Hello, For my simple 3D shooter game I'm currently toying with mouse only input. I've set up my game to use mouse zones for controlling the player's ship. Here's how it works: When the cursor is in the left or right half of the screen, the ship will alter its course, turning to match the new direction. When the cursor is in the upper or lower half of the screen, the ship will accelerate or break/reverse respectively. So to accelerate and turn right at the same time, you'd move your cursor to the upper-right part of the screen (turning is sensitive to how far off-centre you move the mouse, acceleration/breaking is not). I've seen turning implemented this way many times before (it essentially works like a 3rd person camera), but the acceleration/breaking with mouse zones isn't used that frequently AFAIK. I've been doing some test runs and once you get used to it, it works quite well. It enhances the "simple to learn, hard to master" quality of the game, but I don't want the input to be one of the difficulties in the game. This input method allows the game to be completely controlled with the mouse ony, which I think is good for the quick, short shoot-em-up games I'm aiming for. It's easy to accelerate, break or keep the current speed (using the 'dead zones'), but 'setting' a specific speed (other than max forward, max reverse) is hard. This might be either annoying or actually good for battles. Unfortunately I can't provide a demo yet in which you could check out the gameplay first hand. But what do you think about this input method? Would it be fun to play? Would it indeed be "easy to learn, hard to master", or would it just simply be annoying? Thanks for your comments. [Edited by - remigius on October 26, 2005 6:23:41 AM]

If you use the mouse to move, how will you aim? Using the mouse for both things will be annoying (play Freelancer with the default controlls to see what I mean)

Damn, I was just starting to like this control style very much myself...

Maybe it'll still be good enough for the limited scope of this game though, as aiming is by design NOT part of the gameplay. You shoot torpedoes which are fired in the direction the ship is facing or you shoot a cannon which fires in the direction the player is looking (ship facing and looking direction isn't the same due to limited rate of turn, giving an edge to ships with cannons). Both projectiles travel some distance based on the weapon's range, so there's no need to aim up and down.

I do hope this game will be fun, as it does sound very limited explained this way :) It's really intended for the casual gamer, just sail and shoot with little skill needed. The mouse-only-input however makes practice pay off, I think. I've just been testplaying it some more and with some practice you can make really tight turns with an elegant mouse sweep instead of the usual keyboard hammering.

Also, mouse-only-input allows you to eat your lunch while playing the game, another big plus for my target audience :)

It sounds fun actually, I had my doubts about the aiming but your explanation makes sense.

I'd say that for your target audience this is a good move.

Agreed. It sounds like a mix of racer and pariah, to the better :)