Subject: User interface comments
From: Jari P Saukkonen (jsaukkon@cs.Helsinki.FI)
Date: Thu Aug 26 1999 - 22:08:16 EEST
I read through the comments and picked up the most important points. First, I'm in favor of moving where the nose points. This is because controlling your legs and head totally independently isn't that easy. The game Heavy Gear 2 has such control, and I find it a bit cumbersome to make accurate movements because you always have to "search" the forward position to see where you are going (there's a crosshair in HG2 that shows the direction your body is facing). However my system has the disadvantage, as Talgor pointed out, that moving in one direction while looking at the other is impossible. Therefor, I suggest a compromise where you could either toggle 'free look' by holding down a key on the keyboard, or a key to 'lock' your movement. For example if you are running forward, you press caps-lock (or something) to 'lock' the direction. The character will continue running forward (you don't have to press any movement keys when the movement is locked) while you can look wherever you wish (assuming your character has a very flexible neck ;). This also makes traveling easier as one don't have to constantly keep the 'forward' key pressed. Second, about the battle. As was pointed out, some automation would be nice. We could weave the battle maneuver system into the 'automation', so you would need only to specify the combat style you wish to use while fighting. Then the character would fight with the current target as well as his skills will allow. The maneuvers would then be used by the automation system to determine character's actions during the battle. Also, when entering the 'battle' mode the character could wield the weapon he was last using (provided that he is carrying it). Naturally this would only apply to close-combat, ranged combat would still need to be done 'manually'. However, we still need some shortcuts for most often used skills (spells?) and items, for example function keys. ++Dazzt --- | Jari Saukkonen + jari.saukkonen@cs.helsinki.fi : coral -. | programming music graphics | dolphin : | art keyboards web | nah-kolor | +------------------------------------------------+-----------' | Babylon5-inspired 'shadow function' 0 <= t <= 4*pi/3 : x(t) = (sin 8t)^2 * (5 + 3sin 8t) cos (t/2 + (sin 8t)^2) . y(t) = +-(sin 8t)^2 * (5 + 3cos 8t) sin (t/2 + (sin 8t)^2)
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