Point-and-Click

Point-and- Click ( English for point to something and click on it) is a standard user interface for computer programs, where the user with the help of a pointer to its input device, usually a computer mouse graphically represented on the screen, through the highlighting of certain areas of a graphic user interface, and then pressing a button on his input device (click ) triggers a predefined action.

Application areas in computer games

Adventures

The emphasis on a focused on the computer mouse control concept as a point- and-click is usually, but not exclusively, in adventure games and is regarded there as its own subgenre, where there are different types of implementation.

It takes place here, a different use of the mouse buttons, with the left mouse button is usually used to execute certain actions. Right-click to get different meanings. Sometimes it is used to trigger standard actions (eg right-click opens a door to this ) or it has a universal function (eg, regardless of screen position the clicked with the right mouse button object is viewed ). In rare cases, it is used to display the inventory.

Typical representatives of the point- and-click adventure games are games from LucasArts and Sierra On-Line in the 1990s. However, the first was developed by ICOM Simulations for Mindscape in 1985 Déjà Vu: A Nightmare Comes True. Sierra decided only in 1988 with Manhunter. New York for a change. Prior Adventures were mainly controlled by text input and interpretation by the parser.

Strategy games

The classic point-and- click control provides in strategy games such as Command & Conquer, or Warcraft KKND selecting units or marking of multiple units with the left mouse button, that is similar to the operation in graphical user interfaces of current operating systems (eg the GUI of Windows or KDE). After labeling, another left-click sends the units mostly to the cursor position, while the right mouse button usually used to cancel the current action or to cancel the unit selection.

Other control systems provide that the selection of units with a left click to the " emptiness" is canceled ( ie somewhere in the countryside, for example ), then the right mouse button is usually used to perform the default action. In offensive units, for example, the movement to the cursor position or attacking the target, if the cursor is over an enemy object, the default action.