The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

The 3D space adventure game Freelancer was an interesting game which had you controlling your ship with the mouse as opposed to a joystick.  While the idea sounds a little weird, in practice it worked great.  The mouse allowed for a greater amount of control and precision.  This is one reason why people usually prefer FPS games on a PC rather than a console.  Anyway, I know Star Control is a totally different game from an FPS but would mouse control be an idea to try in a game of this type?  How a mouse could be use I'll leave to your imagination.

That would be entry #533 (http://uqm.stack.nl/cgi-bin/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=533) in our Bugzilla database.

Actually, I was thinking more about mouse control for combat not just the menus and starmap.  In theory, this would allow for better precision than a keyboard or joystick.  It proved to be a successful move in Freelancer.  Although I think there might be a need for a modification to the melee engine before something like this is added to UQM.  For now, I'm playing around with the idea in my asteroids game that I'm putting together just to see how it would work.

Mouse control for combat would probably work well if ship rotation were smoother. With rotation in a few large steps, you don't get as much extra precision in aiming as you would if you could point the ship in almost any direction. Using the X position for direction would make aiming easier, but would make intense manoeuvres involving lots of turning a bit hard on the wrists (not that FPS players seem to mind). Using the X position for turning speed makes it hard to fly straight. Thrust would probably be easiest to handle with one of the mouse buttons, although using the Y position to indicate amount of thrust could work well. Assigning the mouse buttons to weapons seems logical.

The Supox Blade really needs to be flown with one hand on the keyboard and one on the mouse, but giving one ship completely different controls is not worth the trouble (and using one key on the keyboard for thrust and controlling everything else with the mouse seems a bit silly, although it might work out).

This is true, the UQM combat engine does not have much precision when it comes to aiming.  I would like to see that improved one day in a future version of the game.  But for now, I'm playing around with mouse controls with an asteroids wannabe game that I'm making.  Currently, the Left button is the main weapon, Right button is secondary, the wheel controls thrust, the X position controls turning of the ship, and the Y position does nothing for now.  I'm definitely going to try different configurations but this one sounds like it would work.  And if there is ever a transition to 3D melee combat, this configuration should carry over well after giving functionality to the Y position.  Silly question, does Mac support two-button wheel mice?

Yes it does, and has for many years, so long as the mouse is USB.  The reason the default Mac mouse only has one button is because you don't NEED any other buttons to use it effectively, not because they're unsupported.

Fun fact:  you can also simulate a right click my holding down Ctrl while clicking on something, and a middle-click by holding down Command while clicking.

Yes, but don't make the assumption that mac users will own one.

It's a more Politically Correct assumption than Apple's:  that anyone who want to "simulate" a right-click or middle-click has two hands.   And it also assumes that you don't want to hit more than one mouse button at the same time.  :-\

Not on my iBook with a trackpad; Ctrl+click is easily done with a single hand, and I find it better than the comparable multibutton setups on ThinkPads and the like -- with only one button it's harder to click the wrong button accidentally.  Also, see previous comment about the software and operating system being designed so that only one mouse button is needed for effective use, and the fact that multibutton mice are 100% supported.

True, I was just curious on whether it was possible to use the two-button wheel mouse on a Mac.  It would probably be a good idea to have the keyboard-only control as the default and then allow the player to choose joystick or two-button wheel mouse controls in the settings.

As for which type of mouse is better is up to the individual's preference.  I personally prefer the Logitec TrackMan Wheel.  It's two-button, has a scroll wheel, and an optical trackball all in one.

Older people with arthritis and reduced flexibility have extreme difficulty pressing only one button. My grandfather was physically incapable of checking his email with a two-button mouse, even though he understood the concepts needed to do so.

People with Parkinson on the other hand have an easy time double-clicking. :D

You know, meepy, that's reducing a seriously debilitating handicap only to elicit a few cheap laughs. I love it!