I'm making a third person shooter, and I'm looking for feedback on a control scheme. The weapons all have relatively low velocity projectiles, (like grenades from a grenade launcher, and slower) , so I plan to display the projected arc of the projectile, like in “Worms Armageddon” or the grenade aiming display in “Gears of War .“ 3 weapon types: projectile weapons punching and lets call the third “magic bombs“ -Weapons/ Firing controls Option A: Left Mouse Button Hold – display projectile arc. Left Mouse Button Release – Fire weapon Left Mouse Button Hold + “Ctrl” - Auto Fire or Option B: “Ctrl” - display projectile arc. Left Mouse Button On-Click / Hold – Fire / Auto Fire Right Mouse Button On-Click – Punch Right Mouse Button Hold for 2 seconds – Magic Bomb -Navigation and Aiming “W” & “S” - Move the player forward and backward along their facing direction “A” & “D” - Move the player left and right perpendicular to their facing direction Mouse Movement Left and Right – Turn the players facing direction Mouse Movement Forward and Backward – adjust the camera angle to the player up and down as well as the angle of trajectory for hand weapons

In option A, the player cannot just see the arc without firing.

damn, you're right

For option A, you could use

Hold Left Mouse = View Trajectory
Click Left Mouse = Fire

A "click" is not the same as a "release" if you could time the duration held.

2 things that might be cool to add.

A "turn towards danger" command. One thing I hate about FPSs is that I get hit and then while I'm turning to try to find the person, which if he hit me I should know where it generally came from, the guy has already loaded another ten or so rounds in me and thats more than enough to kill. I'd activate it via both mouse buttons being clicked.

A "insta-shield" command. A shield that comes up for a split second and then drops that reflects or mitigates all damage. People who play FPSs like twitch game play so if you add something like this it allows for another level of skilled play. I would suggest placing it near the aswd keys.


Your control scheme seems standard fair for an FPS...and I think that Option B is probably better because when I'm playing a game like this I hate having to wait for functions come up cuz I have to hold, plus when you have that you have to risk firing a shot off wasting ammo which sucks.

i guess i'm leaning more to option B now, unless there's anything i'm missing about that one

good comments about the "turn towards danger" command, although visual indicators of the direction of the shooter are generally HUD style in FPS's I'm not sure if it is as useful in TPS's where you'd likely be able to see what direction you where shot from

[Edited by - prolow on January 4, 2009 1:43:58 PM]

ok I think this is it

“Ctrl” - display projectile arc.
Left Mouse Button On-Click / Hold – Fire / Auto Fire

Right Mouse Button On-Click - Punch
Right Mouse Button Rapid Click - Combo Punch
Right Mouse Button Hold 1+ seconds - energizes Magic Bomb,
Then On-Release – Fire Magic Bomb

Quote:

Original post by prolow ok I think this is it “Ctrl” - display projectile arc. Left Mouse Button On-Click / Hold – Fire / Auto Fire Right Mouse Button On-Click - Punch Right Mouse Button Rapid Click - Combo Punch Right Mouse Button Hold 1+ seconds - energizes Magic Bomb, Then On-Release – Fire Magic Bomb

Rapid button punching seems off IMO. Even more so if it's a mouse button. People don't generally want to wear out their mice, keyboards or fingers. If it's there to add delay, then make punch chargable and if you charge it enough, it becomes a combo punch. Otherwise (if combo punch is supposed to be instant) give combo punch its own button.

If humanly possible, set defaults but let folks change them to their liking.

Re: displaying the projectile arc. Would it hurt to show it all the time? If ballistic projectiles are the main weapon in the game, I'd consider doing this. It could have an on/off toggle of course.

Is there any reason to not auto fire when fire button is held? If not, let's just call that button "fire" for simplicity.

I'd do this:

Button (default): function
---
Button 1 (Mouse1): fire
Button 2 (Mouse2): toggle projectile arc on/off // infrequent, probably?
Button 3 (V): punch / hold to charge up combo punch
Button 4 (Space): hold to charge Magic Bomb Meter. Releasing clears meter, and launches Magic Bomb if meter was full.

i guess i can't say for certain at this point but, i don't think the rapid press would be too frequent, like a melee attack more the a common combat weapon.

i like the suggestion about toggling the arc display

we're on the same page about the mouse 1 = fire

IMO keeping controls on as few buttons as possible generally keeps the controls more fluid then splitting them up on separate buttons