Open For Discussion

Problem Summary

Game actions are mapped to specific keys or buttons of input devices. Some of these mapping are either not suitable to user's game playing style or hard to use. For example, two keys that being used frequently and in sequence are located distance apart from each other.

Use When

• Game uses same button/key for different purpose at different stages of the game.
• Game takes a sequence of inputs to perform a single operation.
• There are other games from the same genre that uses different set of inputs.
• The player may be familiar with different key bindings.
• To make it more accessible for people.
• Allow different types of user to play game such as left handed player and right handed players.
• Run a macro on a single click/push of a button.
• To change game camera view such as inverted camera and in game navigation.

Solution

Save key/button mapping along with other game settings

Almost every single modern day game allows player to change and save game settings. This is true for both PC and console games. It doesn’t take much space and time to save and load few extra settings related to key binding. Modern game development kits are flexible and robust. They are designed to handle all key/button events.

To accomplish this game must provide a user interface to do so. The screen can show current key mapping and asks for player’s input for new mapping. This can either be done directly by monitoring key press event from player or allow player to select key/button shown on screen. Once have all the key mapping done save it along with other game settings just as another game settings. When game is being load, load all the settings including new key/button mapping and dynamically map actions to new keys.

To take step further towards more generic solution, for all the game should support different player profiles for controls mapping. Each player profile can store player's custom configured control and can be loaded before playing the game.

Recommendations

• Allow player to reset to default key/button bindings.
• Allow player to chose from saved profile.
• Only one player profile can be active at a time.
• Allow player to delete unwanted profiles.

Rationale

Customizable control will make game more flexible and efficient to use. The ability to customize the keys to a player's liking increases the players sense of control and improves satisfaction and allows more player to play the game. It also improves the accessibility of the game.

Examples

Following images are screen shots from actual game and allows to map input controls.

Figure 2.Ghost Recon

Figure 3.Unreal Tournament 2

Figure 4. Sacrifice