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Control Schemes

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I'm catching up on 'casts, and I realized there were a fairly big number of segments about control schemes - yeah Kinect/Move badmouthing, but also lots of stuff about button based ones. [Ep13 (from 01:07:30) Ep9 and something in Ep10, check them out again].

It made me wonder : should pad control schemes themselves support player expression ?

One Button Bob works because you've got no choice; but playing a bit of Minecraft, Bioshock and Mario Galaxy 2, I realized you can replace separate buttons with a shitload of game rules to expand agency. With only 2 actions available but a vast number game objects/NPC reacting differently to these, you can get fairly complex reaction with limited input.

But then, are people more able to absorb more game rules or a more complex scheme ?

Assassin's Creed Puppeteer fails but I find the idea very elegant : armed/unarmed end models intent/mood instead of definite action ... Still, most games fail to transform intent into the proper action, so it's kind of a dead end ? Anybody played Shattered Memories ? Does this actually works ?

Or maybe Crawford's right is literally right and true interactivity means more verbs available at any time. But then how do you filter/bind those verbs without turning into freakin' Flight Simulator ?

Fellow Thumbeteers, any thoughts about all this brain dump ?

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It made me wonder : should pad control schemes themselves support player expression?

As an Xbox player primarily, I'm surprised with how well its games use the controller to do complex things, even if it takes me as a player a long time to use them well.

For example, I played through all of GTA IV without perfecting my shooting ability. Using only the two triggers and right thumbstick, the game let me Target -> Zoom -> Adjust -> Shoot to take down thugs more easily. This might have been how Rockstar wanted me to play the game in the first place, but as a player, the game let me "grow into it." Heck, it took me longer than that to switch from Arrow Keys to WASD.

Player expression is always subject to the developers, though. I was very disappointed by the change in movement from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2. Shepard used to walk normally when holding the left thumbstick halfway. Now she goes instantly from a crawl into a jog, making it impossible to stroll around the Citadel. There's no way to blend in and treat the Galaxy as a real place. You just run, run everywhere. It really takes a lot out of the game for me.

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I couldn't care less what the control scheme looks like as long as it's able to translate my intentions accurately. Complex set of "verbs" tied to different set of keystrokes like a flightsim wouldn't deter me from enjoyment (though it would take considerable more time to build muscle memory). It is of my opinion that people can get used to any bad things.

Context-sensitive buttons are a wonderful thing but only if it makes sense. In modern P&C adventure games, for example, i don't think anybody complained about amalgamation of verb coins "turn on," "turn off," "open," "close," etc into a single "use" button. "Do Something" button like in Fable 2/3(?) is a big no-no in my opinion. I would feel completely helpless if I don't feel I'm in control of my character.

A bit off-topic but it annoys me very much that almost every PC game uses space bar for jump. :( I played Doom and Jedi Knight more than any other shooter, so I prefer space bar for "use" and right click for jump.

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Player expression is always subject to the developers, though. I was very disappointed by the change in movement from Mass Effect to Mass Effect 2. Shepard used to walk normally when holding the left thumbstick halfway. Now she goes instantly from a crawl into a jog, making it impossible to stroll around the Citadel. There's no way to blend in and treat the Galaxy as a real place. You just run, run everywhere. It really takes a lot out of the game for me.

I'm a theoretical proponent of analog movement control, but a lead tester recently told me that the vast majority of gamers usually pushes the stick to the max; only using analog for the angle. A button for walk/run is apparently a less confusing and less 'physically stressing' input.:gaming:

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I'm a theoretical proponent of analog movement control, but a lead tester recently told me that the vast majority of gamers usually pushes the stick to the max; only using analog for the angle. A button for walk/run is apparently a less confusing and less 'physically stressing' input.:gaming:

I hate this.

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Err, what ?

People not having the dexterity to use an analogue stick the way intended, to me they should be used properly in the same way that triggers should be. You are losing out on hundreds of thousands of actual values (The 360 controller analogue stick has values x ϵ [-255,255] y ϵ [-255,255]), obviously not all are recognised in the game but a subset of them will be for certain velocities (which accounts for direction, velocity being a vector.

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A lead tester recently told me that the vast majority of gamers usually pushes the stick to the max; only using analog for the angle.

It's depressing to think that this might be why the Mass Effect team made this change.

BIOWARE DEVELOPER 1: "Sometimes players push the left thumbstick only halfway. This makes Commander Shepard walk instead of run."

BIOWARE DEVELOPER 2: "That's a problem; research indicates that these people really mean to run. Let's get rid of Shepard's normal walking speed."

I have recently walked normally in Grand Theft Auto IV, Limbo, and Super Mario Galaxy. I think it's necessary to have a normal movement speed, if only to let the player adjust to the world.

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... and not fall off ledges. Bioware games have no ledges to fall off of, so who cares about the walking speed?

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I think it's more a problem with the controllers than it is with the players using them.

Compare the N64 stick to the Xbox stick. The N64 stick was longer. Longer stick = more torque = allows for finer movements. I also wonder if adding resistance as the stick is pushed further would help.

Which brings me to my next, somewhat random, point: why aren't we seeing more innovations in controller design? It's really frustrating to me. This motion stuff is interesting and all that, but I think there's a world of exploration yet to happen in the area of typical controllers, that would make games more approachable, while still maintaining "hardcore-ness" for present gamers.

Annnnnnnnnd, I'm late for a meeting now.

Cheers,

Mo

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I'm hoping that the next gen consoles will have a trackball built into the controllers.

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I wasn't even thinking of anything as dramatic as that. A few simple change would go a long way:

1) I'd love it if analog triggers had the same "click" function that the gamecube controller had. Seriously, it was possibly /the/ most ingenious, yet criminally under-used controller feature.

1a) While we're at it, a bit more analog-ness on the triggers too. Maybe a bit of resistance too. Basically, I feel analog controls need to have more weight to them.

2) The "press in the analog stick" buttons have to go. They're awful. Hard to press, easy to accidentally press, and it's not at all obvious that they even exist.

3) This one's a bit more hardcore, but I wonder if swapping around the trigger and bumper would work better? You always want to use the trigger with your index finger, so you end up using the one finger between two buttons. If the bumper was behind the trigger, you'd be able to use your index finger for the triggers, and middle finger for the bumper.

4) What about face button placement? I wonder if the gamecube face button placement actually helped players understand controller layout better. There may be benefits in making more important buttons bigger, and so on.

5) Sort out your dpads. It's 2010. This shouldn't be difficult, Nintendo patents not withstanding.

6) Finally, I wish developers would take more care in assigning features to buttons. Namely, I don't want my dpad to be mapped to a bagfull of random features. I can (just about) understand left/right for cycling inventory & weapons. I can understand up/down for zooming a minimap. But when random shit like nightvision is mapped to left-dpad, I just get mad. There's no logic to it. The dpad should *not* be treated like 4 extra buttons to use.

Cheers,

Mo

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I wasn't even thinking of anything as dramatic as that. A few simple change would go a long way:

1) I'd love it if analog triggers had the same "click" function that the gamecube controller had. Seriously, it was possibly /the/ most ingenious, yet criminally under-used controller feature.

The GC controller is easily my favourite controller of all time, though the one flaw it had was that the D-pad was too small. The 360 controllers have the problem of durability, after a while the sticks lose tension making them horrible to use (I have 5 360 controllers but only use 2 of them). For this reason I'm really looking forward to the Razer 360 controller, which looks to be fantastic, also their kit has never died on me.

Though if the Razer controller turns out to be gash I might go for one of the fancy turning D-pad controllers

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I'm hoping that the next gen consoles will have a trackball built into the controllers.
I am Snooglebum and I approve this message.

IMAGINE HI FIDELITY MISSILE COMMAND!

EDIT: hey, 200 posts! :woohoo:

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I'm hoping that the next gen consoles will have a trackball built into the controllers.

A trackball instead of the right analog stick would really improve the way to aim in FPS/TPS games on a console. It would then suck less.

But in all these years of controllers they still didn't expand the number of buttons you can use simultaneously. It's still 4 to 6 buttons at once max, where 6 buttons is stretching it a bit, as it's quite difficult to keep 4 fingers on all shoulder buttons.

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A trackball instead of the right analog stick would really improve the way to aim in FPS/TPS games on a console. It would then suck less.

But in all these years of controllers they still didn't expand the number of buttons you can use simultaneously. It's still 4 to 6 buttons at once max, where 6 buttons is stretching it a bit, as it's quite difficult to keep 4 fingers on all shoulder buttons.

Are you sure a trackball would actually go over well with users? I can see it upping FPS aiming on a console in theory, but people would be up in arms over slippery thumbs/no R3 button/change in general.

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