Have you ever worked on a game that could have had a whole motherload of buttons or axes assigned to things, but it was avoided to keep things simple? As an example, my game can have manual camera control. It's mainly controlled with a mouse or analog stick. But I could also add buttons such as "move camera left", then right, up, down, zoom in and out, etc. I could then add a button that you could hold to pan the camera with the mouse, rather than the mouse be devoted to it. Same with zoom and rotate, where you could hold buttons rather than assign a button to each direction. My characters can also fire ranged weapons from both hands. And a whole host of actions can come along with that. Such as reload, change firing rate, or have specific buttons assigned to each firing rate mode. Primary fire, secondary fire, or even buttons to swap to other specific weapons in your inventory. I was thinking about adding a custom-button setup. Basically, the engine would have a huge list of actions. Each action would store it's action-ID type, device GUID, control index, and "info". Info would be the type of control that needs to be used for that action (hold a button, press a button, move an axis, etc), and an object ID or such to associate the action with something (such as a character or item) which would be set by the user, but only for certain actions. So the user would have a set of actions that offered the most basic limited control over the game. These would be setup as most games have them set up. Then the user could go into a seperate screen, which is initially blank. By pressing a button, they could add an action. Once they select the action type from the huge list (probably sub-categorized), they assign a control and an item (if it needs one) to associate with it. Anyway, my goal is to allow a huge amount of actions the user can map controls to, so they can have instant, direct control over anything they wish, without the setup being overwhelming. Any other ideas?

A lot of FPS games (The Unreal Tournament series, Quake 3, Deus Ex, and Rune spring immediately to mind) have console command lines, and if you take a few minutes to learn the language, you can script anything you want. In college, I played a lot of Unrel Tournament, and if I was hosting the game, I'd give myself administrator privileges, turn myself invisible, and float around the map spawning monsters in deathmatch modes. I did it all with manually set hotkeys. We had a name for it ("Shitstorm", as I recall), and I'm gratified to see that the "Invasion" gametype from UT2004 is basically an automatic version of what I was doing. So yes, being able to bind keys to unique and specific commands is welcome, but what sort of commands did you have in mind?

Switching guns, issuing team orders and using items are all pretty standard, and most modern games either have default hotkeys for them or else offer some handy system (UT's voicechat menu comes to mind) to use them. Would you be doing other things in your game?

You mention things like camera control. How much on-the-fly property editting do you expect your players to want? Will I ever be playing your game and think, "Boy, if only I could disable the Z-buffering and increase the size of my lensflares, I'd be set!" Would physics tweaks or throttle presets be appropriate?

I think that custom hotkeys are absolutely required for sophisticated games (I can't imagine Diablo II without them). What I'm not quite clear on is how they fit into your design differently than they do in other games I've played.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage You mention things like camera control. How much on-the-fly property editting do you expect your players to want? Will I ever be playing your game and think, "Boy, if only I could disable the Z-buffering and increase the size of my lensflares, I'd be set!" Would physics tweaks or throttle presets be appropriate?

[lol] In 3rd person actions games, it's nice to control the camera. And I want to allow the user to control it using the method they want. So far, I can think of three variations. Analog or mouse, hold-a-button to activate an analog or mouse, or a hold a specific button for each direction (like a POV, but not restricted to POVs or axes). This is just the camera.

My game is being designed for a gamepad. You can definitely play with a keybaord and mouse, but the primary action controls always fit on 4 buttons, and the total number of controls will fit on 10. This means more advanced control stuff wouldn't be quick-access available. For example, there is no room on a PS2 style controller for changing firing rate modes. And these characters can hold a different weapon in each hand. I won't mention remote control mechs.

Each action can be mapped to individual devices, which means they could use the keyboard to extend control for non-critical actions. Most can be accessed from equip / weapon screens or other menues. But that just sucks if you like to change something often.

Most complex games have a huge list of actions, and it's extremely confusing to setup. Especially the first time you play, which is usually the only time you'll mess with configuration until you get a much better understanding of the game.

So I'm basically asking if it's just me. I could throw the gigantic list of actions into the main configuration setup. It would definitely be easier. But I wouldn't be able to add nearly as many actions, and it would still be a mess. Or I could just avoid the flexibility altogether and keep it simple.

Let's see if I have this straight: You seem to be guaranteeing that your players will never be able to map controls to all of the actions they want to perform. There will never be enough buttons to hold all the commands, and so a configuration interface is required that will allow them to re-map their controls during play. Is that right?

It's not a bad idea, and in fact I've seen it done before. Diablo II uses the two mouse buttons to do EVERYTHING, and you can hotkey your actions to remap them. I can fight for a while with a Might aura active, switch to Zeal and turn on my lightning resistance aura, then switch to Vengeance and Prayer as the enemy horde thins out. It's pretty natural once you get used to it.

Another example that seems closer to your idea is seen in Phantasy Star Online I&II. It's available for the GameCube, and you can probably get a copy for eight bucks. It's not great. But you have a total of six "command buttons": three buttons on your controller each have two functions, switched by holding down a shoulder button. It lets you string together combos, use healing items, or cast spells very quickly. There's also a "quick menu" for using less common items or casting spells that didn't make the list. You can remap your six main button any time you want to, using a menu of all the commands. Check it out, it might be just what your'e after.

The strength of this system is that it encourages specialization. As a primarily physical character, I'll have two or three attack types bound to the main buttons, with a healing item and maybe a trap or offensive spell in there, too. A magic-user would bind up four or five spells, and a healing item. With the party system the game uses, it leads to very complementary play.

The weakness is the same as the strength. Forced specialization makes players feel trapped, especially if they've built up a very balanced jack-of-all-trades sort of character. If you're going to be a one-man party, you'll want to have quick access to all your skills. This system precludes that.