Re: [Adonthell-devel] Quest map

[Sasha Kushnirenko]

Hi,

The main point indeed is to have a tool that can easily remind you where you
are in your game.  It should allow as little cheating as possible.  Would it
be a graphical or textual representation - it does not really matter. I
probably just like maps with pictures (you know - treasure islands, pirates
...)

For pictures I thought one can use tricks, that are harder to implement in
text: for example once you know that it was human that makes noise there
maybe a faceless pictogram of someone near stables.  Once you know it was
Jelom - you draw him and add name.  Though I bet there would be cases when
textual log is superior to pictograms.  Maybe we can use both to their
advantage?  But again this is a question of representation of information.

> So we would need a quest log, I think. And the more convenient, the
> better. 

Agreed.  Absolutely.  Poorly organized logs really make some otherwise good
games not very attractive.  

Some words about quest log design (though I think it is a separate
discussion) In logs one can use color coding to highlight completed tasks. 
I would also add some color to indicate "task in process - not completed".
Highlighting should be done when it is obvious in the game that it is a task
to complete.  So it should not get highlited when someone tells you that
there is this an interesting magic powder, but when you know that you can
rescue a princess with it - highlight it.  Rest of the information
(comletely irrelevant or which can some day become relevant) should not be
highlighted.

>> Let me explain. In the game, there will be tons of events happening.
>> Some will be important for one quest, some for another one, some will 
>> be purely anecdotical. What might happen is that every time one event
>> happen, the player will look at his quest maps. "Ah, so this event is
>> related to this quest", or "It doesn't appear anywhere - guess it's
>> not important then".

Good point - that is where one should be careful implementing the log. 
Highlighting is a reminder.  And yes it can also be a hint.  I think actual
decision when to highlight which records/pictograms should be solved
individually.  In most of the cases it should be straightforward.

> I too do think that it is sort of the wrong approach. If I look at your
> example, then I become quite curious what the individual icons mean, and
> I'd click on them out of curiosity. That's spoiling the game somewhat,
> as Alex said.

No... I thought you would have pictograms of something you ALREADY know.
So at the beginnig there is nothing on the map.  After that noise near
stables shows up and so on.  If you click on it it whould remind you about
dialog that you ALREADY had with the kid.

> The quest log shouldn't invite people to browse it out of curiosity, it
> should just be an aid to people that have forgotten something. I think
> that's your intention too, isn't it?

Exactly.

Actual design of quest log is highly correlated with quest diagrams that Kai
proposed.  After all in your quest diagram layout there are key points when
you achieve certain step, why not record it in the log?  So I think actual
quest log layout can grow naturally out of the quest diagram.

Sasha.