[MUD-Dev] When the interface becomes the challenge.

[Travis Nixon]

From: "Brian Hook" <bwh at wksoftware.com>

> First person mouse/keyboard controls suck.  To FPS players, it
> feels natural as hell, but if you want to hit the broader market,
> it sucks.  Take someone that has never played an FPS and sit them
> in front of a typical Quake ASWD/mouse combination and they will
> do one of the three things:

>   - stare straight down - stare straight up - walk into lava

> It takes hours and hours of just practice to get that basic
> control system mastered.

> Unfortunately, nothing better has come along (witness the disaster
> that is the FPS genre on consoles), but it still bites.  Diablo 2
> has a very simple interface that ANYONE can play.

Heh, I was going to pipe into this thread with a comment about how
the interface to my "ideal game" is a lot more like Diablo than
quake.

You beat me to it, though. :)

FPS controls are hard.

Point and click, that's the way to go.  A cross between diablo and
some of the more conventional adventure type games would be best, I
think.  Want to go somewhere?  Click on it.  Want to open a door?
Click on it.  Want to sit on that rock?  Click on it.  Want to kick
it to show frustration?  Well, then maybe you have to right click on
it and select something from a menu.  Or maybe you "highlight" it
somehow and then type /kick or something.  I dunno.  That's where
things start to get a little more complicated, and where we start
talking to somebody who actually has some knowledge of interface
design.  :)

An interface like this is more typically used in third person games,
but there's no reason it can't be used in first person, as well.
And actually, I think I prefer third person anyway, because you can
see what's going on with your character.  Seeing your character wave
when you /wave isn't quite the same as feeling your arm moving, but
its better (in my opinion, anyway) than not seeing it, and just
hoping it worked.

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