You have to be specific then... Do you mean ONE BUTTON or 5 (the directional pad being 4). The mouse mind you is two rollers with a ball controlling them. The fact that mice are more smooth in comparison to a 4 button directional in a detail which is beyond what we''re discussing. You asked, what can be done with one button, I''m saying not much. If you meant DPAD+BUTTON, then we''ve got a discussion.

Severely handicapped people often communicate through devices with only one button, which they can activate by moving their chin or their ankle, or even by closing an eyelid.... whatever motion is left. Basically, there''s a board with different symbols on it ("food", "bathroom", letters, etc.). Each has an LED on it. The system cycles through the LEDs, usually about two per second (though the user can change this), and the user presses the button while the correct symbol is lit.

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Don''t listen to me. I''ve had too much coffee.

You don''t need a full on mouse to use a menu...Windows allows you to use the Tab key to cycle through choices...and the ENTER key to execute them...this can be further simplified to one button:

When given a menu choice...a single press would cycle to the next highlighted choice...two rapid presses (double click) would active the highlighted choice...

Heck you could develop a deep game with a system like that...a turn basied stratigy game purhapse...players are given a menu of units that can be moved...they select one...which pops up another menu for the actions that unit can perform...then select one (say move)...and the area the unit can move to is highlighted...the player then cycles through each tile that can be moved to..."double clicks" to select it (or cycels through all choices followed by a "go back to previous menu" choice...before the tiles are cycled through again)...sure it would get tedious, but it would certainly still be a playable game.


also...there was a old laserdisk basied game...sorta like Dragons Lair...but used a anime styled Wild West theme...players "controlled" the town sheriff out for revenge, or some such...

The game only had one button (no joystick input...just one big red button)...pressing the button basicly fired the hero''s gun...but you had to press it at certain times...I remember seeing some guy play the game, which ended with one of those "high noon" show-downs...just the player against the villian in a "quick draw" contest...the bad guy throws a coin into the air...and the very instant that it hits the gun...players must "shoot" thier gun...press to early, and you miss the bad guy...press to late and the bad guy hits you instead...simple, but it worked

Hmm, some pretty neat ideas.
A finite state machine of possible player actions where the state is advanced by either "amount of time the button is held down", "time at which the button is pressed" or "number of single clicks before a double clicks". I guess they''re similar systems but they feel different enough to be different systems in a player''s mind.

That Mars Matrix game sounds wicked. These types of systems seem to work nicely with scrolling shooters. Time to make a shooter

if you''re looking at simplistic control systems, then check out GridRunner++. Quite possibly the most elegent control system ever invented

Is it an analog button?

And usually, I design my control schemes with a game in mind, but... How about a 3D shooter on rails. Powerups are scattered throughout the stage. Shooting them gives more ammunition. You have to time your shots (because they''re limited, you can''t keep jamming the button down), and decide which enemies you can affort to be hit by, and which are worth using ammo to shoot down.

Or, you''re a navagations officer for a person in remote territory. Unfortunately, all your equipment broke, and now all you can do is make a single loud tone. The goal is to help them navagate through potentially hostile terrain by jamming on the button at different times. The AI would have to be able to match teh stimulous that you give them to the situaions they encountered. For example, if you use a long beep every time they''re in danger, your person will eventually associate the long beep with danger. A series of beeps might be able to catch their attention.

Or, wave harmonics. You can add a decaying cosine function to a currently exisiting wave by tapping the button. The longer you hold down the button the higher the amplitude. Try to match your wave to the computers. The closer it is the more points you get.

That the sort of stuff you''re looking for?

Ultimately, you can look at it as having a single input, or having a single controllable variable to work with.

Here's a nifty idea.
You are a in a full 3D enviroment, you being a ball or whatever. Doesn't matter. Your goal is to navigate the envirnoment, travelling in all directions, to reach the exit.

Now you've only got 1 button, so how would one get around? Well if you aren't pressing a button, you are slowly pulled towards the nearest surface. If you hold down the button, you drift away from the nearest surface. The key thing here is that until you let go of the button, you will continue drifting away from the same surface. So you have to time when you let go and press again so that you will attach to a surface which sends you in the right direction!

Quickly double clicking could cycle the camera through various positions, or you could just always put the exit in a certain direction and face that way the whole time.

There could be moving obstacles, fans, all sorts of things to make your brain hurt. You could change reaching the exit, to collecting items. Hell you could make it multiplayer and play capture the flag!

Personally, if I wasn't on a game already, I'd actually go and make this...

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MSN: nmaster42@hotmail.com, AIM: LockePick42, ICQ: 74128155
"It's all part of the conspiracy of conspirators conspiring to conspire their own conspiracies..."

[edited by - LockePick on December 16, 2002 2:00:20 AM]

Hello.

The first soccer game I ever played was "Konami''s Soccer", running on a MSX computer (technically similar to the NES, I think). You can move your player with the cursor keys and...
-> ...pressing space bar while you were not owning the ball will chage the controled player to the nearest to the ball.
-> ...pressing space bar while you were owning the ball will pass it to another player.
-> ...by keeping pressed space bar you shot the ball.

It''s the simpliest and funniest soccer game I''ve ever played. I don''t like the thousands_of_buttons_and_actions soccer games: it''s like adding the clutch, turning signals, windshield wipers and seat-belt controls to a racing game.

theNestruo

Syntax error in 2410
Ok

They're out of style now, but some successful graphic adventure games exist that use (if memory serves) exclusively the left mouse button. King's Quest VII is the one that I'm thinking of at the moment.

As beantas mentioned, it basically worked on context, where depending on what sort of object you had the cursor over, a click did the appropriate action. Like if you hover over a person, clicking would talk, whereas clicking a stick on the ground would make you pick it up. It was fairly simplistic compared to other adventure games (some of the funniest moments in these games come from trying to click the "open" verb on a dog or something and hearing the charater's response) but it shows the amount of depth you can get from a single button.

EDIT: I forgot that I wanted to mention that a version of Dragon's Lair was recently released for the PC; you can find it on Amazon among other places.

[edited by - Anthracks on December 16, 2002 2:17:40 PM]

quote:

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Original post by MENTAL
if you''re looking at simplistic control systems, then check out GridRunner++. Quite possibly the most elegent control system ever invented

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The autofire in a shooting game is genius. There''s no reason to ever stop shooting in games like this (well, sometimes there is, but rarely), so they might as well make you shoot constantly.