Gamepad controls are BAD!
Many of you have expressed their feelings about the lack of a true point and click interface for the movement, but I have nothing against it. In fact, I like it better to control the character directly and only use the mouse for objects. It worked excellent in Wallace and Gromit. As the producers pointed out in another topic, it's nearly impossible to make the character move "off screen" with a point and click interface. Plus, the games look much more cinematic this way, a thing that I greatly enjoy.
My complain is that the CONTROLLERS are just messed up. Why on earth make the game playable with a controller, if you still need the mouse to use objects? It just defies my comprehension. I wanted to use the XBOX 360 controller for ToMI, playing it away from the PC, but it seems that this will not be possible (I don't have the full game yet, I'm waiting for the DVD to come out). Wallace and Gromit had full support for the controller (probably because it came out on the 360 also). Now it just annoys me that I will not be able to play it properly with a controller. Who ever heard of a mouse and controller combination? "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?"
Is there any chance for this abominable control scheme to change for the next episodes and have full controller support? The game would be just perfect if proper control for gamepads would be implemented. By proper control I mean the hotspot cycling system, just like in Wallace and Gromit! No mouse pointer whatsoever!
My complain is that the CONTROLLERS are just messed up. Why on earth make the game playable with a controller, if you still need the mouse to use objects? It just defies my comprehension. I wanted to use the XBOX 360 controller for ToMI, playing it away from the PC, but it seems that this will not be possible (I don't have the full game yet, I'm waiting for the DVD to come out). Wallace and Gromit had full support for the controller (probably because it came out on the 360 also). Now it just annoys me that I will not be able to play it properly with a controller. Who ever heard of a mouse and controller combination? "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?"
Is there any chance for this abominable control scheme to change for the next episodes and have full controller support? The game would be just perfect if proper control for gamepads would be implemented. By proper control I mean the hotspot cycling system, just like in Wallace and Gromit! No mouse pointer whatsoever!
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But seriously now, I don't think that I was too "loud" about it. It's just that once you get a good control scheme for a gamepad, like in W&G, why on earth change it and leave the game half made (on the control side)? It makes no sense. Either do keyboard&mouse, or gamepad only.
And the trick of using the right stick as a mouse is not my idea of fun. It just doesn't work. Scanning the entire screen with a stick gets boring and irritating REALLY fast.
It is not that unnatural with mouse and keyboard as well, just that a manual could've helped much more in explaining which keys to use.
It is not made for the gamepad at the moment, as there are already a lot of signs that the game is being rushed. But Yare did comment on a locked post that they will definitely be working to improve controls, and making it work on a gamepad may not be that far from reality.
But here's the catch. If they improve future episodes to the hotspot method used in W&G, will they also update the first chapter at the time of the game's release on DVD?
At least this nerd is progressive and not retro. Not your typical "I want POINT AND CLICK" kinda anger.
Argh! Not another 'wii-mote suck' comment!
As much as you may not like the wii, you have to admit to the fact that wii reaches to a different audience than the 360 will. Wiimote removes the stigma of the hardcore gamers, typically perceived as a guy with reflective spectacles, eating the pretzels, scratching his backside and focusing on nothing in the world, but the screen and firmly gripping on his gamepad in one hand. I believe it is really intentional to explore the wii as a platform, as adventure games are much more acceptable to the casual gaming crowd than the a lot of other genres.
As for mouse and controller control for the game, you should try it before you knock it. It actually works really well. here's my opinion on stick+mouse control in more detail.
Only if you're right-handed.
The way I see it, I either have to bring the mouse with me to play, or use some third party programs to map the mouse to the right stick. But the problem is that a stick isn't designed to work as a mouse, so scanning each scene can take a LOT of time-
Wow, thanks for that! So, basically, we're screwed. I don't think there are many chances to port the game to the 360 before the end of the season.
This post actually got me to pick up the controller to see what it would be like to try using the left stick with my right hand.
I suppose a left handed person could try using a gamepad key mapper to move the control to the right stick to get the same experience. I haven't needed to use one yet so I'm not sure how hard that would be.
Yeah, I was suggesting taking the mouse with you as well as the controller, but thinking about it more, I now see how this could be more trouble for some people. A wired mouse might not reach, and a ball mouse wouldn't work on a couch cushion. So I could see how it might not be your best option.
There was no time to address gamepad support for ToMI on the PC. The controller half-works because our engine automatically treats the buttons like some keyboard keys, and the analog stick is routed to the same event handlers as the click+drag.
I'm not sure if you'll see hotspot cycling in ToMI since that tech hasn't been ported from W&G, but I'll probably make the right-stick move the cursor.
In the mean time, you can find programs like PadMappper to map the right stick to mouse movement, and play the game with just a controller.
Are you crazy!? The Wiimote's IR aiming is the closest thing on a console to a Mouse. The reason the controls are like they are has nothing to do with the Wii's capabilities. If you have a Wii try installing the homebrew channel and putting ScummVM on it. The first three Monkey Islands feel even better than they do with a mouse in my opinion.
Thanks a lot for your reply Yare. I already raised a similar topic here, but it seems it went unnoticed:
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10482
Basically I had the same problem as the OP (Hitman), but in my case I find controlling the mouse with the second stick comfortable enough, so I could fix this emulating the mouse with XPadder.
Anyway, I'm glad to hear you will (probably) fix it natively in the game, so XPadder won't be needed anymore.
BTW, what's that PadMapper program you mention? I haven't been able to find it in Google.
Well, that's disappointing, to say the least (the fact that there won't be a hot spot system).
Also, I don't understand something. Why make a game in the similar style as Wallace & Gromit (with the cool camera angles) and not use the same engine that was used in that game? The games share the same design concept, but you decided to use a different engine. I get a feeling that Wii owners get priority treatment, to say the least.
You're missing the point here. Didn't you read what the user above you just said? No one said that it wouldn't be fitting for mouse movement, but the problem is the CONTROLLERS. You can't make point and click with a controller. So there has to be some sort of hot spot implemented.
Same engine, but development of both titles was simultaneous by different teams in the studio so the scripts wound up forking. Can't really keep everything perfectly synchronized since there are different needs on each project, different deadlines, and so on.
Couple of suggestions if that happens: a cursor sensitivity option. Moving a cursor with the analog stick is a little sluggish as is - but then I've seen mouse players complaining about the sluggishness of the cursor too. Some went as far as claiming that it's the a result of the Wiimote shining through, which I very much doubt personally. An option to turn off the smoothing that appears to be going an and one to alter sensitivity would help greatly.
And if pad suppord will make it into the game: being able to pick multiple choice options during dialogue by up and down arrows / pad buttons on top of the mouse cursor option. Or stick, in that case. Much smoother an experience, well on a pad anyways.
Could you make sure that the gamepad isn't useable as well so that tools like Xpadder will still work with the game and not trying to execute two commands then (xpadder and ttg definition for instance)?
Not true. SMI:SE handles great on the 360 and Sam & Max season 1 is good on the console as well.
I just hope that future titles will use a hot spot cycling system (when played with the controller, otherwise the WASD + mouse is perfect). You could also try making the character move at different speeds depending on how much the user tilts the left stick, like in regular action titles. Say for example that a puzzle needs you to sneak past a certain character or room, you would only press slightly on the stick to move.
Andrew and I are working on grabbing tech from our different projects and rolling them into a new system that all projects can use and extend in the future. This includes some form of hotspot cycling. You should see a lot more consistency between Telltale products in the future. I hope!
This is one of those interesting programming tasks because it has to be done in lockstep with art. Guybrush's 180 degree turns were similar. Dave Bogan (important art guy) and I had to make sure that the 180 turn was fast enough that the player didn't notice control was being taken away from them, that the animation still looked good, and it blended into the walk reasonably when complete. Analog movement speed is similar. We'd need to have several run/job/walk animations, make sure they were all synchronized, blend between them, and so on. It's a big deal, and it takes a few people to get something like this to not be terrible.
It makes sense to do something like this now that we're moving around using direct control, but I don't know if there's a push for it. While joysticks and drag-to-move supports analog movement, the keyboard does not.
Would be fun to work on, though.
Would it be possible to modify the W&G stuff slightly so that the stick+mouse control that works so well in TMI doesn't fall back to how it was in W&G?
Firstly, have the cursor appear on any mouse input and disappear on any controller input other than the left stick.
Secondly, have the game start with auto-hotspot selection turned on (By auto-hotspot selection, I mean how a hotspot is highlighted automatically when you approach it). Any mouse input turns it off, and any controller input other than the left stick turns it back on.
It would be awesome if you could implement this because it would solve the two main problems I have with playing W&G with stick+mouse.
a) a mouse pointer, or
b) a hot spot cycling system?
That would be perfect and we would both be happy. I don't want the right stick to be automatically treated as a mouse! I want it to behave like the hot spot cycling system, just like in W&G. Or have the left and right bumper buttons act as cycling through the hotspots back and forth.
I'm not sure why you quoted my post when making your comment. I don't particularly care what the right stick does. I just want to use the left stick with the mouse. Just to make my point clearer for those who missed the link I posted up thread, I'll quote the post I made about the control method I'm talking about. This quote expresses the problems that my last post is suggesting fixes for:
I don't mean to disregard your suggestion in any way, Hitman. It's a good suggestion. It's just your post made me fell like I had not expressed my own point clearly.
Aside from eating pretzels (seriously, guys, real gamers only eat M&Ms) that basically describes me.
When I say stick+mouse, the left stick moves the character directly. This is used like WADS on the keyboard. Everything else you do in the game is done with the mouse. You can still do this in W&G, but the game acts differently when it registers controller inputs, than it does when it registers mouse inputs. This makes stick+mouse awkward in W&G when it feels quite natural in TMI.