In a game with multiple settings to choose from, does it make sense to begin with a start menu?
I already had a menu that could be accessed during the game, but I thought it might make sense to show the menu at the beginning of the game as well. There are multiple settings that can be set, and it might be easier for the player to set those right away (or it might be helpful to see what the available settings are) rather than interrupting the game to set them and trying to remember how to bring up the menu.
So I was experimenting with displaying the existing menu (using Wade Clarkeās Menus extension) when play begins, and I added a menu option to start playing the game (which would really just quit the menu). I havenāt gotten that option working quite right.
If players have a menu option to play the game, will they also expect a menu option to quit the game? Save and restore, too? I havenāt attempted those yet. I also donāt want to make the menu too long and overwhelming.
Oh, Iāve gotten something like this working. I needed a start menu for the sake of letting the player set some preferences due to using ASCII art (didnāt want the title screen to happen before screen readers could choose a non-ascii option).
ā¦I used Emilyās Shortās extension, though, so Iām not sure if much advice I could offer would apply. That being said:
It does appear first thing when the game starts.
It does have an option for loading the game, as a convenience.
Iāve modified it to let me quit the menu immediately from high depths, rather than forcing the player to manually exit all the way back to the start.
If youāre going this route, I would consider those last two bullet points as being worth consideration. Again, though, Iām not familiar with Wade Clarkeās work. Is there any particular appeal to it over the included Emily Short extension?
Press [SPACE] to begin.
Press R to restore a saved game.
Press S to skip the introduction.
Press T to begin a transcript.
Press H to activate HARD mode.
Press A to increase screen reader support.
Press Q to quit.
Since the game had a fairly lengthy introduction sequence that wouldnāt let you put in normal commands (like RESTORE or SCRIPT), I offered ways to do those from the opening menu, as well as skipping the whole sequence (in hindsight it was really far too long and not very useful; it would have been better to jump right in without all the exposition).
If I were doing it over, I would only offer:
Start the game
Switch to hard mode
Turn on screen reader support (turns off all Zalgo effects and puts spaces between the letters of made-up words, like F R O T Z)
Then I would make sure the game got to a command prompt pretty quickly, from which you could RESTORE, SCRIPT, QUIT, etc. The reason for hard mode in the opening menu is because it changes various puzzles in the game, so it needs to be turned on before you encounter any of those puzzles.
I donāt know what the state of the default extension is now, but at the time I originally put this menu in (years ago), Wade Clarkeās menu extension was more screen reader friendly than the default one, and I believe a tester recommended it for that reason. Wade Clarkeās extension has single keypress to select a menu option (whereas, if I remember right, the default extension would have you move up and down to choose an option, reprinting the whole set of options each time, which was a lot of extra clutter for a screen reader to read), and Wade Clarkeās also has a screen reader mode where (among other things) the instructions appear in the main window instead of in the status window.
I ask the player whether they are playing on mobile or desktop (the web formatting is different depending).
I also ask if the player is using a screenreader. Rather than depend on alt text, I print image descriptions myself. In Portrait With Wolf, I also substituted commas for emdashes because comma is a longer pause.
I do these as player prompts, but I would put them in a menu if that were my approach.
I strongly recommend Wadeās extension over ESās because of screen reader support. I use it in all three of my games, and Wade has been helpful when I needed support.
Hmm! I might consider making a swap, then (or even offering both kinds of menus). If I could adapt the first menu extension a few years back, I could probably do the same with another one. Thanks for the recommendation!
But yeah, at the very least I know that having a start menu at the beginning of the game is possible. Though that sometimes requires editing the rules those menus operate by.
Oh yeah, this is a choice I went with as well. I like to switch to those descriptions if the playerās screen width isnāt what I consider āimage safeā and print a warning message if so.
I think thatās fine. Most games have title screens and settings menus before you actually play the game. It might be cool to have an ASCII splash screen before you send the player to the menu to at least have the game āput its best foot forwardā so to speak.
Iād avoid putting that in, since so many people play parser games online now, and I think trying to āquitā in Parchment does nothing except stop the game.
Everyone now knows to quit something using the close button on the window or the tab.
Thatās also something to think about for the other features, but I think you could get something working for those.