Controls

[raphaelbastide]

I love the control key choice! I will think about a way to put in in a dedicated popup.

About the space bar stuff: it sounds weird and hard for me to handle it with the shoot (to come). But I understand the purpose and we need to try it of course.

Sinon on peut parler en français ici.

[bpierre]

I love the control key choice! I will think about a way to put in in a dedicated popup.

Yes, and it’s an independant library, I think it is really useful for canvas games!

Why I did this:

• I needed to implement the rotation, activated by the space bar.
• But the space bar is not accessible from the arrow keys.
• We need WASD keys, but my keyboard is not qwerty.
• Customizable keys.

I thought of a classic game menu to show the keyboard settings, but maybe we can do something better, I don’t know. Dont overthink this, we have many things to think!

About the space bar stuff

Now that it’s working, I think the behavior is weird. In other games I played with this kind of controls, the rotation is always activated. Maybe we need to activate this all the time, but we should decide later: we need to know what is the core concept of the game before. Is shooting a primary feature, or secondary?

Sinon on peut parler en français ici.

Oui pas de problème, mais ça limitera ces discussions aux francophones (pour celles qui resteront ouvertes quand le projet sera public).

[raphaelbastide]

Since I tryed the click to shoot I am wondering why we have to use spacebar. Spacebar-to-shoot involve a tricky gesture. It can be fun to get it under control but I think it also can be simpler: An alternative could be just to rotate the character in the targer direction for the shoot only. Or rotate the character in the target direction at the mouse press and shoot at the mouse release.
Wutubut dut?

[bpierre]

Agree, this is tricky, but if we move the shoot on the mouse click (left?), the game will be very shoot-oriented (as I see it, firing with the gun is one of the many possible actions).

That said, the controls implementation we have are just an experimentation. If we are going in this direction, we need to limit the bullets (2-3 max) and force the player to be immobile when he shoot. (on a side note, the bullet animation were an experimentation, but this is not realistic enough for this game, we could animate the gun and the wall / player hit by the bullet, at the same time).

I think the main problem with these controls is the keyboard itself, there is no real reason for not using the mouse at the moment:

• Left click where you want to go.
• Left click on your character, which shows some action buttons, and choose an action (e.g. « shoot »).
• Right click where you want to trigger this action.

The main benefit, out of the ease of use (no keyboard problem, no configuration), is the compatibility with mobile/touch devices.

But it will completely change the nature of the game. I think we really need to know what this game will be before making a choice here.