Slashdot Mirror
Strategic Commander Controller For RTS
limpbizkit sent in a review of strategic commander, a new controller designed especially for real-time strategy games (StarCraft, Red Alert, etc). Yeah, it's made by Microsoft, but they have a history of making excellent input devices. The controller puts a lot of buttons on the mouse, and I gotta say I'm pretty curious. Wonder how long before we have X11 drivers ...
Don't stop there! Have you ever noticed that keyboards are utterly cluttered up with keys? Why not replace it with new minimalist scheme of two sets of eight keys each - one set of 'primaries' and one set of 'shifts'? You just program it with your favourite keys (a, e, t, s) and you can get them at the simultaneous touch of nine buttons.
What about RPG's? Clearly there is a niche for the 'RPG keyboard', with specially designed keys. For example, the 'hehehe' key and the 'run die! buy sell boil seal spank catch spoon fish fight! kewldude strobo nix boat house Orc' key.
The only RTS games I can imagine needing an extra mouse+ for would be fully 3D games like Homeworld. Even then, I can't but think that the keyboard would be faster.
Marios
I asked my self the same question when I got my MS Intellimouse Explorer (the big gray one) and as a joke I called Microsoft and asked them about drivers for it to run under Linux. They pointed out a like on their webpage to the SOURCE!!!!!!! So I don't think that it will be too long and somewere (maybe even On MS's page) we will have the source for it.
Sanchi
"They said we couldn't do it [Athlon]... but we built it, we shipped it... and we didn't have to recall it." Rich Heye
Having played with this, I can tell you a few things:
- You need a nice, flat, clean surface to place this unit on, otherwise every time you move the center hand module, the whole unit slips, since the dime-size rubber pads aren't that grippy.
- You need to have somewhat large hands. My hands are about 7" from edge of wrist to tip of middle finger... and I found the center hand module to be kinda big, and uncomfortable when gripping.
- The finger buttons are pretty stiff, and you have to kinda reach forward and back to be able to press them. Then again, maybe my hand is just too small.
- The center hand module doesn't move forward/backward/sideways as smoothly as I would want. I would want a little resistance - the unit just goes flying a bit too fast.
Now... despite all of those things, this unit was great for playing RTS's, since I didn't even have to peek at the keyboard to make sure I was depressing the right hotkey.But... I guess you need big hands... Somehow I get the feeling this unit wasn't made for a 5'8" Asian male like myself... which makes me think... hey, what about kids? They have smaller hands than me... Oh well.
Hello moderator. Before you moderate this story as "offtopic" like I know you might, I ask you this question. If I am offtopic, then we are all to assume there is a place for me to be on topic with a point like this I am about to make. There is however, no such forum on Slashdot for general slashdot story issues. So any moderations of offtopic on this comment will be redundant, because there is no ONTOPIC place to post it. You will simply be wrong and wasting your moderation points. Thank you and enjoy the comment.
... NetBSD ..
Ok here's one little pet peeve that I'm finding as of late with Slashdot stories. The story above mentions a new joystick concept from Microsoft. Obviously a technology story that belongs here on Slashdot. But oh wait, we forgot the OBLIGATORY linux reference! "Can't wait for x11 drivers"
Oh goodness, we couldn't just post a story for itself? No. We must complain about how every single new technology does not work with our beloved Linux, FreeBSD, KDE or GNOME. Oh wait I'm sorry, I just offended all you users of Debian.. Slackware... OpenBSD
Speaking of that, what the hell is an "x11 driver" anyways?! Last time I checked, joysticks were handled by joystick code in the kernel, not an "x11 driver". This from the same site that continuously complains when the media interchangably uses "hacker" and "cracker". Does anyone want to explain to me an "x11 driver?" Because if not, you look just as silly as the media.
As of late Slashdot has been posting lots of good stories such as this joystick one, but then the editors must quip in with their whole "... but i wonder when open source drivers will be availble" or "shame it doesnt work in linux" etc comments. This is insulting and irritating for me to read. Must you find it necessary to use such tired, old cliches?
and it doubles as my keyboard.
In my mind, however, this effort is overshadowed by the fact that so many RTS games really need to improve their UI. I would hate to think that future RTS games will use this as a crutch thinking, "Hey, we can just recommend that they buy a second input device.". Too many RTS games (which are Real Time Tactics games in most cases, if you ask me), have fairly limited unit AI and rely on the player to provide precise maneuvering orders in complex situations. Take for example WarCraft II -- how many times did you wish for an option to "move the catapult just outside of the range of that tower" rather than having to micro-manage every last unit's movement. I'll grant that these are not simple problems and some games are moving to fix this, but most RTS games are still far short of being truly "strategy" games instead of intricate click-fests.
I beta tested the SC, and it is pretty cool. Oddly, I found it more useful for games like Baldur's Gate (I won't play BG without it) than for rts games they designed it for. Basically, it's because rts games tend to have too many options to organize a useful set without leaving out a lot. Not that it isn't still really useful, it's just that you still need to use the keyboard a lot. With BG, on the other hand, the only time I touch the keyboard is to name a saved game.
I definitely recommend this to any serious gamer. Among the features I found most useful were that it is left-handed, so it works alongside a mouse (for most of us); and it can be programmed on the fly, so if you decide you don't like how your profile is set up, you can change it right then. It also makes it easy to set up your own profiles, which I recommend over using a profile someone else has set up. It just makes it a lot easier to use.
There's only one serious issue I ran into, and you can work around it. If you type fast while you are recording, it sometimes treats separate keystrokes as combos. (You'll understand this once you see its accompanying software.) This sometimes makes the keystrokes replay out of order, so your commands don't work right. To avoid this, type carefully while recording, so that you don't have two keys down at once, except of course when that is required.