borzwazie on 27/8/2001 at 23:30
One of the guys I work with and I were discussing System Shock 2 and Deus Ex today, and their relative merits and flaws. He was going back to play SS2 as a pure psionic.
We both agreed that the menu system for the psionic sucked, since you couldn't rapidly switch active skills without going to the menus. Then we realized that Deus Ex suffered from the same problems as SS2 -Augs.
In the middle of a firefight, it's very annoying to take your eyes off the keyboard to switch augs on and off. For this style of game, where you have menus of items, and menus of attributes, why not a "switchmenu" key?
For example, you could use the mousewheel to scroll through your items. Supposing someone using the standard WSAD keys bound key "g" to a "switchmenu." While holding this key, you can scroll through your augs while still using the mouselook and directional keys as you wish.
Now, to top it off, get rid of the full-screen item menu when you use this key for both menus, or make it unnecessary. Have a small, transparent menu (like the items menu in Half-Life) come up that you can scroll through. If you hold the "switchmenu" key down, you get the alternate menu, and not in the middle of your field of view, either.
Enough people use a mousewheel mouse that I don't think you alienate lots of people this way, and it doesn't really lock you out from using this control scheme.
It doesn't need to be a momentary switch, pressing it once gives you the first menu, which you then scroll through. Pressing it again gives you the alternate menu. Choosing an item dismisses the menu, or not.
[ August 28, 2001: Message edited by: borzwazie ]
Shadowhawk on 28/8/2001 at 07:57
I kinda like your idea of a transparent menu...
Having to pause the game over and over again to access your inventory is very annoying. Having to pause the game to access the skills tab and conversations is less annoying, but still ruins the smoothness of the game. However, I do not agree that the inventory be something like half-life. In half-life, you could carry one of every gun and item, because there was no inventory or inventory space. One of the great things of DX is the minimal space you do have to carry stuff. You have to pick and choose your items based on your skills and style of play. Maybe I'm just reading your idea wrong but if you are insisting on a half-life inventory instead of a diablo style inventory for DX, I must protest. I liked SS2's inventory the most because it forced you to do your business while the game was still going. It was cool being afraid to rearrange stuff in your inventory because a hybrid might sneak up behind you while you're in the middle of it. I would like to see this kind of inventory worked into DX2.
As for the augs, I found it a bit unfair that you could activate augs while the game was paused. It was so easy to get out of situations by turning on Cloak or Ballistic Protection when you got in a jam.
Quote:
it's very annoying to take your eyes off the keyboard to switch augs on and off.
You can bind the aug keys to ones other than the F buttons for easier access. Bind stuff to ZXCV and even the mouse wheel.
borzwazie on 28/8/2001 at 23:39
no, I'm not suggesting they get rid of the inventory screen. I'm just saying that once you have your augs/inventory set up, you should be able to scroll thru them with a minimum of keys/pausing game.
I had no idea you could activate/deactivate augs while paused...
rhalibus on 30/8/2001 at 23:33
Perhaps a "Mechawarrior 2" implementation might help: You could put specific augs in a single group that was part of a set of separate groups; Every aug in that group would then be toggled on/off when that group was called (F4-F12).
