User interface

[jack]

Suggested user interface

You control 2+ marines on a hex grid, who each turn can move or fire. Proposed interface:

* One marine is selected
* A red highlight appears on the hex under the mouse; right click and the marine fires her weapon into that square. If the weapon would hit other squares as well (eg. plasma cannon would hit any line of hexes) those will also be highlighted. (Q. If the hex is behind a wall, should that be inoperable, rather than fire at the nearest possible hex?)
* A blue arrow appears from the marine to the adjacent hex in the direction of the mouse cursor. Left click and the marine moves into that hex.
* When a marine has moved/fired the next marine is then selected.

Also:

* You can left click on a marine to select her, or click and drag to move a non-selected marine
* If there are two alternative lines of fire (eg. along, along, up, along; or along, up, along, along) it chooses the more left or more right depending which side of the hex the mouse is nearer. (This should normally not matter.)

Does that make sense? I thought about several more complicated systems

* Those were often avoiding any assumptions about which marine you'd move first
* For instance, hover over a square, and press 1,2,3... to move there, or q,w,e... to fire there.
* Or, as Matt suggested, 1,2,3 to select and click/right-click to move/fire. (That would still be possible with my suggested idea.)

Notes:

* A mouse interface is a faff to code, but I think it has to be mouse based.
* That can be annoying if you're trying to control two different marines (maybe you ought to be able to move one marine along a corridor, and then another along a parallel corridor, and have it treat the turns as concurrent?) or move in one direction and fire in another.
* But keyboard based control of several marines is really convoluted.
* You could have a hex of keys (eg. 90 I P KL) that move the current marine, as a keyboard shortcut if you want to repeatedly retreat a marine.
* You need to be able to position marines finely in close combat. (This does that mostly -- one click per move)
* You need to be able to move several marines along a corridor quickly. (This does that mostly -- just clickclickclick and they will move)

Any other suggestions?

Comments

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

Can you make it so that you can group the marines and have them move and fire together sometimes? I think that's quite common in hex-based battle games, at least ones I've played.

And definitely what Chess said about the timing.

By the way, are the marines all girls? Just curious :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Can you make it so that you can group the marines and have them move and fire together sometimes?

There should definitely be a shortcut way to "move everyone over here". The current interface might have that as an emergent property rather than a special key though.

And see above, I forgot to specify it's supposed to be puzzle (turn based) rather than tactical, so firing-in-unison shouldn't normally be necessary or correct, and controlling in combination should be there to make things easier, but dying-because-you-can't-direct-two-things-at-once shouldn't be part of the game.

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. That sounds good then. I don't think I've played many puzzle-based games like that... but I'll think about it and see if I come up with any that give me ideas that might be helpful :) Most of my games are either city/empire-building or role-play.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Did you play my winnie-the-pooh game?

Experience from controls in other games may well be relevant; obviously anything that makes it possible to manoeuvre a group of units in real time makes it easier to do so in less than real time.

or role-play.

Work just sent an email "HOW TO SHIP TRAINING". Alas, it wasn't as interesting as my first thought had it, nor even as much as my second had :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

By the way, are the marines all girls? Just curious :)

Yeah. I don't know why, it just felt right. (And now I've a few characters in my head as showed up briefly in snippet-fic.) I've been doing it a lot in fic lately.

Anthea "Judd" Lakowski. The original leader, and the tough one. Think Arnie "Dutch" Schaefer from Predator.

Red "Red" Caroline. The joint-leader, wiry, grandiose and reckless one. Think President Harrison Ford from Air Force One, but somewhere between Nixon and JFK.

Etc.

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

ISWYM :) I suppose I never think up characters like that... but then if I were going to write about marines they'd all be men (see icon, *lol*) ;)

It sounds really interesting. I like a good story behind a game :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

if I were going to write about marines they'd all be men (see icon, *lol*) ;)

:) I did think that. But I also wondered if you'd like these characters too :)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

It sounds really interesting. I like a good story behind a game :)

*hugs* Thank you. I always invent too much backstory, but it's always very fun :)

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Do you have any female characters who would be reminiscent of female people rather than male one ?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

:) No, not really. They're not necessarily based on those ideas, but (a) the "Like X and Y" is not the only way of describing an idea, but often a useful one, especially to convey a brief headline; however, essentially no female action heroes spring to my mind, so they'd all end being described as "Like Ripley, but..." :) And (b) I enjoy writing, but am not necessarily any good at it, so to the extent the characters have character, it's likely to owe a lot more to me than my observations of anyone else :)

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

however, essentially no female action heroes spring to my mind, so they'd all end being described as "Like Ripley, but..."

Like Sarah Connor in Terminator 2.

Like Vasquez in Aliens.

Like the Jamie Lee Curtis character in Blue Steel whose name annoyingly escapes me.

Like Thelma and/or Louise.

Like Lara Croft.

Like Barbarella.

Some day I will learn how to switch off the bit at the back of my brain that takes things as challenges.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Some day I will learn how to switch off the bit at the back of my brain that takes things as challenges.

I resemble this remark :) (And, indeed, thank you, that could in fact be helpful.)

Though I think that's still essentially none, as compared to the number of male action heroes. There are certainly good exceptions, but in at least my experience, men are definitely way more represented in the action hero role. (It may depend if you count the same character with a different name by the same actor as twenty or one, possibly.) None seem (afaik, maybe vasquez? I don't really remember any of the characters from aliens) a good description for Judd or Red :)

(In the original post I was going to say "Apart from Riply. (Angelina Jolie doesn't count.)" But only because it seemed funny, not because it was especially accurate.)