Author Topic: Keeping gamepads (and other odd peripherals) in mind  (Read 23061 times)

akeley

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Re: Keeping gamepads (and other odd peripherals) in mind
« Reply #15 on: September 07, 2013, 10:31:19 AM »
Will have to reread your description of Crawl's UI to let it sink in

Yes, I know it sounds anything but clear. It`s one of these things best experienced "live", so I suggest a little emulation exercise (it`s all freeware, so no worries about copyrights and such).

http://desmume.com/download.htm - desmume, the best NDS emulator around.
http://library.dev-scene.com/index.php?dir=DS/Games/DSCrawl/ - DSCrawl

Just unpack and drag dscrawl.nds into the emu window, should work okay.

Rickton

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Re: Keeping gamepads (and other odd peripherals) in mind
« Reply #16 on: September 07, 2013, 03:12:46 PM »
Related question: Am I right in believing that mouses/touchpads used on Macs only have one button? If so, the game must be playable with just the left mouse button, or am I missing something?
I know the discussion's moved on, but this question was never actually answered.
Short answer: No.
Long answer:
They used to come with one-button mice, but they started including 2-button mice I think around 2005. Even before then you could use a 2-button mouse, you just had to buy one separately, and most people did.
Anyone who still uses a one-button mouse most likely doesn't play roguelikes or really anything besides Candy Crush.
Creator of the 7DRL Possession: Escape from the Nether Regions
And its sequel, simply titled Possession

Holsety

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Re: Keeping gamepads (and other odd peripherals) in mind
« Reply #17 on: September 07, 2013, 04:26:50 PM »
Gamepads are more comfortable than KBM.

Disregarding the subjective X is more comfortable than Y issue, the problem is that every pc in general has a keyboard and mouse, but a USB gamepad is a seperate entity that most (?) people don't have. I happen to have one and my biggest peeve is going "OH MAN NOW I HAVE TO GET UP AND HOOK IT UP, WHY BOTHER WHEN I CAN JUST KEEP USING THIS KEYBOARD THAT'S RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.".
Doesn't help that everything else my computer does is keyboard-based, so I'm really just only hooking up the gamepad  to play 1 game.

First, major change: pressing a DPAD direction won`t move you anywhere. You have to press A (while holding the direction) for that to happen. Sounds insane? Thought as much too. And yet...give it a whirl and it soon  becomes a second nature. One thing, diagonal "problem" disappears. The other: it`s a lifesaver for a hotheaded players like me who kind of rush everywhere by just holding a direction, which is quite often suicidal. So, a safety lock of sorts.

ALTERNATIVELY, you can use the d-pad or whatever to orient your character, and then press A to move (one move per press) in the direction you're facing. Rotating your character doesn't take up a move. I think I remember Izuna (a jRL on the nintendo DS) using this system. I'd prefer it to [holding a direction and tapping the button] because it requires less buttons to do the action.

Worth noting that Izuna/Shiren/Journey to Farland (I'm just gonna call em jRLs from now on since they're pretty much consistent) have smaller rooms, and IF enemies have ranged attacks, they're in the 8 directions. So you can't shoot an arrow in an L-shape, like you can in a lot of roguelikes. Generally they feel as if they're more about tactical positioning (?) with a VERY heavy emphasis on fighting inside of corridors.

If you have an ipod touch (or whatever compatible device) there's also The Isle of 8 bit Treasures (https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/the-isle-of-8-bit-treasures/id336755042?mt=8).
It uses the ipod's touch screen with virtual controls (which is pretty garbage; can't beat tactile response).
It follows the jRL formula, but spices things up a LITTLE;
You can choose from the overworld which dungeon you want to tackle, unlocking more and harder dungeons as you beat previous ones. The goal is to dive a certain amount of floors and find a macguffin. En route you can pick up powerups (stun 1 enemy, do 1 elemental attack, do 1 screenwide elemental attack, heal, etc etc.). If you make it to the macguffin any powerups you're carrying are saved in a sort of bank, from which you can withdraw them to bring them with you to your next dungeoncrawl.
Also you can use your music library to generate your weapon, weapons in this game being a sort of roulette wheel with various specials.
So you could have a hammer with the on-hit effects of
[normal normal normal firey-swipe normal normal instakill normal stun-enemy normal heal-enemy normal].

I never thought about whether that was a good system, but it did make the game less boring just by being there.
« Last Edit: September 07, 2013, 04:37:26 PM by Holsety »
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guest509

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Re: Keeping gamepads (and other odd peripherals) in mind
« Reply #18 on: September 07, 2013, 09:09:59 PM »
My gamepad is never unhooked. I have JoyToKey on my desktop...:-)

akeley

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Re: Keeping gamepads (and other odd peripherals) in mind
« Reply #19 on: September 08, 2013, 11:07:09 AM »
WHY BOTHER WHEN I CAN JUST KEEP USING THIS KEYBOARD THAT'S RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.

Oh, come on now. Following this logic, you might as well ditch the mouse too. Though I admit that first sentence of mine you quoted is a bit flammable - but it was more of a "think out loud" moment (which is why the next two sentences were a stab at some explaining/damage limitation). While I don`t think the "more comfortable?" angle is subjective and I could argue about it, it`s a subject that`s outside the scope of this thread.

And of course I`d never advocate getting rid of KBM functionality in RLs - the point here is that adding sensible pad control would be welcome by many(?) players.

AgingMinotaur

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Re: Keeping gamepads (and other odd peripherals) in mind
« Reply #20 on: September 08, 2013, 09:40:16 PM »
ditch the mouse

Hear, hear  :D

As always,
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Holsety

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Re: Keeping gamepads (and other odd peripherals) in mind
« Reply #21 on: September 09, 2013, 11:13:06 AM »
Though I admit that first sentence of mine you quoted is a bit flammable - but it was more of a "think out loud" moment (which is why the next two sentences were a stab at some explaining/damage limitation). While I don`t think the "more comfortable?" angle is subjective and I could argue about it, it`s a subject that`s outside the scope of this thread.

And of course I`d never advocate getting rid of KBM functionality in RLs - the point here is that adding sensible pad control would be welcome by many(?) players.

Nah, don't worry about that. It was purely my reasoning, since I hardly ever plug in my gamepad. I did play some RLs on touchscreen devices AND handhelds, so I can see why people would want gamepad support.
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… and it won't stop until we get to the first, unknown ignorance. And after that – well, who knows?

wire_hall_medic

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Re: Keeping gamepads (and other odd peripherals) in mind
« Reply #22 on: September 13, 2013, 06:57:03 AM »
I like how Shiren handled diagonal commands.

Pressing a direction on the d-pad entered orthogonal movement.  Unless you were holding the "diagonal" button (one of the shoulder buttons).  Then, the system would only recognize diagonal movement, which was handled by pressing two directions simultaneously.  Check out the control scheme as an example of how they did it; I'm sure there's a manual out there some where.

guest509

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Re: Keeping gamepads (and other odd peripherals) in mind
« Reply #23 on: September 14, 2013, 10:07:44 AM »
Oh man, that's even better.