Expanding the parser for beginners?

[DavidC]

Okay I’ll amend my statement. Anything “reasonable” should have some kind of valid response. The trolling stuff should 100% be ignored.

But I think “dance with sofa” should 100% be implemented.

[AmandaB]

@Lancelot

I also implemented licking but I guess almost nobody knew about it unless I told them beforehand…

>lick me
You are a warrior, not a beta tester trying to lick yourself.

Mine was a warning about the dangers of pica.

[Lancelot (Onno Brouwer)]

@AmandaB

Mine was a warning about the dangers of pica .

Whoa that is so cool. I definitely will try to top that…

[kamineko (Drew Cook)]

I also included a lick response based on comments here by rovarsson.

(mine was a quoted, non-sequitur passage from Death of a Salesman that included “licked”). One player thought it was a bug, IIRC

[JoshGrams]

@AmandaB

I always ask “Are you new to parser IF?” at the beginning of a game and then have a stock paragraph with basic command info. People don’t often answer “yes” even when they clearly should, so things like HELLO should bring them to that section automatically.

Yeah, I feel like when you ask some variant of “do you want a tutorial?” you’re fighting against so much history (across all of video games) of people writing bad tutorials and hence people assuming they won’t be helpful, or they’ll be way too long for how helpful they are.

And your wording is good but sometimes people will ask questions that I think are “Are you new to parser IF?” and say no, and then it turns out that they meant “Would you like to know how this particular game works?” and I would have liked to see it…

[Lancelot (Onno Brouwer)]

@JoshGrams

And your wording is good but sometimes people will ask questions that I think are “Are you new to parser IF?” and say no, and then it turns out that they meant “Would you like to know how this particular game works?” and I would have liked to see it…

That is exactly why I do still offer help for players new to this particular game…

A tall, thin man suddenly appears, seemingly out of nowhere. "Hey there!" he
says, grinning broadly. "My name is R; I beta-tested this game. I am here
to offer guidance if you need it. Have you played interactive fiction before?"
 
>yes
 
"Splendid!" R says. "I will tell you about commands unique to this game
when the need arises, just in case you have never played Pack Rat before.
You can always use the help command or talk to me if you get stuck.
Let us begin!"

[AmandaB]

@JoshGrams

And your wording is good but sometimes people will ask questions that I think are “Are you new to parser IF?” and say no, and then it turns out that they meant “Would you like to know how this particular game works?” and I would have liked to see it…

Hmm, good point. The way I do this is:
1.) The very first thing I ask is whether or not they’d like helpful information. Every player should say yes, and in almost 90% of transcripts I’ve seen, they do.
2.) At the end of that section I ask if they’re new to parser IF. Almost 90% of the time they say no. Which is easy to believe, because well over 90% of players are from this community.

So it feels like this is working, but I’m always willing to take advice on how to word things better.

[Draconis (Daniel Stelzer)]

@JoshGrams

Yeah, I feel like when you ask some variant of “do you want a tutorial?” you’re fighting against so much history (across all of video games) of people writing bad tutorials and hence people assuming they won’t be helpful, or they’ll be way too long for how helpful they are.

I imagine that’s why the IFTF recommends having the tutorial be on by default, instead of requiring players to choose anything to turn it on. Give them a way to opt out if you want, but don’t require any thought or effort to opt in.

[Wysardry]

My personal preference is for the game to ask “Do you want instructions?”

Regardless of whether the player answers “yes” or “no” the game should tell the player what the command is to show them later. Often, this is “help”.

The same goes for a story introduction. Something like “intro” could show it (again).

For clues on solving a specific puzzle, “hint” and/or “clue” could be used.

If a game is restarted, it should just remind the player of those commands, rather than ask the questions again.

If the player’s commands have not been understood three times in a row, a reminder that “help” shows the instructions might be useful.

[severedhand]

While we’re comparing… my WIP has the content warning. Then a screenreader mode question. Then the front menu whose first two options of an initial eight are:

[1] Start a new game in Tutorial Mode (for those new to text adventures)
[2] Start a new game

so I prioritise the tutorial. The next time you come by the front menu, I’ve swapped options 1 and 2, making the tutorial option 2. Possibly overkill, possibly some may dislike this in theory, but I like it in practice. It just gives primacy to 1 being the typical way to start a game in the long term.

First prompt of the game says you can enter HELP for a commands overview, or SPECIAL for a list of commands particular to this game.

@Wysardry

If the player’s commands have not been understood three times in a row, a reminder that “help” shows the instructions might be useful.

Hm, I might add this to my WIP.

-Wade

[Wysardry]

@severedhand

First prompt of the game says you can enter HELP for a commands overview, or SPECIAL for a list of commands particular to this game.

I would probably use VOCAB to show a list of unusual commands, as I vaguely recall some games from the 80s having that option.

[Hidnook]

If any of those are implemented, VERBS and COMMANDS should be implemented as well. That’s what I always check.