itch.io

I've been playing a fair bit now and the only way I've found to eat food or use batteries is to set them down and long press LMB while looking at them. If I can hold LMB while holding an item to perform the same action that I perform by holding LMB while looking at it, that would be news to me. But I'm on day nine and still can't even figure out how to get credit for finding a signal and processing it to level three, so I guess that would track. 

The issue is that there are the following different inputs to interact with an object:

• LMB quick press
• LMB long press
• Grab quick press
• Grab long press
• Hold quick press
• Hold long press
• RMB quick press

Which are all repeated over again for the following states:

• Looking at
• Grabbing
• Holding

Which is further multiplied by the following modifiers:

• Scroll wheel
• Sprint (I mapped sprint to 'press left stick' when binding a controller and somehow now I need to use it to put things in the drone bag, hell if I know what key it usually is)

This is over FORTY possible ways to interact with an object, and EVERY interaction becomes its own minigame of figuring out which of the over FORTY possible inputs that you can perform on an object does an OBVIOUS action  that a real life human would have NO difficulty immediately and unhesitantly executing, that every player is going to look to do with the object in a given situation. This effectively transforms Voices of the Void into the QWOP of user interaction.

Sure, some combinations you can start to rule out because they are universal. Short press hold puts something in inventory. But that only removes one combination of the forty, and there are many examples of objects that break many of the conventions you could try to set forth. Broom which sweeps with RMB (holy goddamn SHIT that was agonizing to figure out as somebody trying using an controller). Tape reels that you can only remove from the recording machine with GRAB rather than long-presing HOLD, yet the tape reels are put into a HELD state. The fact that you put tape reels into the machine tape recorder with LMB, but you put drives into the signal playback/processing machines by long-pressing HOLD (or wait, maybe it's LMB too and it's removing them that's different between drives and reels?). Broombas whose inventory you access by using the SCROLLWHEEL and LMB, but I don't think I interact with the drone bag in the same way? The whole ridiculous situation where you can grab drive out of a signal machine and put it at slot of another machine, but even though you moved the object correctly through time and space, you didn't use the right magic word while making the motion, you need to use the other magic word for performing  the very same physical motion.

And to top it all off - there is NO radical, special sophistication that Voices of the Void has somehow introduced with having FORTY possible user inputs relating to objects. The things that your character is doing is NOT an order of magnitude more complex than any other video game. It might not be universal across all other games, but I have absolutely been able to pick up world objects and set them down while also holding a firearm that I can shoot or a sword I can swing. I've also been able to pick up and hold an object and then have it interact with the world other than just firearms that put holes in things. I've been able to enter things into keypads, eat food, reload objects that take consumables (be they bullets or batteries or whatever). All without even really thinking about it because of an effective user interface design that apparently deserved far more respect than I've ever paid before in those other games. I really wonder how much somebody actually likes "the complexity", or more honestly they just like playing interaction QWOP (QWOP is a game after all) where it becomes possible to make mistakes, be wrong, and you need to get interactions right across a myriad of inputs.  That it just feels complex and sophisticated because of all of the different possible inputs you have to think through, even though the actual interactions character is performing with the world are exactly the same as the games that achieve this with vastly less confusion and a vastly simpler set of commands. 

I think the real, true test here is just how much effort goes into actually performing these actions IRL. If much of a game's interaction is managed by a single interact key that has a context aware-input that simply knows that the desired interaction with food is to eat it, the interaction with a mounted tape reel is to take it off the machine and start holding it - and then a context aware single activation key for equipped item, where brooms sweep and tape drives are installed into a slot - it would indeed make doing these sort of things thoughtless and effortless when compared with the current controls where every one of these interactions currently involves a separate keybinding - but aren't all of these actions also effortless and thoughtless in real life too? I never find myself unable to take off a tape reel because I tried to hold it my hands rather than grab it in my hands, I never hold a broom and can't figure out how to sweep it, I never get stuck not being sure how to eat food, I never have a drive in my hand that I can't insert because I'd 'grabbed' it instead of 'held' it.

I don't think there is a single way your character actually interacts with the world that couldn't be managed by just four buttons, including a trigger:

• Put in inventory (long press to access its inventory)
• Interact (long press to move it around in the air, releases object when press is released) (interact is context-intelligent, does the obvious thing you wish to do with something) (never activates a held object, is only an interaction with the world object)
• Activation button (e.g. trigger, no long press function other than continuous activation) (is never used as an interact button - only ever activates held item)
• Switch held item, ideally a radial menu (long press to access your inventory)

This is only 5 different ways of interacting with the world, and then two of interacting with yourself. Maybe add one or two functions to more easily place equipped item, while easily keeping it under 20 possible ways of interacting.