I''m currently working on an RPG, and I''m toying around with the notion of having a system where you have all of your characters on the screen, select them with the mouse, and move them with the keyboard. The battles will be random encounters and turn based menu driven. Would such a combination be adviseable?

I don't think that really counts as 'mixing sub-genres' to be honest. There's a lot more to a genre than the control method.

However I would generally advise against this, because it sounds awkward. Why not let them always use the mouse or always use the keyboard? Moving your hand from mouse to keyboard and back again is awkward.

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[edited by - Kylotan on May 16, 2004 6:17:14 PM]

It sounds annoying to me as well. What is the advantage of controling characters your way?

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Original post by Onemind
It sounds annoying to me as well. What is the advantage of controling characters your way?

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Well, I thought it would be nice to have the precise control of the keyboard (let''s face it, sometimes it''s difficult to precisely position your characters with a mouse driven movement system) with the realism of not having a knight use a thief skill (such as in games where the party is represented by one sprite), but I do see how that setup could be annoying.

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Original post by Kylotan
However I would generally advise against this, because it sounds awkward. Why not let them always use the mouse or always use the keyboard? Moving your hand from mouse to keyboard and back again is awkward.

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You could always use your right(or left whatever) hand for the mouse and the right for the keyboard.. that''s the way I do with FPS all the time...

I''m don''t really think it would be annoying or weird but I don''t see a reason to use mouse and keyboard. For me using the mouse for movement has never been hard, unless you want really precise movement, like needing to click on a specific pixel in the screen but that kind of things aren''t advisable on most cases.

Also I don''t get what this has to do with knights not using thief skills...

And by the way, the impresion of the type of control you want is like having a party of 3+ people, selecting one and moving one of them separately and leaving the others doing nothing? O_o That kinda remains me the snes game Vikings.

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Original post by Coz
Also I don''t get what this has to do with knights not using thief skills...

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In most keyboard driven games the entire party is represented by the leader. That way, if you wanted to disarm a trap (generally a thief skill), you would have to move the party up to it and press the correct button or select the right command. It would look like the knight, if he''s the leader, would be disarming the trap, even though he doesn''t have that skill.