The A-Engine: A new Beat 'em Up game engine

[A-Man]

I would be very wary of adopting something, from an article, without serious consideration beforehand (I don't know how much consideration that went into that).
Consider the game in the article, they were showing it off at a convention where it matters that people get how the game works quickly, but concluding that that sort of interface is strictly better than a menu is fallacious due to a lack of data. Consider wanting to play a 1v1 against a friend and having to walk up to a wall, jump and punch it just in order to start the match. It may work for teaching the mechanics to a new player but once you are mildly experienced at the game, it will simply be annoying.

We've given enough thought into that actually. Taking inspiration from that article doesn't necessarily mean we're just going to mimic what they did. The plan is to have the player start aboard a ship. Different rooms are different modes. The steering wheel is the adventure mode..etc. It shouldn't be annoying as long as we keep the important "rooms" nearby.

I also see no reason why you'd want to make the game strictly work with keyboard/controller and not allow the mouse to be used, for menus. If people find it easier to use then why disallow it?

i do find the keyboard faster and more comfortable, but you made a point. I could just allow both. But I am still convinced about getting rid of the main menu altogether to be honest.

https://code.google.com/p/glintercept/

Nice! That should prove useful for debugging.