"Let me show you my controls schemes!"
MY CONTROL SCHEMES
let me show you them
Here I show you them
I guess the default controls are OK for people playing on Painfully Easy and other casual gamers. I found them immediately frustrating, here's why:
- Turning is slow. The camera drags along, having a hard time catching up with the cursor. A quick and smooth 90-degree turn is impossible. A manual 180-degree turn puts me to sleep. This turning speed makes the 180-degree shortcut a necessity, using up a button you'd probably want assigned to some other function.
- The dead zone is big. Combined with the slow turn, sudden changes in direction lead to a jerky presentation. It also requires you to aim pretty far off to the sides (in widescreen mode) to trigger any appreciable turning.
- The camera twitches too much. It tilts the view angle for every little left/right displacement of the cursor. This is a terrible design assumption implying Ford's in-game "eyes" are independent of the Player's, when the presentation/coordination of the two should be seamless (ideally). My vision doesn't achieve this kind of sensitivity or instability (when I'm sober). It's like your eyes aren't allowed move in their sockets, locked in one direction, while you shake your head. Very irritating.
- Doesn't look Up very high. One doesn't have to look STRAIGHT UP, cuz that's not as necessary as you might think, but as a person you should be able look up a at a steep yet comfortable angle.
Here's things I considered for my controls:
- My ideal default. I wanted a scheme that, at the least, felt nice as a starting point for ANY FPS-style game. It's not intended to provide optimum/exploitive performance in The Conduit, just something widely useful.
- I have a big TV, and my face is only about 6-ft from the screen when seated. Cursor performance is easily scrutinized.
- Quick turning. Able to make sudden 90-degree turns with 180-degree turns kept nice and brief. 180-degree shortcut is practically unnecessary. Dead zone had to be limited while sensitivity and turning were emphasized.
- Responsive, but stable, cursor. Input-Cursor delay should be kept to a minimum, but not so sensitive that the inherent twitching becomes problematic. But I admit, it's pretty sensitive (FLIES RIGHT OFF THE SCREEN).
- Stable camera inside the dead zone. Stable camera GOOD FOR AIM. Our vision is pretty damn stable, so minimize the twitching bullshit by reducing `Horizontal View` (while allowing a tiny bit to accommodate the next item).
- Smooth camera transitions. Whether you change direction quickly or slowly, the camera/view should pan gradually without drastic pauses in/out of the dead zone.
- Easy circle-strafing. The dead zone + turn speed also help you strafe around a defined corner without having to aim the cursor so far left/right (biiiig TV). The shortened distance from center enables the cursor to return to the dead zone quickly with less panning of the camera.
- We can look up reasonably high. Yay. The vertical value of the bounding box has no function in the `Human` camera style; allowable Up/Down tilt is controlled by `Vertical View`.
- I don't care for large dead zones. I realize the big dead zone helps for wide-view "snap-aiming" moments, but I don't find them necessary; control trade-offs and alternatives considered. I suppose the Lock-On perspective helps alleviate that, but I don't mess with it.
- Overall, I wanted controls that helped the visuals mimic real-world movements, tactics, and perspectives; imagining how I would move around. Our eyes can move relative to our head, the head moves relative to the body, the body moves relative to the ground, and the weapon just adds another movable FLOATING THING in front of our eyes-head-body. Our vision, despite using several axes of movement, is stable yet independent of the weapons's line of sight. In practice, the two components often separate but eventually have to match up to aim the weapon reliably. This relationship, how it visually feels in action, was something I hoped to allude to in these custom settings.
BONUS
If you apply my settings and reduce the horizontal value of the bounding box all the way down (160 to 32), your stable zone will be almost non-existant, and the camera will drift easily for slight movements. Seem familiar? It's a replica of Metroid Prime 3's "advanced" control scheme. (I just knew I stumbled onto some happy settings)
YOUR CONTROL SCHEMES, SHOW ME THEM
Try mine out, tweak it, whatever.
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