Our space shooter (link in sig) is designed to play just as fast and frantically as a good First Person Shooter. But, it is not an FPS, since there is complete freedom of movement in any direction (no horizon). When a bunch of players get together on a LAN, the action is so fast paced and we have gotten some great feedback, but there is a major persistent problem... We find that a lot of PC gamers will not play using a joystick/gamepad. They simply refuse to own one. Our game is really designed to use a joystick or gamepad, because we are NOT a simulator. We purposefully tried to keep the control simple. There is a lot of depth and strategy in the game based on having 20 unique ships with different attributes, blah blah blah Shameless plug aside, we have provided an input system that allows the player to use a keyboard/mouse, or another other direct input device, with all functions mappable to any button the player would like. But, no matter what we try, the game just sucks with a keyboard and mouse. Nothing we have come up with so far has allowed the kb/mouse players to keep up with the joystick players. Why the hostility towards input devices? Can a game on the PC that does not use a kb/mouse for control have a chance? Are the only games that can succeed on the PC RPGs, RTS, FPSs, and puzzle games? This is what we have so far: Mouse = fly/aim Mouse wheel = throttle Left click = primary weapon Right click = secondary weapon A = toggle primary target S = toggle primary weapon link D = toggle secondary weapon link space bar = afterburn We allow the sensitivty for everything to be adjusted, as well as adjusting manuverablity of ships based on throttle percentage, etc... trying to ensure the experience is as close to what we intended as possible using a keyboard and mouse. that's it. The FPS crowd is our target market, but we have found it difficult to convince them that a joystick is a worthy investment. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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Original post by DrewCaliburClark We find that a lot of PC gamers will not play using a joystick/gamepad.

Its probably not so much that they won't play a game with a joystick/gamepad, it is that they don't want to buy one. The only games that need joysticks are flight simulators, and if you aren't a big fan of flight sims, why own a joystick?

Have you ever played Freelancer? For all its flaws, that game had a great mouse-based control system. You might want to check it out.

- Mike

i got a joystick a few months ago. it has like a hundred buttons and switches and all this other crap. it has a little button with a cover that flips down over it, that button is for the big nukes i guess, i love those. it is soooooo cool, but i haven't used it yet...

i also altered an xbox controller to work with a USB port, which is great for playing some games. but, most games do not have joystick support, and those that do have really crappy joystick support (how the hell are they not going to let me customize my buttons/axes/etc???? with unreal tournament, up and down change weapons, and left and right move me left and right. i haven't figured out how to walk yet!)...

anyway, i'd recommend just making the keyboard/mouse input customizable as hell (i.e. let them use any keys / mouse-buttons / mouse axes in any way they like) and let the players sort it out. i know some people that use wacky keyboard configurations for FPSes that i can't even come close to using, but they can control their characters with extreme precision. assuming the controls are simply enough for a gamepad to be used, they ought to be able to configure the keyboard well enough to play.

sorry for rambling... tired... need a nap...

For just about any game that has a point-n-shoot/click control scheme I usually prefer the mouse for its greater range of "precision" provided for looking around, as the granularity for input data is not delegated to the "directional" controls. For just about any other action oriented game I actually prefer a gamepad/flight-stick as keyboard keys are just boolean states with no real "precision" when it comes to the input data retrieved from them (at least until keyboards, gamepads, DirectX, etc. start providing dedicated support for analog buttons).

- When a set of input directly controls the direction of movement I prefer an analog control stick setup, as keyboard controls like [w, s, a, d] has limited resolution in control of diagonal directions.
- When control of direction is split between multiple input sources as in most FPSs I prefer mouse and keyboard input, as the extra diagonal resolution in not necessary for the keyboard as the mouse more than makes up for it.

I think one of the main drawbacks currently with pc gamepads is due to the lack of any real support for controllers outside of flight/driving based control systems. Ever since the main crossover to mainstream console development very few hardware manufacturers keep up anywhere near the same quality of hardware production compared to their console counter parts.

(Aside: I really can't even believe it took Microsoft so long to consider cross machine support for controllers up until XNA, given the platform similarities I would have thought this would have been an obvious, and very beneficial addition from the start (read: analog device support))

As such very few PC games take full advantage of or in some cases, even consider that a PC player may have taken steps to have decent gamepad based controls setup. This comes mainly from certain games limitations in configuration choices, especially when it comes to ports from a console game. For some reason, except in certain circumstances, it has become pretty much standard to map "every" in-game action to a separate key sequence not allowing for a single key sequence to activate multiple commands either at once or in context to the situation used. In a console game it is not uncommon for a button to perform a number of actions based on the situation it is used in because of the limited button set compared to devices such as a keyboard. In ports or in comparable genre games on the PC developers seem to ignore that this is sometimes beneficial to a control design and as such a control scheme that usually works extremely well for a controller falls apart when restricted by the single action per key design of most keyboard-centric control schemes.

The other thing is, as was said, controllers for computers are not usually sold with a computer. Which means an extra purchase of a possibly lacking device when compared to console versions.

I also have an xbox controller usb cable, and would love to use it effectively in a number of games, but as numerous developers don't take into account the fact that I may have a setup that is equivalent to, or could rival that of a console, most games have poor or inadequate support for gamepads outside of the game genres that usually signify a greater need for them (driving/flight).


[EDIT:] It is really difficult to exaclty match input control efficiency with the types you are going for. This is mainly due to the "continuous" nature of the input coming from controllers. This is mainly with concern to the mouse being a relative movement device. A mouse returns movement data only as long as it is actually moving, which means to get a contant stream of input data, a constant effort has to be made in always moving the mouse. A controller has the advantage of being an absolute device when it comes to input data, you only have to keep the controls in the state it was in before and you get the "movement" change for free in most input design schemes. The usually automatic input interpretation of gamepad state data is its main advantage since there is no real "effort" involved in maintaining input sate and as long as a particular input state is maintained there is nothing else else required of the user. The stateless interpretation of mouse data requires constant adjustments to keep the related input states consistent with what the user is attempting to do. Throw that in with the instinctive reponse ratio differences between keyboard<-to->mouse<-to->analog-stick and the problem gets a little difficult. Moving the view direction controls to the keyboard would alleviate the persistent state issue of mouse controls, but the difference in terms of instictively relating action decisions to control usage becomes apparent. Even more so with the instictive advantage of an analog stick.

In the end I think a extensively customizable input configuration is the best way to allow players to play how they see fit. I too, would be interested in hearing what others on the forum would suggest as ways of evening the gap between gamepad and traditional keyboard/mouse control schemes.



[Edited by - Amadeus on August 12, 2004 1:01:00 AM]

You hit some of the problems we have right on the head Amadeus. Such as the continuous mouse movement issue. In our case, moving the mouse causes your ship to begin to turn. This can be combinded with a "roll" button that causes a banking of the ship as well. But, the turn doesn't stop until the player resets the mouse back to the null position. This was necessary, in order to allow continuous turning, without forcing the player to pick up the mouse and bring it back to the center of the pad and keep moving left, to do a continuous turn.

An analog stick would just reset on its own, allowing very precise control of a turn and adjustments in the middle of a turn to track targets. Our testers tell us that the mouse control can be gotten used to eventually, but I still feel that it's clunky. I just don't see a way around it though.

Also, the idea of simple controls is very appealing, and that is why we strived to be a shooter, and not a simulator. We have tried to keep the controls very simple, while adding a lot of depth to the game through special situations. Such as, when using the afterburner, ship manueverability is cut by two-thirds. Also, you cannot use weapons while boosting. Also, manueverability increases as your throttle decreases, allow a player to do quick turn-arounds, if you are willing to stop moving while you do it. This and other types of situations allow the players to have a huge range of control and strategy, even though the game doesn't use a large amount of buttons.

For another example, the Splinter Cell games, on the consoles, make great use of simplified controls, that I feel actually becomes more effective. Such as, when opening a door, a list of options comes up, allowing you to open it only a little, use a camera to peek in the door, fling it open, or stand off to the side while opening it. This is all done via one action button, and drop down list of options once you have your hand on a door knob. If all these actions were mapped to separate buttons on a keyboard, that would be become very cumbersome very quickly.

How, in a front-end configuration screen, could you effectively allow players to map multiple actions to a single button, based on different in-game senarios? Could you use a column based approach, listing the possible actions that could be taken based on what the character is doing, then allow any button to be mapped, even if it has a different function in another column? Would this get way to overwhelming and time wasting if the game has a huge amount of interactivity and situations where different controls can be used? What's a good solution? Especially since you can't be sure how many buttons the player will have on an input device ahead of time?

We enforce a button minimum for our game - you must have an input device with at least 6 buttons, but all we can do is map the functions by default to button #1 #2 #3, etc, and we aren't even sure what buttons these will be for the player. It's just our best guess at a usable default configuration.

Joysticks died for me when they released the SpaceOrb. Then they just HAD to go out of business before making WinXP drivers.

DAMN YOU SPACETEC!!! *waves frantically*

Eww @ mouse_null_position.

I remember the game "Beach head" used a control scheme like that, were you move the mouse a little to the left and the turret swings slowly to the left. Move it a lot left, turret swings left fast, etc. I didn't like it. I think the game would have succeeded in allowing mouse-over actions of repeated lifting of the mouse and setting back down.

Here's a suggestion to the movement of your ships with a mouse and keyboard. Allow mouse-over movement in flight, but propose an alternate solution via keyboard to your problem.
Have a button, we'll say 'the down arrow', cause the ship to point its nose up to gain elevation. The 'up arrow' causes it to dive.
Of course, you could do the same with the mouse, but the keybutton allows you to do it continuously with one press, much the same way pressing forward or back on a joystick allows.

Moving the mouse left and right would control a sort of 'rudder' of the ship (looking left/right). Left and Right arrows could allow the ship to roll. Combining up/down with left/right would produce a banking motion. The movement of the mouse enhances the precision of player-controlled aiming.

I know you didn't ask for help with kb/mouse input. I think you wanted an opinion on whether or not joysticks/gamepads were obsolete. I've got a Hammerhead FX and if there were any new games that required a joystick, I'd use it. Of course I would.

The problem with mouse-as-joystick (ie null position and movement is a kind of acceleration instead of direct velocity) is that it can be very difficult to get the mouse to exactly the dead position again. Is the dead zone configurable in your game, and if not, is it large enough to make it easy to hit with the mouse? I've always had that kind of problem in any game with that style of controls.

As said by others, the reason I won't buy a joystick is that I'd only use it for the one game. I used to have a game pad that I used for descent1/2, but after it died I didn't replace it. I've tried using a joystick for FPS and the like, and really I'd like too, but they just aren't precise or flexable enough to replace the mouse for such genres.
Edit: Just to expand on the problem with joysticks for other types of games: I really wanted a joystick to work for FPSes, so I bought a rather expensive one (I don't remeber which, but it was highly reccomended and expensive compared to most other joysticks) and even a cheap ball mouse beat it for accuracy. Compared to an optical mouse, it was no contest at all. Now that I'm getting into EE, maybe I'll figure out what the problem is with joysticks and rig something precise up from optical mouse parts or something =-P

[Edited by - Extrarius on August 12, 2004 5:44:22 PM]

I just don't think that there's anyway to get mouse control to be the equal of a joystick. The stategy I'd use is to encourage the players to make the investment of buying a joystick. If you are including some sort of ladder system into your game, why not make it so that it shows what controller each player used. When people see that all of the top players use a joystick, then they'll all want one as well.

WiLD2, I really appreciate the suggestion actually, and I want to do some experiments tonight to see how well that could work. Very intersting... Thanks for the "input" (please forgive the lame pun)

I too had a Hammerhead controller that I loved... but there's no XP drivers!!! I found some unofficial drivers that didnt' work too well, but I appreciated the effort.

Extrarius, I also appreciate the suggestion for configurable deadzone, and I want to see how well that could work also. We do have a sensitivity slider, to help with adjusting how far the mouse moves to determine how hard the ship turns.

I just want to give the player the best experience possible, no matter how they choose to play. I wish I could force all players to use a joystick, so they could have the best experience possible, but I want everyone who wants to play to play. Maybe they'll love it enough to go get a device.