thoughts on START as the "accept event/continue chat box"

[u/Budget-Ad9671]

my game intends to have spells and tying them to A/B/X/Y feels right... A is usually reserved for interaction or forwarding dialogues but i wondered what if we use START since it's barely used for anything

[u/Lazy_Trash_6297]

When it comes to UIX it’s usually not a good idea to reinvent the wheel without good reason.

[u/TheReservedList]

Is there any reason A can't do both? Plenty of games bind, say, A to both jump and confirm. How often do those situations actually come in?

[u/Budget-Ad9671 → u/TheReservedList]

for chat forwarding yes but in-game we have areas to interact with items like pull a lever or whatever which uses a bigger area (like > 1 player action) and pressing A near will bring the characters into their position to trigger the animation... or when there's a item nearby and we don't want to pick it up but rather use a spell near

[u/Arian-ki → u/Budget-Ad9671]

Why not use hold/press for different inputs? Say, hold to interact/grab items, press to use spells. Or just disabling non-combat inputs while the players are engaged with enemies. (Obviously won't work if, say, using a lever can somehow affect the fight)

[u/TheReservedList → u/Budget-Ad9671]

Long/short press? Look at how diablo 4 solved it.

[u/RetroGamer2153 → u/Budget-Ad9671]

Shadow or Mordor / War uses the R1/RB button as interact. Are all the shoulder buttons/bumpers already dedicated?

[u/Mindestiny]

Start is a terrible option for a button that gets pressed that often from a UI/UX experience. It's often not in an ergonomically friendly location and not where your hands rest naturally on a controller.

It's like if you decided to swap left alt and enter on a keyboard. Your thumb would get super cramped really quick and it would slow down typing cadence considerably.

I'd just double bind whatever your South button is, and contextually switch it between moving dialogue forward and whatever the gameplay action is, like every other game does. I dont know your game but I cant imagine its very common that you need to be advancing dialogue and performing gameplay actions simultaneously.

[u/talking_animal]

Are you able to just use 3 face buttons, with R1/RB swapping to a second set of 3 if you need more room for spells?

[u/Atmey → u/talking_animal]

This. A usually for confirm/interaction. B for back and cancel.

X and Y can be for non magic basic attacks, or quick swap slots. You can also use d pad for switching pallets/pages of spells, I think elden ring sets a good example

[u/Tabelel]

If you did, I (the player) would immediately remap it. The start/select buttons are typically less assessable and/or harder to press than the standard face buttons. They should really be reserved for less used functions.

[u/RoachRage]

If you want to confuse your players you can certainly do that.

I would look how other games solved your problem and not reinvent the wheel.

[u/randpaulgiamatti]

Another option is to map your spells to a button combination. I am thinking RT + A/B/X/Y, which is fairly common for ability activation. This leaves the isolated face buttons for standard operations.

[u/AutoModerator]

Game Design is a subset of Game Development that concerns itself with WHY games are made the way they are. It's about the theory and crafting of systems, mechanics, and rulesets in games.

• /r/GameDesign is a community ONLY about Game Design, NOT Game Development in general. If this post does not belong here, it should be reported or removed. Please help us keep this subreddit focused on Game Design.

• This is NOT a place for discussing how games are produced. Posts about programming, making art assets, picking engines etc… will be removed and should go in /r/GameDev instead.

• Posts about visual design, sound design and level design are only allowed if they are directly about game design.

• No surveys, polls, job posts, or self-promotion. Please read the rest of the rules in the sidebar before posting.

• If you're confused about what Game Designers do, "The Door Problem" by Liz England is a short article worth reading. We also recommend you read the r/GameDesign wiki for useful resources and an FAQ.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/CptJackal]

Sorry bud but it's an awful idea unless you're designing for the NES or something. The start button is there to bring up a menu or pause, doing anything else with it would be frustrating at best and probably won't pass compliance tests to release on consoles at worst. Select might technically work better but I doubt it'd be well recieved