Handheld Genesis?

[gorboth]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010 ... kindle.ars

Check out the above article everyone. I know some people have experimented with playing from iphones, etc ... but I wonder if our future couldn't involve such media in a more serious way ...

G.

[Uther]

I wonder if that can really be used to promote Genesis. I would love for it to succeed :=)
More people playing text games then graphical ones

[Cherek]

I have tried playing Genesis from my iPhone. An while the developers of the app MobileMUD do their best to make it work on the iPhone there are still some serious limitations. Simply because the size of the screen you cant get it to look good, either you have to word wrap very strangely, or the text becomes too small to see. I suppose Genesis would need to have some type of mobile version, or a dynamic word wrapping for it to really work. The other big limitation is of course to actually type on your phone. Most of the population I think (or is it just me??) simply cant write quick enough to have a good text game experience.

Allthough it might work better on an iPad I suppose. Atleast it wont be a problem to read the text, typing I assume is pretty awkward even on an iPad though. (I havent tried one). But clearly "pads" are here to stay, and mobile phone screens are getting better and better so perhaps with some work on a client it might be usuable. For instance if you could touch things (words) in the text to interact with the world it would be pretty cool. So instead of writing "examina stone" you simple touch the word "stone" and you will examine it. Or "A ship arrives", touch the "ship" and you'll board it. Touch the orcs to kill them, etc, etc. Using voice recognition for commands and talking to others would also be pretty interesting to try out. Even though voice recognition never really got a breakthough yet. I suppose people dont like talking to themselves with others around, and I admit I may be a little disturbed if someone was going "north, north, north, kill orc" at the desk beside me all day...

Pads give you the "book" feeling though which computers mostly dont, so yeah, I do think text games could have a future there, but I still think its most convenient to play on your computer, atleast in the year 2011.

I think we should focus on making our game successful on a computer before trying to target another media. In all honesty, graphical games are still more made for the small screens and the0 interface of phones and pads. In a few years we'll surely see world of warcraft type games and very good looking graphics on phones. So the future of graphical games will probably have even more of an edge on text games than they do on computers imho.

Anyway, I personally think text games could have a great future if they wanted to. Books are still very popular. Why could not "interactive books" be?

The only reason they are not is nobody have made a serious attempt to make it successful imho. All text games suffer from being developed and played mainly by an aging bunch of old computer geeks from the 80s and 90s. That target group is almost gone, and targeting people who love MMORPGs might not be right either. I think our future lies on those who want to "live their book". Be it young teenagers who just have discovered the fantasy book genre, or moms who want to escape reality awhile. Fantasy books are very successful, fantasy interactive books could be as well.

Text games still have a huge edge on graphical games. Just like books, it's about the imagination of the reader / player. Graphical games do not have that, and will never have that. Just like a good book often can beat a good movie, so could text games. If we could manage to sell it the right way, and to the right people!

[Ilrahil]

I have a friend I recently tried taking to xp on the iphone... The result. The client for it kept crashing from the amount of combat spam. He did however say that it was convenient for checking mails.

[Celephias]

Typing on the iPad is substantially better than the iPhone in my experience due to the size of the keyboard, especially if you use it in landscape mode. It really wants to be on a tabletop to make real headway typing - one-handed typing while holding the device will slow you down.

As for clients, I would imagine that a mobile device really needs shortcuts/aliases capability to get the most done with the least typing.

[Laurel]

iP*** is not the only thing out there? I got my Android handheld and I would NEVER even attempt to use it for Gen - typing would kill me, not the targets ... not to mention trying to escape any sort of danger

[Anahita]

Posting a reply a few months later - has anyone found a good app for the iPad yet? I'll be going on vacation in a few weeks and won't be carrying anything else. There are a few available but I'd rather not pay for anything unless I know it works!

I have an andriod phone and had an app that worked fairly well, though my phone had a full keyboard so that certainly helped. If people are still looking for that I can figure out which one it was (I've since changed phones).

[Greneth]

Ive been using a app for my android called BlowTorch and I love it. I can create a directional pad on my screen so movement, looking, reading, boarding ships ect can become quite easy. Comes with Alias's, Triggers, Timers it's basically a mini mud client with the general bells and whistles. Far as lag I hardly get it on the client long as I am connected to a Wifi.

[Laurel]

BlowTorch for Android is quite good indeed. However it's far behind a full-blown Z/CMud or TF.

[gorboth]

We're also working on a simple-text client that emulates an old term interface. It is hopefully going to work on just about any system, including things like an Amazon Kindle.

G.