep 1997, Nathan Yospe wrote:

> On Tue, 23 Sep 1997, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
> 
> [ whose rock's on first, what rock's on second ]
> 
> I'm going to test this.
> 
> Lets see:
> get the fourth largest rock
> 
> It grabbed the second smallest rock. No surprise.
> 
> get the fourth smallest rock
> 
> It got the desired rock
> 
> get the second largest rock
> 
> ditto
> 
> get the next largest rock
> 
> "You haven't focussed on any rocks recently. You pick up the large gray 
> rock."
> 
> (It got the largest rock)
> 
> get the largest rock but one
> 
> "Do you mean to get the largest rock, and only the largest rock?"
> 
> (The NLP has not yet adjusted to ambiguities. Over time, it will learn
> several player specific ambiguities - this is why it is client hosted - and
> should come to recognize what the above command means.)
> 
> get the penultimate rock
> 
> Hey! It actually parsed that correctly!

I get the feeling that controlling one's character in Nathan's
scenario is like guiding one's shopping cart in the market.  At
first, it never goes exactly where you want, but after you spend
enough time with it, it eventually catches on to exactly what you're
thinking and allows you to continue without requiring guidance. 
Probably not an apt comparison, and not in any way meant as a slight.
Just a complete departure from my perspective of having a set of "dumb"
verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc. and routinely searching through them
until the object of interaction is definitively known.	Any pointers
to information or pitfalls to beware of, Nathan?  I assume some texts
on neural networks will give the adequate background for a design,
but is there anything else you'd used that would be helpful?  At the
moment, I'm not sure I want to add anything like this to my design
without further research, but the research will certainly be
enlightening.

There are always some elements of a user interface that one user will
dislike and another cannot live without (if ever in doubt, take a
frequent Win95 user and put him in front of a Unix console, and a
frequent Unix user and drop him in front of a Win95 box.  Almost
without fail, I've seen the Unix user open up a DOS session, while
the Win95 user stumbles around with "dir" and "help" commands
attempting to establish a frame of reference--amusing and
illustrative).	This only goes to show that everyone's preference for
a UI can and probably will be different.  How customizable can such a
thing be made?	Custom clients is one direction (and Java will make
them commonplace for those games that require a client of sorts). 
Clients that can adapt to a degree to how you play is another.	I
would categorize Nathan's approach under the latter and probably close to
the best one can do without forcing everyone to create their own interface
to the game's interface.

The user interface is not my current area of interest.	Everyone will
have a different idea of what the perfect UI is and I'm not going to
attempt to cater to them all when I eventually design mine.  Simple
is good.  Intuitive is good.  Both, however, are slippery since there
is no definite "this is simple and intuitive for everyone".  The path
this thread has taken seems to be toward championing what elements of
a UI that everyone likes, what elements are applicable to a scenario,
and occasionally what one finds particularly loathsome.  The bottom
line, IMO, is that no matter the game, no matter the scenario, no
matter the player base, some of the users are going to have to
_learn_ something in order to make things work.  Me, I intend to make
as simple and intuitive an interface for me, and then let others use
it.  Refine with feedback and eventually the thing should be
acceptable to people other than the developer.  Does this make the perfect
UI that will please everyone?  No.  And I don't care.  But I think it will
be good enough that not everyone who uses it will complain about it.

Meanwhile, I save the UI ideas that are bandied about here for later
perusal, since I would consider this list and thread part of the feedback,
even though my UI hasn't been designed yet.

Shawn