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The Game Controllers That Shaped the Way We Play
An anonymous reader writes "Neal Stephenson's ambitious sword fighting Kickstarter Clang has run into financial troubles, and part of the reason is down to new controller that was required — the extra investment reportedly scared away investors. Sometimes though, games can help usher in a whole new type of controller, and create new ways to play. From Pong's easy dials, which helped bring the video game into the home, to Ape Escape's twin thumbsticks and Doodle's Jump savvy use of the accelerometer on the iPhone, some games have hit the critical mass necessary to establish a new input as a way to play. So what's next?"
when a friend was playing some adventure game and at some point he got stuck because he was looking for a "mouse" and for a "stick of joy". That is because one of the F-keys allowed him to select mouse for example and then it said "mouse not found".
As somebody who grew up in the early to mid 80's I was raised on the joystick. When the industry moved to gamepads I simply could not play as effectively anymore (and rarely play consoles as a result).
Wrist coordination and speed is fundamentally different from thumb coordination. I suppose many people are better at fine finger coordination then wrist, but for me the switch from wrist to thumb controllers ruined consoles for me.
What is wrong with Wii as a controller? Or a kinect and youse a real sword (wooden sword)?
As someone who has kenjutsu experience I really wonder how a sword fighting 'game' should work at all.
E.g. without something that has the weight and feel of a sword in your hands, and nothing to actuall block your blow etc.
To have a sword fighting game you would need a robot, at least with a sword arm and a torso to hit at.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
because it's a swordplay game. to have a controller with feedback that's cheap you would need what amounts currently to "magic".
Or, you know, a friend, two PVC pipes and some foam.
1) The Nintendo N64 controller was the first to introduce the analog joystick. This was a huge stage of controller evolution. This should have had its own section before PlayStations dual shock. And this goes into my second point.
2) The environment that was mentioned for Ape Escape was already introduced in the super Mario world for the N64. The dual shock control did raise the bar for thumb sticks by having two, but the N64 controller already was doing the environment the dual shock was allowing. Nintendo did this with the combination of the thumb sticks and the four directional butons. Play golden eye for N64 and you will see Nintendo forced PlayStations hand in creating the dual-shock controller
IMO
When it comes to controller ergonomics the dual shock was a step backwards in controller design. The thumb sticks do not sit in a place where you thumbs would natural rest. Making the thumb sticks awkward to use. The 2nd generation Xbox controllers perfected the dual thumb stick controller.
my 2 cents
...showed the evolution of game controllers.
I love the Power Glove. It's so bad.
Or, someone who's not such a close friend, and save money on the foam.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Kickstarter investors are just as much investors as anyone else. There's no way Clang would have reached the goal they did without proposing the custom hardware.
I've written off Clang as a loss, which is fine - the more ambitious a project is, the more that is possible. But in the future I'm not sure I'd back a game project with custom hardware asking for less than a million or so, or with a very clear plan on how they are delivering on the hardware.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A joystick has only 2 axes.
3 axes.
Main joystick, +twist, +thumbstick
5 axes if you include the: hat (thumbstick at the top of the joystick)
In practice the hat was usually implemented usually as 4 buttons (that usually supported 8 directions N/W/S/E + NW/NE/SW/SE) instead of actual true axes but that was more a limitation of what the old game port could take than anything else.
In any case the old jet fighter games did allow for pitch, yaw, roll while they were often setup to use the hat as a way of looking left/right/forward/back all from one stick. (or more realistically for controlling aileron or rudder trim).
Then the thrust axis was a slider at the base along with additional buttons for the 2nd hard. Or was separated out onto a 2ndary controller.
But the base controls aside, a good flightstick could be considered to have 5 axes, main trigger, secondary fire, and at least another couple buttons all operable from a single hand.
And they still exist, except as the flight sim and space shooter genre collapsed, they are relatively niche.