Moonring, a retro RPG by the guy who made Spellrazor [DEMO]

[ReFreezed]

I agree with MadByte about controller support in dialogs. Having a menu or something with the available phrases seems like the obvious solution. When it comes to phrases that aren't available yet there's always the option to have an on-screen keyboard. It may not be the prettiest but I assume the player don't have to use it that often anyway.

The dialogs seem to be the only obstacle to not have controller support, but I don't think it's that hard to solve judging by your explanation of the game mechanics.

[MadByte]

It's a good thing löve has the ability to sidestep that issue with using scancodes instead of keyconstants, yeah?

Yes, but many devs don't use scancodes in their (mostly smaller) games, thats the real problem here, myself included . I just tend to avoid y and z entirely.. (and special characters of course).

[jbskaggs]

[Gunroar:Cannon()]

The game hilights words you've come across in conversation. You can use Tab to auto-complete words, so you rarely have to type more than a letter or two. It also gets you back to topics you may have forgotten about, so if someone once said something about 'Ned' you can just type 'Ned' to get back to that segment of the conversation again... presuming you've not done anything to kill that conversation.

NPC: "I like red berries. They are magical."
Type: "Be" (Tab) -> "Berries" + return
NPC: "They are so tasty and good for you, yes?"
Type: "No"
NPC: "Hmm... aren't we disagreeable."
etc.

Thnx, seems cool, and since there's not that much typing controller support does now seem plausible.

[Madrayken]

Thanks again for the feedback!

The thing that bugs me about giving players a joystick-friendly speech panel, though, is the inelegance of having two conflicting input options. If you expect to be able to pick from a sea of text options in a list, you'll *never* think of typing in something by hand (because you've not seen the option, so why would you expect to suddenly start typing in text?). "What! I had to type in a password? Lame. I was never trained to do that. What crappy game design."

There also can be 20 or more things to talk about in a conversation. Even if I prioritize 'stuff you've not talked about, yet' that's still 'show a grid of all the text you could potentially talk about and let users navigate around it using a joystick', which seems kind of... hideous. More elegant methods (use left/right to show 'next'->'previous' or something) would require 10+ clicks, or a radial menu made of words to get to the desired topic, which seems like I'm trying to make things more complicated for players, while still hiding the fact that you can type in *anything*.

So, in short: there's not much typing, but actually getting players used to typing seems kind of important.

[Gunroar:Cannon()]

Oh, I see. So it's an important element of gameplay. Understandable.

[inJuly]

I just played 5 minutes of this and I have to say I am **very** impressed by the quality and scale of this game!
Everything looks very polished. I don't play RPGs a lot but I can tell you I'll be playing more of this.

Keep up the amazing work, it's a great game.

[MadByte]

If you expect to be able to pick from a sea of text options in a list, you'll *never* think of typing in something by hand (because you've not seen the option, so why would you expect to suddenly start typing in text?).

I feel like you assume that the UI always has to be exactly the same and you might have good reasons for it. I'm not deep into UI development and I assume there might be some sort of guideline saying "never use different UI elements for different input methods because that kills the workflow" or something like that.
I thought it might be possible to hot-swap the text input line with something of similar size like [ < Selectable answer > ] as soon as the player picks up a controller and presses anything - similar as it is now with modern games where all key icons get switched out for the corresponding controller counter part (A, B button etc). And if the player then decides to go back to keyboard, he/she just presses anything on the keyboard again.
If I were the player doing it in your game, I'd expect no huge visual changes to the UI, otherwise I'd be confused, for example when the action buttons on the left would disappear and the game would expect me to use only a radial menu from now on. Instead, all UI elements should be created in a way that is somewhat usable for all input methods with possible additions (but no removals) to make certain actions easier for certain input types (like adding a radial menu or a virtual keyboard on top for controller users).

Regarding the "sea of text options", I also think this would be a bad idea. I'd try the [ < Selectable answer > ] method if there's not much to choose from, lets say 4-5 dialog options max. You said ...

In Moonring, everything you need you see in the context of the conversation... apart from secrets.

.. earlier. The dialog system seems to be made for rather short sentences instead of text walls - that's why I think this could work pretty well. (Okay, secrets won't work but imo having the core gameplay working for more players [controller users / maybe even console players?] is more importent then having dialog secrets.)

There also can be 20 or more things to talk about in a conversation. Even if I prioritize 'stuff you've not talked about, yet' that's still 'show a grid of all the text you could potentially talk about and let users navigate around it using a joystick', which seems kind of... hideous.

Yeah, with that amount of options it would be clunky to scroll through all options with a controller to get to the one the player wants. But to be fair, I'd say having that many possible options highlighted in the dialog would annoy keyboard players just as well and also could mean many more dialog writing needed for the game. I think I'd limit myself to a smaller number of options to keep things easier or implement common keywords like the Ultima games.

More elegant methods (use left/right to show 'next'->'previous' or something) would require 10+ clicks, or a radial menu made of words to get to the desired topic, which seems like I'm trying to make things more complicated for players, while still hiding the fact that you can type in *anything*.

For me, using a controller would make things easier in general, because I dislike using the keyboard And I wouldn't use a button to click through the options, I'd use the x axis of the left analog stick since movement is locked while in a conversation - B button to exit.

I think if you don't feel like it could work, just don't do it It possibly means many hours of headache, tinkering, maybe prototyping/testing different solutions or even compromises in game design (if no easy, accessible solution for the dialog problem can be found).

[Madrayken]

Thanks again for the feedback. It's a lot to think about! I'd not considered that anyone but hardcore nerdy retro-heads would ever be interested in this, so it's refreshing to get a viewpoint from people who weren't necessarily my target audience.