Timed aesthetics

[SomeOne2 (Max Fog)]

@Warrigal

You’re probably thinking of choice-based games

Hit any key in choice based?! What choice based game will have that? Isn’t the whole point of choice games that there is no keyboard or typing involved?

[Warrigal (Garry Francis)]

No. You still have to make a choice. Some allow mouse clicks on a button or hyperlinks, but typing A, B, C or 1, 2, 3 is also used.

[AmandaB]

@Warrigal

You’re probably thinking of choice-based games, but even there, it has many disadvantages, as you have no control over the size of the player’s screen, browser window or text size. It’s not unusual for visually-impaired players (or just people with poor eyesight) to use a large text size, then they get a screen full of text that scrolls off the screen anyway, together with press any key. That’s double the irritation.

I guess I just see PRESS ANY KEY as analogous to turning a page in a book, which isn’t obnoxious. No, you can’t control the size of the player’s screen, but I just don’t mind it it. But I like story-heavy games and feel fine about walls of text as long as it’s good writing.

@Warrigal

Have you ever played an Adventuron game?

Yeah, Adventuron has some special annoyances, but playing Adventuron games twingles the nostalgia area of my brain and so I don’t mind that, either. And we have some great Adventuron authors who I think do a great job reining in the quirks.

[JoshGrams]

@AmandaB

Y’know, when I think about timed text I always instantly think of text dragging out too slowly. It never even occurred to me that In a minute there is time was a game with timed text, although I guess it is, and I loved that game and how the fast pace gave it that sense of time and opportunities slipping through my fingers, which is like the entire point of the poem it’s based on.

Likewise, but that has the opposite problem for slower readers as slowly-timed text has for fast readers. At what point does it stop feeling interestingly like time and opportunities slipping through your fingers, and start feeling like you just can’t see anything because the game is kicking you out before you get past the first page or two? There’s a 4x or 5x difference in reading speeds between people: how would it feel to you if the game gave you only 12 or 15 seconds instead of 60?

[AmandaB]

@JoshGrams

At what point does it stop feeling interestingly like time and opportunities slipping through your fingers, and start feeling like you just can’t see anything because the game is kicking you out before you get past the first page or two?

Well, in the case of In a minute there is time, it was

@pieartsy

thematic

as Aster says, so it was a really good choice to convey the sense of the Prufrock story and the mindset of the protagonist. I can see how that would be problematic for people with dyslexia, etc. I certainly wouldn’t encourage anyone to do that without a very good reason. I think Dysfluent and IaMTIT (the snickering 5-year-old in me LOVES that acronym) are excellent examples of polar opposites in timing in which time (sped up or slowed down) was a critical element of the story. The vast majority of games like this would probably just be annoying, but these 2 are instructive for how to use time experimentally to bolster the Point. Which I think is more or less what everyone is saying: Don’t do these things without a critical reason, and prepare for some backlash anyway.

[ramstrong (Harry Hardjono)]

@AmandaB

I prefer to have a page of text up on the screen and press a key instead of scrolling.

I think scrolling is yet another form of timed text. Look at Star Wars intro scrolls. You can see it timed as if the narrator is reading it. In other words, audio book.

For narrated works, timed text is a natural.

My preference, though, is to shut any audio, and speed read! I also like scrolling because I can scroll back easily to refer previous text. YMMV.

Edit: Look at how Close Caption/Teleprompter works.

[pieartsy (Aster F)]

@JoshGrams

At what point does it stop feeling interestingly like time and opportunities slipping through your fingers, and start feeling like you just can’t see anything because the game is kicking you out before you get past the first page or two?

I agree this is a thing for people who have slower reading speeds in English for whatever reason. At some point in the process of designing games, I decide that I can’t be perfectly accessible to everyone.

Acknowledging that, I also think that my game would be intolerable (or even more intolerable to those people) were there not a Revise (redo) option and indications that you’ve clicked a link already. I am thinking about adding more accessibility options (I think I discussed them with you a while ago, Josh!), especially with regards to low vision and low contrast issues with the faded timer in the background. But having a minute is thematic and I don’t feel like compromising on that, currently.

ETA: I just re-read the convo with you Josh and on second thought, I think I’d be willing to implement an accessibility choice to increase the amount to 3 or 5 minutes, with a note that the intended play is 1 minute! Only after a single playthrough has been done, though. Post-comp release version!

[ramstrong (Harry Hardjono)]

@pieartsy

accessibility choice to increase the amount to 3 or 5 minutes, with a note that the intended play is 1 minute!

Time is malleable. What seems like going by too quickly will be perceived as going by too slowly with repeated plays. It took me an extremely long time to learn to play 1+1 chess, you know?

[Piergiorgio_d_errico]

sorry, typo… I mean bps (bit for second, and with parity and end bits, this translates in ~10 character at second)

Thanks for pointing to the error; perhaps is my aging, my first modem (back in BBS era) was a 1200/2400 bps one, and many BBS here in Italy was 1200, so indeed 110 cps was what I experienced back then…

I apologise to everyone and proceed to edit appropriately my previous post

Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.

[Mike_G (Mike)]

@Piergiorgio_d_errico

my first modem (back in BBS era) was a 1200/2400 bps one

Mine was 300.
I still have it.

[HanonO (Hanon Ondricek)]

@Warrigal

You might need to press any key 20 or 30 times to get through the prologue.

If there’s 20-30 pages of prologue, the game has a problem besides needing the player to hammer the keyboard.

[Press Any Key] in parser is the equivalent to timed text. Not talking about when the screen fills and the interpreter pauses to make sure the text doesn’t scroll because that’s automatic. It’s one thing to pace out a cutscene or a necessary info dump or the prologue, or make sure the player can read if the screen is going to clear itself next, but chunking through every paragraph will get old. Ideally [Press Any Key] should indicate a transition like a time-jump or a scene change, a change in thought/narration such as separate paragraphs about two characters, or to occasionally enforce pacing or comedic timing, or break up a (hopefully rare) wall o’ text.

@SomeOne2

Hit any key in choice based?! What choice based game will have that? Isn’t the whole point of choice games that there is no keyboard or typing involved?

Some choice games with timed text will have you press a key to skip a transition, or might allow typing numbered or lettered choices in lieu of - or as an alternative - to clicking the screen. It’s still a choice narrative, it’s just an interface option.

@pieartsy

I agree this is a thing for people who have slower reading speeds in English for whatever reason. At some point in the process of designing games, I decide that I can’t be perfectly accessible to everyone.

That’s the converse of waiting for timed text: text should never ever blink away and decide that the player is done. I’ve seen this happen in movies that have an introductory text block like Hereditary - someone is always going to not have a chance to read to the end. In a movie there’s not much that can be done I believe Hereditary gives plenty of time, and other than establishing character names and relationships, you get the idea someone’s died and the last sentences do not carry any important information.

Exception - sometimes for effect you want to overwhelm the player and specifically make them feel they’ve missed something, or blink a word on the screen for the “subliminal message” effect, usually in horror.

I did this in Going Down...

One of the ways to die and get a game over is to acknowledge the presence of an otherworldly entity and it breaks your head so I flashed a screenful of mostly gibberish sentences and uncomfortable words for one second with the intention the player might perceive a phrase or two before it abruptly smashes to the end credits. The blink of text is an effect, not important information.