Following on from another thread, I thought it would be helpful all round - especially for designers - if we started a discussion about the things that annoy and frustrate in Text Adventure Games, and of course, more positively, the things that encourage you to play on till the end, and even seek out more games from a given developer.

I suppose I should kick off by saying one of my biggest turn-offs is illogical problems, in which the designer devises what they see as a clever puzzle, but one which makes no sense to me and eventually results in me banging silly commands into the keyboard... "Lick glass", "shout help", "slap thigh"... I will very quickly give up on these games.

Another is when the description is too brief/too long/full of grammatical errors (which is why I wish Quest had a built-in spell-checker). Ironically, too long and detailed descriptions is something I have to fight against doing myself, and I am guilty of trying to force an atmosphere, rather than describing it briefly and allow the players imagination to do the rest.

Conversely, "You are in a room. There is an exit north and an exit east" leaves me cold and with no sense of place.

Others will come to me, but enough to get the ball rolling I hope.

As mentioned before, killing off the player as some kind of 'clever' mechanic. I suppose it could work if a minor punishment could be implemented (Grand Theft Auto does it well by sending you to hospital and charging you for the pleasure, or losing weapons, I forget which, maybe the weapon loss might be for arrest) but making people start again = bad/boring game.

In IF I really do want every single noun that you mention to have some sort of description for when/if I decide to examine them. If that seems like too much work then reduce the amount of nouns in your room descriptions. If the game mentions blood on the floor, I examine it and the game goes 'meh?' I will assume it's still in beta and (as a player) probably stop playing it or (as a game moderator) send it to the sand pit unless its like the Blackpool Illuminations in all other respects.

Silver wrote:f the game mentions blood on the floor, I examine it and the game goes 'meh?' I will assume it's still in beta and (as a player) probably stop playing it or (as a game moderator) send it to the sand pit unless its like the Blackpool Illuminations in all other respects.

So you're saying you want a description on 'look/examine' ? I must confess I'm the same, especially if I think the thing being examined is of relevance.

As for pleasing aspects (I've mentioned elsewhere that I like to test a game's logic) I like games that have a good attention to detail. If I eat a bowl of ice cream, I want that bowl to then be empty. If I use a toilet and try to use it again immediately afterwards, I want a different response to be displayed. Most of these are things any normal player wouldn't do, but they impress me nonetheless - it's a sign that the developer has put real thought into it. Of course scripting different secondary responses for every aspect of your game would require a ridiculous amount of work, and it's not something I expect, but the odd one here and there is nice.

I think for me, what I want to experience is a sort of escape. So what works the best for me are games where I can see new things, discover things, explore, solve problems. I try to think about that in the varied games I have designed in my head: what will be unique and novel in this? What will engage the player and make them want to learn and do more? I don't want to do things like: hire people, manage money, gamble to win money, search all around trying to find keys for locks, etc. I don't want to have to go through minutiae just because it's like real life. I don't feel satisfaction by having to look everywhere for passwords hidden in oddball places.

I like games where the story is well integrated with the puzzles or other game play - where everything makes sense. I like room descriptions to be evocative and to the point - a bit the way poetry is but without having to be poetic. Just... a focus on the importance of each individual word. (Which might be ironic given how much I type.) I don't like long passages of text where I have to "press any key to continue" multiple times.

I don't like games with busy work, at least not IF games. (I have played other sorts of games that have that, and it can be ok if you can see progress and are working toward something.)

And I don't like linear design, where I have to get past one puzzle after another to proceed. (I'm not that big on puzzles anyway.) I like to have the freedom to have multiple things possible to do, not just a single task that has me stonewalled.

Basically, I like creative games that have been designed and written with the player in mind, with the goal of giving the player a unique, memorable, enjoyable experience. (And if it stirs the emotions, so much the better, even if they're not happy ones!)

I'm also not big on gratuitous gore or violence... (even in movies). But that's a personal preference.

It's like this: "you walk into the lounge which has an old thread-bare carpet on the floor and tatty wallpaper adorning the walls. There is a table and chair in the centre of the room and an ornamental rhinoceros with a large tusk sitting on a shelf."

>examine tusk

You can't see that.
______________________

You'd be surprised how many games are like that.

Silver wrote:It's like this: "you walk into the lounge which has an old thread-bare carpet on the floor and tatty wallpaper adorning the walls. There is a table and chair in the centre of the room and an ornamental rhinoceros with a large tusk sitting on a shelf."

>examine tusk

You can't see that.
______________________

You'd be surprised how many games are like that.

Mmm, that seems like a strange example to me. I can imagine why you'd type 'examine rhinoceros' as that would probably include the tusk's description, but why would you want to examine the tusk alone?

If you apply that logic, then every element of an object would need it's own description, wouldn't it? The eyes of a doll, the bed sheets on a bed, the door handle on a door...

Just my thoughts on that, anyway, or are you simply saying the designer should have changed the default 'look' response for anything inconsequential to something like "Nothing special.."

I suppose this would be a good place to ask for opinion on an aspect of my own game. Luckily I've hardly started on it and so far have only mapped out the player's apartment, so the feedback shouldn't be too discouraging... but I had planned to use non directional exists throughout (I know Jay has already mentioned that some players find this disorientating). However, my concern is the inputting aspect, and the fact that 'n' is so much easier and quicker to type than 'go bathroom'.

So I ask, would you as a player be irritated by having to type 'go [wherever]' every time you want to move?

OurJud wrote:

"Silver"

It's like this: "you walk into the lounge which has an old thread-bare carpet on the floor and tatty wallpaper adorning the walls. There is a table and chair in the centre of the room and an ornamental rhinoceros with a large tusk sitting on a shelf."

>examine tusk

You can't see that.
______________________

You'd be surprised how many games are like that.

Mmm, that seems like a strange example to me. I can imagine why you'd type 'examine rhinoceros' as that would probably include the tusk's description, but why would you want to examine the tusk alone?

If you apply that logic, then every element of an object would need it's own description, wouldn't it? The eyes of a doll, the bed sheets on a bed, the door handle on a door...

Exactly my point. So you have two options in this situation.

1) create a scenery object called 'tusk' and write a description for it.
2) don't mention a tusk in either the room description or the object description.

If it is mentioned, people will try to examine it (otherwise how are they to know whether it's an important game element or not?)

Mentioning it and have it return a 'I can't see that' or 'nothing special' signifies a lack of polish.

To follow up on SIlver's post: the general consensus is that noun's mentioned in descriptions should have their own descriptions (to a depth of perhaps three, I believe - though I just tend to try to not mention further stuff in my descriptions.)

In the example he gave, I'd expect there to be additional descriptions for carpet, floor, wallpaper, walls, table, chair, rhinoceros, tusk and shelf. It might seem extreme when listed like that, but... people will do it since the description calls them out specially!

OurJud wrote:I suppose this would be a good place to ask for opinion on an aspect of my own game. Luckily I've hardly started on it and so far have only mapped out the player's apartment, so the feedback shouldn't be too discouraging... but I had planned to use non directional exists throughout (I know Jay has already mentioned that some players find this disorientating). However, my concern is the inputting aspect, and the fact that 'n' is so much easier and quicker to type than 'go bathroom'.

So I ask, would you as a player be irritated by having to type 'go [wherever]' every time you want to move?

Only because - as previously mentioned - excluding any kind of directions in the commands makes it difficult to visualise where the locations are situated with regards to each other in the game world. You've got to remember that what may be obvious to you as the author may not be quite so clear to your audience. Also you would need to coach the player fairly early on what input you expect (although that's easy enough to do in the room description) because they'll be expecting to use established IF conventions.

jaynabonne wrote:To follow up on SIlver's post: the general consensus is that noun's mentioned in descriptions should have their own descriptions (to a depth of perhaps three, I believe - though I just tend to try to not mention further stuff in my descriptions.)

In the example he gave, I'd expect there to be additional descriptions for carpet, floor, wallpaper, walls, table, chair, rhinoceros, tusk and shelf. It might seem extreme when listed like that, but... people will do it since the description calls them out specially!

So how do you create an atmosphere and sense of 'being there' if everything you describe is expected to have its own look description? What you suggest means that room description should be restricted to, 'You are in the [room]. There are exits north and east.'

As for the non directional method, would a brief 'Guide to inputs' before the game's intro be sufficient?

Why should one preclude the other? Providing further descriptions for nouns doesn't prevent you from adding feeling to your prose.

Silver wrote:Why should one preclude the other? Providing further descriptions for nouns doesn't prevent you from adding feeling to your prose.

No, what I'm saying is that your room description seemed fine to me, but Jay suggests all that the 'things' you mentioned require their own description. Wouldn't this mean an awful lot of work for anyone who likes to be descriptive with their rooms? I can understand players might want to 'look' at these things, just to check, but I don't see what's wrong with a default 'Nothing special', unless the object is relevant to the game's story.

So how do you create an atmosphere and sense of 'being there' if everything you describe is expected to have its own look description? What you suggest means that room description should be restricted to, 'You are in the [room]. There are exits north and

Actually, it's the opposite. The expectation is that room descriptions will be fully featured *and* fully written (to the level of the objects within them). It's the authors who stop at the room description and don't bother to fully create the user experience by fleshing out the components of that room that leave a bad taste in players' mouths.

And, yes, it *is* a lot of work. Creating a text adventure/IF piece is not trivial. Not only do you need to make your world explorable to the extent that you describe it, but the need to anticipate and provide for a wide range of possible user input is a further challenge toward creating a quality piece. A well-designed parser game needs to give the illusion that the player is interacting with a world where their actions have an effect - and that the input they have entered to solve a puzzle has been their own. (This concept was a foreign to me at first, but it slowly grew on me, and now I think I understand it a bit better, if not completely.) It's not the case that it is, but... well, it is all illusion, isn't it?

In particular, what you have describe before as your particular approach (which is to try all these different things) is exactly what others do as well. And the game needs to response accordingly. That' why beta testing is so critical - to get feedback about all the things people might try to do. The boundaries need to be fuzzy. It needs to respond well to lots of things. I have come to respect those who create highly polished IF. It is a lot of work. And the sign of the novice author is *not* putting that level of detail in.

I would highly recommend perusing the Game Design portion of the IntFiction.org forums. It's a great way to expand your perspective. (It certainly has mine.)

OurJud wrote:

"Silver"

Why should one preclude the other? Providing further descriptions for nouns doesn't prevent you from adding feeling to your prose.

No, what I'm saying is that your room description seemed fine to me, but Jay suggests all that the 'things' you mentioned require their own description. Wouldn't this mean an awful lot of work for anyone who likes to be descriptive with their rooms? I can understand players might want to 'look' at these things, just to check, but I don't see what's wrong with a default 'Nothing special', unless the object is relevant to the game's story.

Well let's look at it another way. What if - to borrow an earlier example that Jay provided - the producers of Star Trek didn't bother including elements that wasn't relevant to the episode? They land on a planet so that's important but why bother giving it a colour when all the viewer needs to know is that it's a planet? Why give the spaceship flaming boosters? People can see the spaceship moving along so how it is doing it is irrelevant, surely?

The point is besides perhaps some images should you choose to include them, your words are the only way for you to paint this world for your audience. Players won't just be looking for things that matter, they will be looking at everything - the whole picture.

Silver wrote:

"OurJud"

[quote="Silver"]It's like this: "you walk into the lounge which has an old thread-bare carpet on the floor and tatty wallpaper adorning the walls. There is a table and chair in the centre of the room and an ornamental rhinoceros with a large tusk sitting on a shelf."

>examine tusk

You can't see that.
______________________

You'd be surprised how many games are like that.

Mmm, that seems like a strange example to me. I can imagine why you'd type 'examine rhinoceros' as that would probably include the tusk's description, but why would you want to examine the tusk alone?

If you apply that logic, then every element of an object would need it's own description, wouldn't it? The eyes of a doll, the bed sheets on a bed, the door handle on a door...

Exactly my point. So you have two options in this situation.

1) create a scenery object called 'tusk' and write a description for it.
2) don't mention a tusk in either the room description or the object description.

If it is mentioned, people will try to examine it (otherwise how are they to know whether it's an important game element or not?)

Mentioning it and have it return a 'I can't see that' or 'nothing special' signifies a lack of polish.[/quote]
An alternative is to include more about the tusk in the rhino description, and have "tusk" as an alternative name. The player can examine either the rhino and the tusk, and get the same description. It is not quite as good, but I think a good compromise in this situation (assuming the tusk is not significant).

Yeah there is that. I came across that recently myself. I had a medical cabinet but if you examined the door when it was open (it closed automatically after a period of time) you would discover a mirror. The problem was if you typed 'examine cabinet door' a pop up would appear saying do you mean

1. The medical cabinet
2. The medical cabinet door

I decided I hated that happening so just made the cabinet door an alias of the cabinet and included a description of the door if the cabinet was examined when opened (the description when opening the cabinet omits to mention it).

Oh cool is this the thread for random rants? Ok here goes.

One thing that bugs me immensely about the gamebooks here is that so many of them basically boil down to 'here's two lines of text, now okay just click a link at random and let's see if you die!'

Even worse are the ones where the author will insult you for not reading their mind, or that just make no sense whatsoever. You know what I mean, something like, 'k do you wanna wear the red shirt or the blue shirt?' 'Uggh why would you pick blue your so stupid!!! play again'

And my response to that is usually just something like, 'Play again? Umm no I think I'll pass.'

Maybe I'm just a CYOA snob but I like choices to be meaningful...moral or tactical choices, or ones that show me something about the plot. If I get a bad end I want it to be because I responded to a situation in the story the wrong way, not because there were two choices that gave me no information and the one I clicked just happened to kill me.

Marzipan, the amazing thing to me is that when you approach the author of such a game and say why it's no fun, they basically say, "Well play it again and choose the other choice." They are really refusing to look at it from the player's point of view. All they know is they have this "cool game I wrote that my friends all love", and they can't understand why the rest of the world just goes "meh." And no desire for growth and development as a game creator...

I also wonder if it's the mentality of the destination over the journey. As long as you can get to the end, they don't care about all the pain along the way. Or maybe they're just defensive. I really don't know.

If a game kills me unless it's spectacularly interesting and I did something spectacularly stupid I don't go for a second bite. On the times that I have it usually does it again.

jaynabonne wrote:Marzipan, the amazing thing to me is that when you approach the author of such a game and say why it's no fun, they basically say, "Well play it again and choose the other choice." They are really refusing to look at it from the player's point of view. All they know is they have this "cool game I wrote that my friends all love", and they can't understand why the rest of the world just goes "meh." And no desire for growth and development as a game creator...

Yeah, I guess "cool game I wrote that my friends all love" is all the reasoning there is behind a lot of them. Most I played I didn't even bother to rate because it seemed pointless to jump in there and point out all the ways they were bad, it was obvious enough that the author had to know it and just uploaded it for fun and didn't care.

Anyway this mostly seems to be an issue with gamebooks, which is part of the reason I posted another thread asking if we could get a way to sort them so we know what we're clicking on.

There's plenty of bad parser games too, but for whatever reason they don't bother me as much. I guess my thinking on it is that it takes a lot of work to write a parser game at all (I know I'm really struggling with mine) while with a gamebook, unless you're trying to do something really fancy with it all you have to do is write some words and have those words tell a story. So why not make it a good story?

Believed it or not, I played a GB a few weeks ago that only had ONE hyperlink for each situation. It may as well have just said 'next' or 'continue'

They should make that link 'turn page' so then they could claim they were simulating the experience of reading a real book!

Games that use the whole width of the screen.

I once read somewhere that the number of words per line should not exceed 12, as the reader struggles to move from one line to the other, and it's true. I find it very difficult indeed to read a body of text that stretches the whole width of the screen.

It's even more of a frustration when the game shows real promise like those linked to in the recommendations thread.

That's interesting. I hadn't heard that before.

OurJud wrote:
I once read somewhere that the number of words per line should not exceed 12, as the reader struggles to move from one line to the other, and it's true.

So you can use the whole width of the screen so long as you use really big text size to keep it down to twelve words max.

Here's one example: http://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability

They phrase it in terms of characters instead of words, but the concept is the same. I've just spent the past twenty minutes pondering the layout of my game. lol

Silver wrote:

"OurJud"

I once read somewhere that the number of words per line should not exceed 12, as the reader struggles to move from one line to the other, and it's true.

So you can use the whole width of the screen so long as you use really big text size to keep it down to twelve words max.

I suppose so, in theory

jaynabonne wrote:I've just spent the past twenty minutes pondering the layout of my game. lol

Soz

Easily fixable with padding, though.

in hindsight, this makes such sense (though it never occured to me, prior to in hindsight, I feel stupid, laughs), why do newspapers~magazines, use 'columns', why are literary books' pages so small in width (in fact, they're pretty much the same size as newspaper~magazine columns), because it is scientific, as been stated in the above post(s), we get tired in reading too many words~characters in each left-right line of a sentence across the page.

Oh dear! There's going to be droves of IF designers hurriedly reducing the width of their game text now

Doesn't seem to be an issue with Quest games at least. I don't know if it's just a setting I have on or what but when I play it's always centered and about the width of a page.

For Gargoyle and ADRIFT I have hit upon the high-tech solution of 'resizing the window', though that comes with it's own annoyances.

Marzipan wrote:Doesn't seem to be an issue with Quest games at least. I don't know if it's just a setting I have on or what but when I play it's always centered and about the width of a page.

I suppose it depends what you do with Quest. As you say, the default with player interface on the right sets the width about right, but I stripped mine right back and had to add padding in the game set-up to avoid full width text.

Annoying/Hilarious: The kind of person who would go to a site called textadventures.co.uk, join in, load a game, and then be all like, 'wtf you mean I'm supposed to play this game by typing words??? Are you kidding me that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of!!!'

...I mean, you'd think that somewhere in the progress of finding the site, looking around the site or registering an account he'd have picked up at least a vague idea that IF involved words somehow.

Yeah you sometimes see on some of the popular games with lots of reviews n00bs giving it a 1 star review saying "WTF I can't even get out of the first room stupid game!!!1!!"

OurJud wrote:Games that use the whole width of the screen.

I once read somewhere that the number of words per line should not exceed 12, as the reader struggles to move from one line to the other, and it's true. I find it very difficult indeed to read a body of text that stretches the whole width of the screen.

It's even more of a frustration when the game shows real promise like those linked to in the recommendations thread.

It's interesting that the very line you mention the 12 word limit has (on my browser) no less than 19 words on it

davidw wrote:

"OurJud"

Games that use the whole width of the screen.

I once read somewhere that the number of words per line should not exceed 12, as the reader struggles to move from one line to the other, and it's true. I find it very difficult indeed to read a body of text that stretches the whole width of the screen.

It's even more of a frustration when the game shows real promise like those linked to in the recommendations thread.

It's interesting that the very line you mention the 12 word limit has (on my browser) no less than 19 words on it

Mmm, it's 29 on mine.

I think I may have my figures wrong as 12 words per line would make for a very narrow body of text. I never worked out how many words 50 - 75 characters would be, as that was the range given on the site Jay linked to, but 12 words doesn't seem like very many when you think about it. Font size is a factor, of course.

Works out to approx 11 or 12 words a line on my mobile phone. The problem is everyone nowadays uses high res widescreen monitors. Hence people use padding on their websites to centre everything and keep it to a reasonable size in those circumstances. I don't think forums do that though; or I'm yet to see one that does.