Essential Four Adventure Commands

[Andrew_Baker]

Hi, all. Well, the deadline for me to begin Voodoo Girl 2 is looming close (June 1st). It's not going to be in AGI, and it's only going to have four or five buttons other than the directional keys. That being, I'm not going to have text parsing

I thought about using a text parser, especially for conversations, but I've decided that I want to do something totally different than text or mouse.

So, out of all the possible commands like use, look, take, etc. I'm going to try to boil them all down into four categories. The interface will be context-sensitive, so you obviously won't try to "use a man" or "take a door", but I'm a bit shaky on the proper groupings right now. For instance, should I dedicate one button to inventory and then have only three contextual buttons, or should I make four contextual buttons and then use another button, like the space bar, for inventory?

Also, I imagine that if you were to "equip" an item from your inventory, there could be special contexts set up. For example, equipping a magnifying glass might turn "Look" into "Examine" and "Use" into "Focus Light". Or equipping a stick might turn "Use" into "Hit" and "Look" into... hell, I don't know... that's kind of my problem.

I'm really trying to simplify the interface without dumbing down the game. So, what are your favorite essential keywords? And given that the commands should remain similar from one context to another, what do you think would be the most proper grouping?

I am, of course, going to be releasing VG2 for free with source code, so contributing to this might help further development in adventure games.

Current List:
Look
Take
Push
Pull
Climb
Drop
Give
Talk
Examine
Hit
Open
Close
Use
Inventory

[Rainer]

well since you say its context sensitive, all you really need is 'look', and 'action' where action would change to 'get' or 'hit' or whatever the context. The problem with less controls though is that it makes the game much easier. It makes it harder for you to make a more difficult game, because your game would have to rely on the puzzle factor rather than skill (or: guessing which command to use or where to place your character). I hope this helps you in your design. If you want to discuss this further let me know.

[Andrew_Baker]

Oh, I definitely want to discuss this further.

To add command complexity, there is, of course, your inventory items. Plus, I'm planning on not letting this be a game where you can just hammer every recognizable object with commands without there being some kinds of consequences, temporary or not. I'm not going to have instant death for bad choices like in classic Sierra games, but if you use an inventory item on an object and it doesn't work, then you may lose the item and have to get a new one. As I'm planning on having potion components like sleep moss and blue mushrooms be placed on the map in a more "organic" fashion than VG:QotD, this alone should be a hindrance to keep players from hammering.

Plus, I am assuming that most objects will have multiple possible actions available. For instance, a stone block might allow you to both push AND pull. A switch might be poly-phase. A vase might allow itself to be taken or broken, etc. So, what I'm really looking for here is how to properly address this multiple action route in a logical, structured manner, so a player will only need periodic references to the available commands. Using the four command buttons should become intuitive.

Doubleplus, I *do* have a control scheme worked out that could support up to 16 different commands per object, but I actually think this is overkill and could lead to the exact kind of "hammering" I'm trying to do away with.