Originally Posted by skorman00
If you don't continually check input, how else will you know what the player wants to do? For the second question, the first option would call for a menu of sort with the player pressing 1, 2, 3..etc depending on what action they want, while the second would have some sort of text command line like old school sierra games (if I understand what you're asking).
The question is what will your game require. If all I can do is look, attack, and move, I would be ........ed if I had to type out those words all the dang time. But if I had to "look at box" or "use torch with magic flame to burn face of evil jaberwaki," a menu would have to be pretty extensive.