Yes it would, it’s a completely different feel.
I’d say try it yourself, but you’re not a programmer, are you? Or you’d know.
Why the hell would it matter whether I’m a programmer or not?
You know what I don’t think you’ve read a single damn thing I’ve said or even know what I mean by free-aim. I just mean being able to aim with the mouse while moving with the keyboard, not being able to point on enemies and click to shoot.
Who cares how different it feels (which I’m pretty sure wouldn’t be so)? Nobody is being forced to use it and I’ve already explained a way of keeping the control styles/gameplay consistent.
No you haven’t, you are clearly incapable of listening to anything apart form your own clearly perfect points, and I look forward to your game, where you seamlessly merge a gameplay style, and control style that are completely opposed.
People would get very frustrated with that aiming mechanic. There would be many positions where you would think you were high enough or low enough for one angle, and then you would end up shooting in the wrong direction. When you actually have to shoot, you don’t have time to figure out “Hm… how high or low should I aim…” It is much more functional to just press a button and know it’s going to be the right angle than to flail the mouse around because you can’t seem to find exactly where you need to aim. It would frustrate a lot of people, and then they would say “fuck this, I’m usin’ the keyboard.”
How do I know? I’ve played games like that. The only real solution is to narrow the up or over aiming windows, since those are much easier to find, but that gets annoying, too.
And it would make a difference because then you could program your own game like that, and see if you actually liked it better than the keyboard.
If you hated the keyboard so much, go out and buy a $15 logitech game pad. They’ve got them at pretty much… y’know… anywhere where there’s a computer store.
If you don’t have one, find a target or wal-mart or something.
Well that makes sense. I really can’t think of anything else that would balance the gameplay for the control styles.
PY maybe if you actually elaborated on why you think it would ruin the feel and stuff maybe I’d be more inclined to listen. It’s not that I’m only listening to my own “clearly perfect ponts”, it’s that you aren’t actually giving any defined points of your own and are piggy-backing on things other people have said.
I’m listening more to CloudVaris/etc because at least they’re reasonable and explain what they’re talking about, and aren’t acting all angry about a video game.
I can’t explain it to someone who lacks basic concepts of social interaction, I’m sorry.
PY, knock that shit off.
Sorry, I just don’t know what else to say.
Maybe coming from someone else, he’ll notice it, so I’ll shut up.
Well, that was interesting…
Anyway, I like the idea of free aim, but it has already been tried with a 2D Halo game. It wasn’t bad by any means, but it didn’t feel right. The problem with free aim in a 2D environment is that it simplifies the gameplay too much. It’s like playing Halo on easy. There’s no challenge, and you’ll more than likely end up doing whatever the hell you want rather than complete the mission. Simplifying the gameplay is all good and fun, but when it comes down to it, too much simplification ruins the gameplay.
Free aim only truly works in 3D because it’s working in a 3D environment…that was redundant…anyway, with 3D, you have Height, Length, and Depth. The depth is what allows free aim to work properly. Without that third dimension, free aim becomes too easy to deal with. Instead of using a keyboard in conjunction with the mouse, the two become separated from each other, one allowing movement and one allowing aiming. This just separates the player from the game even further by forcing them to multi-task. With 3D free aiming, the two have to work in conjunction with each other, because if you don’t use the mouse, you can’t turn to look another way, and if you don’t use the keyboard, you can’t move. In 2D, this restriction is removed. Someone could not use the mouse, and potentially beat the game.
Free aim is a good thing in 3D, but in 2D, the simplification of gameplay ruins the 2D experience, at least, in my opinion.
Have you ever played Abuse? It’s a 2D scroller with free-mouse-aim and still manages to be A) fairly hard and B) genuinely creepy in atmosphere.
Relatively hard doesn’t necessarily mean less simple gameplay, it just means that they made a hard game with simple gameplay. The creepiness doesn’t have much to do with the controls either, but, um… sounds interesting, I might check it out.
As will I, Cloud. And yes, as Cloud already stated, Relatively hard doesn’t necessarily mean less simple gameplay. I was just trying to prove that point that 9 times out of 10, free aiming 2D side-scrollers don’t work. Of course, there will almost always be an anomaly within a set of data, and I’m assuming that Abuse is just that. I will have to check it out.
Cloud, I just meant that it doesn’t ruin the ‘feel’ horribly. Metroid has always had kind of a creepy, on-edge feeling, and Abuse has a similar one. Not really relevant, I just thought I’d point it out. 
But yeah, I was moreso just being devil’s advocate there. I don’t particularly care to add free-aim to P2D, but the fact remains that a lot of your arguments against it are silly. <_<
I love Soldat/Unreal Tournament/Doom, personally… Got no problem with mouse-aiming, especially in 3D, but in 2D it’s only difficult if you have small bullets.
The biggest impediment I see with it in P2D is changing weapons/visors and such. When you have both hands on the keyboard or gamepad, there are plenty of keys or buttons in reach. If one is stuck on the mouse, uh, it’s kinda awkward.
I guess holding a key and mouse-scrolling could potentially work… though some mice lack a scrollwheel, so, uh, yeah.
Well, yeah. I never said it would ruin the feel, I first said it would be hard to balance full free-aim and gamepad controls, and then I said it would be frustrating to use limited mouse aim for a variety of reasons. I don’t entirely understand why they’re silly, but meh.
I wouldn’t particularly care if they added it as an alternative, as long as it was balanced towards the keyboard/gamepad rather than mouse aiming, even though I think that it would make a lot of spots easier for mouse aiming. I just… wouldn’t use it, and I think it would be a waste of time if it made the game easier or made the game frustrating.
Edit: Oh, Daz… if the right mouse button wasn’t being used for missiles or something, you could potentially use that to switch beams, then hold a key to switch visors. Of course, it would go in rotation rather than jumping right to it, but it’d work. You could then switch to missiles with a key on the keyboard, and continue shooting with the left mouse button, and press the button to then switch back.
less smooth than right click being missiles, but hey… it’s functional.
In response to Cloud’s edit and a point that Daz brought up earlier, another reason not to have free aim be a part of P2D. I agree wholeheartedly. And I admit, my argument was a bit…biased, I’ll give you that. Silliness, that’s a bit of a stretch to me, but that’s because I’m an arrogant coward hiding behind a computer monitor.
i’m all for free aim, especially if it’s completely optional. What if visors were selected like in MP3: you tap a button and it brings up a grid, you mouse over the correct cell and that’s your visor.
i don’t think it would ruin the feel, i’ve often seen suggestions shot down because the idea is to make a game as similar to prime as possible, and if there’s free aim in prime, it makes sense for it to translate to a remake. Of course, it should always be optional.
I think back at SCU the idea of lock on got thrown around and rejected, I’d be interested to know the exact reason for that (not that i’m arguing for it, i’m just interested, seeing as the aim was to make a game as similar to prime as possible)
in any case, even if mouse aim wasn’t implemented, it’d be completely within my capabilities to roughly program an autohotkey script that automates the appropriate button presses based on mouse position.
There’s something everyone seems to be missing, and that is that Metroid is an exploration game. I’ve nothing against mouse-aim in 2D, it often works, but Metroid isn’t a smooth, sleek shooter, where you can blast the hell out of something while wall kicking. As cool as that is, that’s not Samus.
Super Metroid was fantastically brilliant, partially because of the restricted controls. I’d have full trust in Nintendo to work in free aim to Super Metroid, but they didn’t, for a reason.
Basicly, I’m saying that while it could be done, it wouldn’t work in the context of pure exploration.
(At weapon changing, I’m a huge advocate of mouse gestures, and that would be great to see, if done well)
That reason being the SNES dpad. >_>