I am trying to develop Xenorogue to be playable using only the mouse, that way it would also work well on a touch screen; i do not disregard the possibility of having keyboard shortcuts, but only to make the game a bit easier to play, and would be completely optional.

I have been all this time busy with the graphics for the terrain, the player, and the first enemy, thus i have not been able to try it with a smartphone until now.

My premise is that turns do not matter much if there is no imminent danger—having to press ten times a key to move ten cells gives you more control, but it is boring if there is nothing else to do. Therefore, I am trying out a point and click scheme, like in graphical adventures, in that the player walks to the pointed cell. I have not implemented the path routines yet, and it works like this:

(It is a bit chaotic because there are a lot of animations at the same time, but the important part is that it follows the cursor placed with the mouse. You can also try it out with the HTML build.)

The truth is that it works on a smartphone better than i thought i would, in the sense that i have more or less the same precision with my finger and with the mouse, but only if i increase “enough” the screen’s zoom.

That’s a bit of a problem, because my idea was that most combats had firearms, since it makes mores sense in a sci-fi setting, and it is better if there is some distance between characters, something that is harder to do with a large scale factor.

In my next test, i will add fire weapons and give the enemy a rudimentary artificial intelligence to return that fire, to check whether the scale is as much a problem as i believe now.

For the time being, despite the gap problem, it seems that this system is going to work, and i can comfortably play with a vertical or horizontal screen, which is always nice.