How important is it to have Mouse support?

[Chrome]

I do not mind spending a lot of money on mouse support but I am really afraid that it is impossible to fix some compatibility issues, also I do not like the path finding. So will Gog, Desura, Steam, etc. require me to have mouse support? 

Also I really want it where I have WASD key with mouse support as Z and X in the field. Is that considered to be okay with game portals? I do not want to give the player the option to use only the mouse.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

If your game doesn't need it, don't put one IMO... I don't see why they would require you, and if they do, then you can just find another portal that doesn't... btw, is this for RM games or not?

 

[Zalerinian]

They don't restrict button bindings because that would be stupid. The game is designed to run with key bindings a certain way so they don't tell you that you can't have your game with them because your bindings aren't a certain way, or that you don't use the mouse. Just use what you want and you will be fine.

 

[Lunarea]

You should ask the game portals directly.

I've been told before that they do expect mouse support, and that they'd go as far as not considering a game if it lacks mouse support. So, e-mail them and check for yourself.

 

[Shaz]

Yes, there are some portals that will reject your game if it doesn't have mouse support. I don't know about the specific ones you listed.


@adiktuzmiko, you have to consider that it's not OUR opinions (RMWeb members or RPG Maker developers) that count with the portals, but it's what their players want. If the majority of players find it easier to play with a mouse, then they will demand mouse support. Portals have a far more stringent set of requirements than most of us are willing to meet in our games, but if we want them to distribute our games, we have to play by their rules, or at least go as far as we can to accommodate them. After all, they are doing us a favor in getting our game in front of many more players than we'd ever be able to reach on our own - it would be wise to listen to their voices of experience when they say what their players will be wanting or expecting, as it's a way WE can boost the potential for sales.

 

[phoenix_rossy]

I've never really seen the point in mouse support... I mean, you don't really play console games with a mouse, right? I bought a cheap retro-gamepad for playing RPG Maker games, and that works a treat! That beings said, as Shaz put it, you're a slave to your customers, no matter what you might think.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

I think they expect it mainly because, its a PC game...

 

[Shaz]

Big Fish will not accept your game if it doesn't have mouse support. Of course, with the latest direction from Big Fish, that may or may not make a difference.


I'll still have it in all my titles - mouse support with clicking and pathfinding makes it a simple step to touch screens, which is necessarily for mobile applications.

 

[Erynn]

Mouse support may not seem important to the way you play, but you are not the entire target audience. Many people find it easier or more relaxing to point and click. Leaving it out limits your potential market in an already limited market.

 

[AkiraKotatsuhime]

How important? Considering it's a game and that should be designed in the way you think it's best, you just have to think about one little point:


- If your Gameplay totally needs it and Keyboard is impossible: Really important, high Priority, just do it and maybe also deactivate Support for Gamepads.


- If it's good as alternative to key control: Try out how hard it would be to do and then decide to implement it or not.


- If it's unplayable or overcomplicated with a Mouse: Don't even dream of doing it! Nobody needs bad Gameplay/Controls in a Game, even if somebody cries for it.


A portal Site that is not accepting Games without Mouse Support should not be taken serious, because it seems they have no Interest in Quality and Respect for Decisions of GameDesign.

 

[orochii]

Mouse, Keyboard and Gamepads (and any other kind of input) are peripherals. While developing, most important thing you need to consider is your target platforms.

Any desktop computer has access to keyboard and mouse, because Windows itself requires them (I normally make my stuff without mouse though, because it's slower pointing and clicking than making some key combinations <3).

Laptops often have touchpads. While it's basic functionality mimics a mouse, it isn't the same. There are things harder to do there, there are some easier (for me they suck but that's my personal taste). Thing is, not even "PCs" have an always defined set of available peripherals.

As for portals, just as everyone has said. Portals have restrictions, mainly because they try to make an standard for the kind of customers they get. It's specializing the content, making it more attractive to a certain public, meaning in more of that specific public to be attracted to the portal. It is selecting a target audience, instead of trying to take all the cake, which could end not to well.

So, in fact, those restrictions could mean that your game would not sell well inside that kind of public. It's better to look a portal that suits you, instead of trying to change your game to their likings. Maybe just those changes would not change at all public acceptance (and could not be well implemented either and result on something too forced), because your game was never intended to them.

Salut,

OZ

 

[Gigglemoo]

A portal Site that is not accepting Games without Mouse Support should not be taken serious, because it seems they have no Interest in Quality and Respect for Decisions of GameDesign.

They have no interest in selling a game people can't play.


Not every keyboard has arrow keys for example. A lot of purchasers never try a demo, so their business will have unhappy customers & support staff will get refund requests.

 

[Kes]

I think there are 2 basic considerations here:

What difference does it make to me as a developer if the player wants mouse or arrows?

- actually none, as far as I can see.  Use Shaz's mouse sytem.  It's free for commercial (so the point made in the original post about spending money on mouse support is no longer relevant) and the player can switch between mouse and arrows as they wish, so I don't have to put in any complicated mechanism to allow that choice.  As far as I can see (and maybe I've missed something crucial here), how I construct my game is independent of their choice - except perhaps for e.g. some mini-games where perhaps one is a better choice than the other.  But if both are available to the player, that is not a problem.  I must admit, I have never understood why some games have to use WASD instead of arrows, so there may be some subtlety which has gone over my head.

What difference does it make to the player?

- the player can use whichever they are most comfortable with, and so will have a better game experience.  As it is the player that is the ultimate focus, that, it seems to me, should be the deciding factor.

 

[AkiraKotatsuhime]

They have no interest in selling a game people can't play.

That's good in first Place and you should know not everything is (better) playable with Mouse (than Keyboard). I would never implement such Options IF they are not fitting to the Game (when they do, there is no Problem at all). I only think about best possible Way(s) to play, not about which of the totally different working Peripherals most People want to use for playing it. Considering in most Cases you only have the Choice of the 3 most usual Peripherals many PC Owners already have, Players should be able to align to such easy Requirements (unless their Ego is bigger than the Amount of Disk Space the Game needs, yeh...).

Not every keyboard has arrow keys for example. A lot of purchasers never try a demo, so their business will have unhappy customers & support staff will get refund requests.

Besides that I have never seen Keyboards without the Arrows field (I know some having less keys, but none of them removes this), it's a Problem the Purchaser has to solve by self, because he/she never read about what is required to play or tried out a Demo before. You can't (and should not try to) help them in such a Situation, because the given Possibilities are enough to be informed before buying something. If you refuse First Aid, everything else will also fail.
And if we are talking about RPG Maker: It's totally made for Creation of Keyboard or (since RPGXP more than ever before) Gamepad controlled Games. Well, you should tell that your Players, especially the ones who don't know the Program behind it, but that's, as said, enough.

 

[Shaz]

A portal Site that is not accepting Games without Mouse Support should not be taken serious, because it seems they have no Interest in Quality and Respect for Decisions of GameDesign.

A comment like that reveals that you're expressing your opinion only, and not facts based on experience. If you are serious about selling your game, you don't say "no" to a distributor that can get you thousands of sales, just because you don't think they should demand mouse support.


They want games that are easy for their customers to play. No matter how simple it might be for a hard-core RPG player or someone who enjoys keyboard-controlled games, a game that requires keyboard, with at least 8 keys for different purposes, is not easy for a casual player who is used to point-and-click mouse control in all their games.


Not adding mouse support, when the majority of your target audience likes mouse support, is just lazy of the developer. Don't blame the portal and say they shouldn't be taken seriously, when in reality YOU are the one saying it's too hard.


And the comment about no interest in quality is just laughable. One portal in particular will grind your game into the ground looking for bugs and things that need to be improved - they will test it much more thoroughly than most games here probably get tested.

it's a Problem the Purchaser has to solve by self, because he/she never read about what is required to play or tried out a Demo before. You can't (and should not try to) help them in such a Situation, because the given Possibilities are enough to be informed before buying something.


And if we are talking about RPG Maker: It's totally made for Creation of Keyboard or (since RPGXP more than ever before) Gamepad controlled Games. Well, you should tell that your Players, especially the ones who don't know the Program behind it, but that's, as said, enough.

No - as a developer, you need to make your game as accessible as possible to your target audience. If your target audience is the RM crowd who's used to playing with a keyboard, that's fine. If you're wanting to distribute through portals whose other games are all mouse based, then that audience will expect mouse control.


Players don't care what the game's made with, and I have NEVER seen a game that's advertised as requiring a certain type of keyboard to play.


It's simple - if you exclude mouse support, you are reducing your sales. If you're okay with that, leave it out. If sales is what you want, then you HAVE to take your audience's preferences into account, and top dictating to them.


Now, before you reply and keep going on with your train of thought, DO you actually HAVE experienced with any released commercial games? Through what portals? Or is everything you're saying based solely on your own opinions? Since you claim portals who require mouse support should not be taken seriously, it's only fair for us to find out how seriously YOUR comments should be taken.

 

[AkiraKotatsuhime]

Not adding mouse support, when the majority of your target audience likes mouse support, is just lazy of the developer. Don't blame the portal and say they shouldn't be taken seriously, when in reality YOU are the one saying it's too hard.

No - as a developer, you need to make your game as accessible as possible to your target audience. If your target audience is the RM crowd who's used to playing with a keyboard, that's fine. If you're wanting to distribute through portals whose other games are all mouse based, then that audience will expect mouse control.

There is it, I won't release a Game right into the Faces of an Audience that is not the Target.
If a Portal would tell me as early as possible what are their Target Audiences and the Requirements, everything alright, I know that this is a Place where I can send in the Game or not. Telling me about that later without chance to know it earlier is the really bad Case I wanted to explain (it's hard for me to state clear in (written) English what I want to say and posting such complex Text takes too much Time to think about every Word 2 or 22 Times).


And I really like it to create something that (only) uses the Mouse, but I can't make every Control Type fitting to every Gameplay Experience I want to create (and wouldn't think about MouseOrNotMouse first, it comes with Design and Concept, not the other Way Round (keep this little Aspect in Mind, I'm developing Games, not selling)). The Magic Spell to make this happen maybe needs to be invented.

Players don't care what the game's made with

Oh, never wanted to say that this would be not the Case.

It's simple - if you exclude mouse support, you are reducing your sales.

DO you actually HAVE experienced with any released commercial games?

I'd like to end this for my Part:
This is the "Commercial Discussion" subforum, but Sales should not be set above everything else and I'm sure you all know that. I don't have any Experience with Selling and also don't have any Plans now. Everything I told you is written from Developer's Standpoint, not about what sells most, because I create what I think could be fun to create and play. Mouse Support and Stuff is not only a Question of Sales (and this totally depends on which Audience you want to address with a Game, there is more to reach than mousefriendly Casual Players or some little Core of RPGTK Users), it's also an Aspect of Game Development and I thought this receives no really consideration when I saw this Thread, maybe I was wrong and overconcerned about it.

 

[Shaz]

There is it, I won't release a Game right into the Faces of an Audience that is not the Target.

That's exactly right, and I wasn't sure after my post, if I'd hit on that correctly. IF you plan to release your game to members of an RM forum, then mouse control is a minor thing, as most people here would have no issues playing a game without it.


IF you're releasing commercially (sales aren't necessarily above everything else, but your goal is to sell as many copies as possible, so sales would be right up there), then you need to consider the audience of your distributors, and mouse control becomes a more important consideration.


Maybe the question should be reworded: How important is it to the player to have mouse control? And that could only be answered by identifying who "the player" is going to be.


Another consideration is, how difficult is it to implement? I've provided a script based on all our commercial RPGs that have been released, converted to Ace, though no Ace game has yet been released that uses this particular script. It's pretty much plug-and-play. But the time to go through and edit events to take advantage of the script might be significant if you're already well into developing your game. And if you use a lot of custom scripts that completely mangle window handling, there might be a lot of rework to get it handling properly. In those cases, depending on the audience, the results may not be worth the effort required.

 

[Zeriab]

Shaz is hinting at a typical cost-benefit analysis. One on hand you have the cost of implementing a mouse system, on the other the potential profit increase for new customers such a system would give you.


Of course, you don't know either so a lot of guesses are going into it. It is pretty clear that Shaz believes building a mouse system was worth it. Something you should include into your analysis.


The standard RPGs with their turn-based battles are excellent candidates for mouse control. For action battle systems and platforming mouse control is not so natural.


Personally, I prefer greater exposure. If some of the audience are more confident with mouse control then I prefer implementing that. Except games with significant structures ill-suited for mouse control.


Don't restrict this purely to mouse control. I have implemented an option to double the size of the mouse icon in Aldorlea games. I have also added options to make text easier to read by increasing the significance of the text shadow or replacing it with an outline. Imo it doesn’t look as nice hence only being options, but it is good to have such features when visually impaired play the game. We should think about them as well.


*hugs*


- Zeriab

 

[Ocedic]

After playing some Big Fish games for my job, I can see the importance of mouse support if you want your game to be accessible to a more casual demographic. Before you scoff and roll your eyes condescendingly, ask yourself whether you care that your player is a 'casual' or hardcore gamer if they're shelling out the same amount of money for your title.

Also, if you think about it, the only reason people think mouse support is so superfluous is because we've become used to not having it by default. Chances are if you're playing a 'professional' game, even an indie one, you would expect mouse support on the PC.

 

[Gump]

After reading through this discussion I'd just like to say that you should always consider mouse support optional unless your game is built to operate with intention as a point to click interface for the player. Unless its like that, it should be provided as an option. You may not like how it handles, but if it works some players might like it. So provide the option if you can, always. That way you can always say at least that there is "optional mouse support" and depending on the game, you can either recommend for or against using it.

This is all assuming you target a selling portal that requires mouse support.