[Hajo]

Hello,

I'm currently adding mouse control to my new project, and I came across some questions. Like H-World the map of my new project is organized in a grid.

My first goal was to make the players avatar move to a square upon a click on that square. This works nicely. Now I was pondering if the mouse can be used to trigger more actions, and to do this in a convenient way for the player.

A square can have two interactive elements, an item and a being.

If the player clicks a distant square there could be the following cases:

1) Empty square

Here seems to be only one action possible, player wants to move there.

2) Square with item

Why did the player click this? Maybe he/she wants to:

- look at the item to learn about it
- move there to pick it up

3) Square with being

Why did the player click this? Maybe he/she wants to:

- look at the being to learn about it
- move closer to the being
- talk to/trade with
- more ?

4) Square with item and being

Basicall problems of (2) and (3) combined.


I wonder what to do in the cases of (2) and (3) where a single click is ambiguous. Offering a menu each time seems awkward. Maybe a left click could mean "move" and a right click could be "interact" followed by a menu if the are several ways to interact? This would eliminate popups in case (2) unless more interactions turn up, and make moving easy in any case.

What do you think? Did you encounter such problems in your projects, too, and how did you solve them?

/Hajo

[XMark]

Yeah, left click to move and right click to interact is pretty much the standard thing. If you want to avoid menus more, perhaps a double-click could mean attack for an entity, and pick up for an item.
_________________
Mark Hall
Abstract Productions
I PLAYS THE MUSIC THAT MAKES THE PEOPLES FALL DOWN!

[Hajo]

Thank you. I think I'll use the menu, it's more obvious for a new player than a double click :)

[Verious]

I would avoid using menus if possible as they have a tendency to break the illusion of the game world and slow down game play. I know its not always possible, but I would definitely try to avoid menus for primary game play elements.

[Hajo]

Random thoughts:

Left click/right click/double click: There are no hints to the player that they exist and mean something. Players also don't know if they has explored all options (maybe press shift, ctrl or alt with a click to modify further?). A menu will show all options, it's easy to access and learn.

All three exist on windows though. But their semantics are: select, context menu, execute

I think the context menus were introduced because many objects have more than one action bound to them and "execute" was ambiguous for many.

Menues are artificial though, this is true, they are not part of the game world on their own. So if one pops up, the player is confronted with something that is a meta-level, it's 'about' the item, not the item itself. I still think this deos not kill immersion neccesarily, the player was interested in this item. In real life he'd pick it up, and inspect it, and his mind makes a list of ideas about this item, including the more obvious options what to do with it.

This process is what the menu does in the game. The player clicked it, and the game tells him "this and that you can do with this". I'd say it keeps the flow, even if it's a meta-level about the game, and not of the games word, but it's not too different from the result of inspecting something in real.

I agree that such elements should be avoided if there are better options. The menu has benefits, to be clear and precise. Sine "execute" can mean several things to an item, I think menues are needed anyways at some point, thus I rather would keep the number if different mouse clicks small (left and right) and make right click "Show me what I can do with this" for all entitites in the game, while left click means "move to" or "pick up" depending on the distance, which is what most other games do, too, and therefore should be what the player expects.

How did you solve that in your games? I have nothing decided yet, but I tend much towards menues as you can see from my writing.