If I weren’t in the middle of a contract that’s keeping me pretty busy, I’d prototype some of these. Who am I kidding– the real problem is Final Fantasy XII. Holy crap, that game is good.

Anyway, I hope to get off my ass and prototype some of these soon. I’ll be sure to post them.

It’s not that I need to be able to do all of these things with the mouse, but I’d like to consider a mouse-centric interface. Some controls could remain on the keyboard.

Space Rangers: I forgot about that, even though I just played it recently! I had dismissed out of hand the idea of “click here to go here” controls, thinking they wouldn’t work at high speeds and with inertia. Even though Space Rangers is turn-based, though, I think you might be able to do it real-time. Definitely seems worth prototyping. You could do predicted path on screen, and mouse-at-edge-of-screen-scrolling…. You’d want different buttons for move and attack, though, because in real-time it’d be easy to miss the enemy. Diablo gets away with it because you stop to attack, have no inertia, and various other reasons. Definitely something to mull, if I don’t have time to prototype. I should check out Space Rangers and Armada Online again, as my memories of both are hazy.

Sideways thrust adds a potentially fun wrinkle. How come even the Arilou are stuck moving forward? Strafing would be unconventional for a space game, but could be cool.

Alright, that’s a ton more for me to play with and think about.

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2007/05/torrent_raiders_bit_torrent_game.html

The video in particular is intriguing. I’m still trying to figure out exactly what’s going on.

How would you describe these verbs at a higher level? You might use terms like:
* Move toward a set of static or moving objects
* Move away from a set of such objects
* Do a strafing attack (keep momentum in one angle but fire at another angle). In FPS games this is highly effective as circle-strafing. In Star Control games, pulling this off may as well make winning automatic.
* gravity whip, split attacks between multiple targets, etc etc

So one completely different approach is to use higher level controls, rather than the low-level ones. Think of the player’s controls as the same as a specific crew member on a space-y show like Star Trek. Are you the admiral giving orders to many ships in the fleet? A captain giving a high-level order like “don’t let them hit our left flank where the shields are down?” Or are you a just a pilot, taking orders from a superior? Or are you the only person on the ship with any controls at all, like a WW2 spitfire pilot?

Check out the controls in Space Rangers 1 or 2. It’s a kind of hybrid between the high-level and low-level. Namely, it’s turn-based, you click to set your destination, you click on bad guys to start firing your auto-aiming weapons at them. So here it’s kind of like a captain’s role, rather than a pilot’s. I don’t remember the exact controls in Armada Online but I think it was higher level like Space Rangers.

Further along that line of having higher level control, you have your RTS games. Contrast with your typical Star Control fare, where it’s all manual, all the time.

So there are examples of games that meet this criteria, dig around, they’re out there.

I don’t know how you can do everything you want with a keyboard & mouse, because you’ve got multiple analog goals and only one analog input. If you could accept keyboard control for movement, you’re 90% of the way there.

However, I’ve always thought the Asteroids-style “tank controls” were pretty much the worst interface ever, anywhere. The fact that they live on (in the Resident Evil series, for example) is an affront to the interactive medium.

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/ev/
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evo/
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/evn/

Now, I don’t remember the controls, but it was a keyboard + mouse system. I was reminded of it because ships had “attach points” where you could mount various items (cargo bays, ram scoops – but who needs those when you can put weapon systems on?) – including turret weapons. I remember there was some way to get your turrets to hit a target while you swung the rest of the ship about to get your main weapons focused on them. Plus there were several other ideas you talk about – hailing ships/planets and docking come to mind. Anyway, you may want to check it out.

-geoff