Solved one of the difficult problems for the main part: Controls Design
It is difficult, especially in an early stage, because of two problems I have to face:
1.(the most difficult one) deciding what mechanics and abilities the player should be offered
2. designing input to access all of the abilities in a non-conflicting, most economic and direct
way possible
Regarding input devices, I want it to be potentially equally playable on a xbox360-controller and the keyboard + mouse combo. But the xbox360-controller is its native device. So I will refer to that for the time being. There will also be several control-types, for more and less skilled players. The type respecting point 2 is called "competitive" and that is the point of interest here. I came up with a solution candidate that is worth showing at this stage:
The idea needs some elaboration. First it might seem that the jump on the L-trigger is not intuitive but otherwise it would not satisfy point 2. So it is worth to get accustomed to it.
In this design you can play an entire match without moving the thumbs from the thumbsticks, the path all the fingers have to move is kept minimal. In addition no simultaneous action conflicts with another.
Things like crouching and running have been optimized. On joypad it is trivial, you have the analog stick to control the speed. On the keyboard however you run with the maximum regular speed by default since that is what you most often want to do. You don't have to waste one finger to accelerate like in Super Metroid. If you wish to decelerate or run with the slow speed you push the opposite run direction while running. You crouch while you
hold down, otherwise you will stand up. That way the up direction is not required to stand up and is free for something else. Here it is used for the so called sniper mode. While you hold up you are in a precision mode. It is a new mechanic which allows 2D thumbstick-shooters to have pixel-perfect aiming in long range. It will be explained later.
The weapon change allows for instant switching between 4 weapons (can also be higher but requires more precision). Pressing R3 (press right thumb in) will select the weapon corresponding to your thumb position (right, left, up, down). Of course all that requires you to be familiar with a joypad to not accidently click R3.
One thing to notice, since the sophisticated feature set is packed optimally now the face buttons and directionals are completely free for potential other needs.
The next video content will likely introduce running. It will take a while because I have to copy and modify the sprites from Super Metroid again.