I've been at odds with myself for a few weeks now about how to impliment the interface for my game idea, so I thought I'd ask for some opinions. The game is more for the action oriented audience (not very casual) and I was wondering if players would be accepting of gameplay that required using a keyboard to input key combinations within a time limit? For example, if you had to press a combination like Up, Left, Left, Down, Up, Right, Down, and Left within a 3 second limit. Input would be limited to just 4 keys and reconfigurable, but I'm still wondering if I should pursue the idea or remodel my gameplay to use just the mouse for sake of simplicity...
Sounds more like a gamepad/keyboard game than a mouse/keyboard game to me. I wouldn't want to have to enter a combo like that too often though - it's a touch complicated. Reminds me of a Mortal Kombat fatality sequence. Hard to say without the game to go by of course.
Prototype it and see if it makes any sense. Also check other input methods while you're at it. There are many things which sound fine in theory, but in reality they just suck. Prototyping is the only way to be sure (well, without wasting too much time).
Agreed w/ oNyx. My guess is that fast mouse-clicking in the manner described would be much more frustrating than its keyboard counterpart, but maybe neither is what you're looking for. The audience you're describing is just fine with keyboard, as long as it's not overly complex (see: Diablo; Fate; etc.).
Mouse Gestures? Have you thought about using Mouse Gestures as an alterative to keys? I've been using a freeware Mouse Gesture command processor called StrokeIt for several years in Windows (very handy, highly recommended), and have often thought about putting them into a game. Darwinia used gestures to great effect, and I'm sure there have been others I can't remember. There are at least 5 articles on Code Project, several with working code.
I had considered it, but didn't know how to implement mouse gestures. I'll look into StrokeIt. With the input I've gotten on the forum and from friends of mine, it looks like I will be leaning towards a more mouse based interface. I won't completely throw the keyboard out the window yet
By all means, don't abandon the keyboard. It's super easy to implement, and let's you easily hook into hardware like my trusty Nostromo. Just to be clear, StrokeIt is an end-user application, and you would have to distribute it with your game if you want to use it to add gestures to your code. This article on Code Project includes a stand-alone C++ class that is a solid implementation which would also be easy to copy if you don't plan to use C++.