I'm hoping to get some feedback on my interface design. I have a small (in terms of features) demo of my DOS text RPG here. Specifically, I'd like to know what others see as the strengths and weaknesses of the input system, screen layout, color scheme, and how much of a learning curve it requires. Typing ":game guide" (must be preceded by a colon) will bring up a description of the interface features. Typing ":help" will give you the list of commands you can play around with to try out the input system. The names of all characters and objects are completely nonsensical on purpose; the game just has dummy data for testing purposes. Don't worry about the values of the arguments you give to commands, just give them anything. To avoid possible confusion, I should also mention that there is no gameplay or goals for the player, this demo is purely for checking out the interface. Any feedback is much appreciated. Sean [edited by - Sean99 on November 30, 2002 12:43:12 AM]

Thanks. I made the colon neccesary to enter command mode so as to distinguish between a hot key and command line input. Maybe I should reverse the situation: have keyboard input always go to the command line unless preceded by a designated non-alphanumeric character which means to interpret the next character as a hot key. Would that make more sense?

Sean

The quantity and values of the hot keys are determined by the hot.cfg file. The idea is that the user can edit the config file to assign hot keys for any and all commands.

Haven''t looked at the demo yet, I''m on a the family''s computer (visiting for the Holidays ) -- but regarding the command line vs. hotkey thing, am I to assume that the Ctrl-, Shift-, Alt-, or Function keys are not an option? Those were all designed to be hotkeys.

If you''re dead set on using the non-alphanumeric character, use a slash (/) character. Most of the people who would play your game are probably at least vaguely familiar with that command syntax from IRC, DOS, and so on.


/hotkey
is probably better than
:hotkey

I''m not dead-set on anything. The function and/or alt + ctrl are still an option. The thing keeping me from using combination keystrokes is that the game is portable to linux and I''m not sure if I can do that using the curses library. Originally I planned on having multiple modes, of which command line input was just one. So in a way, the seperate command mode is a relic of that idea (and I might still go back to it), but if everybody''s expecting the function keys or ctrl+key / alt+key, then I''ll look into doing it with curses. Thanks,

Sean