Config and Interface

Configuration & Interface

Another huge difference between Myth 2 and the competition is the interface. With Myth 2 you have the freedom to pan the viewpoint left, right, up, and around the map in almost any direction. Zoom the view in for finer control of your troops and zoom out to view more of the battlefield. This type of interface is a welcome change from the fixed isometric or overhead viewpoints that other RTS games restrict you to. It is possible to do all these things with mouse only, but you'd be crazy to try.

The default setup allows the player to use the keyboard to control the camera, which is a much faster way of manipulating your view than using the mouse only. Quake veterans and other players who are familiar with the 'WASD' method of moving around in a first person shooter should pick up the camera control quickly. Those who are not familiar with 'WASD' will have a much steeper learning curve to deal with. The game does include a tutorial mission that is supposed to acquaint you with the camera control but it doesn't do that great a job of it so prepare to do most of your learning on the go. There are other nice touches to the interface…the whiteboard allows you to draw on the minimap - this is great for communication with teammates in a multiplayer match. Also, you can quickly select units of one type on screen by double clicking them. Bungie gets extra brownie points for allowing users to customize the keyboard commands to their liking!

Overall Bungie did a good job with the interface but there was one problem I found as annoying as the Spice Girls. While you are able to make your own groups of troops and assign them to # keys, the way in which this is done is really clunky. To create a group, you select the desired troops, and hold down ALT-[#]. If you want to grab that group again you press ALT-[#] quickly or cycle through your groups with 'F'. A lot of times in the heat of battle I found myself accidentally creating a new group because I held the buttons down too long or worse, missing the ALT key completely and pressing the Windows key. Obviously Mac users are not going to have that problem but still, it would have been really nice to have one key access to my groups.