Evolution of user interfaces in variants
From
Janis Papanagnou@21:1/5 to
All on Mon May 26 19:10:57 2025
Over the past decades an abundance of Nethack variants evolved. Some
made it a _strategic goal_ to enhance the user interface. And indeed
quite some good changes have been invented - and in some cases also
adopted by other variants - that were very good!
What I don't understand is why the experiences with good interfaces
don't converge, why they don't find their way into some of the other
variants. Some existing good interface functions were even removed
by some variants.
There's quite some examples where useful interface features vanished
(like cursor movement with inspection of screen entities in larger
steps than just 1), or when newly introduced items and item classes
did not consider the side interface effects they impose (for example
in menus).
Currently I'm still playing the CrecelleHack game and noticed some
such change, with potentially drastic undesired effects. Previously,
empty bottles had their own group in the menus with the same class
symbol '!', and both could be class-selected by '!'. Now we can see
that this got changed, empty bottles got an own object class ','.
The effect is that if you want to select in menus all bottles, empty
and filled, you cannot (and should not) type '!' and ',' to select
objects of these two classes; because while '!' will still select
the tonics, the ',' (as implemented since ever) selects *all* object
classes in the menu. And with the typical fast typing supported by
the muscle memory you may that way put all your objects into your
bag [of holding] including the wand of cancellation. - A really bad
interface change!
There's other variants that introduced new object classes with could
not be selected at all by the object class character in the menus.
BTW; having so many variants with different user interfaces makes it
not inviting to play them; every occasional switch of a variant will
result in learning it's subtle differences and inconsistencies again.
And if there's such bad designs (as exemplarily mentioned above) it
makes things even worse.
I'd wish the variant developers would cooperate and could agree on a
sensible interface.
Janis
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