Alternatives to verbs in UI of adventure games

How would you implement the “lift edge of the rug” puzzle without spoiling it?

Just click the rug? that would spoil it… UNLESS you don’t highlight objects on mouseover…

“use rug”? Too easy. “pickup rug”? seems an improper usage of the verb.

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I was thinking in that case you would see you could click the rug, then the “obvious” choice(s) would be there (like Look), and then there would be “Other”, and if you selected Other, you’d pick from a preset list of maybe 6-8 verbs, either icons or written. Honestly, it starts to look like the verb interface from TWP in the end :slight_smile:

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this seems a very good compromise to me. you could also use the right button for “other”, and the left button for obvious choices…

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I’ve played a few games where the items you can interact with aren’t ‘highlighted’ somehow when you get the mouse near them, and I never enjoy them. I find myself clicking all over the room trying to figure out what responds and what doesn’t. Eventually I stop playing, it’s not worth the hassle.

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What if the game detects this, and tells you “cheating detected! We are now going to wait 20 seconds to discourage you from playing like this… 19…18…17…16…”

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Oh then I’d definitely stop playing altogether, at about ‘16’, I think :slight_smile:

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How do you convey the fact that, if you are often opening the “other” menu, you are playing wrong? that you should do it only when you have a clear idea what to do? I’m afraid the user could spend a lot of time trying silly combinations… (reason why Ron removed the possibility to do verbs on actors)

maybe you could label the menu “infrequent actions”?

In my mind there is nothing wrong with that at all. It’s just a convenience - hide the interesting verbs so they don’t take screen space all the time, and just make basic looking at things, opening and closing door, talking to characters easy with one or two clicks. I think TWP handles it will with the right click for obvious stuff, but I do think the verb box, while retro and cool in that respect, takes up way too much valuable screen real estate.

I know you feel you want to discourage the ‘experiment until you find a solution’ approach - since it’s kind of cheating the rational puzzle-solving method, but I think that’s valuable at times, and can lead to some funny responses. People need that sort of thing to keep the game moving along, in my opinion, or you would be getting stuck at a puzzle forever because you didn’t happen to think about it in the same rational way the developer intended.

I’m concerned the user would see the “other” menu, with all those verbs (push, throw, climb, listen), and ASSUME they must be used. And starts doing silly combinations, and gets frustrated.

Ron said this is exactly why he removed the possibility to use verbs on actors. users would try any kind of silly combinations and get frustrated with the default error responses.

I wonder if this principle if true and if it can help:

“A good puzzle is such that, when you solved it, you immediately know you solved it. You don’t need to try it. You already know it will work if you try.”

( I got this idea from reading the “Lateral Thinking Puzzles” series by Paul Sloane)

Now, if this principle is true, (and I am not sure it is) can it be useful in the text parser? In other words, could it be that any puzzle where you are uncertain what verb (or verbs) to use is not a good puzzle?

So, is the puzzle “guess the verb”? Because I thought we put those to bed during the age of Infocom.

In my opinion, “guess the verb” should not be the puzzle; the puzzle is the use or application of some object to reach a determined goal. If there is something hidden under a rug, the act of clicking to perform an appropriate action should be sufficient to reveal it, since the player came up with the notion of performing an action on the rug.

If you think this makes the puzzle too easy, then don’t make that puzzle, think of something else. Game design is hard.

I am perfectly happy using the Leisure Suit Larry interface with general icons, and it allowed me to solve some rather complex puzzles. Some of them are purely due to Larry’s themes, so they could be rid of. The icons it has are:

  • Eye → Look At
  • Nose → Smell Object
  • Mouth → Talk To
  • Tongue → Lick, Taste, or Kiss
  • Hand → Do Something

To me the important ones are the Eye (Look At), the Mouth (Talk To), and the Hand (Do Action). Having a generic “Do Action” verb on the hand solves many of the issues being discussed here and, in my opinion at least, doesn’t spoil any puzzles or make them too easy.

You can still design fancy complex puzzles where most of what you need to do involves performing an action on stuff.

Why is this bad? I would hate getting stuck on a puzzle just because I tried “pushing” the rug when I should have “lifted” it. To me, that’s an annoying puzzle, and just “hard” by contrivance.

-dZ.

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So your response falls into the “that puzzle is bad” category. I am fine with that.

We should only focus on good puzzles…

but, at this point, we should define what a good puzzle is. not what a good UI is.

Er… I thought we were defining the reasons why a coin UI was bad and how to refine it to improve it. My comments were in response to what I thought was a conversation on which verbs to accept.

The specific comment from you that I quoted suggests that implementing “lift edge of the rug” puzzle with “use rug” is too easy. My response to that is, why? Is it because the player didn’t have to divine the specific verb the designer had expected but used a generic one? So, we’re back to the bad old days of “guess the verb” puzzles and design by contrivance in Sierra games.

I made no judgement about a rug puzzle particularly, other than to say that if your puzzle is “guess the verb” then “guess the verb” puzzles are bad design, in general.

-dZ.

because you can solve it by clicking the hand on everything, without a clear idea what you are trying to accomplish.

we don’t want the player to be able to solve a puzzle without solving it in their mind first.

Fine, that’s a good goal, but I still assert that the verb is inconsequential. If you are afraid your player is going to be clicking randomly around your screen and not playing fair then,

a) you are not trusting your player enough or giving him enough credit for his wits;
b) you do not have much confidence that your game is interesting enough to invite the player to explore and to attempt to solve puzzles by their wits rather than by brute-force;
c) your aiming at the wrong audience, one who doesn’t appear interested in solving puzzles.

At that point, I do not think the verbs are your problem.

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What you say makes a lot of sense. But the problem is more subtle. The problem is that I am encouraging the player to click randomly. The fact that the hand exists encourages them to play the wrong way. So it’s not that I don’t trust them. It’s that I am misleading them to believe they must play like this, instead of thinking first. I am leading them to play in a way that removes the fun.

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I’m bulding a game with Visionaire I think I’ll save this thread for further analysis… maybe I’ll use a foot controller as interface like playing guitar and pedal board​:fire::scream:

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I understand, but I still think that’s a rather negative view of your player. I see an adventure game more like a partnership between the designer and the player: the designer invites the player to come along in a journey, and the player suspends his disbelief and goes along for the ride.

Nothing in that tacit agreement suggests that the player should try things randomly, because by its very own nature – by default – the player will assume that the designer is not interested in “tricking” him. The game must start from both sides with such basic trust, or else both player and designer will always be at odds and will try to outsmart the other because they already expect that the other is doing them wrong.

If you assume your player will play by the rules, then all you have to do as a designer is to maintain that trust: ensure your puzzles are solvable, encourage exploration by the user, provide appropriate and logical feedback, and – most importantly – make sure that the solutions are fair and logical.

However, it must start with that trust. It’s like watching a movie or reading a book: nothing stops the viewer from skipping ahead to the end, or from asking someone else for the key conclusions before watching, or from looking up a plot synopsis on Wikipedia. Most people don’t because they expect that the journey of watching the movie or reading the book is more fun if they follow the author rather than work against him. In return, the author must fulfill that expectation by providing a fun and enjoyable experience. :slight_smile:

Make the game for that player. If you try to “fix” your game so that the negative player is not able to hack away at the rules, then you’ll piss off both kinds of player.

-dZ.

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What you say makes a lot of sense, and I am honestly uncertain if you are right or wrong. So I need to try to falsify what you say. (don’t take this the wrong way)

  1. If what you say is correct, then why don’t we have just one button, the spacebar? You are supposed to think first, then press spacebar when you are done thinking. Since you trust the player, you know he will not cheat, and he will not just press the spacebar whenever he is stuck. He will only press the spacebar when he has solved a puzzle in his mind. So why don’t we just do this? [Maybe because the game would become like a book.] Ok, so let me change the question: why don’t we just have single click on objects? When you click, the puzzle on that object is automatically solved with a cut-scene. What’s the problem? we trust him, so we know that, if he clicked, he has already solved that puzzle in his mind.

  2. take what Ron Gilbert said: he had to remove the possibility to use verbs on human actors. Why? Because he found out that, if he gave this possibility, players started trying all kinds of silly combinations on actors, and get frustrated as a result. Does this support your positive view of players? or a negative view of players? The fact is that even “honest” players can be corrupted by an interface that encourages them to be dishonest.

Simple, because you want to let the player explore the world and try interesting things. This is why you offer something like “Look At,” because it invites the player to examine his surroundings.

I am not against using verbs, but they do come with some consequences: the moment you give a range of actions, then that becomes the de facto vocabulary of all player interactions. This means that if the game has, say, an “open” verb, the player will expect to open stuff, and rightly so.

All good so far when you have doors or jars. However, you get into trouble when that verb is applied (by mere fact of being one of the limited actions available) to a particular object for which it is not particularly intuitive, say, a picture on a wall.

Now you put the player in a pickle: if he ever comes up with the notion of “open picture frame,” which on its surface is absurd no matter how logical it may seem within the language of the game, then you have now given him reason to assume that all bets are off: the world is no longer sensible, you don’t only open doors and jars, you can open paintings! What else can I open? Random actions ensue.

So, how do you solve this? You could apply the “open” verb only to doors and jars, which makes it rather limited; or you then have to fight against the player’s tendency of doing random stuff.

You could also see this as an artefact of the limited vocabulary. So, you expand your vocabulary, convoluting the game even more. Does the player “push” the painting instead of opening it? How about “lift” it or “peek behind”?

That’s Sierra’s “guess the verb” or “read the programmer’s mind” territory.

One way to solve this – and perhaps not necessarily the best way – is to avoid it all. Offer sensible useful verbs that apply to (mostly) everything like “Look At < Object >” or “Do < Action >” or “Use < Object >.”

I wouldn’t consider that “corrupting the player.” I think it’s just the nature of imposing a limited vocabulary on the player. If all the player can do is “talk to” and “open” and “look at,” then by George, that’s all he will do with anything and everything – especially if one of those interactions he was allowed to do made no sense at all (like “Talk To” a plant or “Open” a rug). That’s not the fault of the player.

I think the trick is to offer a rich enough vocabulary that is also general enough to apply in most cases, and let the player use them as they wish. This is why there’s typically some sort of generic “Use < object >” or “Do < action >” verb. Mr. Gilbert’s interface has these to some extent.

Icons can help even more because they abstract the specific verb. For instance a “Hand” icon can me “touch,” “use,” “grab,” “use,” or whatever else you can do with your hands.

None of this is easy, and it’s not a science. Designing games is hard and it’s replete with trade-offs. However, I reiterate that if you are trying to “fix” your mechanics because the player is not playing by your rules, then you either mistrust your player (which is not good), or your rules are not good enough.

The designer should guide the player and help him have fun, not try to stop him from doing “the wrong thing.” It’s a subtle distinction, but one nonetheless. :slight_smile:

-dZ.

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