it's WSAD and mouse or nothing

[Ginger Tea]

Yes there could be a thread about how a mouse is more accurate in FPS' or how consoles auto aim for you so you are not as good at shooting as you thought, but this is more a gripe about people refusing to entertain the idea that their own created game could be played any other way.

I frequent a programming forum for a niche product, not used said product in years ever since moving in 03 and I wasn't using it much before then.

Sometimes people will showcase a good game but use keyboard controls only, even though it would be best played with a game pad and the wired 360 / ps3 ones are USB and many have one or both consoles at their disposal, yet asking for said feature normally brings up the old "FPS should only be played with WSAD and mouse." even if this is not a bloody FPS but a platformer.

I tested and gave (later implemented) feedback (using 360 and ps3 sticks as both gave different button id's for the same button arangement) about this dual thruster hover helecopter shaped thing, it looked half way between a helecopter sans rotor blades and a HK from Terminator.
He didn't know there was a button underneath the analogue sticks and I gave him both sets of ID's so instead of having the digital triggers for thrusting you could thrust and steer using only the thumbs, basically you could fly with only thumbs, leaving the rest of the hand to do eff all.
Yet people wanted keyboard support, that would mean either dual mouse, how many end users have dual mice, developers might have more than one knocking around, but joe average?

Let's see, WSAD and cursors for the thrusters and two keys for thrusting and as most people use nearly the whole hand on WSAD that leaves very few digits left for actual gaming buttons.

Sadly this ended up only as a tech demo and as everyone wanted keyboard support defeated the whole point of trying to get the most out of an already existing controller design that joe public could pick up quite quickly without needing a £80 gamer keyboard.



"But joysticks are slower than mice"
granted mice zip, that's their job, but you don't have to move per pixel in the game GUI, just grid it out, people used to use keyboard menu's long before mice came into more mainstream PC use (hell even on the ST/Amiga most game menu's were joystick controlled and were grid based).
I played 2 player bloodwych way back when (by myself as my brother hated those first person maze RPG's as he got lost too easily, single player was mouse and was quick to get around the GUI, 2 player used joysticks and pixel movement and was dog slow, yet if it used grid movement it would be just as fast and more playable (even if i was controlling just one group not two)

From what I've seen, Minecraft on the 360 got it right or close enough regarding the UI and crafting, you didn't place each object in the crafting 3x3, but instead it checked your inventory vs what you could build and you scrolled and tabbed along till you found what you wanted.
Ditching the whole crafting table and just giving you an icon of what you could make might be quicker, but there might be an outcry if that were to dissapear.

I used to say when asking about joystick support, what if I had lost 2 fingers on my left hand and could not WSAD? I could wield the joy pad just fine and those missing fingers could never be used even if I had them save for gripping the damn thing. nope keyboard and mouse or GTFO.

[lordlundar]

You are not going to like this but I'm on their side. Not for any of their arguments (sometimes the gamepad is the ideal format) but for the simple fact that the keyboard and mouse combination has been the default interface combination for computers for years.

If you want to make a system that gamepads are ideal for I have no issues with that. But if your making for a PC/Mac, you have to allow people with only the default interface to handle it or you automatically void yourself out of that entire market.

By the same token you wouldn't make a racing game for the 360 that only responds to the (now discontinued) 360 steering wheel because you'd only get sales in that very limited market.

There have been a number of games that only respond to a certain non-default interface and nothing else. Unless that exclusive interface system is included, they never sell well enough to be considered anything but a complete failure.

[Ginger Tea]

I've asked them how hard it is to give the gamer the option, hell they give you key configs so you don't have to use wsad, you could use edsf that way you can find the keys by using the raised line found on most f and j keys.
it's not that they can't do it as an option its more won's, I won't let you play tetris clone 6billion using the dpad, no you have to have the keyboard infront of you.

Hell some had semi migrated to XNA which does involve using a game pad for one target platform IE the 360, yet the pc port no dice, just due to pure stubbornness.

The niche product is game bias and has joystick input commands out of the box, it's not like I expect them to gruel away on 10,000 lines of code to make sure the dual analogue sticks work as intended, coding for keyboard or joystick (dpad and buttons more than analogue) is damn near identical.

[Andara Bledin]

The very thought of Minecraft on the console makes me twitch.

Some things are just better with the keyboard, and Minecraft is absolutely one of those. I've played it with a gamepad and I'd rather never be forced to do that ever again.

Also, minor quibble: it's WASD.

^-.-^

[Ginger Tea]

I don't own a 360 to try it, but my keyboard placement isn't comfy without shelling out for a better desk than this old coffee table/sitting on the floor, yet any game I can sit (still on the floor) and joypad with saves me having to fengsui (sp) things up.

but id like to see a few inteligent options around for most gaming types, perhaps console games and teams developing them think more about targeting for the pad than PC coders as not many 360 users will willingly plug in a keyboard to play a game.

I started using wsad instead of the official wasd, after the budwiser wasuup adverts, mind you I grew up on qaop and can not play emulator games for the c64 as most were aslp or something similar.

IIR it went something like this in their semi official irc channel

someone wasuuuuuuuuup
someone else waaaaaaaaaasssssssup
etc
someone else wasd
me qaop

I kinda pronouce it wasad, it's easier to say outloud than was'd and for it to not loose meaning.

[Jetfire]

I'm a southpaw. WASD is the bane of my gameplaying existance. So many games I've tried and passed on because I simply can't use WASD. My left hand is my dominant hand, so that's where my mouse (trackball actually) is, and rarely can I figure out how to get a decent set of southpaw key configurations in place in time to get hooked in the game.

Sure you can configure them yourself, but then I run into the "Ok what commands are important and which can be left as is?" When you're looking at 20-30, 100 even key bindings to reset, it can be a daunting task, especially when you're playing a game for the first time and don't know what 90% of those keybindings do yet.

For example, I played DCUniverse Online briefly in Beta with a keyboard. So briefly I barely made it out of the initial tutorial because the controls were too fubared for me to use.

A few months after it came out, I decided to buy a wired XBox controller and use that for my computer game controller. And using the controller I could actually Play The Game! Sure some of the commands can be awkward at time, but it was playable enough that I could get hooked and keep playing past the tutorial.

Borderlands 2 has proven to be a similar game for me. Can't play it with the keyboard at all; but with the controller I can play it fine.

Planetside 2 may work; I dunno. it's not my type of game and has other issues for me, so I haven't gone in since beta, but if the game controller doesn't work, I'm out.

Frankly, if someone could figure out a decent set of keyboard bindings for people who play with the mouse on the left, and get it out there for general use (like WASD has become), it would probably open games up a lot more for south paw gamers like me.

Or maybe I'm just too stubborn to change now.

[Ginger Tea]

You raise valid points, I myself was looking towards what if's regarding finger amputations etc and used the megatokyo both broken hands using a ps2 controller as a sig, page url not image link, actually without looking it probably still is my sig, I started using it during the hovercraft tech demo, sans weaponry etc, you could play it using just thumbs.
All I can sugest off the bat would be mirroring the keys, if it's set for wasd use okl; qe use ip etc, but like you said dozzens of keys to fumble around, a default southpaw across the board would be nice to see implemented, but how many testers are lefthanded?

Funny though, alot of the anti joypad brigade are now looking at android via other tools and touch screen devices, no keyboard there and there seems to be a trend with established games to have a virtual dual stick at the bottom corners semi middle.

[Nekojin]

I'm a lefty, and I have no problems with WASD. That said, I've been doing FPS gaming for as long as they existed. With the earliest games - Castle Wolfenstein and Doom - I used arrow keys to move, space to shoot, and number keys to change weapons. When Quake came along, it changed the game from a false 3D map to true 3D environments, and aim precision became important. While I tried to keep using my arrow key setup, it became obvious very quickly that it just would not do. While I tried to do mouse-and-arrow keys, that was requiring my left hand to do too much movement over the keys. And since I needed a new mouse anyway, I took a cue from one of the Keybinds that I liked in the Quake scene, and picked up a Logitech Trackman Marble, a thumb trackball.

The Keybind configuration that I was following used a few neat tricks (such as having the right mouse button fire a different weapon than the one I had out), but the most important bit was getting used to WASD right off the bat. Not long after, the community got into a feud over whether WASD or ESDF was better, and that argument was never really resolved - the answer was, "personal preference." But WASD was clearly more popular, and it became adopted as the "default" FPS controls, and then expanded to fit any first-person or third-person game out there.

[Nekojin]

Funny though, alot of the anti joypad brigade are now looking at android via other tools and touch screen devices, no keyboard there and there seems to be a trend with established games to have a virtual dual stick at the bottom corners semi middle.

Virtual controls on a touchpad absolutely suck for speed and precision. It's fine when you don't mind if the touch is somewhere within a large-ish grid square (Triple Town), or don't care where the touch takes place (Jetpack Joyride), but virtual "joysticks" are an abomination, and will never replace real physical controls.

[Ginger Tea]

but virtual "joysticks" are an abomination, and will never replace real physical controls.

Yet without forking out god knows what for a bluetooth clip on very few tablets and phones these days have (m)any buttons.
Loosing out screen real estate to thumbs does sound stupid and the videos showing said movement show the screen output never the actual screen with the guys hands all over the thing getting in the way.
The sony Erricson Experia solved that by having a ps type controller that slid out, if it wasn't so fraught with developement hell the pandora would be a nice addition to the adroid ranks, if it had not gone south when it did, making me belive it never materialised, by now they could have been in the 3rd or 4th iteration and heading towards being android based, but as it is now, its £500 or so in a world where I can get so much more (sans keyboard) for far less.

[gremcint]

I loved playing bioshock 1 but number sits unplayed because I can't use my xbox 360 controller for, same for mass effect, I'll probably end up buying them a second time for the xbox because of this.

[Gravekeeper]

I loved playing bioshock 1 but number sits unplayed because I can't use my xbox 360 controller for, same for mass effect, I'll probably end up buying them a second time for the xbox because of this.

You can use an x-box 360 controller for anything. Google up Xpadder. It can serve as a bridge between any controller and any PC game by translating the gamepad inputs into keyboard/mouse inputs for the game.

Little gem I discovered while I'm off work in physio right now because I can't sit at my desk to use the computer. So I picked up a 360 wireless controller and Xpadder. Been playing The Secret World with it from bed. Is it perfect? No, a mouse would still be more responsive of course. Is it playable? Quite, yes.

And that's with an MMO. A cross platform release like Mass Effect would play perfectly with it.

As for the original topic, mouse / keyboard is the default. You have to support it in the PC realm. Gamepad support is optional but should be included or at least partially supported for games that could convincably be played on a console. Third person shooters, vehicle sims, etc. FPS is a tricky one though as the game needs to be built around controller support for it to work. I couldn't play an FPS with a gamepad, its just not responsive enough and I don't like crutch functions like auto aim that are required to smooth it out.

What really pisses me off in the gaming world is when a game doesn't have remappable keys. -.-

[Andara Bledin]

It's interesting to note that Gabe Newell of Valve in the keynote speech at DICE this morning actually touched on this subject as part of the issue of the "living room PC" as opposed to locked down consoles.

Relevant quote:

But the biggest problem stopping living room PC gaming from being a reality according to Newell is controls. Valve is thinking quite a bit about the input side of games, particularly how to best unify a world currently segmented into keyboard/mouse, motion controls, touch controls, and traditional gamepads. "We don't want to sell a bunch of [controller] hardware," he said. "We want to move things forward. We'll sell hardware if we have to, but the big thing is to think through these issues."

What I take from that is that he wants controller-based agnosticism. Sure, games can be optimized for a particular control scheme, but if you don't have that controller, that shouldn't make the game inaccessible, just a less-optimal experience.


Article at Ars Technica

And his other ideas are intriguing as well.

^-.-^