User Interface design

User interface design is, IMHO one of the most important parts of designing any sort of software. Without a user interface, the user can not use the software in any meaningful manner. For command line tools, just having a syntax and an explination of what the various options mean is fine. However, when we get into graphical programs written for end users rather than just sys admins, we need to think a bit differently about what is nesessary. For a long time, there were MUDS, or for the less informed, multi-user dungeons. Basically, these were text based chat games. You would enter a "room" like a chat room, but this room had a description of it. You would define your character, often very much like in a regular role-playing game, but, of course it was all in text, so when the blob hit you for 2 points, you did not see a blob, you did not see a screen, you did not see a character who was slowly losing health. Only the lines of text could tell you what was going on. You had to create the entire picture in your mind, a far more difficult feat than merely reading a book, because, after all, you also had to figure out what to do about the fact that this blob had just hit you for two points.

These early games, in addition to having to imagine the whole thing, also posed problems with the user interface. When you finally killed the blob (unfortunately it was more likely that it killed you), you had to figure out how to loot its corpse. There was no double clicking on that blob on the screen. There was no mouse over, it was all key board. Then you had to figure out how to equip items. There was no drag and drop with the mouse. Even worse, there was generally a lot of reading of instructions before you could get to the actual playing of the game, simply to figure out how you could get out of the forest dead end road. You could not simply move your mouse to an opening in the path, you had to try every direction, where you would get the ominous message "you cannot go that way." and frequently forget what paths you did try.

Today, we have progressed far beyond the need to have an IQ of 200 (and more importantly a lot of patience) to play an mmorpg. A complete newbie can be moving the mouse around, and in seconds, he or she has managed to move the character, equip items, and fight that first battle.

However, crossfire, and thus its fork, Wograld, has a teriable user interface as of right now. (although if you are reading the archieves hopefully this has changed). The windows for stats, inventory,looting (also knowing as walking over floor tiles), chat, and hitting things have taken up most of the screen space, leaving little to see the actual game. Wograld has already improved this over crossfire, giving more screen real estate to the actual game. Yet the problem is that much of these windows need to be closed, that is hidden, so that they are not in the way of playing the game most of the time, except when you need to see them. Also, additional windows need to be added, that can also be minimized into a button in the same fashion, things like buttons for macros, detailed listings of your stats and skills, a quest log, a party screen, a map, detailed chat logs, all need to be made in this manner.

We have started a discussion on the forums about the user interface design, go see it and participate here.

Discussion about Wograld user interface

Crafting in multiplayer online rpgs

A lot of times, crafting in multiplayer online rpgs leaves much to be desired. Usually, monster loot drops are much better than anything a player can make out of component parts. I would like to reverse this trend. I would prefer to have player crafted items be better than anything you can find on monsters. I feel this would add much to the game. The other problem that I have seen in some multiplayer online rpgs is that you have to craft thousands of items to gain a few skill points. I think this is wasteful of a players time. I think how world of warcraft did it where it only took a few craftings of the item to raise skill at a certain level, and the time consuming part was gathering resources. I feel this is better since it means that players will do less sitting in one spot for hours trying to raise a crafting skill.

The negative side of player crafted items being too powerful, is that it can leave monster loot a little less exciting. But monster loot could still have random drops thosse could be taken apart with something similar to the world of warcraft disenchant skill, allowing the item properties to be separated from the items. Maybe they could be reused to make newer stronger items. The other idea I have for crafting is something similar to the diablo2 gem system. In diablo 2, you could collect gems. With a horadric cube, you would put 3 gems of any property, so long as it was all the same property and the same color gem at the same level into the cube. Thosse three gems could then be upgraded to the next higher level. So for instance, you could put 3 chipped rubies into the gem and get a flawed ruby. 3 flawed rubies would get you a ruby, 3 rubies will get you a flawless ruby, and 3 flawless a perfect ruby. The gems in diablo had different properties depending on what item they were put into. Later, in the expansion, diablo2 added jewels that had the same properties no matter what item you put them into, and runes that became a completely different type of rune when you put 3 of them into the cube. I would like to do something similar with the disenchanted components from monster items, or other stuff that you may be able to find or mine.

I think all items should be like socket items, except instead of being permanite like in diablo, you could break the item in order to remove the components that had the properties in them. People would end up making custom items depending on the kind of monsters/players they were fighting, or what kind of template and stats and skills they had. You could then break the item, so that there would always be a market for armor pieces since you would always need new ones to put the gems into.

I think it would take the flustration out of waiting for ever to find the random properties on an item you need, at the same time make looting monsters fun and intresting. I only wish I had the skill to add this new crafting idea into the user interface. It would make a great addition to our game, while keeping it fresh and exciting forever.

Why monster spawns must be limited

Monster spawns need to be limited in any game. Originally, Crossfire did not have this limitation. What happens, is monsters can keep spawning and fill up the entire tiled map. While this may seem like fun for players, it is a nightmare for the computer to keep up with all those objects running around the map. What eventually would happen is there would be so much spawn the computer would run out of space and it would crash the server. Therefore, limits need to be put on how many monsters can be spawned a one time. This could be linked to the monster spawn generators. Every generator could keep track of the number of monsters it has spawned and every monster could have mark saying what generator it comes from. The generators could keep track of how many are spawned at once.

I remember one very buggy version of Ultima Online I played where monsters refused to respawn because the generator got corrupted somehow. This would not happen in Wograld as long as we keep the map reset feature, since then the spawn generators as well as all the creatures on that map get completey destroyed, and then refreshed when someone comes back to that area. As long as that feature is kept, the spawn generators should not be getting bugged.