About hinting in the tutorial style as used in e.g. Bronze by Emily Short. I find that the way my hinting is now implemented, it is always suggesting commands to “move forward” in the game/story. So e.g. I have the following (among others):
look (after player changes topology, by e.g. opening or closing a door)
take inventory when player carries something unexamined
examine something not yet examined
open something not yet opened (doors, openable containers)
read something readable not yet read by the player (e.g. opened books)
Now I am wondering: Should I also add commands which do not really progress the game? E.g. closing an opened container which might add nothing to the gameplay but is strictly speaking a valid command at the time?
Is the goal to teach players these commands—i.e. you’ll show them the “open something” hint once, then assume they know it when they encounter more containers in the future—or to provide general guidance whenever they get stuck—i.e. if there’s a closed container, always hint that it could be opened?
If I wanted to teach the players these commands I might as well save myself the effort and point to the interactive fiction cheat sheet. I cannot assume they will immediately “get it” and teach each command exactly once. I tried that originally, but then the game quickly ran out of hints to suggest, because at the location the player was at, all the usual commands were already hinted at at least once.
So basically providing general guidance whenever they get stuck. There should always be something I can suggest to the player to do.
Of course teaching the commands is a nice bonus. But I cannot aim for the “most newbie-friendly IF game ever” (although I am adding story mode as I did in my previous game to soften the impact for the parser challenged players).
In that case, I’d say provide all plausible actions, whether or not they’ll be productive. Players tend not to like being given too explicit of guidance; one of the biggest criticisms of Miss Gosling was that the opening tutorial was too direct in telling you how to progress, and one of the biggest points of praise was that the suggested actions in the rest of the game weren’t (e.g. it would suggest CLOSE THE FRONT DOOR even if there’s no reason whatsoever to do that, just because that’s a thing you can do with doors—so it’s up to the player to think about whether it’s useful or not).
You have a very good point there. I was thinking this when I often find there was only one “right command” to make progress in the game which might make players feel like they have been tied to the proverbial chair while I am shouting the plot at them.
I do think I should put a limit on the list, it might become overwhelming when where is a lot to see and do at certain locations (e.g. my starting room has a lot of scenery objects, and suggesting to examine each of them would result in a very long list indeed).
Suggest examining the most important objects in the room; tag scenery as “important” or “unimportant” for hint purposes, to keep this list from getting too long
Keep track of the one or two most recently interacted-with objects, and if they’re visible, suggest relevant actions on each of them