I''m working on prototyping a third-person adventure game engine, and at the moment I''m giving thought to controls. The click-and-move interface has sort of worn itself out, and would be especially out of place with everything being rendered on-the-fly. But from having played games like Grim Fandango and the City of Lost Children, I''ve found that when there are a lot of objects lying around, you can easily miss them if you have to step up close to interact with them. I thought of a control system, using a two-joystick gamepad, where the left joystick moves the character (respective to the camera) and the right joystick moves the cursor. Anything in the character''s field of vision can be examined, and maybe the closer the character is, the more information is provided? A surrogate system for those without joysticks might be the arrow keys and the mouse, for navigation and interaction respectively. Does this seem feasible at all?

There''s a whole world of PC games that use the keys for movement/mouse for interaction control set. Most are in first person, but the only issue that''ll arise from changing perspective is the possibility of the player obscuring things with his presence.

With pads, I recommend staying away from a cursor based interaction system. The ''everything accelerates outward from the origin'' operation of modern two-stick gamepads bears no relation to a mouse, and doesn''t benefit from the point to point immediacy a cursor can give you.

It might be personal preference, but I''ve always thought gamepads were more fun to use than keyboards and definitely more immersive/intuitive.

However, you''re unfortunately right about a joystick having no relation to a mouse. I made a mock-up, and it was clunky and awkward.

What I might do is signal the player in some way when the character can interact with an object, maybe by adding a subtle glow effect. Or resign myself to keyboard/mouse.

Thanks for your... um... input?

Personally I didn''t like any of the PC adventure games I''ve played that had a "console-style" control.. Examples are Grim Fandango, Broken Sword 3, Indiana Jones and the Infernal machine. I found the controls un-intuitive and kept "spinning" a lot before I got the character to move in the direction I wanted. Granted I did get into it afte a while, but the first hour or so was extremely frustrating. Oh, and BS3 used keyboard only with two sets of directional keys - one set for movement and one set for interaction (menu with up to 4 different actions for the "focused" object).
Gabriel Knight 3 on the other hand is a 3D graphical adventure with a click-to-move system, and I thought that was much better. It''s been a while since I played it though, so it might be that my memory is "colored" by time - that I''ve forgot the bad parts , but I did like that game better than the others I''ve mentioned. If I remember correctly you controlled the camera as a 1st person shooter (+ being able to change height) and the character moved to the place where you clicked. The character didn''t even have to be inside the view. It''s been a couple of years since I last played it so I may be wrong..

If you''re developing for a console system then I guess you don''t have a choice and have to use sticks, but for a PC game, try to implement a click to move system. At least as an added option.

my preference: GK3 > BS3 > IJIM > GF

I wish I were considering consoles (at least the XBox, I don''t want to develop on PS2 again if I can help it), but this is a pet project at the moment so I''m just thinking PC. The problem is, I''m mostly a console gamer, so I have a limited frame of reference.

Grim Fandango had an *awful* control scheme. Rotation relative to the character (like in Resident Evil) always feels clunky, but GF was extra-clunky. Control schemes where the rotation''s relative to the camera are usually great... but then, an adventure game requires a different kind of interaction with the environment.

I still think there''s a way to pull it off well with a joystick, but the idea of click-to-move as an option is interesting and may be a good compromise.

all the sierra adventure games, once they reached the graphics maturity, used click interaction interfaces. As well as clicking to go where you wanted, you could use the arrow keys to move. I felt it worked quite well. movement was all in relation to the screen. up would move you towards the top of the screen and left would move to the left.

You''re right. I completely forgot that the later Sierra games offered the arrow keys as an option, too.

What will be the pace of this game? If you''re going to be duelling with Nazis or wrestling with stone golems every few seconds, then quick, intuitive controls will be absolutely critical. If you''re going to be searching for evidence and clues, or solving puzzles, then a precise system would be preferable. It''s possible to design a hybrid system, but the task will be daunting. I advise you to make two different control states and allow players to switch from one to the other.

For instance, since you''re so enamored of the gamepad control system (I like it, too), take an "action set" from a game you like to play. Maybe something like the system from a favorite Zelda game, or maybe something more like Winback, if gunplay will be a strong feature. However, once you get into "detective mode", you''ll want something a little more systematic.

I think that the character can be an invaluable asset in such matters. A subtle turn of the head can show the location of a notable item, and you could tie that into your control scheme. The character can designate an item by looking at it, and if you press the "examine" button, then he''ll stroll over there and take a closer look. At that point, you can either lose interest or perform a number of different actions on it. If you use the XBox controller, then perhaps you could have a little four-button menu appear on-screen, with each one assigned a different action (open, take, push, use item) and a fifth button would be the default "ignore" button. A slight glow effect could show the player exactly which item the character is looking at, and the two saddle buttons could be used to cycle between interesting objects within the character''s view.

If you''re poking around and a crocodile jumps out at you, the you just tap the "switch modes" button and you''ll leap into combat mode, ready for fight or flight. Vice versa, after you''ve subdued the terrorists, you can hit the "switch mode" button to holster your smokewagon and start searching the bodies for clues, ammo, or whatever.