Alien abilites: one button away
NeoSniper
Join Date: 2005-06-02 Member: 52976Members
Join Date: 2005-06-02 Member: 52976Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Because aliens shouldn't have to switch weapons</div>Regarding the recent blog posts and Twitter feeds concerning Skulk bite having an alt-fire... It shouldn't.
Aliens should not need to switch between weapons. They would play much better if all abilities where one button away.
If you want to bite? click, leap? click, parasites(or replacement)? click
Works like this for skulk by default example:
attack1 (bite) = mouse1
attack2 (leap) = mouse2
attack3 (parasite/spit?) = q or mouse4
attack4 (grapple) = e or mouse5
Jump = Space
and so on...
The beauty of this is:
*that everyone is happy regarding keyboard assignments because they are free to put whatever they want in mouse2
*Aliens will play better and more intuitive right out of the Box
*You only have to worry about which abilities to give each alien (and when they unlock) and NOT about what will be alt-fire to what.
I though this had already been discussed in one of the pod casts... must have dreamed it.
Aliens should not need to switch between weapons. They would play much better if all abilities where one button away.
If you want to bite? click, leap? click, parasites(or replacement)? click
Works like this for skulk by default example:
attack1 (bite) = mouse1
attack2 (leap) = mouse2
attack3 (parasite/spit?) = q or mouse4
attack4 (grapple) = e or mouse5
Jump = Space
and so on...
The beauty of this is:
*that everyone is happy regarding keyboard assignments because they are free to put whatever they want in mouse2
*Aliens will play better and more intuitive right out of the Box
*You only have to worry about which abilities to give each alien (and when they unlock) and NOT about what will be alt-fire to what.
I though this had already been discussed in one of the pod casts... must have dreamed it.
Comments
Ya, not gonna work.
Edit: also, it's a lot less user/newbie friendly when you can't switch between slots and see what skills you have/don't have but just have buttons bound to abilities.
Oh, oh, and I should add, I have nothing against this being added as a BONUS. Being able to bind up "use slotx skill" or whatever without actually having to switch to the corresponding slot would be nice. But I'm strongly against this being the standard, or only, way of going about things.
6 abilities per alien sounds very cool. That's a lot more than in NS1 which makes me wonder since so far the Onos and Skulk seem to have less abilities that before and they are struggling to add as many as they had in NS1.
Anyway, your just suggestion does seem best. Allow this mode to be set up but by default keep the more easy to understand method. That will truly keep everyone happy.
I'm thinking for exampel Onos... Mouse 1 is always gore, you simply press 2 for stomp, and press 3 to toggle bone armor. Mouse 2 could be the +alien movement, for Onos would be charge.
At the very least, this could be tested. Or have an option to toggle this type of ability use on/off.
All movement abilities must not require more than 1 button press, total. Or at least have the option of a single key bind.
I don't know what "alt-fire" means exactly, but there has to be a key control system in place that isn't bound to the HL paradigm of weapon slots, or "alt-fire" where you have to equip a certain ability to use another ability. Having a system of slots is fine, but it can't be limited by that, and it must be customizable.
In other words there should be customizable weapon slots, so you can bind an ability to a slot AND to a single button. And you can overload the slots as much as you want.
Now, with marines, obviously you must have a weapon "out" in order to use one of its fire keys. But with aliens, it needs to be flexible.
And obviously, I vote NO to bite at the end of a leap. That sounds like an MMO script or something. I want to decide when I bite. The only reason the leap-bite scripts were an issue was because you had to switch "weapons" quickly, pressing multiple keys for different slots, which was difficult for some players.
Ultimately I want to be able to bind leap, bite, and parasite to their own keys, so I am free to go crazy doing action after action (think of kpm in starcraft). I want to blink, swipe, meta, rocket, meta, blink, swipe all without touching the ground (like in NS1). You have to raise the competitive skill ceiling by designing control with this paradigm in mind.
Give the player control with possibilities. Don't take it away using automation.
Fading is a lot more intuitive with mouse2 as +movement as you only have to swap between meta and swipe, the same with skulks and leaping with bite/para. It's a great feature.
A few years ago before +movement was created I modified the client-side lastinv script for a fade script where mouse2 was blink, mouse1 was swipe, spacebar was metabolize and mouse4 was acid rocket and lastinv still worked if you really wanted it to (for whatever reason..). It was a lot of fun once you got used to it and made it feel a lot more responsive. Of course at this point we were all used to spamming 1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,2,1,3,2,3,2,3,1,3,2 etc. just to get around so pretty much any change was going to feel better, but it was a definate unnecessary barrier to entry for playing aliens well at mid-game, theres a lot more good fades and leapskulks nowadays than compared to back then.
True. I can't see the direct command used that much on anything else than the movement related abilities like leap and blink, but having flexible keybinding customization never hurts.
only thing i would add, is to make leap as the default jump - there's not really need to hop around when you can leap
only thing i would add, is to make leap as the default jump - there's not really need to hop around when you can leap<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You "change weapons" because it's easier to play with slotted abilities.
Again, not against the option, against the forced option and standard insertion.
And it also is bad if every class behaves differently when pressing 'jump' :/
At topic: It would be nice to have the OPTION to bind every ability to a single key to avoid "weaponswitching" for aliens. But always keep in mind that you should be able to use all abilities with a 3-button-mouse. I do not want to bind like 10 attack-buttons (primary attack, secondary attack, 3rd attack, 4th attack? wtf? noone new to a game would be able to understand that)
I'd like to be able to hop around to:
*conserve adrenaline and still hop around
*perhaps to be quieter if the leap maintains the same shrieking sounds
*hop around at running speed (sometimes I just like this better than the super fast leap)
However what we all seem to be agreeing on is the ability to bind each individual alien ability to any key we want. So could you place Leap in the Space bar if you wanted.
whens the last time you wanted to kick someone in the nuts?
did you have to select wepslot 3 click ok for boot and then deliver a swift blow to the gonads?
NO!
you just swung that stomper up and caught the dude right in his piss pump without even thinking about it!
having the option to use either way seems like the best idea to me.
someone else mentioned that it's hard to aim with mouse and attack with keyboard, while this is true, the only thing a skulk really needs to aim with (in NS1 at least) is bite and parasite which i'd have as mouse1 and mouse2.
I've never had to aim my xeno at a group of marines.
and if you think about it, slot 1 and 2 for most aliens were the skills that required you to aim where as 3 and 4 didn't, ex: xeno, leap, bile bomb, web (BB and web aren't really used in a panic too often so precise aim isn't that important), primal scream, metabolize, charge, stomp.
really the only problem i could see with this method is the fade's acid rocket.
yes if you have only 2 fingers on your keyboard-hand
The possibility to bind all fire's and alt-fires to any key (as before)
but to deal with the massive amount of buttons also have a special key assignment called +altfire for example. Which by itself does nothing but if press before any of the primary fire binds then would activate the alt fire for it.
Think of it as working just like shift but the capital letter are altfires?
Did that make sense?
using Mouse2 as example of +altfire (and random guesses at some abilities)
Mouse1 = gorge spit
Mouse2 + mouse1 = gorge alt slow big spit
Mouse3 = Damage Soak
Mouse2 + mouse3 = Damage Soak altfire (whatever that's going to be)
Q = Drop OC
Mouse2 + Q = Drop DC
And so on...
That way you could real easily map 6 abilities directly to 4 buttons. Keeping everything handy.
Basically would be awesome to have some fairly advanced binding options that are easier to use than actual Lua coding (for us programing noobs)
Aliens should not need to switch between weapons. They would play much better if all abilities where one button away.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I agree. Aliens don't even <i>have</i> weapons, so there's no reason to force bad interface upon them. If I remember correctly (and it has been a while), weapon switching was instaneous for aliens anyway. It makes this change a <i>no-brainer</i>.
Forcing aliens to switch weapons would be like forcing characters in Street Fighter to switch weapon before each different attack. I understand that it makes things simpler for a newbie, but the two systems can coexist together, and separate bind per special attack is much more flexible and convenient for <i>experienced</i> players. Surprise ! Many players won't always be newbies ! If you design your game/interface in such way that it's good for newbies <i>only</i>, you're annoying people who become good at your game.
However, default to weapon switching to make new players able to play. I hated as a noob the huge number of buttons in Tribes that I had to remember, although later as an experienced player I could use them all with proficiency.
However, default to weapon switching to make new players able to play....<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't agree with this argument. This game is actually banking on the differences between marines and alien. And I think making the alien control scheme a bit different would play to that. Plus if you allow newer player to learn to do it the right way from the start they'll be better aliens. Otherwise they may get used to the easy to learn yet limiting controls and actually progress the learning curve slower.
or "for long jumps press <attack 2> - Button" what ever. Such hints would do the job. Many people just
start the game right away without checking their key configuration. And such small hints, which tell them which button to
press and what they do should be enough (at least for people who know the alphabet).
so I agree, if you make such "one button away" alien control style just throw in some ingame hints and the new players should be fine
Nick