I want spacial navigation. I don't want "kerthunk" feelings.
Here's now it works, in 2D:
- you have a cursor. But it doesn't jump around to targets or on a grid: it just... goes.
- 'wasd' go up/right/left/down as you expect.
- Alternate mode: 'esdf', to keep you from leaving the home row. But I don't know how desirable that will be (makes shift, etc, that much harder to hit).
- movement has INERTIA. the longer you hold the key down, the faster you go.
- holding down Shift makes you ACCELERATE faster.
- holding down Control gives you cruise control at that current speed, but still lets you change direction.
- pressing Space causes the camera to focus on the nearest CenterOfGravity (but not the cursor to jump, yet).
- in this mode, 'a' and 'd' will now switch the camera focus to other nearby CoGs.
- pressing Space again will jump the cursor to that CoG.
- pressing Shift will cancel the camera/cursor desync and leave the camera centered back on the cursor.
- alternate idea: some key that makes you start gravitating to the nearest CoG.
That's about it.
Notice how this also works pretty seamlessly with tablet or other touch metaphors, or even with occasional use of mouse.
You can establish new CoGs (Center of Gravity) at will:
- Tab (or something?) makes a new CoG.
- This happens wherever your cursor currently is.
- Consider how this behaves when combined with the Space-to-jump-to-nearby-CoG feature: every CoG is easier to navigate to than the empty space around it.
- You can label CoGs if you want (but you really don't need to).
- New windows spawn somewhere around a CoG. It should feel roughly orbital.
- We'll probably need to toy with various ways to make this have some amount of spacial persistence when you add new things, but also enough "budge" to be naturally cozy.
You reposition things using the cursor:
- You can select things (keyboard action required for this not yet determined).
- When things are selected, holding Space will drag them closer to the cursor.
- Holding Shift and Space at the same time will drag them faster (and pay less attention to the gravity of the CoG, or make them more likely to switch between CoGs).
- Some other mode can let you tweak things by small precise steps, but I'd expect to use that less often.
- Overall this is meant to feel like slinging things to one side of your desk or the other... not meant to produce precise marching grids of stuff that you can get OCD over.