Hello – thank you for your comment!

The game is still a work in progress – there are still lots to do before the remake is complete. The plan is to remake the game as true to the original game as possible to start with, and then create “mods” to the game that the player can turn on and off for a different experience. The auto-pickup is one of the mods that we have talked about. Autopilot to minerals is a new idea – thank you.

In the Sega Genesis version, you could use a “scan for minerals” menu item that would basically show the map with “hot spots” that you could move to and hit the confirm button to pick up without the menu drill-downs that the PC version has. For surface “mine” icons like in the PC version the Genesis version also lets you just move over it, however the genesis version automatically picks up things you move over without the confirm button. This is OK for SF1, but not for SF2. Where I think the Unity version should deviate a little here (aside from needing to add controller support) is allow the player to use auto-pickup anything moved over/near if scanned first (thus knowing what it is), that would reduce the amount of menu drill down, and accidentally throwing away items when you think you’re picking up something and instead dropping it (which happened more than once in SF1 and SF2.)

A more elaborate option would be to
( o ) Always pick up minerals nearby
( ) Only pick up (list) of minerals nearby
( ) Manual pick up minerals only (SF1 DOS behavior)

And a further extension of that would be to “autopilot” to those minerals (eg if the game was played on a tablet.) A SF2 variation would include the lifeforms, but since the lifeforms in SF1 amount to pretty much nothing of value, I’d probably leave it as a manual option, just like artifacts and scanning ruins.