» Tue May 17, 2011 6:16 am Regarding interactions with other characters or items.
=== === === === === === === === === === === ===
I have been thinking about the user interface and controls and I thought of a system that IMHO would make a quite streamlined but effective control scheme, and please note that in this post I might refer to perks, which I have suggested in another thread, so taking a look at that http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1107940-perks-they-can-make-each-play-through-a-unique-experience would not be a bad idea.
For controls, it would be great if all the interaction keys and buttons were smart and context sensitive, so depending on the current situation and the item held in the hand, and the confronting entity, the interaction key or button should result to the best possible action, and there should be an icon somewhere on the screen that would show the current selected action.
First of all, you should be able to use any two items that you hold in your hands independently and interchangeably, so you could take a sword in your left hand and a shield in your right hand and be able to use them (or even a weapon in each hand).
There are five interaction keys or buttons:
- Default right hand action
- Default left hand action
- Alternate selectable action
- Passive/defensive action
- Foot related action
IMHO the best choice of keys and buttons for those actions is:
- Right hand action: Left mouse button
- Left hand action: Right mouse button
- Alternate action: Middle mouse button
- Passive action: The key that you would normally use to open a door or start a conversation
- Foot action: The key that you would normally use to jump or dodge an attack
So if you are in front of an enemy, and holding a sword in your right hand and a shield in your left hand, then you would attack with right hand action key and block with your left hand action key, but if you are left handed and placed a sword in your left hand and a shield in your right hand and you have taken the mouse in your left hand, then for instance you would attack with the right mouse button and block with the left mouse button.
But if you have taken a sword in right hand and an axe in the left hand, then you would attack with both action keys, independently, or in predefined classy patterns and moves.
If you have taken a two handed melee weapon or bow in both of your hands, then you would do primary attack with right hand action key and secondary attack mode with left hand action key, which would be exchangeable in the options menu, for left handed persons.
The alternate action key is selectable by for instance scrolling the middle button, and is the place where spells go, so you can have a spell or another perk ready in the alternate action key and use it whenever needed.
The foot action would usually cause you to jump, but in some situations it might result in dodge, a kicking move, or anything that designers thought of and designed the animation for, like jumping over a barrier, or pushing a fallen tree trunk with a foot, and so on...
The passive action key would always do the best passive/defensive action in current situation that is not directly related to the current items held in hands, and would always adjusts to the current situation and is not selectable, just like active actions for each hand and the foot action, and after a while of playing the game, you would know what to expect in any situation.
=== === === === === === === === === === === ===
In all the situations, there should be five clear and visible icons in a corner of the screen that would show the current default actions of each interaction key or button, so that with a glance at them you know what they would do, and for instance with scrolling the scroll button in a direction and icon for the alternate action changes, until the desired alternative action is selected.
A simple but good visualization for the current selected interactions would be a wheel that is divided to four parts by a diagonal cross but with a clear center, in a way that we have separate left, right, top, bottom, and center sections.
In that wheel, we can show right hand action in the right-most part of the wheel, and left hand action in the left-most part of that wheel, and alternate action in the top section, and foot action in the bottom section, and the passive/defensive action in the center of that wheel.
Another fine visualization can be the back-side of a torso, and five icon slots on his hands, head, and upper and lower back.
There can be an option to switch the visualization of the left and right hand actions so that they match better with mouse buttons, or let the torso have his front side to us.
The Icons showing the action for each interaction key should be clear and efficient in showing the current action, but the whole GUI section should be unobtrusive and toggle-able.
=== === === === === === === === === === === ===
Other examples for other situations and the context sensitive actions:
If you are holding a shield in your left hand and you have the shield bash perk, you could select it for alternate action, (for instance middle button) and use that, so you could block with right mouse button, and bash the opponent with your shield, with middle mouse button.
If you are holding a weapon in front of a character who is not your enemy and is not attacking you, if you use the weapon hand in front of him, a dialog box would open and would ask you if you are really sure that you want to attack this person, but this question could be disabled in the options menu and you could attack anyway.
If you click on a friendly person by a defensive hand key, or by passive action key, then you would start a conversation, unless he is currently fighting another character.
If you are holding a weapon in your hand and you use it on a container or door, and you are not in a civilized area and not sneaking then you would start to bash the container or door, but otherwise you would do nothing, using a hand holding a defensive object or using the passive action key on the locked item would result in picking the lock, and using the shield bash perk on the locked item would result in bashing the item with the shield.
If you are holding a lockpick in your hand it would do its job in front of a locked item and would act as passive action in any other situation.
In some class rooms, there can be mannequins that while you stand facing them, when you press the foot action key, you would start performing kicking moves, instead of jumping.
=== === === === === === === === === === === ===
All the interactions have two sides, "Originator" and "Recipient", and all those interactions could be defined and proposed in the editor on each pair of entities that try to interact.
For each object, skill and perk that we create in the editor, we could define their interaction with any number of other entities, so:
When you define the interactions of skills, perks, spells or the objects that you could hold in your hands, you define their interaction as the originator side and define the default action for any type of recipient.
But for objects that could only be the recipient of an interaction, then you define their interaction as the recipient party and define the default action for any type of originator for interactions.
If we want this method to work efficiently, we have to have a hierarchy of definitions for all the items in the editor, so that we could select the generic lockpick to define its interactions, or select the generic animal or human to define their interactions, and so on...
When we press an interaction key/button, the engine checks to see if an object is in front of us, and if so, it would start the interaction defined for that object for the type of interaction that we want to initiate, but if there is no object in front of us, or there is no interaction defined for the object regarding the type of interaction that we want to initiate, then the default interaction defined in the item that we are holding, or the spell or perk that we are using will initiate.
When we are defining the interaction for an item that would be the recipient of interactions, we could define no interactions, like statics, or we could define one or more styles of interactions, for instance in generic humans we could define interactions like this:
- Generic weapons: if in combat with the holder, then "attack", else "conditional attack".
- Generic shields: if in combat with holder, then "block", else "converse".
- Passive action: if in combat with initiator, then "yield", else "converse".
- Foot action: if in combat with initiator, then "combat foot", else "jump".
- Offensive spell: if in combat with initiator, then "cast", else "conditional cast".
- ...
Conditional attack, and conditional cast mean normal attack or cast if defined in the options menu otherwise open a dialog box to confirm if to initiate an attack or cast.
Combat foot action would be a type of dodge, kick, or jumping attack motion depending on other conditions.
You could define special interaction definitions for a special recipient or special initiator, like a special opponent that you could not block his attacks unless you had a special shield, or special type of locks that required us to have special lockpicks or special security perks to be able to open them and so on...
These specific interactions can be defined with more conditions in the definitions and selecting the recipient or initiator parts from non-generic items.
I was going to get more involved in this section, but I do not have the time for now, so that's it.
=== === === === === === === === === === === ===
OK, this is what I call a streamlined but effective user interface regarding in-game interactions.
