Learning the commands

[Max Stats]

Actually, you know what would be good for V? An "emote" command that prompts for a string and echos it back to you.

Why? To add interest to chardumps.

You drink the White Potion of Heroism.
You say "Check out my pose!"

Morgoth, Lord of Darkness dies.
You say "Eat hot lantern!"

Make sure that you also add the ability to do a death cry as you die.

"Why did I think I could go one more round of melee?"

[Timo Pietilä]

I use V and b a lot. Are you proposing that I pretend I want to cast a spell whenever I want to browse a book? Or would the new unified use command allow me to browse spells and then press a key to cast the currently selected spell?

You could integrate browsing book in 'I'nspect -command. Same way you look at the details of your weapons, wands etc. you could look your spells in your books. To me that would be the natural place to put it.

[Nick]

IMHO the correct way to simplify commands for small device use is to allow noun-verb commands as well as (not instead of, before anyone gets twitchy) verb-noun. So bring up inventory, choose item, choose what to do with it (use, inscribe, throw, etc). This is the system that Psi and I came up with for the WinCE port of FA, and it worked well. The "too many commands" problem is no longer a problem if you have a relevant list to choose from.

Ironically, this has largely been pulled out of current FA so I could use the V codebase, but I'm planning to put it back in and port it to V. Real Soon Now.

[Timo Pietilä]

IMHO the correct way to simplify commands for small device use is to allow noun-verb commands as well as (not instead of, before anyone gets twitchy) verb-noun. So bring up inventory, choose item, choose what to do with it (use, inscribe, throw, etc). This is the system that Psi and I came up with for the WinCE port of FA, and it worked well.

So we need third set of commands: mobile devices, traditional and roguelike set. It would be shame to ruin very fast traditional set (including inscriptions and stuff) to support tiny minority of devices, and noun-verb system would do just that.

[Elsairon]

I think a unified Use command is fine. As long as the user can choose which of the actions they want to be the default for each different item type, for those that have more than one. Otherwise using an item becomes a series of prompts, asking what to do next for any item chosen (maybe thats whats wanted?).

[Nick]

So we need third set of commands: mobile devices, traditional and roguelike set. It would be shame to ruin very fast traditional set (including inscriptions and stuff) to support tiny minority of devices, and noun-verb system would do just that.

I said don't get twitchy!

The whole point would be not to affect the traditional and roguelike commands.

Add one extra command (or button to click, or region of the screen to tap) which brings up an inventory list for this purpose. Selecting from this list brings up a list of commands which can be used on that item. In any case, this has no effect on ordinary keyboard play. Believe me, I have had this system operational for some time in FA, and it works - if you don't use the noun-verb system, you can be completely unaware of its existence.

[Timo Pietilä]

I said don't get twitchy!

The whole point would be not to affect the traditional and roguelike commands.

I think that is what I said. We need third set of commands.

[Antoine]

I said don't get twitchy!

You actually said the dance is always danced above the terrible abyss. When you go round saying that sort of thing you can expect to make some people nervous.

A.

[Nick]

I think that is what I said. We need third set of commands.

Oops, sorry, my bad reading. Looks like I'm the twitchy one ... must be all those abysses ...

[d_m]

Actually, you know what would be good for V? An "emote" command that prompts for a string and echos it back to you.

I was so amused by this idea that I implemented it.

In staging now (and soon in the current nightly) you can begin a : note with /say to have the character say something, or /me to write as if the character takes an action (like on IRC).

Examples:

/me eyes the palantir. -> Pippin eyes the palantir.

/say A Elbereth Gilthoniel! -> Frodo says "A Elbereth Gilthoniel!"

/me paces impatiently. -> Boromir paces impatiently.

/say You shall not pass! -> Gandalf says "You shall not pass!"

Obviously it doesn't have any gameplay ramifications, and I don't expect it to interfere with most people's current note-taking practice. I'm hoping people use this to create some interesting (and funny) logs of their characters' thoughts and actions.

A last words feature is also a good idea, but would take (slightly) more work so I haven't done it yet!

[caruso]

BOSS? I remember playing an old black-and-white Moria variant named BOSS. Sort of a cyberpunk setting, wandering from one city to another, beating up Dirty Harry with a Daisyian Umbrella and getting venereal diseases. That BOSS?

Yes, that's the right one. I boldly assumed that you can just copypaste a few lines of code, provided that two games are of close ancestry :-P (and that the licence allows for it). I better leave this sort of stuff to you techies