Game Interface: Simple vs Complex

News & General Discussion
1

I am currently working on a martial arts fighting game project and i wanted to get some feed back from the unity community as a whole…

Game Interface: Simple vs Complex
As far as playability goes and hopefully ease of understanding. Which is the better path ?

Simple:
I could do a simple w,a,s,d movement and you click on the opponents body or head to cycle thru a small set of kicks, punches with the other mouse button for blocks.

Unity would know what kick animation to play (head or body) by where you clicked. and just use a different one each click.

Complex:
Same movement (w,a,s,d) but now you can select from an array of moves by keystroke and modifier
(button mashing :slight_smile: ). This would allow a lot more control over what is going on and a lot more types of moves.

Keeping in mind that computer skills will vary for each player ?? any thoughts ???

2

Why not both?

3

For me… I’m not an experienced game creator and don’t have allot of time (The day job ) so i want to focus down and work on one thing… i can always expand i suppose but being new to unity i was hopping to just accomplish small things first and have a narrow path

4

The ideal is to have deep gameplay with simple controls, but that takes a lot of time to get right.

If you are short of time, concentrate on getting a few things right, rather than a lot of things nearly right.

5

I my self like complex, because then it does not feel like your clicking as fast as you can randomly. But it would be cool if you did both!

6

I like the idea of simple to control but hard to master ( gameplay wise ). Keeping interfaces as clean as possible is a good thing in my book :slight_smile: Having said that, I also like the idea of having a ‘power user’ interface, so once I learn the basic stuff, I can upgrade the interface to have more options.

7

Well, I’ll go with the why not both crowd.

Actually, complexity should scale. Simple stuff should be done with a single input, and more complex stuff should require some more input complexity so the player really feels like he achieved something after pulling it off.

8

I like the way Soul Calibur II handled its fighting system. It was very easy to use, but incredibly difficult to master in terms of memorizing sequences to pull of moves. So a pro could play against a new player and the new player wouldn’t necessarily have their face pummeled to pieces. I would say look at the Soul Calibur series(i haven’t played since 2) as they seemed to fit my needs for simple/complexity in a fighting game. It’s good research to know how they handle it regardless if you use that style or not.

9

If you are talking about controls, and since you mentioned that you just started out with unity, why not start small and then build up from that?
Create simple movement controls. Test them and see what could be improved. Test them again. When thats done, go for the basic moves. Then for the super moves, etc. At least thats how I would do it.

10

Thanks everyone for the suggestions!.
The suggestions seem to lean toward a layered control that gets progressively harder. I think i will start with fremachuca’s advice and just do a basic control at first and add more controls as i make "super power/fancy " moves.
I will be posting a version of it in the forums when i get the basic controls done. I have the basic kick/punch animations done already so it may be wise to just go from there and do a basic control… thanks again!

11

I think it’ll depend on who you think your future players will be. If you are targeting hard-cored gamers, complex controls might be the way to go because it gives them precise controls and a rewarding learning curve. If you are targeting people who aren’t fighting game fanatics, a simple control allows them to pick up the game and get a hang of it quickly.