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The adventure game genre should have never abandoned the text parser interface.

Jenkem

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as well as prone to mindless frustration either because the verbs were underspecified or overspecified
it's an obstacle the genre simply surpassed by introducing a limited set of, say, twelve verbs (modern adventure games do away with twelve and mostly ever use four at best, treating Open/Close as default actions on doors and Use as assumed action on containers)
also, please don't even try to claim that typing out labels is preferable to clicking on them

you could tell the characters to fuck themselves and they would acknowledge it. can't do that w/ pre-ordained sanitized icon verbs. and yes it is faster to type "use book on shelf" than to mouse to the top of the screen, mouse over the book in your inventory, then mouse over to the shelf and either click again or stop clicking. typing is literally faster and by actually commanding through text you are using your brain much more than clicking by needing to figure out what exactly you want to parse out rather than just clicking.
 
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I generally agree with Maxie that the implementation of verbs was a happy medium between parser and cursor, but it is undeniable that it left less room for Easter eggs (Pick nose) and creative solutions. Laura Bow 1, for example, would have been a much worse game without a text parser, as evidenced by its incredibly dumbed down sequel.
 

Cross

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Verbs are fine for basic physical interactions you'll be doing all the time like picking up stuff and opening and closing things, but the text parser should never have been abandoned for the purposes of dialogue, riddles and puzzles that involve text/numbers.

and yes it is faster to type "use book on shelf" than to mouse to the top of the screen, mouse over the book in your inventory, then mouse over to the shelf and either click again or stop clicking. typing is literally faster
Don't be moronic. Using the mouse to click on something is faster than typing out a sentence. All those convoluted steps you're describing together only take a (split) second to do in reality.
 

FeelTheRads

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Printing press was a mistake, people had to carefully think through every word if they had to punch it in solid rock letter by letter.

Reminder that TurdNick thinks classic adventure games are bad and Telltale games are what adventures should be.
 

Jenkem

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Verbs are fine for basic physical interactions you'll be doing all the time like picking up stuff and opening and closing things, but the text parser should never have been abandoned for the purposes of dialogue, riddles and puzzles that involve text/numbers.

Don't be moronic. Using the mouse to click on something is faster than typing out a sentence. All those convoluted steps you're describing together only take a (split) second to do in reality.

Don't be a bad typist. Even at a pathetic 80wpm it would take "use book on shelf" 3 seconds. I just timed the mouse movements using my imagination and got about 4-5.

Science, bitch.
 

Atrachasis

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People who complain that IF is about guessing verbs have never been exposed to a proper user-friendly parser.

Expose this parser to me.

https://msmemorial.if-legends.org/games.htm/pawn.php

> PLANT POT PLANT INTO PLANT POT

But, on a more serious note, a lot was indeed lost by abandoning text parsers. Nowadays, too many puzzles boil down to finding the right items "A" and "B" in "use <A> with <B>". And, all the possible states of "A" and "B" are drawn from the items/objects presented by the game, so there is a limited solution space (especially for pure inventory puzzles, a little less limited for item/environment puzzles) that can even be brute-forced. You might end up using the rubber ducky with the clamp and retrieving the key without having had a clue what you were even doing.

Contrast this with a text parser, where an element of the solution (WHAT to do with <A> and <B>) has to be drawn from the player's own cultural background knowledge and imagination, rather than a short list of options that the game is shoving in your face, which makes for an entirely different kind of puzzle whose solution feels more like creativity than busywork.

Same problem with dialogue trees, actually. I'll admit, I vastly preferred the dialogue system of Ultima VI to VII.

IIRC, earlier Sierra games used an odd kind of hybrid that let you execute certain actions with the mouse, but also bring up a text prompt if desired. Pity that the parser was a far cry from the standards set by Infocom and Magnetic Scrolls.
 

MRY

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It really depends on what you're emphasizing in the game. For whatever it's worth, I think the point-and-click graphical adventures range from somewhat better to much better than their parser counterparts. (That is not necessarily true of the parser->verb bar translations that Sierra did, but that's not surprising because taking a game designed for a parser and giving it the Procrustes treatment is not a recipe for maintaining (let alone improving) the gameplay.) There are a few clever aspects of the parser-era adventures, but there really aren't many I would want to play today. Of course there's confounding factors because art, sound, writing, etc. all improved over time (for a while, anyway).

Modern IF (say, Counterfeit Monkey or Hadean Lands) really doesn't have the parser problems people describe. There was a real problem where a legitimate word was simply not recognized ("flip switch" not recognized for "turn off light," say). In graphical parser games the problem could be compounded where the graphics were so bad you didn't know what an object was (I recall having that problem in King's Quest II as a kid). These problems don't exist in modern IF, which is extremely good at interpreting requests, especially if you're used to formulating them for older parser games. People use "guess the verb" nowadays sort of like they use "pixel hunting" or "moon logic" in point-and-clicks, simply to mean "I can't figure out what I should be doing." The same thing that makes parsers interesting (the fact that you can't brute force them and aren't presented with a menu of options) also makes them frustrating to some (most) players. I myself often have a feeling of directionlessness in larger works of IF, and I think the parser is a significant part of it.

Designing for parsers is difficult, and I'm not actually sure how you think they'd work with >EGA graphics. A parser is stupid if it only permits the same range of actions as a point-and-click. Even if you're not "guessing the verb" in the sense of guessing the word that the game will accept, you are guessing the action. If the only way you can interact with a book is "read book" and everything else gives you a "you can't do that" message, why not just have a "use" button like in Primordia? But if you allow for a wider range of actions (again, you really need to play modern IF to see what we're talking about here, Counterfeit Monkey is an insane example of it), then graphically representing them becomes insanely costly. "Rip map out of book" is expensive in graphics if it's just a flavor option. Even setting aside the graphic issue, though, you still need to respond to a vastly larger array of requests with a parser. When I made IF games back in the day, inevitably there would be way, way, way more writing/design than Primordia required -- and my style of IF was extremely closed off compared to proper IF, I basically came at it from a point-and-click, narrative-oriented mentality.

I come out that both interfaces have their virtues, but for most designers and most players, the efficiency and ease of mouse interfaces is the better approach.
 

Alpan

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Pathfinder: Wrath
Don't be moronic. Using the mouse to click on something is faster than typing out a sentence.

It really isn't. For one click, maybe. For two or more, with some distance between the clicks -- doubt it. There are certain interfaces that are more suitable for mouse navigation (i.e. web pages with links), but in most practical situations using a keyboard is faster, more intuitive and most importantly, doesn't depend on feedback (the mouse's critical design flaw). Maybe try it at work some time.
 

WallaceChambers

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It's true that the parser gives off a feeling of dynamism that you don't get from other graphic adventure interfaces. At least not to the same extent. The feeling that the world could be manipulated in countless ways, something closer to "true" discovery. Despite the frustrations that often came along with that design I think it's worthwhile for at least some devs to see what they can do with it.

That's one of the things that seems really neat about The Crimson Diamond. I hope that game turns out good.
 
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Don't be moronic. Using the mouse to click on something is faster than typing out a sentence.

It really isn't. For one click, maybe. For two or more, with some distance between the clicks -- doubt it. There are certain interfaces that are more suitable for mouse navigation (i.e. web pages with links), but in most practical situations using a keyboard is faster, more intuitive and most importantly, doesn't depend on feedback (the mouse's critical design flaw). Maybe try it at work some time.

This is a fair point, I can play World of Xeen probably five times faster using the keyboard compared to using the mouse, but it does ignore that a lot of the later parser based games were designed to be optimally used with both mouse and keyboard (mouse to move, parser to interact) which is definitely not faster overall than just mouse or just keyboard.
 

GandGolf

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Parser games aren't good for the exceptionally lazy. Typing in a bunch of long words repeatedly can be hard work for that type.
 

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