1) This was a concern of mine regarding any macintosh versions that might appear at a later date. I'm really not sure what I could do for an alternative, and the controls are mapped specifically rather than to some sort of numbered index that you could change out on the fly. (if button #0 is pressed you shoot. Let's set button #0 to the Q key or the up key or whatever". This is just a limitation of Game Maker. Renoki was saying the same thing.
In short, the controls cannot be set because of the way events and actions work. I can definitely alter the pause key and let you select a weapon in relative comfort, though.
2) This kinda segues into both #1 and #3, mostly #1 though. I can change WASD to the arrow keys, but they'll be arrow keys FOR EVERYONE. Which maybe they'll like. I dunno, I think of a lot of modern games using WASD so that's where I put it. But hey... We'll see which of the two is more preferable.
3) The game is very dependent on the direction you are facing, especially in terms of combat. As easy as cardinal directions sound, they would by necessity not be able to govern dedicated forward movement. While cardinal movement could be done, a seperate button would be needed for moving towards the mouse.
Honestly though, the controls are just something you have to get used to, for the most part. Even I will admit that strafing is a little bit broken, because it is supposed to reset every time you let go of the button, depending on where the mouse is in relation to it. Originally, A and D always moved it in the same direction, which got confusing when the craft was facing downward. You bring up a good point, it's just that this would not be able to govern your main forward movement and there'd need to be some more buttons to press.
That's open to change, just keep in mind what other buttons use what. Right click for instance...
4) I don't wanna rip off either game *too* much. Although they don't appear, there are health expansions that take the form of squares below your health bar (much like in Metroid), for a total of 16 in the game. Each of these is part of a global variable string for determining specific collected instances (did you get the one IN THIS ROOM yet? Oh you did, ok I"ll delete it then."😉, as rooms cannot remain on persistent status due to enemy populations.
Health as a number would actually be relatively easy. I could even display it in terms of TOTAL health by using the value of collected health tanks as a hundreds digit, and they'd probably work out alright with this. Again, the problem is trying to find a preferential sweet spot, something more people prefer to something else. Not impossible, just not sure it'd be popular.
In short, I can *fix* things, but I can't open them up to the player to change (due to how events are handled.) for #3, It sounds good, but I'll need to determine an extra button to use (and that could be dramatically dependent upon #2.
There's actually plans for a somewhat unique minimap system too, but it requires more knowledge of drawing surfaces than I possess.
