[MUD-Dev] Better Combat

[Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes]

Thu, Aug 12, 2004 at 12:48:10AM -0400 in <5.1.0.14.0.20040812004021.00bc9170 at mail.earthlink.net>,
Douglas Goodall <dgoodall at earthlink.net> spake:
>Paul Schwanz wrote:

>> It seems to me that in this example, freeing up her hands to chat
>> involves a better UI design, not additional game-created dead
>> time.

> Give me a better interface (or built-in voice chat or, preferably,
> speech-to-text-to-speech) and you can have your cake and eat it
> to. Easier said than done, I know.

> In exchange for simultaneous chat and combat, I'd even be willing
> to give up female avatars.

One point that isn't mentioned in this and in Richard Bartle's article
on voice chat[0], is internationalization.

In FFXI, you can meet and play with Japanese speakers from Japan,
English speakers from North America, and very soon French, German,
and Italian speakers from Europe.  We all share the same servers,
and each group has a different peak period of use, so the server
load is stable--it's very convenient that Japan, North America, and
Europe are evenly-spaced around the planet.  There's an automated
word-translation system; type a few letters of a term or phrase, hit
tab, and it fills in the rest and will be shown in each user's
native language.  It's not smart (it unfortunately doesn't recognize
words if you just type them, you have to hit tab), it's not
grammatical, but it's good enough to let the smarter users play
together and do some basic social interaction.  I've had many
enjoyable evenings partying with Japanese players, even though I
only know a few words of Japanese and can't read hiragana well yet.

With pure voice chat, we're back to square one, you can only talk to
people who share your native language.  There's no Japanese or
English language in Vana'Diel.  It's an alien planet.  There
shouldn't be a language barrier in the game.

There's also an issue of accessibility: text-only systems allow deaf
people to play on an even basis.  If you're using a speech-to-text
system, the deaf have to type, but they can still communicate.
Voice-only excludes them.

  [0] http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2003/07/28/not_yet_you_fools.html

--
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"Doing the impossible makes us mighty." -Captain Malcolm Reynolds, Firefly
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