I'm designing editors for my codebase. I'm wanting to design them with no preconceptions of what I've seen before. My curiosity is two fold–
Does anyone have any ideas for features they'd like to bounce? ; Would anyone like to share their favorite interfaces for in-game OLC? (menu driven, passive, etc)
30 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
I'm quite a fan of using clickable links like one finds in MXP or ZMP. Also, using subwindows would be pretty awesome, but you need clients that support them. I was never hugely in love with the normal SmaugFUSS OLC, but I found it quite adequate for what I had to do with it, most of the time. Could have done with a better text editor, but I guess it wasn't that bad considering that it had to be line-based (as opposed to something in character mode).
Clickable menu driven OLC would be nice. What's "passive" OLC?
It's the only word I knew to describe the OLCs that do not impede any other normal commands and the menu appears on empty input. I've seen some OLCs that totally remove you from the normal game space to begin editing.
30 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
I think the fancypants term would be modal vs. amodal, the latter being the one that doesn't get in the way of normal I/O. :wink:
I'm quite a fan of using clickable links like one finds in MXP or ZMP.
I've never used either. Do they both accomplish the same thing?
30 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
The ZMP spec is still under construction (see this thread, for example), but yes, basically they both do the same thing as far as clickable links are concerned.
I don't like clicking or anything else that might remove my hands from the keyboard. It may be that it was my first exposure to OLC, but I still prefer the one in Ack bases. You "build" and "stop", but while in build mode can still escape out by prefixing any commands with : so they are treated normally.
I don't like clicking or anything else that might remove my hands from the keyboard. It may be that it was my first exposure to OLC, but I still prefer the one in Ack bases. You "build" and "stop", but while in build mode can still escape out by prefixing any commands with : so they are treated normally.
It has three editor modes: obj, mob, or room. These will change the available commands, slightly, ie, no "door <dir> to <vnum>" is available in mobedit. No menus, though, it's fully command driven. It retains a few commonalities across modes, too, such as "x" to display all current values on whatever you're editing, "name" for setting obj/mob name, etc. Wherever something can be kept common it generally has been.
edit: Just to elaborate, I also dislike menus. If they are a toggle-able option, that's great, but please don't force them on someone. I hate navigating 3 or 4 menus deep just to change a value on a weapon, or re-name something. Let me use the shortcuts of typing "name <string>" or "v0 <value>" if I know how to do that. Often times in menu-driven systems (Promina, regular mode, I'm looking at you) I simply find myself wandering around trying to find where what I want to accomplish has been hidden.
As a general rule I don't like menu OLC either, but for the record I had a long discussion about this with a dev who didlike menu OLC and had designed his game around it.
MUSHes use an amodal command-line OLC, if you could call it that. Is there a reason for modal OLC, other than alias conflicts?
For me there are three important elements of a good OLC:
* quick access to information, like lists, templates, etcetera. * easy copying and cloning of information from lists and templates * easy way to chat while I'm building without losing information/screwing up some description
eta – I should say, is there a reason for modal OLC other than menus ;D
01 Jul, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
Menus aren't so bad, if you can use character-mode telnet (or clever keybound macros with a client), so single keystrokes pick things off the menus until you have to enter text.
01 Jul, 2009, Hades_Kane wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
I'd just be sure to ultimately call it something else other than OLC and make a conscious effort to make sure there aren't too many stylistic similarities to keep that jackass Locke off of your back :p
My curiosity is two fold–
Does anyone have any ideas for features they'd like to bounce? ; Would anyone like to share their favorite interfaces for in-game OLC? (menu driven, passive, etc)