Sunday, March 6, 2011

Control Changes

I am systematically going through the entire interface to N8 and simplifing the controls, reducing the amount of button presses, and making everything super obvious. But first we need to get rid of the unnecessary bits.
Click to move = gone

Clicking on a player shows the name tag.
Clicking on an item(hat sword etc) shows the "That is a..."
Clicking on a dropped item in range causes you to walk and pick up the item.
Clicking on a block in a mode besides Build shows the "That is a..."

Clicking on a Block in Build mode selects it. A Gizmo like the one in the Maker will appear, along with a menu displaying: Place, Attach Place, Copy, Delete, Advanced


Advanced toggles the display of text precision editing, snap selection, global and local gizmo, detach, attach, and rename.

All the old key combo's (ctrl click to place) will still work as shortcuts. There are more changes coming as well, but these are the first to go in, and even here in the hotel I've been able to get a lot of this done. :D

Also, much thanks to Wizard and FingerFactor for brainstorming all of this while we were at the GDC.

7 comments:

  1. Honest to be,i think weeklong build and total change of combat is more on the ''urgent list''

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  2. The biggest problem right now is that we are losing so many players within the first few minutes of gameplay. This was never more obvious then watching people at the IGF booth struggle with the controls.
    Are there other issue? Absolutely, but an empty world is a boring world.

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  3. Is it completely necessary to draw your weapon/item out once you equip it? Sure, its cool having an item on your back, but I feel that its only for show, and not much use comes out of it.

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  4. I've told him before to have it auto un-sheathe once you click the attack button, instead of having to press a seperate button to do it. You can of course still use that button to put it away and pull it out.

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  5. I don't know if this is planned already, but you should pick the default translation node grabby things on the gizmo so that they're all pointing towards the player's position. In that example picture you posted, for instance, if the player wanted to move the land in the blue axis they'd have to right-click and rotate the camera around so that they could get to the grabby thing, instead of just clicking on it from where they're standing.

    Oooh or maybe just have explicit + and - translation grabby things, like how there's both + and - ones for rotations? That way there'd always be one pointing towards the player regardless, but it could get crowded.

    Though on the other hand, now that I think about it, I do rather like the organic way current ctrl-clicking to move works - I'd hate for it to be (relatively) hidden behind a key combo.

    I don't know, really. Good thing you're the dev and I'm just a player, I'm sure you'll pick the thing that works best :)

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  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  7. Aion'[o_o]' you are totaly right every time i go to "spawn" i see what around 2 - 4 new players saying what the hell do i do. :/

    it seams people are to lazy to read the guide OR that the people that are finding the game seam to be more of a "you do this then you go there then...." type people
    not "i can do whatever i want cool lets build a roller coaster" <ha joke<

    a good idea for thoughts is put a incentive to players to get there buds to play and if they play for a "insert number of hours " and 3 others that YOU invited do this you get like a some hat that says i invite people hat or something :P

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