The Mana World Forums

KTH5, while I agree keyboard control shouldn't be limited, the game controls should not be based on your personal problems :p

Using a mouse for several hours shouldn't cause soreness unless you have poor posture ect. Trust me, I spend enough hours a day working with a mouse to know :p

Nevermind all the games with the hybred mouse/keyboard control that I play. First person shooters come to mind. Also the many 2d games with similar to FPS controls, where the character faces the mouse cursor but moves with the keyboard.

If you are having that much trouble in RO, maybe you don't know about the ctrl key, /noctrl, and clicking-and-hold? If you do and after two hours you still have problems, thats BAD. Maybe its time to look up carpal tunnel?

i think facing is quite useless in a 2d game like tmw, right? so what for do we need the mouse then?
knowing lots of games which use both mouse and keyboard just b/c it's useful for their gameplay, i still don't really see a reason to use the mouse in tmw which is worth it.

kth5 wrote:i think facing is quite useless in a 2d game like tmw, right? so what for do we need the mouse then?
knowing lots of games which use both mouse and keyboard just b/c it's useful for their gameplay, i still don't really see a reason to use the mouse in tmw which is worth it.

And what about magic?

You just want to throw your fireball in the direction where you look?

Or how will you aim?

It think magic an targeting would be much easier with Mouse .

Ultramichy wrote:
And what about magic?

You just want to throw your fireball in the direction where you look?

Or how will you aim?

It think magic an targeting would be much easier with Mouse .

how did u use spells in som? remeber? no mouse needed at all...

kth5 wrote: how did u use spells in som? remeber? no mouse needed at all...

Yeah i know it but that was because Snes don't have a mouse ^.^.

kth5 wrote:how did u use spells in som? remeber? no mouse needed at all...

Yes, because that would work. Think about this for a sec, your in a room with 5 players and 10 monsters. How would the som aiming system work? What, is the entire game world gonna freeze while you pick who you want to cast your spell on? Maybe you just freeze, and while your taping the arrow key oops, did you just die? Or did they just walk out of range? Too bad it takes soo long to choose your target that way. :p

Anyway, I was serious about the carpal tunnel comment you know.

Also, an online game cannot be completely faithful to the original SOM gameplay. It just will not work well. For that matter, SD3/SOM2 wasn't exactly faithful when it came to the gui. Heck, it altered major parts of the gameplay as well. TMW should be less restricted to SOM than SD3 was.

Ardaen wrote: TMW should be less restricted to SOM than SD3 was.

Sure it won't. TMW is a MMORPG, while SOM is "only" the best RPG ever created. The world can't freeze while targeting, never! The best idea in my opinion is to use the mouse to target the objects but you're welcome to offer nerw solutions!

I know a few people are not to keen on the idea of using a mouse, but I think for PC games it does really work well. If combat is in real time,look at games like Diablo/War Craft (Mouse, Keyboard combo).

I like old school NES controls but remember that is a Game Pad not a keyboard. Even a Game Pad works better then just a keyboard.

Eh, the poll.. is the question isometric or topview?

I just love the topdown view. Its simple, clear and easy.
This with the bennefits we have on the PC.. yum!


ps, mouse is cool!
And while its there why not use it :p

kth5 wrote:

Ultramichy wrote:
And what about magic?

You just want to throw your fireball in the direction where you look?

Or how will you aim?

It think magic an targeting would be much easier with Mouse .

how did u use spells in som? remeber? no mouse needed at all...

Sure in SoM there is no need for mouse because everytime you want to do a magic attack or use an item in the inventory you show up the menu and the world freezes You cannot do that in a MMORPG.

Don't forget, simplicity is often overlooked in the creation of game interfaces and design.

Think about it, if the origional SoM had a cluttered interface, it wouldn't be half as attractive as it was. What Square did was make the interface as clean and as simple as possible, so you were more taken in by the incredibly pretty 16 bit graphics of the time. The menu that spirals out from the player's current position was a brilliant idea, and as to the whole targetting thing. Make the mouse only for user interface things, make it controlled by the keyboard. SoM was a game you played on a pad. You can't later on tack a point and click interface to it, combat in SoM was about slashing when your power was at 100% and then backing off until it was near that again. If it's point and click combat, you might'as well just make a Final Fantasy 3/6 (whatever) type battle screen, because it would be more or less turn based anyways. To reproduce the charm of Mana, you really need to reproduce the feel of it's gameplay, and combat was a very big part of that. Of course, you can improve upon it, but you should make the combat a fun part of the game that can be built upon with player skill and agility, not something you're going to grind to get exp points to do more damage.

Strategy is what you want to aim for in the overall gameplay, you don't want it to become a game of silly numbers, you want it to be a game where someone who is damn good can take a rusty sword and take out someone levels above him on pure skill.

I didn't really read the thread at all, so I apologize if this is redundant, but I've played Mana so much over the years, and there is a lot that set it apart from other RPGs and you need to preserve that to really get the feel and charm that the Mana world had when we were younger.

How about making the spells and special moves to be initiated by a combo driven system instead of a menu driven icon system..? Would also require some skill by players on the long run..

@T7g:

man, i cannot agree more with your reasons! that's exactly what i came up with earlier in this thread. but unfortunately i haven't had the arguments in handy at that time.

Rotonen wrote:How about making the spells and special moves to be initiated by a combo driven system instead of a menu driven icon system..? Would also require some skill by players on the long run..

what do you mean a combo-driven system? something like atl+shift+1 for a thunderbolt?

More of something that's usually associated with beat 'em up games.. For example: thunderbolt - up, down down while holding shift.. And you could define the combinations yourself, but the limitation would be that the level of the spell/skill would define the required number of keys in the combo.. Lvl1 skills - 3 keys, lvl2 - 4 keys, etc...(?)

Yeah, but remember. The keyboard will only register something like... four keys? being pressed down at once, after that I don't think it'll register right and the combos will get flaky if they even work at all.