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Support / Aquaria and Gamepads
« on: December 09, 2007, 11:20:33 pm »
Great job on Aquaria, Bitblot. I'm still working my way through the demo version (slowly but surely) but I've run in to something of a speed bump regarding your gamepad support. I understand your game is built around mouse support, but to me, that feels like a substitute for gamepad support - the mouse controls are, for the most part, utilized in a very similar fashion to that of an analog stick.
Most recently in the last month some work I have been doing has caused me to suffer a great deal from carpal tunnel syndrome. Holding down the left mouse button for too long causes my index finger to ache a great deal, so I've been primarily using a SmartJoy USB adapter and a Playstation 2 controller for the remainder of my experience. It works very well - left stick for moving Naija, and the L1 is map, R1 is menu, L2 is dash, R2 is sing.
Problem is, Aquaria still seems to force me to use the mouse every now and then. Once you get Naija's energy form, for example, I still have to click on her to return to normal. Reaching from my gamepad to my mouse is pretty awkward and I don't understand why I can't just tap L2 and R2 to achieve the same effect. Similarly goes for targeting - Whenever shoot a small energy bolt, it always seems to go to the right unless I'm dangerously close to an enemy. I don't know if it's just how the SmartJoy is, but you completely ignore the right analog stick when that could be used for some targetting (similar to, say, Geometry Wars). I don't see why, though, most other games seem to identify the right stick just fine.
Just some food for thought. Keep up the good work - as somebody who hopes to get in to professional game development some time soon, I honor your efforts.
Most recently in the last month some work I have been doing has caused me to suffer a great deal from carpal tunnel syndrome. Holding down the left mouse button for too long causes my index finger to ache a great deal, so I've been primarily using a SmartJoy USB adapter and a Playstation 2 controller for the remainder of my experience. It works very well - left stick for moving Naija, and the L1 is map, R1 is menu, L2 is dash, R2 is sing.
Problem is, Aquaria still seems to force me to use the mouse every now and then. Once you get Naija's energy form, for example, I still have to click on her to return to normal. Reaching from my gamepad to my mouse is pretty awkward and I don't understand why I can't just tap L2 and R2 to achieve the same effect. Similarly goes for targeting - Whenever shoot a small energy bolt, it always seems to go to the right unless I'm dangerously close to an enemy. I don't know if it's just how the SmartJoy is, but you completely ignore the right analog stick when that could be used for some targetting (similar to, say, Geometry Wars). I don't see why, though, most other games seem to identify the right stick just fine.
Just some food for thought. Keep up the good work - as somebody who hopes to get in to professional game development some time soon, I honor your efforts.