Slartboz: The UI Styles/Modes and Why, and Goals

Slartboz has been designed to have a 100% textual user interface (TUI.)

Why?

Several reasons. Because a TUI has a few attractive qualities about it. Plus I have a few strategic goals I'm trying to achieve with Slartboz, and I believe that a TUI will help me to achieve them better than otherwise.

Let's walk through them:

1. no visual artists needed

Nothing personal against artists -- it simply helps keep the dev team smaller, or even 100% solo if desired. In turn this helps keep costs down. And lets me (as the guy wearing the game designer's hat) to be more nimble, from an R&D perspective. Easier for me to do pivots, for example, when make sense, and whether little or big.

2. faster dev pace than otherwise

3. multi platform is easier

4. future-proofing is more likely (more built to last)

5. users can tailor their own experienced game text sizes, color and contrast to heart's content

6. audio-translations and UI adaptations are easier -- for the blind, or those who simply savor phonetics/linguistics and the sound of human speech. This plus 5 is great for accessibility and multi-platforming. win and win!

7. a TUI puts more emphasis on the power of written language. And it helps reinforce reading skills. Its a greater pleasure for my fellow geeky fans of sci-fi or comedy fiction, and strong writing in general. (Though we plan to have *weak* writing. So incredibly bad and utterly terrible writing. So bad it will make you cry. Heck I'm crying now just thinking about it. Granted, I cry easily. I live near an onion farm.)

8. text has a high signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio. An intellectual pleasure itself and a wise engineering ideal in a world filled increasingly with noise, distractions, pretty blatant publicity stunts, seemingly endless drama by our world's 24x7 mass media "journalism" orgs, and the addictive drug-like pull of doomscrolling within socmedia. ie. "less is more"

9. Slartboz is a game, yes, and that implies entertainment. But this game/experience is ALSO about education. I hope to use it to teach certain ideas and points, or to reinforce them. And to *influence" the user's view on certain topics I feel are important. I find it easier to *do* all that via text and language. As a student/consumer myself I know that reading and hearing text/language, and studying it -- and even trying to mimic it or make fun of it -- has a strong and memorable impact on me. Educationally as a technique it is very "effective" on me. Therefore I have a stronger intuitive grasp for it when trying myself to wear the hat of a teacher, or an actor, or make-believe character, a wannabe politician, an advertiser, or even just some random "influencer" online.

So... there's all that.

But also:

Slartboz will have a mix of TUI type modes and elements, each used where fits best:

* a classic Infocom-style "text adventure" mode (later re-coined as "interactive fiction" or IF.). Though we intend to liberally use such incredibly modern affordances for user convenience as... buttons and hotkeys as shortcuts, where makes sense. (OMG HOLD ME BACK!!!)

* some Rogue-like UI modes. And I do mean Rogue-like in the original, true and.*correct* sense of that term. Meaning the kinds of UI and play mechanics used in Rogue (ooh shocking!), Hack, NetHack and all the rest, including the fantabulous Dorf Fortress (Holy Be Thy Name, and Forever Ever, Amen. "Strike the Earth!")

And just as Fallout did we hope to have portions of our game UX serve as little loving homages to the era of those cool old retro "green screen" physical Terminals.

Anyway, more insight into our vision and plan, and philosophy.