15 réponses à ce sujet

[Tchos]

One of the methods I'm using to communicate descriptive information to the player is to display some text in the chat box when the PC enters a room or approaches a notable object.  For particularly important things, I display this text in a popup message box, but for more mundane details like a simple description of the room, I'm using the normal chat box.

My question here is: When I do this, should I also float a brief string over the PC's head just to indicate to the player that some information has been printed to the chat box regarding the PC observing the surroundings?  If so, what sort of string would make sense to put there?  It could be "in character", like "Hmm..." or a notice directly to the player, something like "You observe your surroundings".  Thoughts?

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

I've taken to playing a sound in conjuction with SetNoticeText. A nice chime or gong is enough to get the player to look up and notice the important text. For your purposed here, you could just have the PC play a voice chat ("there are secrets about...").

[Tchos]

I did like the chimes and sounds they used in SoZ in conjunction with the notice text when you would, say, discover a new location.

The "secret discovered" voice chat is great for when the character discovers hidden objects by getting near enough to them and passing a spot check, but I would want something a little more generic, since I'm using this mainly for simple room descriptions that any character could notice, for extra flavour, intentionally omitting mention of any secrets that the character should have to pass a check to notice.

[MERP UK]

I operated something like this in my old PW stuff. It's a nice touch if you are going for high-immersion and the players who look for that will tend to check their chat box often for any insight. A simple "You observe..." like you mentioned on the character followed by a concise breakdown of the things observed in the chat box should be enough to start the player off, leaving the rest to them. Make it so

[Arkalezth]

Agreed. It could be in-character if spoken by a companion, but since your module doesn't force any specific companion and allows for party creation (IIRC), I'd go with the description option ("You enter a dark room, blah blah...").

[Tchos]

Good, this all is helping.

I do have some barks delivered by the optional party members in various areas (more than what you've seen, Ark), as well as barks that are designed to be spoken by player-created party members who pass certain checks, though of course those are short lines suited to their own specialties, and not paragraphs of description.

I think it's a good idea to just do the floating text for the first few times, which should be enough to inform the player that there's something there to look at, and I agree that it should be unobtrusive for the players who don't care about descriptive text, while at the same time being obvious for those who do.

I use text, not only because I find these graphics to be inadequate to present what I want to present, but because I approach RPGs as a fully multimedia experience. Text, graphics, and sound are all highly necessary elements for it, as far as I'm concerned (with as text-heavy as are the games that I love most), and there are few media that are as well-suited to this kind of experience as this game is.

[ColorsFade]

Iveforgotmypassword wrote...
Personally though I find descriptions of what is already partly a visual experience to be a bit unnecessary

I feel the same. 

I haven't played a lot of user-made mods yet, but many of the ones I have played had a lot of superfluous description in dialogs and elsewhere. You don't need to tell the reader that character A is irritated at character B. If the writing is adequate, it comes across. 

[Tchos]

I vehemently disagree. I consider Planescape: Torment to be the pinnacle of story-based RPGs, and it was largely for its descriptive text, both in dialogues and elsewhere. It is entirely necessary.

[bealzebub]

I think that if you are going to use sounds, it should be in conjunction with some kind of visual clue as well. Some people try to play while the kids are running around screaming, the dogs are barking, and their wife is sitting in a chair next to them talking on the phone "blah, blah, blah"
sounds can be easily missed.

[andysks]

It was a bit different. There they kinda had to, because of the bad and isometric graphics. You didn't have the same image you have when you play NWN2 and can turn the camera all around. I also remember on ToEE, when you enter some areas you get the DM description of the area, quite a long one.
All in all, I think in NWN2 this shouldn't be a module thing. I mean, not in all areas. Perhaps when you first enter Candle Cove, or when you first enter the Undersea Cave. You know what I mean... some few beautiful areas, that might have more history to share than anything that meets the eye.

[Arkalezth]

It depends on what you're describing. Sometimes a description improves the atmosphere (Misery Stone, for instance, has some good examples of this), and there are things that simply cannot be represented with the game's resources (i.e. a particular odour, etc).

[Tchos]

Indeed, it's true that they made virtue out of necessity. That doesn't mean virtue cannot exist outside of necessity, even if I were to think that the graphics in NWN2 are that much of an improvement over those of PS:T or ToEE (which I don't).

Just so it's clear what is in question here, lest it wander beyond the useful limits, there is no question about the extent to which the descriptive text will be used. The only question is about the method and extent of indicating to the player that such descriptive text is being printed to the chat box.

[andysks]

Yeah I think we went too far . As always .
As I said to you earlier my only objection is nothing in the style of Wulverheim that breaks a bit the atmosphere (welcome, visit the forums etc.). So in your case, nothing like "Look at the chat box", "Information written in the chat box". Something simple, floating text which is not as obvious as SetMessageText saying: "This room is immediately printed on your mind", or "You carefully observe the room".
Let's face it, everyone will notice the yellow text because it's going to be a lot.

[Tchos]

Right, it definitely won't be the large yellow notice text.

[Arkalezth]

In case I wasn't clear, I vote floating text. You can put it in italics or something if you want it to look different than normal dialogue. Unless you put one of those in every damn room, I don't think it's going to be a hindrance for anyone. It'll only stay on the screen for a couple of seconds anyway.