I am making a small Eye of the Beholder/Bard''s Tale/Might and Magic type of game and was wondering which do you consider as more intuitive : ( while using the keyboard arrows to control in a dungeon like environment ) Using the back arrow key as taking a step back while still maintaining the same facing. Or using the back arrow key as a way of inverting the player facing while not moving him. Or something else ? I have played games with the two of these possibilities and was wondering your opinion as to which works best.

Personally I''d prefer to have the down arrow make you step back and have a flip key near by, maybe CTRL or END.

- DarkScholar

Down arrow should backyou up

Simple, let the player customize the controls.

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

True.

The standard would be to use FPS controls, but since there is always some geek to tell you that having the up arrow mapped to backward movement, you are better off letting the player being able to do his own key mapping.

*grin* Forward, in my FPS settings, is my right mouse button. I guess I'm one of those geeks huh.

MadKeithV, ClanMaster of the CrC


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

Edited by - MadKeithV on September 25, 2000 5:55:26 AM

Thank you for your replies. At first since this is my second foray into game devlopment ( the first being a small multi-ball pong game ), I will make the back arrow backstep and put another key nearby like control to reverse. I would like to implement some key mapping later tough, it''s a good suggestion. It seems a daunting task tough.

Actually key mapping isn''t really that hard, all you do is build
a look up array of integers, (or whatever) that when you get a keypress you move to that particular element.

Say we get the character 64 pressed, we move to KeyMap[64].

Then we use this keymap value and send it to a dedicated function, that has each of these keymap values associated with a particular "movement" or whatever in the game.

The main problem is allowing the user to modify it in a userfriendly style.

Regards,
Nekosion