Rant: Shoddy Programming, 360 Controllers, + Pad Vs Analog.

[Xylia]

So, yay! I found yet another game that was shoddily coded in the gamepad support area, yet another game that defaults to 360 controllers (and does not want to play nice with anything BUT a 360 controller).

 

First off, I'm going to say that 360 controllers are good game controllers; they are sturdily made, they have really nice pinpoint accuracy control, they feel good in your hands, and they work well in general.

 

However, they have but one flaw:

 

They have an Analog Stick as the main movement scheme.

 

This is fine for a game where you have true 360' movement and good analog movement support, and where pinpoint directional movement is not required. It is not fine, however, for a 2d/2.5d platforming game and the reason why is simple: too many of those have a ridiculous sensitivity in detecting directions.

 

For example, let's say you want to run right in a 2d platformer. You press right on the analog stick, but analog being analog, you are actually getting 90% right, and 10% down. Too many games have the threshold set way too low, meaning your character might run a few steps and then crouch if your finger moves just a hair to 15% down. An accidental crouch at the wrong time during a boss fight, or a jumping sequence means an annoying death to mechanics.

 

And then you have games like Ys: Oath and Ys: Origins; a Three-Quarter Overhead game that has precise jumping elements and 16-directional projectile attacks. You want to shoot a fireball straight left? Oh no, because of how analog sticks work, you are actually shooting that fireball one click northwest instead of straight west. Or you wanna make that jump where you gotta jump straight east and land on a platform? Whoops, your thumb was barely pushing up on the stick at the same time you were pushing right so you end up falling in the hole. Gotta start again!

 

That's why I do not like using analog sticks in some games. Sure I could set movement to the 360's + pad, but that's quite a stretch for my thumb (I do not have large hands) and I've had tendonitis in my left thumb before; I don't want a re-occurrence of that because I stretched that muscle too far.

 

SO, that makes me want to use my other gamepad for this type of gaming. My other gamepad is a PS2 controller hooked up to my PC using a PS2->USB adapter. It has a + pad for its main movement, and a thumbstick if I should want to use that instead. Said controller works perfectly in any game that was actually coded properly (thankfully the aforementioned Ys games will actually see this controller and use it perfectly fine, otherwise I'd never been able to see the end of those awesome games).

 

However, I'm finding too many games are so dead set programmed for the 360 controller that they won't see anything else.

 

First, Valdis Story. I can't count the number of times I wanted to pound the ground (a switch) and then immediately dash right or left... but the game said "NOPE! We're going to hesitate a second and crouch because you didn't rotate the stick in the exact way we wanted you to!" and other such control-based nonsense. I managed to eventually make it through the game, though I didn't get 100% collection because some of those puzzles were ridiculous. I read in some update something about controllers, so maybe they changed that, but I haven't played it since.

 

Now, its Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams Rise of the Owlverlord. The first Giana Sisters, I was able to get the PS2 controller to work, but only after repeatedly opening and exiting the config screen and messing around with the buttons. Dunno why it eventually worked, but I did actually get it to work. The expansion? Not so much. Three of the buttons on the controller, it refuses to see whatsoever, and this is a 2d game we're talking. I'm not about to try and analog stick that; I can only picture the types of mistakes that would cause (in a game where one mistake = death, mind you).

 

So..... yeah.

 

Game Developers: There are non-Xbox 360 controllers out there your gamers might want to use. How about programming your games to see all of them? I should not be forced into doinking around with 3rd party keymap programs just to play your games.

 

Learn how to properly do controller support, kthx.

[thegooseking]

I wish developers would support both DirectX and XInput, but it's not like Microsoft has made it easy for them. If you want to support anything other than an Xbox 360 controller, that does mean dragging out a completely different controller API (that hasn't been updated since DirectX 8.1 and Microsoft are cheekily telling people to no longer use).

Edited February 5, 2014 by thegooseking