Arayna v0.035 alpha 2534

Poster

I think the comment was that the game *user* is doing the focusing, not the game author. Emily's "ExpertGrammar.h, and other such extensions" can certainly help the programmer write a better parser (or so I presume, not knowing the first thing about the product), but that doesn't do much for the player trying to guess all the uncommon words used by the game.

Reception from whom? Certainly die-hard fans of the text-only genre will be disappointed. But the popularity of non-text interactive fiction games (e.g., Warcraft) over the years suggests that the *average* person doesn't like having to guess at arcane command names. As I've said earlier in this thread, once you get past the nifty-ness of an amazing parser, you immediately switch into using commands like "g n". People don't play games because the parser amazes them. While a bad parser can take a great game concept and turn it into an also-ran, a great parser won't make a bad game good. Indeed, 90% of the reason for having a parser in the first place is for the first-time user of a game. Once they figure out the basic commands, they start using cryptic commands like "g n". It may as well be "up-arrow" or "mouse click above your current location" for all it matters.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that a mouse-based windowing scheme is going to be better. I'm *not* a fan of text-based interactive fiction games. I hated "adventure" the first time I played it back in the middle 1970's and that lack of interest in the genre has carried forward since then. As a result, I'm not real qualified to comment on the playability of such options. But having observed, first hand, the hoardes of people laying games like Everquest and World of Warcraft, I *can* tell you that there is a bit more interest in games that provide alternative inputs beyond English sentences. You don't have to give up the text genre to do this (i.e., no need for graphics; let people use their imagination); but exploring ways to make the game mechanically easier to play is *not* a bad idea at all. Cheers, Randy Hyde