Interface Design

[Ornir Elunari]

Hi folks – I’d like to talk about interface design.

In a MUD, interface design is very important – The text on the screen is the players’ window into the game world. Having a sloppy interface, with 10 different color schemes and ugly layouts is a real turnoff. I think we have done pretty well in this regard but would like to get more input from staff and players – What do you like about our interface and what would you like to see changed? Later I will post up my ideas but I want to get a feeling for what the community thinks first.

– Ornir Elunari

[Treyorn]

I think it looks pretty good. Can we please fix dragon in who though. Everything lines up perfect except Dragon.

[Treyorn]

I think the character creation could use some work as well as far as aesthetics go. Having to hit an extra enter to bring up Y/N is cumbersome and a bit confusing.

[Shadorn]

Having a custom GUI for mud clients would go far for some players as well. Such as health bar, separate window for chat or maybe even group/buffs and such?

[Ornir Elunari]

@Shadorn wrote:

Having a custom GUI for mud clients would go far for some players as well. Such as health bar, separate window for chat or maybe even group/buffs and such?

I am actually working on a client script for Mudlet – it has the ability to auto download client scripts on connect. Mudlet is my favorite client for graphical environments, tintin++ is my favorite for text-only.

The script will have chat windows, buffs, spell slots (and auto mem), targeting, health/move/xp bars, group management, quick bindings, icons, visual timers, etc. If I can easily do it I will also make a graphical minimap, but I would rather have it be solid and robust than have that feature.

That being said, I want to focus on the default text interface in this thread. One thing we lack, actually, is consistency. This is a result of thr development process if nothing else. I would really like to decide on a standard ‘look and feel’, like: Do menus have a frame around them? What does it mean if text is in ALL CAPS? What about cyan vs blue vs yellow text? Or red? If I have an argument to a command, does the receiver of the command always come first? Do spell names always require quotes? Do we use the same terminology in the output of all commands?

We have some standards – Help files are pretty uniform for example. I would like to expand this across the UI.

Any opinions or offers to test or help are much appreciated. Thanks!

– Ornir Elunari

[Ornir Elunari]

@Treyorn wrote:

I think it looks pretty good. Can we please fix dragon in who though. Everything lines up perfect except Dragon.

Yes, I will fix dragon. Char creation will get an overhaul.

[mosheh]

So Ornir and I spoke a tad in-game about some ideas… he wants codification of color schemes and design elements. Very smart.

Some of the little thoughts:
Interfaces like score sheets, who list, feat list, affects interface, etc all should have standard color schemes and dividers. Whether that is a serious of =-=-=- or ~~~~~~~~~~
I started with the idea of help files are somewhat codified by color schemes, you can see examples by typing in-game:
help shield
help warrior
help human

We may want to continue this pattern.

Also we spoke about universal input, such as all menus you exit right now, you have to type either Q or -1
We should unify this so all menu exiting can be done by typing Q

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