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

[Travis Casey]

Jon A. Lambert <jlsysinc at IX.NETCOM.COM> wrote:
>On 23 Sep 97 at 10:52, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
>> On Tuesday, September 23, 1997 4:45 AM, Chris Gray

>> > I agree with most of what you are saying here, but it seems to me the
>> > problems are ones which have to be solved in a given system, whether
>> > through natural-language-like means or others. It's worth noting that
>> > many of these problems disappear if you use can choose items with a
>> > pointer in a graphical display.
>>
>> I think I've already mentioned my terrible dislike of switching between
>> mouse and keyboard. ;)
>
>Don't you see that this may be an area in which the list _is_
>programmer biased?  I am well aware of the dislike of many list
>members for mice.  It is my experience that this bias does not extend
>to the general user population.

Personally, I like mice.  Now if my cats just wouldn't eat them...

Oops, wrong mice.  Seriously, though, I love using a mouse, as long as
using it is faster than using the keyboard -- including the time spent
switching.  One of my favorite uses of the mouse in a computer RPG was
in the Windows game Castle of the Winds.  This was basically a graphical
version of the Hack genre, but with more of a story than most.  The nice
part was equipment handling -- the screen showed an outline of your
character, with "slots" for icons on the hands, arms, chest, neck, etc.
There was a separate window for each container you had.  To pick something
up, you could use the mouse to drag it to where you wanted it.  To wear
something, you could drag it from your inventory onto the body part you
wanted to wear them on/carry them in.  You could also skip the intermediate
step and just drag things from the floor to where you wanted to wear them.
I think an interface like this would be much faster than, for example,
"wear green shield on left arm" for those who aren't touch-typists.

This brings up another thought -- one of the best uses f a graphical
(or even a semi-graphical text) interface is to allow status information
to stay up where the player can easily see it and update in real-time.
For example, a constant display of one's hit points.  A graphical display
can also be easier to interpret for those who aren't good at math -- it's
easy to *see* that you're two-thirds down on hit points on a graphical
bar, but it may take some players a few seconds to get that info out of
"hp:  185/582."  It becomes even more convenient with more quantities --
say, if you've got location hit points, overall hit points, fatigue, magic
 points, and psionic points to keep track of.  To make it even easier on
players, you can color-code the data -- have a green bar while they're
above 2/3, yellow from 1/3 to 2/3, and red below 1/3.

Another PC game had location hit points -- each character had a body
outline shown, with body parts in green when they were OK, yellow when
they were injured, red when crippled, and gone if they got cut off.
This made it easy to see the character's condition at a glance.  IMHO,
this is not only convenient, but also realistic -- not many people
have to stop to check just how injured they are!
--
      |\      _,,,---,,_        Travis S. Casey  <efindel at io.com>
 ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_   No one agrees with me.  Not even me.
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