Software Engineering and Computer Games

Keyboard and mouse controls

There are five main kinds of keyboard controls.

First, there are controls to move the player critter, that is, to change its position, velocity, or orientation.

Second, you can often make the player shoot.

Third, there are controls to change the view location, that is, to move the world relative to your View window.

Fourth, you can reduce or increase the zoom or magnification of the ‘lens’ through which you view the world.

Fifth, when using 3D graphics, there are controls to change the view direction in which you look at the game.

To summarize let’s use the phrase ‘direction keys’ to include the Arrow keys, the PgUp/PgDn keys and the Home/End keys.

These Controls	Affect This
Direction keys	Player Critter’s Motion ...