Just curious what others thoughts / opinions are on the use of keyboard or mouse for input in roguelike games... or other such games that are turn based. More curious about the idea of only one over the other, except for the exception of writing style input such as entering your name.

I've been working on a roguelike for a while that has been strictly keyboard input only. I'm used to it and it's easy for me to use. I did chose the keybindings though, so I'm not sure how biased I am. I've been contemplating implementing mouse support. This makes me wonder though, if mouse support is so preferred, and I feel the ease of it will make me lean towards it more too : will keyboard input be a waste of time to invest in complete control.

So in the situation where you have mouse and keyboard support, each can do anything the other can... would you solely or at least 90% of the time use one option over the other and which one?

It's 2015 - people expect to be able to use a mouse .

BTW how hard can it be to integrate onClick() unless you have a game purely with primitive input ?

When I play nethack (which is far too often) even though mouse is somewhat supported I never use it.

I can understand why some people might want it, although I personally I wouldn't.

As far as bindings go, I imagine it goes something like this:

1. Convert mouse coordinate to game level coordinate

2. If not level coordinate, stop.

3. If level coordinate is on player, do some action (probably rest or . action), then stop.

4. If level coordinate is one space away from player, do an appropriate safe action, then stop.

5. Otherwise, run a "walk to" algorithm that is generally useful in Roguelikes. The command should take safe steps to walk toward the spot, navigating the map and stopping on any dangerous condition like monsters becoming visible.

Clicking should not do unsafe actions like jumping in water or attacking a tame/peaceful creature.

Unless there's an essential game-design reason to do so (e.g. perhaps you want the relatively slow/serial nature of mouse-clicks to be a limiting factor on the player, maybe for competitve reasons) I think the expectation of players today is to support both, such that a player can chose to play with keyboard, mouse, or both -- power-users will always want keyboard shortcuts.

Ideally, a user should be able to rebind all reasonable keyboard and mouse buttons to their preference, and the only fixed function in the input system would be the cursor action of the mouse.

It's 2015 - people expect to be able to use a mouse .

BTW how hard can it be to integrate onClick() unless you have a game purely with primitive input ?

Not hard at all.

Guess my question is boiling down to if there is mouse support. Is robust keyboard support nessecary... ie is keyboard movement even needed or would it even be missed if mouse support was there?

It's 2015 - people expect to be able to use a mouse .

BTW how hard can it be to integrate onClick() unless you have a game purely with primitive input ?

Not hard at all.

Guess my question is boiling down to if there is mouse support. Is robust keyboard support nessecary... ie is keyboard movement even needed or would it even be missed if mouse support was there?

As someone weaned on console games, I almost exclusively use keyboard over mouse for movement when applicable. However, I hate the shortcut-centric UIs to most roguelikes and prefer to use the mouse for that if possible.

A quick note: I don't play many Roguelikes, so take the following with a grain of salt.

I think that it might depend on how, precisely, your game plays, and what experience you want to create--you've said that it's a Roguelike, which provides some degree of information, but doesn't necessarily tell all.

For one thing, I've seen arguments start over just what does and does not qualify as a "Roguelike", or a "Rogue-lite"; since I don't know what definition you're using, I'm wary of going too far in inferring your gameplay based on that description.

However, even going with a very conservative interpretation--a near-clone of Rogue or Nethack, perhaps--I do think that it might be worth at least considering a mouse-driven interface: if it's uncommon in Roguelikes, it might be worth looking into as a possible avenue for improvement. It may prove that they avoid mouse controls for good reason, or it may turn out that they gain from it.

However, I hate the shortcut-centric UIs to most roguelikes and prefer to use the mouse for that if possible.

+1

There are a ton of games that are needlessly over complicated by not having a mouse option for most of their controls !!!

My thoughts:
-Having to switch between mouse and keyboard is very slow. Use only one or use both simultaneously. But no occasional 'oh I need the mouse/kb for this' moments.
-Show visual hints or mouse hover hints at minimum for keyboard shortcuts. Otherwise the learning curve is too high.
-Keyboard tends to be faster unless the amount of options is massive (such as a big list or the set of all possible directions you could aim your gun in 3D)
-Shortcuts are at their best when you can use them directly from memory without even visual confirmation of what options there are or what the shortcuts for them are. (Similar for the mouse, the options should not move around from time to time)

Well I get the feeling that mouse support is mandatory beyond say angband variants? Or hardcore roguelikers. I'll be honest and say I prefer keyboard over mouse for almost everything dungeon related. I play Crawl, the only rogue like I've stuck with beyond 1-3 games and I use the mouse only for inventory and anything in the menus. Movement and everything else dungeon related from picking up items to casting spells I solely use the keyboard. I am older though.... I still remember playing my dads atari and picking what a-track to listen in the car. So maybe I've been used to complicated control schemes.

I have always been intending to implement some sort of mouse control to my game whether it was just to mimic keyboard control or actually base it off of key board control. Thank yall for your input.. I'm brainstorming a different control scheme and the possibilities of foregoing complete keyboard controls.