Re: Movement schemes and user expectation

Teemu Voipio <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Nov 2003 10:22:14 -0800, Donald Charles Guthrie wrote:

>> First, it helps to confound players who depend excessively on highly
>> sophisticated mud-clients with auto-mapping features - it puts them on a
>> more level playing field with newbies who haven't figured out
>> auto-mappers yet.

> Until someone writes an auto-mapper that supports this style of movement.

Which is several orders of magnitude more difficult to write than the
current crop of auto-mappers. The research papers on robotic mapping using
local environment data are available to read, but it's complex stuff,
not something to knock over on a weekend.

> Not really. You think "I must turn left when I see that red building on my
> right side". The problem is, you'd need to read all the descriptions, and
> those would have to be relative to you direction too.

When I'm driving I think explicitly about what landmark will trigger my turn
but when I'm walking, I just know an area and walk towards where I want to
go. I think that driving (in Sydney at least) is much more non-linear than
walking: some places you can walk into from any direction but you can only
drive into if you go a particular way, and that is not the obvious way,
you just have to know it.

> I think that what you call "player conservatism" is about players wanting
> to enjoy the game. Many "innovative" ideas require much more dedication
> and concentration from players towards the game mechanisms.

Yeah, the game interface has to work with the players, not against them.

        - Tel