Natural Language for mush commands?
I'm creating an IC coded assistant for my players. Each player will have their own assistant. The purpose of these assistants are to help new players with common tasks, and act as an intermediary between coded and the IC game space.
Almost of all of the commands on my mush follow a syntax like: +cgsk/pol, or +priority/pol 1=12
Cryptic and unintuitive.
So what does the community think of using natural language for game commands? I'm currently setting up the assistants as LISTENING, and I'm trying to come up with a bunch of questions that a player might ask (obviously, once I'm in beta, I'll have clear feedback from my players, and I'll be able to customize the commands).
So instead of: +priority/pol 1=12, a player might say "let's raise our infrastructure a little". I understand this is a complex affair, but I was curious what you all thought of using natural language for commands.
Thanks in advance!
Boris
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Man, what a huge topic. On
Man, what a huge topic.
On one hand I agree that people new to mushing in particular, even text games in general, tend to type longer and more natural sentences at the command prompt.
On the other hand there's a reason why command sets are designed the way they are -- once your player has done it a few times they can do the concise version, and do you really want to put in all that extra work for something that's going to be used by a new player only a few times? Far better to put that work into a context-sensitive hint system, game systems, etcetera.
I don't know, maybe the best thing to do is start from the beginning. Start hitting the chat bots and reading how they're done.
I bet all of us computer
I bet all of us computer professionals think that way.
But I don't know if we're right. Case in point, my wife... Even now, after using a PC for 15 years, she still never uses a keyboard shortcut like Ctrl-C or -V. She will always use it from the Edit menu pulldown. I don't think she even uses context menus. And she seems to have no interest in memorizing any of that.
I think a number of non-programmer players might greatly prefer a system that didn't depend on typing a "+" to begin a line, and use a syntax that to them looks like line noise :)
Natural Language and User Interface
The statement "Let's raise our infrastructure a little," as a command, makes me shudder. Even in plain language, commands should be simple and to the point.
Dave says, "Increase the infrastructure priority to three, HAL."
HAL 9000 replies, "Yes, Dave."
I know its an example, but natural language commands, in my opinion, should be as specific as possible. We're replacing +priority/pol 1=12 with "Increase the infrastructure's priority to three."
I'll leave with this...
Dave says, "HAL, let's open the pod bay doors?"
HAL 9000 replies, "Let's not, Dave."
-=+=-
"Nothing is idiot-proof. There is always a better idiot."
Ender@M*U*S*H