Since you briefly mention accessibility and blind people, it's interesting to note that text-based games are particularly great for blind people precisely because it's accessible to them thanks to text to speech and speech to text technologies. That's one of the main reasons why MUDs (think text-based MMOs) are still popular, albeit in specific niches. That's also why we still see text adventure games spring up from time to time.
I hope that one day soon we will get a more advanced version of those old entirely text based computer games, except instead of typing and reading you can just speak and hear.
Zork being the typical example. Add a Text To Speech and Speech To Text modules should help here. Once NPUs (neural processing units) become more common, devs could look at running a local LLM to support their features.
It I remember correctly, the developers that eventually became Obsidian created the first 2 Fallouts, then sold the IP to Bethesda, who proceeded to use their new 3D engine (also used for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) to create a new game in the universe. I imagine the text based UI they created for Fallout 3 just sort of worked with the engine they already had for Oblivion, just a different skin
Their current engine is still based on Gamebryo (not a bad engine in and of itself - Divinity 2 was dope!), but for whatever reason their animation/menu/game systems still feel as clunky as at least Morrowind. I'm starting to feel Bethesda is kind of incompetent. Sucks, since I had so much fun with Morrowind (and less with each successive game).
I always liked the dialog system in Morrowind, structured like a text webpage with embed links and a list of links on the right. That design is much more useful for a mouse than controller. You can really speed through conversations if you dont care about the quest.
Picture-based UIs work really well for me most of the times, but it can heavily depend on the style of the game. Escape From Tarkov and Apex Legends really benefit for this approach for the reasons you've stated, but something like Cogmind or Dwarf Fortress or even Rimworld would lose a lot of fun in my eyes if they were to implement more of it. Maybe it's about the consistency, too. I would say that the more game expects you to rely on visual information, the better it works with the visual style of UI, like Apex Legends, but when you mostly read texts or stare at ASCII(-like) characters, the more you want to read, even if it's just a screwdriver in your backpack. Project Zomboid feels like a game where the two come together really well, and, to a lesser extent, Xenus (The Boiling Point).
yeah, i like text interfaces in RPGs, but there is an interesting thing about the final fantasy when i played it, the game obviously was made for the japanese language, and (to oversimplify) the japanese kanji, have each character representing an entire syllable with a single character, so when the game was translated to english, a ui space that would have fit 4 syllables in japanese, can only fit 4 letters in english, so they had to make consetions for everything, the lightning spell gets abreviated to "lit", which is confusing at first glance, and the antidote gets named "pure", like thats an item name, sure after you know its supposed to remove poison it makes a little bit of sense, but still.
i never knew all that. i always just thought of it as a quirky oringinality thing... its kinda cool though to try and shorten the words down like that, it forces less used words which in turn creates a game-world contextual language. like we dont talk like that but in that world they do
We all know the reason why they switched to text for Fallout 3. It's because the game IP was sold to a different company, which used their own already-existing engine from their older RPG games which were already heavily text-based.
We just released our student game Ex_Silentio, and it's using a text based interface... and text based 3D Graphics ! It's so funny that you released this video less than a month after our release lol
one of the first to swing to mind as an example of good text-based ui would be jumping all the way back to a few months before i was born, ADOM. now that's taking it to the extreme where text is handling even the graphics presentation, but stripping the world back and going into the menus as was the focus here, it actually comes out super clean and quick to parse. sorting hotkeys, distinctive colors in the sub-headers breaking apart the parts of your inventory, and even an adaptive shortening of the gear slot names as you get deeper in the game with items of greater titles all bring a surprisingly smooth experience.
Don't know if you've ever heard of it, but Duskers is a game thats almost entirely based through text. You actually control the game though a ingame command line. Really cool and you might like it.
What you said about the command line is so real. I absolutely love using the command line on my computer, and whenever I can get a similar experience in a game it makes my brain very happy. Even simple stuff like the terminal in Lethal Company is super engaging to me. I wish there were more games that allowed you to interact with them in a similar way, and I wish that there was more to do with the terminal in games like Lethal Company
Ive been playing once human at the moment, you mentioned text is unambiguous. in build mode there are two items with identical names. Water Pump. Different Icons. one 'extracts' ground water. the other is for moving water uphill
Although clunky, I find myself getting immersed much better with text based interfaces. Death Stranding, Skyrim, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Fallout, all of them are so text heavy, but once you get the hang of it you start enjoying these clunky interfaces. I think because they require more attention than just a visual cue, you actually start paying attention to the game. Of course, this comes from a privileged able person. I feel games should always have options or at least mods to make it better. I wonder if we might move towards web like interfaces for games and just have CSS to style the menus, just like on web. I know it feels like an overkill, but it is a problem solved on web platform via user styles and extensions.
Honestly I overlook this aspect of playing or developing video games because it's so foundational that I don't even think about it. The font, style and use of text and images an give you a lot of insight into how much the developers accounted for the experience. So maybe next time i should be looking more at the text i'm reading instead of the words themselves
Text based interfaces are such a normal concept to me that I’ve never even questioned it. I thought this video would be about having to manually type out entries to get to a certain screen in a game computer or something like in Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines.
I would say that fallout interface was an artistic reason. The first one probably wanted to look more futuristic, so they added icons to sell the effect by adding these icons, meanwhile the new one already has a more fleshed out world with lots of npcs, weapons and things to see so they made the interface look more older
Something funny that happened to me is synthesis in the kingdom hearts series. In kingdom Hearts 1, where no images of items are shown, I was not invested in the idea of synthesis and wasn't really engaged in the system, whereas Kingdom hearts 2 showed some pictures of the materials and items that you crafted, and unconsciously I was more invested in it and actually interacted with the system.
I played a game "Lost in Play" with my daughter and all dialog is basically characters mumbling in funny way (halibaba babadu) and picture is displayed with something. You don't even have to read to know what it is about and as you said it makes game accessible, even to someone who cannot read yet
In UI its always show, dont tell especially in action games as you pointed out. + Conyrollers have a ahrder time with grid UI as well. Some advantages to text is it requires almost no file size or art team to create listings. The other reason most live service games use it for now is because it's easier to update. So in Halo if the UI graphic for BR has 32 little hashes because there's 32 shots in the mag, thats great. But that's very final and difficult to scale arbitrarily. As FPS games for example get so many tuning updates now, it's easier to literally just have text in the corner that's says '32' or '34' or '35' than it is to create a new graphic with 32 hashes that still evenly fits in the space. And it works for every gun. Less readable, but more easily updated and scalable.
I honestly think Bethesda made that change because that's how they design all of their inventories. It's always name on the left, picture on the right. They just chose to focus their energy on other aspects of the game when taking on fallout
I think icons work better for games that have very few important items to keep track of. In Apex you're not juggling 20 different consumables and a dozen weapons. In something like Fallout, however. You have so many items that it's faster and easier to find a given item in a sorted alphabetical list than recognize it from a picture. In theory you could make a unique little icon for each item. But at a certain point, you're not making icons anymore, you're making hieroglyphs, and ironically have just reinvented text again.
TBH both OG and 3D Fallouts had not-so-great inventory to navigate. I'm taking bold take here, but no matter how much people dunk on Fallout Tactics it's the Fallout with best inventory to work with. Maybe if they added Categories like in FO3 and NV to make it perfect.
No clue what people are talking about considering your voice. When I watched this video yesterday I literally didn't notice anything being different, maybe a bit that your voice is a bit raspy, but that's all
on the game im woring now it's somwer in middle it have text and icons. for example the main menu's have text mostly text but some times have small icons check ☒ ect the hud on the hand it kind the opposite the have for example the ammo have icon and number some with the helth, and the weapon it just have icon with the weapon. so it kin mixed off both depending on the situation.
holy shit garbaj uploaded
He has a garbaj upload routine
Im just happy if he's happy @iusearch
But I'm not happy when he's not uploading...@@NeonNijahn
@@iusearch oh in that case...
Since you briefly mention accessibility and blind people, it's interesting to note that text-based games are particularly great for blind people precisely because it's accessible to them thanks to text to speech and speech to text technologies.
That's one of the main reasons why MUDs (think text-based MMOs) are still popular, albeit in specific niches. That's also why we still see text adventure games spring up from time to time.
That's actually amazing. Nice to see that games can be more accessible for people with disabilities
I hope that one day soon we will get a more advanced version of those old entirely text based computer games, except instead of typing and reading you can just speak and hear.
Zork being the typical example. Add a Text To Speech and Speech To Text modules should help here.
Once NPUs (neural processing units) become more common, devs could look at running a local LLM to support their features.
If I'm not mistaken there is a text-based Skyrim for the Amazon speakers which works on speaking & hearing
Something I would like to see is an updated take on traditional IF style games, but with systemic mechanics akin to an immersive sim.
It I remember correctly, the developers that eventually became Obsidian created the first 2 Fallouts, then sold the IP to Bethesda, who proceeded to use their new 3D engine (also used for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion) to create a new game in the universe. I imagine the text based UI they created for Fallout 3 just sort of worked with the engine they already had for Oblivion, just a different skin
Their current engine is still based on Gamebryo (not a bad engine in and of itself - Divinity 2 was dope!), but for whatever reason their animation/menu/game systems still feel as clunky as at least Morrowind.
I'm starting to feel Bethesda is kind of incompetent. Sucks, since I had so much fun with Morrowind (and less with each successive game).
@@NostraDavid2 gamebryo is cool but DAMN its hard to believe they are still using an engine built on something so old and crippled on modern hardware
I always liked the dialog system in Morrowind, structured like a text webpage with embed links and a list of links on the right. That design is much more useful for a mouse than controller. You can really speed through conversations if you dont care about the quest.
"Reading is hard and time consuming. Just ask our lead writer Emil Pagliarulo. He struggles with See Spot Run!" -Bethesda, probably.
Picture-based UIs work really well for me most of the times, but it can heavily depend on the style of the game. Escape From Tarkov and Apex Legends really benefit for this approach for the reasons you've stated, but something like Cogmind or Dwarf Fortress or even Rimworld would lose a lot of fun in my eyes if they were to implement more of it.
Maybe it's about the consistency, too. I would say that the more game expects you to rely on visual information, the better it works with the visual style of UI, like Apex Legends, but when you mostly read texts or stare at ASCII(-like) characters, the more you want to read, even if it's just a screwdriver in your backpack.
Project Zomboid feels like a game where the two come together really well, and, to a lesser extent, Xenus (The Boiling Point).
Witcher 3 might be one of the best examples of how NOT to do an inventory 😅
@@VikingTeddy fr
Lethal Company had me stumped for A good minute when I discovered the ship terminal.
omg yeah!! i always made my friends who knew how to do it!!
yeah, i like text interfaces in RPGs, but there is an interesting thing about the final fantasy when i played it, the game obviously was made for the japanese language, and (to oversimplify) the japanese kanji, have each character representing an entire syllable with a single character, so when the game was translated to english, a ui space that would have fit 4 syllables in japanese, can only fit 4 letters in english, so they had to make consetions for everything, the lightning spell gets abreviated to "lit", which is confusing at first glance, and the antidote gets named "pure", like thats an item name, sure after you know its supposed to remove poison it makes a little bit of sense, but still.
i never knew all that. i always just thought of it as a quirky oringinality thing... its kinda cool though to try and shorten the words down like that, it forces less used words which in turn creates a game-world contextual language. like we dont talk like that but in that world they do
We all know the reason why they switched to text for Fallout 3. It's because the game IP was sold to a different company, which used their own already-existing engine from their older RPG games which were already heavily text-based.
We just released our student game Ex_Silentio, and it's using a text based interface... and text based 3D Graphics !
It's so funny that you released this video less than a month after our release lol
Voice change?
nope. AI
@@Zeekblitz they've been changing their voice over time, if you need proof just look at their gaming channel.
@@Zeekblitzit's actually Voice training !
She came out as trans :D
@@POTATOEH81 just looked it up, makes me happy :3
@@POTATOEH81 has nothing to do with it, she said in her last video that it is not voice training.
one of the first to swing to mind as an example of good text-based ui would be jumping all the way back to a few months before i was born, ADOM. now that's taking it to the extreme where text is handling even the graphics presentation, but stripping the world back and going into the menus as was the focus here, it actually comes out super clean and quick to parse. sorting hotkeys, distinctive colors in the sub-headers breaking apart the parts of your inventory, and even an adaptive shortening of the gear slot names as you get deeper in the game with items of greater titles all bring a surprisingly smooth experience.
Don't know if you've ever heard of it, but Duskers is a game thats almost entirely based through text. You actually control the game though a ingame command line. Really cool and you might like it.
Not just any command line but Pop OS, frickin awesome lol
Very good points mentioned, Garbaj 👍
A combination of text and icons can get the point across almost universally.
What you said about the command line is so real. I absolutely love using the command line on my computer, and whenever I can get a similar experience in a game it makes my brain very happy. Even simple stuff like the terminal in Lethal Company is super engaging to me. I wish there were more games that allowed you to interact with them in a similar way, and I wish that there was more to do with the terminal in games like Lethal Company
There's a nice mod called "yUI - User Ynterface" that puts little icons next to the words, makes it a little more visual
Ive been playing once human at the moment, you mentioned text is unambiguous.
in build mode there are two items with identical names. Water Pump. Different Icons.
one 'extracts' ground water.
the other is for moving water uphill
I personally love text-based interfaces, maybe because of the aestetics
"When was the last tiem you played a text-based UI"
about 16 - 26 hours.
Although clunky, I find myself getting immersed much better with text based interfaces. Death Stranding, Skyrim, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Fallout, all of them are so text heavy, but once you get the hang of it you start enjoying these clunky interfaces. I think because they require more attention than just a visual cue, you actually start paying attention to the game. Of course, this comes from a privileged able person. I feel games should always have options or at least mods to make it better. I wonder if we might move towards web like interfaces for games and just have CSS to style the menus, just like on web. I know it feels like an overkill, but it is a problem solved on web platform via user styles and extensions.
Imagine a dewey decimal system-based UI lol
by text-based interfaces i thought he meant ENTIRELY text-based like cataclysm dark days ahead
I was genuinely just watching delta rune and now I’m here and it’s also got some too lol
Honestly I overlook this aspect of playing or developing video games because it's so foundational that I don't even think about it. The font, style and use of text and images an give you a lot of insight into how much the developers accounted for the experience. So maybe next time i should be looking more at the text i'm reading instead of the words themselves
2:56 it took on the look of Elder Scrolls IV, but interestingly, the first 3 Elder Scrolls also had picture based inventories.
Probably because like you said, matches the game setting & quicker on console
Linux users likes this video
I wish it was more in racing games... (I want to know about my opponents pre race
Text based interfaces are such a normal concept to me that I’ve never even questioned it. I thought this video would be about having to manually type out entries to get to a certain screen in a game computer or something like in Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines.
The UI in Fallout New Vegas fits thematically but an absolute pain when I need to sort out items and equipment. Need a SkyUI for Fallout or something.
I would say that fallout interface was an artistic reason. The first one probably wanted to look more futuristic, so they added icons to sell the effect by adding these icons, meanwhile the new one already has a more fleshed out world with lots of npcs, weapons and things to see so they made the interface look more older
Something funny that happened to me is synthesis in the kingdom hearts series. In kingdom Hearts 1, where no images of items are shown, I was not invested in the idea of synthesis and wasn't really engaged in the system, whereas Kingdom hearts 2 showed some pictures of the materials and items that you crafted, and unconsciously I was more invested in it and actually interacted with the system.
Just played FNV, so to answer your question; about a week ago
I played a game "Lost in Play" with my daughter and all dialog is basically characters mumbling in funny way (halibaba babadu) and picture is displayed with something. You don't even have to read to know what it is about and as you said it makes game accessible, even to someone who cannot read yet
In UI its always show, dont tell especially in action games as you pointed out. + Conyrollers have a ahrder time with grid UI as well.
Some advantages to text is it requires almost no file size or art team to create listings. The other reason most live service games use it for now is because it's easier to update. So in Halo if the UI graphic for BR has 32 little hashes because there's 32 shots in the mag, thats great. But that's very final and difficult to scale arbitrarily. As FPS games for example get so many tuning updates now, it's easier to literally just have text in the corner that's says '32' or '34' or '35' than it is to create a new graphic with 32 hashes that still evenly fits in the space. And it works for every gun. Less readable, but more easily updated and scalable.
Many different items - text
Fewer different items - icons
congrats on transitioning or sorry for being sick?
Garbaj femboy confirmed?
this is so funny I'm dying
@@MikoOhneHose She/They on twitter so not a femboy i think
The first lol
@@NICK....Wait she's been trans for over a year. How did we all only just start discovering this? I guess she just recently started voice training.
ahh yes, the finest fallout :3
Femboy Garbaj for the win
She’s actually trans
I'm playing the GoldBox games nowadays. It's turn based, but still, the enemy turn is automatic, so I have to read what happens on their turn fast.
I honestly think Bethesda made that change because that's how they design all of their inventories. It's always name on the left, picture on the right. They just chose to focus their energy on other aspects of the game when taking on fallout
I think icons work better for games that have very few important items to keep track of. In Apex you're not juggling 20 different consumables and a dozen weapons.
In something like Fallout, however. You have so many items that it's faster and easier to find a given item in a sorted alphabetical list than recognize it from a picture.
In theory you could make a unique little icon for each item. But at a certain point, you're not making icons anymore, you're making hieroglyphs, and ironically have just reinvented text again.
hope this interaction doesn't lead to any fallout between us
fallout new vegas
I do think the original Fallouts were quite text heavy. You had to read the bottom left text box what was happening.
sound hella different
Fr
They’re trans
@@gui8g4mer49 has nothing to do with it
@@Skorpien. ?
@@gui8g4mer49 seriously garbaj too now
Dude where have you been ?
TBH both OG and 3D Fallouts had not-so-great inventory to navigate.
I'm taking bold take here, but no matter how much people dunk on Fallout Tactics it's the Fallout with best inventory to work with. Maybe if they added Categories like in FO3 and NV to make it perfect.
0:32 this bring me a smile lmao kskskakkskkakakskk
Hey missed your videos my guy
Voice training going well
i see new vegas i click. I see garbag ohvshit
A Pokemon potion is clearly a bottle with foam on top
I'm curious if you would consider things like a yes and no button to be text or GUI?
Depends on if the buttons are the same colour with text, or red and green with text, or straight up a green checkmark for yes and a red X for no.
Yooo. Wake up fam. Garbaj just dropped vid!
new mic or something?
Nah dude is just trying to change his voice apparently
What do I think? Man, Im here to not think, so you tell me.
Sounds like youve started your transition, I'm so happy for you! Don't let the haters get you down, we all support you!
are you still creating your game
no
no garbaj thought it was garbage which is just a garbage thing to think, poor old garbaj and his garbage view on his game
@@lcdcstudios Mmmm I like garbaj.. I mean garbage
Booty Blastin' was cancelled, the reasoning was explained in a video posted around a year ago
fore marvings
you sound like toby from the office
Frog Fractions anyone?
What was that game you were playing at 2:03?
Welcome bsck Garbaj, congratz on the voice training
Hey
everyone
@@akeem2983 Garbaj here
You feeling ok?
why are you talking like that
It's weird yeah
idk either, not what I was expecting tbh
think garbaj has been on the HRT for a while now
He is trans if I Know right
trans
👍
16 SECONDS AGO
No clue what people are talking about considering your voice. When I watched this video yesterday I literally didn't notice anything being different, maybe a bit that your voice is a bit raspy, but that's all
Whats with your voice
Why do you care
Garbaj has transitioned, at least that's what I think, Twitter bio says She/They
@@johnjuiceshipper4963because they’re watching his video…?
@@lukezeiolf6977 lil bro HATING 😭😭ive seen you reply to 3 comments already go do your homework lmao
Ayooo, i'm first!
His voice sounds weird :( . Don't try to record sick it can ruin the quality of videos.
Aaand unsubscribed
what happened?
Fr
@@lukezeiolf6977 lil bro thinks he said something
Womp womp
on the game im woring now it's somwer in middle it have text and icons.
for example the main menu's have text mostly text but some times have small icons check ☒ ect
the hud on the hand it kind the opposite the have for example the ammo have icon and number some with the helth,
and the weapon it just have icon with the weapon.
so it kin mixed off both depending on the situation.