[MUD-Dev] Blending graphics with text

[J C Lawrence]

On Wed, 14 Apr 1999 19:37:46 -0600 
Chris Gray <cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA> wrote:

> [u1391470 at csi.uottawa.ca:] (Got a signature that you can put in?)
>> So, what is a good balance? Would making the mud "graphical"
>> rather than text based destroy the basis of our being a MUD? Are
>> limited graphics best?

> When this sort of topic has come up in the past, several folks
> have said that they don't like any graphics at all in MUDs. Others
> are willing to allow it as long as the nature of the game doesn't
> change.  Likely you'll see answers with some of their reasons.

I always love these debates for the single reason that most of the
noise is raised by those who have no interest in the outcome.  THose
who don't like it won't play it, those who do, may.  You're only
real choice then is how much you want specific sets of people to
play your game, and what if any compromises are necessary to achieve
that.

There are very specific (and fairly well documented) advantages to
text.  There are also fairly clear advantages to more
visual/subjective interfaces.  Each colours the presentation of the
game in different indelible ways.  It is however that change in
interface definition, and its impact on the user perception and
resulting "game character" that I find most worth examining.

> Personally, I prefer a nice mix of text and graphics. I find that
> navigating in a top-down world view, by just pressing numeric
> keypad keys, is considerably easier than typing normal movement
> commands. I now find it overtaxing to play in a straight text
> mode. Players that use your system may see the same effect over
> time.

In my old Shades days I rebound the numeric pad to
N/NE/E/SE/S/SW/W/NW/N with INS and DEL acting as U/D.  It worked
fairly well.  More recently I've found that I'm not happy with the
implicit compass directions (you have a compass embedded in your
skull?), and the resulting lack of directional confusion, and have
been tempted to go for a forward/right/back/left-type semantic.  Way
back when I toyed with PacMan-style joystick interfaces set in a 3D
1st person ASCII graphic maze and came away disenchanted.

Top-down overviews define a certain field-of-view and user context
that I'm not very happy with (barriers don't restrain vision and
collapsed depth perception) -- not that I like isometric overviews
much better either.  My current toy is a 360 degree view with center
field representing straight ahead and each end of the pane
representing directly behind you.

  Imaging a camera which sites on a tripod and spins in a compleat
circle, taking a single photograph on a very long strip of film.
(For those interested, one of my great grandfathers was a
photographic pioneer and made and used cameras which did precisely
this with the film wrapped about a cylinder and the lense rotating
about it during a single shutter cycle).

The view on screen is akin to that photo, rolled out flat -- except
that it is a real time image and is updated as the environment
changes and the player moves.

Expensive: yes.  All the normal tricks to minimise the active field
and working set no longer apply.  I'm beginning not to care (the
fact that VA threw dual 500MHz Xeon's under my desk at home and work
helped).  I've been playing with very simple filled wire frames:
BSX-ish really, just 360 degree.  It can be extremely confusing and
disorienting.  It gets better when you make the pane 330 degree,
leving the backward 30 degrees as a blindspot (lessens things
"jumping" from end to end as they cross the midpoint).  It also
evokes more than its share of "Oooo! Cool!" reactions on just
walking a PoV about the landscape.

> I've thought about trying to do the South Park Canadian type of
> graphics (as in Terrence, Philip and Ike), but I'm not sure my
> talents are even up to that!

<nod>  Tempting.

--
J C Lawrence                                   Home: claw at kanga.nu
---------(*)                Linux/IA64 - Work: claw at varesearch.com
 ... Beware of cromagnons wearing chewing gum and palm pilots ...


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