There could be several rules of thumb for this subject. Even setting aside the basic "watch your spelling", etc...

I've been playing a number of games in the archives and it's astounding how many people do not take advantage of the 'OTHER' button on objects to use.

It's really not that time consuming or difficult. If you have an object called "big fat dirty towel", allow the user to refer to it as several shorter names such as "big towel, fat towel, dirty towel" OR at the very least just 'towel'.

There are too many games where I have to type "use the four foot long double barrelled shotgun on the mad man with worn jeans and runs with a slight limp" when all I had to type was "use gun on man" or "shoot man"

Take advantage of these little options and you can make not only a good-looking game, but also an easy-to-play game.

I've said my peace...now go make some games!

yes, you are right, too many games are designed this way.
You could also mention the missing obvious synonyms and the unique command, for example instead of refering to an object in their command ("take #@object#") they code it like "take the funny hat" so you must type it exactly this way to make the command work...

I can't be bothered with the #@object# thing. If I want someone to pick up an object, I just make a custom command eg. "forge passport", instead of "forge computer whizz's passport" for example.

007bond wrote:I can't be bothered with the #@object# thing. If I want someone to pick up an object, I just make a custom command eg. "forge passport", instead of "forge computer whizz's passport" for example.

Lol, I know you're young but you seem to say "I can't be bothered with..." in many of your posts. If you can't bother to make it easier for the player to play your games then the player probably won't bother to post a positive review for your game.

There are a lot of steps to game-making and if you can't be bothered by some of them, you might want to just play them and not make them.

In your example, how is the passport being forged? With a machine? With another device? The player can't automatically know what one single custom command is supposed to be. They need to have many options where applicable.
"Forge passport with object", "use object on passport", "use object on whizz's passport", etc.. etc...

That's why better looking games take longer to make.

Amen

Yup, using those object thingy's to have it known by other names (whizz for example) is much better than hard-coding.