My point was, everybody wants to point at the parser itself as the thing that makes parser games difficult to get started playing, but it’s far from the only thing, and maybe not even the main thing. Gruescript removes the parser, but if it retains these other challenges, it’s no wonder that people would say “neat concept”, then go back to their parsers. It’s an engine aimed at parser games players, except with one of their favorite parts removed.
I tend to agree with this, as a not-really-fan-of parser games. If you come to me and tell me you’ve taken a parser puzzle game and you reskinned it with an UI that e.g. has buttons I can click to put movement directions, common verbs, and items in my inventory into the command prompt, then that probably won’t make me much more inclined to give it a shot. If the game’s designer wants me to get my fun from drawing my own map and finding the right needle in a hay stack of verbs (allegedly) including “all the verbs in an English dictionary” then it’s probably not a game for me, regardless of pretty the buttons I can click and how many synonyms the underlying parser knows.
But I don’t think that the above is actually all there is to parser games. For example, Counterfeit Monkey has an (optional) graphical map which I found pretty, helpful, and thematically appropriate. I also enjoyed its puzzles the most whenever they boiled down to common sense logic plus clever application of tools whose existence and function is crystal clear from the moment you get them. In contrast, the one place where I got stuck due to a clear-cut “guess the syntax” issue was incredibly frustrating, but it was only one place. Most of the times I ended up consulting a guide, it was either me struggling with a puzzle itself, or with what I would characterize as “open ended set of verbs + idiosyncratic world model”. I didn’t have to guess which words to use per se, but in hindsight I feel like I sometimes had to guess things like the level of granularity was intended for in-world actions / obstacles / problem-solving.
Note that very little of what I said about the game in the previous paragraph is about the parser per se. Very little of what I liked about CM, including many other things not mentioned above, is related to navigating this world and trying to solve puzzles by typing words into a command prompt. Neither are my gripes: by all accounts, and matching my experience, CM is closer than almost any other (non-limited-)parser game to not having “guess the syntax” style problems (and yet they still happen - avoiding them entirely is self-evidently impossible). The things that matter are affordances or lack thereof, using media other than text effectively to communicate information and vibes, game design in general and puzzle design in particular, and so on. The traditional parser game design, insofar one can speak of it in singular, is just one corner in a vast design space spanned by these and other axes. Changing the parser specifically, without considering the rest, is perhaps the only thing you can do if you want to take an existing parser game and present it differently. But to me it also seems painfully simplistic when talking about anything else. There’s so many interesting things that could be done by reconsidering several of these ingredients and their interactions, e.g., as in “limited parser” games and “parser-like choice” games (this link was posted earlier, but it’s too relevant to my point to not bring up).
I’m thinking a 3 or 4 lines of icons. You can post this after Directional and Action button pads.
You are in a cave. Exits are South. You see a Bear. You are carrying an Avocado and a Chicken. The Bear is carrying a jar of Honey
-
-
-
-
TALK BEAR
Bear says, “I have some honey I can give you, if you have some good food to share!”
GIVE AVOCADO
The bear says, “I’m not a vegan. I’m a meat eater.”
GIVE CHICKEN
The bear says, " Yummy! Here’s some honey for you!" The bear gives you some Honey.
Honey
-
-
-
-
GO SOUTH
You are at cave entrance. Exits are North and South. You see a THIEF. You are carrying AVOCADO, HONEY.
-
-
-
-
TALK THIEF
You say, “Hello there!”
Thief says, “Nice to meet you!” (He steals your honey)
-
-
-
-
TALK THIEF
Thief says, “It’s my honey. I found the honey…somewhere!”
You say, “It’s not your honey. You stole it from me!”
Thief says, “Finder Keeper, Loser Weeper!”
ATTACK THIEF
Thief says, “Wah! I’m so sorry! Here’s your honey back, and some money for the trouble!”
Thief leaves the area.
You are at cave entrance. Exits are North and South. You are carrying AVOCADO, HONEY, MONEY.
-
-
-
The adventure continues…
Edit: so what are good Verbs to use that will fit 3x3 or 3x4 or 4x3 pad?
Edit: tried keyboard formatting.
TALK BEAR
Puzzle solutions should, ideally, be logical and seem obvious in hindsight. Solving one should be an “oh, of course!” moment. In which case, you’re not trying every verb in the dictionary, just the ones that make sense in that situation. Solving parser games tends to get easier with experience.
Discussion regarding types of puzzles are endlessly fascinating, but unless it has something to do with ICON/BUTTON interface, I appreciate it if you make a new thread. Thanks.
Fair enough.
I found some interesting post about NumPad. I don’t know how to link them, but if you search for NUMPAD and look for D Pad Control thread, you’ll see it.
Are you suggesting that a parser game could be played in it’s entirety with this?
LOL Yes.
In fact, given enough patience, you can do it via D-Pad or Joystick! Of course, it’ll be a terribly, horrible slog unless the game is greatly simplified. But as Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom has shown us, it’s definitely possible!
Regarding verbs:
🫸
Last 2 columns would be
- USE
- USE X ON Y
- CUSTOM ACTION
- Home button
- Player’s status
- Help menu
Although I seriously question the need for separate push/pull, take/drop, open/close. I believe that 1 icon each is sufficient because it’s always one or the other.
For reference:
Edit:
For the final keyboard, should the navigation pad be the first, verb second, objects third?
Or should it be VERB + NAV + OBJ?
It will probably be mapped to Qwerty mappings, rather than num pad.
The solution for a joystick is a radial menu. It’s amazing how few games get this right, but I’ve played one or two that did.
The issue with radial menus is in… uh, I can’t explain well… I dislike keeping the stick in the direction when pressing the button. if one can highlight the selection and then pressing the button with the stick back at the center, annoying thing like a carefully laid AoE attack being screwed by the character following the direction of the stick are avoided. Hope to have rendered the concept. in IF term, is like that is intended CAST AOE SPELL, but is turned in, say, NE.CAST AOE SPELL.
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
You mean like a COIN menu? Lucas Arts Full Throttle is a fine game! It’s still a limited verb game, though. It gets crowded when the choices get too many.
Which ones?
For an analog stick, yes. In some cases, I would prefer a simple ribbon of choices that you d-pad across (wrapping back again) than see a radial menu. Radials work great with a mouse, not so much with a stick.
When someone mentions playing an interactive fiction with a game controller, I always think of the GameCube ASCII Keyboard Controller and wonder how good it would be. It’s got everything needed!
That’s cool, although I’m thinking more about glorified calculator. Gameboy mode starts around 3:45.
The one I’m thinking of simply had a ring of selections, where something was always selected. Pressing the stick in a direction would pop to the new selection, or you could rotate quickly to the correct option. The stick need not be touched at all when the button is pressed.
It’s been a long time since I saw a good one, so I’m not actually sure. I do know it was a shooter of some kind on Xbox, probably Xbox 360, that used the radial menu for typing. I just remember thinking “Why can’t everybody do this?” It was much, much faster than typing using a joystick on any kind of traditional onscreen keyboard.
So, here’s the final unicode button keyboard for IF. In Three Rows.
Navigation/Map + Menu/Info/Action + Room/Player/Characters/Objects
Explanation:
Navigation has been explained.
Action: I’m changing the icon for Yes/No question. They can also mean On/Off. The icons are context sensitive. These can change depending upon the object selected, as to provide custom actions. You may add others as desired.
Room view:
Room Icon provides room description. Subsequent icons shows available exits. Exit icons maybe skipped in favor of NavPad. Or NavPad may be skipped in favor of room icons.
Delineate between Room Exits and Objects found in the room. Example shows NPCs.
Player Icon. Subsequent icons shows items worn/equipped, then a divider, then items held. Player icon not shown in Room line because it’s assumed that it is always there.
Current Focus. The example shows what is shown after
LOOK BAG. It shows what the bag (a container) contains. This focus can be of different object or characters, as long as it’s in scope.
Separators. Part of Layout so it’s not too busy/confusing.
Note: Mailbox icon shows that it’s open and empty, but you can just use generic icon.
Objects may include Containers, Supporters. Objects may also includes attachments. For example:
Toolbox with lock
Flashlight with bulb attached and removable battery.
Edit: I design it so it can also works as pure PnC by skipping both NavPad and ActPad. Look up VERBLESS adventure design.
Edit:
Probably should come up with a better name than BoK: Button on Keyboard. It’s too easily confused with Butt On Board! Although calling it BOB interface does sound folksy-like. I hope I’m not jumping the shark here.
Edit:
Clicking on the Room icon in PnC mode also shows icons on the bottom row for main menu and stuff.
Thinking about PnC mode…
If I restrict the verbs and go by the nouns only, then it’s N^2! Assuming all rooms+obj adds up to 50, then it’s only 2500 actions. That’s good for a medium size game, isn’t it?
Assuming I can do 1 action per minute, that’s about 2500 minutes ~ 41 hours. Except quite a bit will be blank, since rooms+objects don’t really cross that well. You can do object +room, but room+object and room+room don’t really work. So, let’s say half of that. .
That’s only 20 hours! One weekend! Especially if you keep to using Unicode. Even if room and objects adds up to 100, that’s only 5000 minutes or about 83 hours! Good for 4 weekends of hard work or monthly
Hmmm. Maybe this is a new dawn of a new IF System! Maybe I should drop everything and create it, and make it a new career from now on!
Yep, today’s the day! Absolutely!
Follow your dreams, Harry!