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Sindusk

Informative Errors

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Informative Errors

 

Right now in Wurm there is a significant number of systems that do not give proper player feedback which can result in confusion for anyone who doesn't understand the intricacies of how things work. These suggestions are meant to help improve clarity by adjusting error messages to more specifically display why things aren't working.

 

Horse Gear

 

A new player to the game might not understand that horses need to be tamed, charmed, or branded in order to be equipped. They might try something like either of the below after creating their first set of horse gear:

 

Notice the errors? You can't reach that. You are not allowed to do that. Why can't I reach it? Why can't I do that? A new player would be absolutely confused as to what they did wrong here. In many cases, that player would simply go to Wurmpedia and figure it out, but not everyone is that patient or dedicated to resolving issues.

 

My suggestion is to change the messages to give more clarity of what went wrong:

You can't take that. The (name of creature) must be your pet or branded to your village.

You are not allowed to do that. The (name of creature) must be your pet or branded to your village.

Something along those lines would solve this player confusion with extremely minimal effort.

 

Highway System

 

There's a google document describing how the highway system works. I assure you, not everyone has read it. While creating a new highway is somewhat reasonable in terms of understanding how it works, take a look when trying to add on to an existing highway:

 

 

You don't even get an error. You just can't even plant the objects trying to expand it. Now, an experienced player will know that you need to replace the catseye in the road with a waystone. But a new player will just sit there completely confused about what they're doing wrong. My suggestion is simple:

 

Allow there to be a "plant" option for waystones and catseyes in the road where they wouldn't work. Then, display an error message telling the player why it wont work. For example, trying to place the catseye next to the highway here would result in an error like:

You cannot place a catseye here. It would create an intersection, which requires a waystone.

If I were to try the waystone, it could tell me something like the following:

Waystones must be planted within a deed or replaced on catseyes to create an intersection.

It's not perfect, but it sure beats having no idea what went wrong.

 

Enchants & Negating Effects

 

This one is rather simple, and can be described in two lines, copied from my Spellcraft mod description:

  • [21:01:38] The longsword is already enchanted with something that would negate the effect.
  • [21:01:43] The longsword is already enchanted with Blessings of the Dark which would negate the effect of Wind of Ages.

 

"Something that would negate the effect" tells the player nothing about what's going wrong. Someone who doesn't read the wiki would have no idea why their enchant wont apply.

 

Corners Can't Be Modified

 

When trying to flatten or level an area, sometimes this will happen:

 

Some corners can't be modified. Why not? What's stopping it? Which corner is it?

 

The following is more descriptive:

The birch tree prevents a corner from being modified.

The slate bricks prevents a corner from being modified.

Either one of those is more effective than what's being displayed.

 

Overall, clarity in error messages does nothing but good things for the game. It helps people learn what they're doing incorrectly and guides them towards solving the problem instead of leaving them feeling dumb and helpless.

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In general, I agree. Most of these are great examples too. Highway, definitely could do just that. Horse gear, yes, it feels helpless. Even only "you can't do that with a horse you have no rights to" would do.

 

I don't think however that all errors should always say exactly what to do. The enchant example seems okay to me. It does tell you that it's a spell that can't be in the same time, and you know already what you were trying to cast. It seems to me that you know exactly what to look for, look for info on what spells can't be with woa.

 

In the horse gear case, my proposal above would tell the player what is wrong - it is an error message after all - but it wouldn't save them from finding out what means to have rights to a horse. I believe that's okay, let you learn the game, and the knowledge that a wild horse isn't yours will be useful in other situations.

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There's a fair few areas where this happens, including putting items too large for the mailbox. 

 

These are great ideas and we'll be looking at improving them, if anyone finds any others that could be useful too please post here 

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While many errors are less than clear, I have more trouble with several interactions recently that had no error message. No response from the UI at all, hard to tell if the action has been attempted or lagged or not.

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2 hours ago, Retrograde said:

There's a fair few areas where this happens, including putting items too large for the mailbox. 

 

These are great ideas and we'll be looking at improving them, if anyone finds any others that could be useful too please post here 

 

Ideally, this Wurmpedia article shouldn't have to exist: https://www.wurmpedia.com/index.php/Mining_warnings

 

Since all these warnings are for rather specific reasons, they could be fairly easily reworded to describe the cause of the error. As-is, the messages themselves don't really describe the situation, you just have to memorize which one corresponds to which problem.

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On 5/20/2018 at 6:21 AM, Ostentatio said:

 

Ideally, this Wurmpedia article shouldn't have to exist: https://www.wurmpedia.com/index.php/Mining_warnings

 

Since all these warnings are for rather specific reasons, they could be fairly easily reworded to describe the cause of the error. As-is, the messages themselves don't really describe the situation, you just have to memorize which one corresponds to which problem.

And this isnt the only table you have to go look on wurmpedia or memorize, also mesages for prospecting could show numbers from wurmpedia right away, like you estimate there is beetween 2-3k ores left in the vein instead of you should start searching for another vein or something like that(pulled the numbers from random). Also vein ql could use numbers, at least in addition to message in brackest like: It's of very good ql(70-90ql). Don't know exact numbers again, i hope you are the point by now why it would be easier to be ingame. Also pendulum messages in number of tiles, etc.

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You're right. There's not much good reason to hide that from the player when they can just memorize it or look it up anyway.

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Along those same lines, locates for artifacts could also display the distance instead of being vague messages to memorize.

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Another one is when your boat can't move. You hop into your boat and try to sail away, but it just doesn't move! There should be a message when you examine it telling you the water is too shallow for the boat. Even after playing for years, this one still gets me.

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I've recently been working on a highway and something that really annoyed me is that you can't queue the planting of catseyes. The next tile is not adjacent to an existing catseye, so you don't even get the option to plant. You have to wait until the previous one is planted, then open the menu and click plant.

 

If planting catseyes were available on every tile corner, this problem would also disappear. You can put planting it in the queue and when it gets to that queue item, it will check whether it's a valid location - which it would then be.

 

(Sidenote: Can you bind planting of catseyes to a key? It's rather tedious to go through the menu hundreds of times)

Edited by Xandaros

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[warning - no sense of humour allowed beyond this point]

 

I think the options a commander gets when trying to load the wrong item into his wagon should be changed.

 

Say he is loading crates into his wagon, and there are a lot of them. Very often he will accidentally right-click on the wagon shaft, and without looking at what he is trying to load, select 'load cargo' and he will get this:

 

You are unable to bend reality enough to accomplish that!

 

Yes hilarious.  For the first time, and to everyone else except the person it is happening to.

As far as the novice commander knows he was just attempting to load a crate - what went wrong? 

If he fails to see the title of the options list is 'cedarwood wagon', the 'load cargo' option tells him nothing about what he's attempting to load, and the error message leaves him wondering if there was something wrong with the crate.

If he right-clicks properly on the crate next time and loads cargo, he won't see the error message again, be left wondering what it was all about, and probably bother CA_Help about it.

For the rest of us, it's just rubbing our noses in the fact that we've wasted our time yet again.

 

Quite simply the option to 'load cargo' a cart or wagon should not be there at all if there are people in it.

I would remove the 'load cargo' option from the vehicle right click options if the cart or wagon has a commander or passengers.

 

But, if we do want to keep the 'load cargo' option, why not change it to 'load [item being loaded]' and change the error message to:

 

You can not load the vehicle because it has people in it.

 

If you desperately want to keep the humour, why not add a little more helpful hint:

 

You cannot load a vehicle into itself. You are unable to bend reality enough to accomplish that!

 

Then the new commander knows what he did wrong! :) 

 

[ok, sense of humour allowed again]

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