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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: [INFORM] Menu-driven conversation, take 2
Message-ID: <GBnI5I.LAq@world.std.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 23:20:06 GMT
References: <9aujp6$96d$1@news.lth.se> <3AD45AD2.FFD59408@csi.com> <9b1mp9$3ch$2@news.lth.se>
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Lines: 35
Xref: news.duke.edu rec.arts.int-fiction:85533

In article <9b1mp9$3ch$2@news.lth.se>, Magnus Olsson <mol@pobox.com> wrote:
>But the very decision to use conversational menus is a decision to
>make the program modal: one mode for conversations, one for everything
>else. It's just a matter of how strict this modality is, and how easily
>you can switch between modes.

This is false, and I meant to explain this in my last post but
I got sidetracked by the status line position and never got to
my main point.  Picture the following: a game where you type
'talk to X' which brings up a conversation menu of things to
say to that character. You can always select '0' which cancels
without taking a turn.

Now, imagine that instead of typing 0, you can just type any
old command you please.  (In other words, you get a real prompt,
but you have the option of typing in the number of a conversation
choice instead.)  [There's an analogy here to a game in which
the only things you can say are "yes" and "no", which can be
thought of as choices from a two-item menu.]

Now move the conversation choices off to the status line so
you can leave them up all the time without filling the screen
and scrollback with them.

At this point, you're not at all modal between conversations
and everything else, although you are modal in terms of which
NPC you're talking to--unless you want to start showing all
of the conversation options for every character present at
all times.

Now, if you want conversation menus that you select by
using arrow keys and the like, that is going to be modal
in some sense compared to typing in commands, no matter what.

SeanB
