The Dark Unknown: Spellcasting UI Considerations
Yesterday, Adam “Goldenflame Dragon” Burr posted some thoughts to the Ultima Dragons Facebook group about the spellcasting UI that he’d like to implement for his Ultima-inspired, browser-based tiled RPG, The Dark Unknown. The various UI styles under consideration were:
(1) You are prompted for level and then which spell. So at the moment casting Flame Blade would be “C 1 4”. Presumably once you pick a level you’ll get shown a list of which spells you know so you can pick the one you want’s number.
(2) A modal window overlays the game UI when you hit “C”, and you scroll up and down to pick the spell you want. Presumably including a way to jump to the desired level.
(3) Spell out the words of power. So casting Magic Bolt is “C G P”. This has advantages and disadvantages. Advantages include easter egg spells, less need to have exactly the same number of spells in each circle, and the ability to make the key for triggering a Surge be just adding “Vas” to the spell; disadvantages include making it harder to justify in-story teaching you spells on an individual basis, needing to distinguish between Flam and Frio, and actually needing to look up spell names rather than just pick from a list.
He then put up a poll about it, which garnered a few responses. More recently, however, he added a second post that removed the option to use the Words of Power directly (for copyright reasons), and which included another option:
My current thought is to add a new command- (B)ookmark. (Without boats there’s no need for (B)oard.) Bookmark assigns a shortcut (one of the number keys, probably) to spells of your choice. Then when you hit (C)ast, it’ll bring up a list of your bookmarks and an “Open Spellbook” option, where you choose the spell.
Still trying to decide the best way to have you select whether to Surge the spell- I’m considering removing Surge as a spell and making it an ability you learn, but I could also just lock it to Bookmark 0 or something, so if 1 is Magic Bolt, you could type C 1 for Magic Bolt and C 0 1 for Surged Magic Bolt.
If you’re on Facebook, drop by and give him your thoughts!
I like the words of power idea. I understand your fears about copyright as well. I just tested “vas” and “corp” using a Latin to English dictionary, and while this may not be the case for every word it appears as though the words of power are loosely based on Latin. Vas = Vast = Great. Corp = Corpus = Dead body. I’d find a Latin equivalent for the meaning of each word of power, if possible resembling the Ultima word of power. That way it will be familiar yet you’ll be free of copyright threat. Then again, these days maybe Latin is copyrighted by some IP firm…
A lot of them are, yeah. Based on Latin, I mean, not that a lot of latin words are copyrighted. In any case, I’ll consider WoP to have +1 vote now. 🙂
What I like about words of power is you’re not limited to 10 spells of 10 levels (only 100). You can really have as many spells as you want by stringing all the words together.
I like the Words of Power as well. You don’t have to specify them exactly, just give a list of letter equivalents. If you don’t say the words, it isn’t like you are copying, exactly… “A = Negate/Destroy, B = Small/Shrink,” etc. And Frio is a Serpent Isle only one, in all other Ultima games “An Flam” does the same thing (negate fire = cold).
It’s true that you can have an arbitrary number of spells with WoP, but is that necessarily a good thing? The game overall is pretty simple- I mean, I think I have 5 kinds of armor, total, in a linear progression. DU isn’t trying to be big or comprehensive. If it was I would totally go all out on the magic system- you should see what I had when I was working on a UO shard for a while- but here I don’t want the complexity of the magic system to overwhelm the rest of the game. After a certain point, adding choices is no longer adding interesting choices, ya know? So I’m pretty content with my current 6×8 spell tree (6 spells each in 8 levels). Heck, the game is designed to be winnable without ever learning a level 7+ spell.(Spoilers, I guess. 😉
If DU is finished and I feel it’s a good job, the next game will have as monstrously interesting and complicated a spell system as I can manage.
And that’s a good point about Frio vs An Flam, though I have to quibble with “all other Ultima games.” I just checked the manuals for U5-UW2 and the only times An Flam are used are in “Douse” and “Great Douse” (unless I missed one). But that doesn’t mean I can’t use it that way.
I think this is a perfectly valid opinion, however I think there’s room for exception. This isn’t advice either (do what you feel is right), but more of an observation:
A game with simple base mechanics can produce complexity that isn’t a hindrance to players. Chess is a good example. Super easy to learn and play, yet if you choose to explore its depth you’ll find a long road few dare travel. As long as the interface and “memory requirements” of the spell casting system are easy to pick up, any additional complexity due to deeper examination will reward the explorer while not being an obstacle for the more casual player. I think the idea that a system can be simple in interface but complex in mastery is an important principle in game design.
Something else to consider is that it’s not unheard of for a game to have a single area of gameplay that is markedly more complex than its brethren. I don’t think all areas of gameplay need to be equally complex.
Again, no argument here, just trying to show things from another perspective. Anyway, good work on the project. I love seeing stuff like this.