I know I'm not the only one who is sick to death of playing through the tutorial in each game in order to learn all the controls or what not. What really irks me, is when developers choose different control layouts for similar titles. For instance, in Half-Life, the default crouch key is CTRL, while in Doom 3 it's the letter C. Some games have you activate items with the right mouse button, while others use that as your secondary fire (The other using the Z key.)
I realize that creating a standard would be impossible and the author of the game should probably layout the controls in the best way they see fit. That said... How about if the developers all save the current control layout in an XML file of some sort so that it can be imported into other games? So when I have the controls setup the way I like them, another title can import that scheme and use the same layout. One could have different layouts for different types of games and import the one they are using that most closely matches the game they are playing. Conflicts could be handled by accepting default locations for unassigned keys, and/or editing the keys. I realize that some Battlecruiser title with 5,000 keys wouldn't be ideal for this, but your average run and gun shooter or RTS would. And then I wouldn't have to learn how to throw a grenade or duck and jump through the obstacle course for the 500th time.
K
Many development houses have problems making internal design choices consistant, and you want all of them to agree to using a "universal control config file system"? ;)
Even if you got a seperate open-source development team to work on a control config standard, I'm still not sure the compatibility problems wouldn't make the effort worth far less than simply relying on players to either relearn controls, or configure them to their liking.
Too much work for too little return.
You know most modern games come with options to change your keys right?
How many keys do you honestly remap? For me, I usually have to remap crouch or prone, or maybe some secondary action like 'drop primary weapon' or something. Oh, and I have to invert the mouse. But other than that, I hardly ever remap the keys as I think there is an industry standard that covers 70 - 80% of all key presses. Q/E to lean, R to reload, shift for walk/run toggle, etc. And I'm pretty sure the same is true for RTSes.
Do you have a really unorthodoxed keyboard setup? If so, then I can understand the hassle. But for just about every FPS I have a pretty good guess what every button, mouse wheel and click will do.
it would never work for me anyway. for whatever idiot reason, the game industry has adopted the WASD standard when the ESDF standard (which i use) is far superior.
I'm going to try this freaky setup you use Bee... also - 'invert mouse' = yukky poo. :wink:
I liked the ESDF setup when forced to try it as the default setup in Tribes 2, but always found myself going with the default layout of other games.
WASD is not at all idiotic. PS/2 keyboards IIRC could not properly communicate keypresses from more than a limited number of alphanumeric/punctuation keys at once. WASD allows better use of Shift/Ctrl/Alt which don't count against the limit because they were transmitted differently. ESDF would have made that problematic at best.
There's also something to be said for giving the normally-weak little finger larger keys to press like Tab, Caps Lock and Shift. (Certainly normal typing doesn't train it much, since the two out-of-the-way letters are Q and Z!)
ESDF might very well work better, now, but there are historical reasons for WASD being the standard.
Do not speak ill of the One True Mouse, heretic.Originally Posted by nutsak
I don't mind remapping controls. What pisses me off to no end, though, is when there's no option to, which is rare, but does indeed happen.
Console games are often much worse than PC games. Often on the console you have a few configurations that you can choose from, and then you are stuck with one. I always like how the Xbox has a button called BACK, but the developers always program a different key to let you go back, such as the B button. Where on the PS1 they use the triangle button but now it's more often the Square button.
I just think a template would be better because remapping can be a pain as well. If you want to move crouch to the C key, and find that the flashlight key is there, and then you move it to the F key, and that is the flare key, and so now the flare key is lost or it becomes the SHIFT key or some other "unused" key that it automatically assigns to a horrible location.
You also run into situations where you have to set mouse sensitivity, invert different axis, gamma correction, etc. Turn the lights out and increase the contrast on your TV until you can see the middle finger directed at you.
I know it'll never happen, but I needed to vent after playing Driv3r 3 on the Xbox with it's horrible control scheme.
K
I might be wrong, but I think it might actually be an Xbox TRC that the Back and B buttons work identically in those situations (likewise A and Start)...
You could get Ideazon'a ZBoard if you're really tired of reassigning keys. It automatically maps all functions to the same keys, and many of the current games are being supported. I hear the keyboard isn't that great for writing, but for gaming it may be.
-Julian
Agreed. Then you can map 'W' to use, instead of reaching to tap 'Enter.'
Bind it to 'F' :) (or don't lean and bind it to E )Agreed. Then you can map 'W' to use, instead of reaching to tap 'Enter.'
Rerailing the thread... I'm getting tired of tutorials as well. Most games today have a friendly and standardized (for their genre) UI which is fantastic but also makes those tutorials mostly obsolete. Please make them optional.
Agreed, even worse for me is when I re-map a key, and the tutorial tells me to use the default key for an action. Not the new key I just bound. So, I waste my time memorizing pertinent key --> action combo's and then play through it.
Guh.
As a lefty, I invariably remap them all to the numeric keypad. (Speaking of FPS's.)How many keys do you honestly remap?
And here I thought this post would be about how tiring its getting that developers are pretty much copying the manual's basic specifics into the game and then skimping on the manual itself. And how more games should be trying to teach the player naturally how to play instead of forcing them through a tutorial, in a kind of intuitive fashion. To which I would have agreed. :D
I kind of wish keyboard keys would be limitted for PC developers though. So many of them seem to say, "Interface too hard or limited? Okay, make a hotkey!" Grrr. Memorizing what amounts to an astrological starchart of hotkeys for each game is not the route to smoothest control... :/
That said, I'm always remapping keys to be closer to the other action keys in a FPS, they are usually scattered around the keyboard to my liking. Coming from a console basis, its way too alien and frustrating to scan over a board of keys for the one that does duck or reload, rather than have it all close at hand with having to move your fingers very far.
-Kitsune
I have to remap most keys when I play. Very unorthodox setup.
Right handed but I do the same. I invariably re-map keys to conform to my set-up. I guess this is why I don't get invited to LAN parties!!
i use the arrow, function, right edge ctrl area, and numpad keys. they are bigger or have a more distinct position. i do have to twist my keyboard though as i am not a lefty. so every game i pretty much have to remap.
the six keys above the arrow keys are great for lean, reload, use, etc.
the offcenter w in wasd movement and the similarity of all the nearby make it so i dislike using those keys.
Most games I can think of off the top of my head *do* have optional tutorial. Test Drive: Eve of Destruction and Kohan 2 both had optional tutorials, if I remember right.
Do most other games not have optional tutorials?
I think most tutorials are optional but there are exceptions. Thief 3 and Rome Total War both had mandatory tutorials, which seems silly to me.
Yeah, tutorials in strategy games are mostly optional but every FPS I can remember had a mandatory tutorial, typically as a part of the first mission.
This conversation sounds strangely familiar... Anyhow, one of the big problems with trying to standardize controls is that different games have different functionality. Some games have separate crouch and prone keys while others have stance-up/down, some support leaning while others don't, some default to "run" while others default to "walk," etc.
- Alan
Black and White is the most notorious example I can think of. That was a game that begged to be started over numerous times, yet being forced to plod through its tutorial was just another reason, among many, for players not to.
I'm with Kitsune on the "integrated tutorial" approach in general. It's a much better way to go. Scrapland uses this approach, and even though you know you're being pushed through a tutorial, since it's integrated into the game and introduces you to key characters and whatnot, it's not that annoying. But B&W's was an integrated tutorial, too, and it totally sucked. So I don't know the answer...maybe it's "have an integrated tutorial but make it not suck." :) Port Royale 2 does a good job of this. All of its non-sandbox scenarios are essentially tutorial scenarios, but they're fun and challenging in and of themselves. They're not just canned walkthroughs. They're actual games.
On the main complaint, yeah, it bugs me when games don't all use my favorite setup, from Thief 2. But not all games can use that setup. In some games jumping, for instance, is of minimal value (or no value at all), while activating things is high on the list. It makes little sense to play such a game with the spacebar devoted to jumping. I've tried to do it, but I usually end up surrendering and going with something close to what the developers favored. Then there are games like Full Spectrum Warrior that look like more or less standard tactical shooters on the outside, but that are designed so differently that this complaint doesn't even make any sense when applied to them. If someone ignored the tutorial/manual and tried to jump into that game using their preconceived notions of what the interface should be, he'd be lost. This isn't because there's something wrong with FSW's interface. On the contrary, Pandemic should win some kind of award for design brilliance. If they'd have gone with the standard WASD kind of control scheme, the game would have been a complete disaster.
Half Life's tutorial (the hazard room) was separate. Although I suppose you could call the first chapter a tutorial of sorts, in that you are given a chance to familiarize yourself with the controls & don't have to deal with any combat. In that case it was certainly well integrated into the story however.
I don't have anything to contribute, but I'd like brag that my custom config shapped with Return to Castle Wolfenstein on the disk. All I had to do was pull down the console and type "exec thrrrpptt.cfg" (or whatever; I forget) and I was ready to go. :)
It's really ridiculous in Pacific Assault, I think... in FPS games, frankly, the tutorial should be at the very beginning and you should be able to skip the whole thing regardless. in MOHPA, the tutorial is in a flashback sequence after the landing sequence at Tarawa.
Yes, you get to learn how to shoot your gun and jump up and down after you man the amtrac's machinegun, get blown off the boat, make your way ashore, and probably shoot some Japanese when you get under the pier.
--- Alan
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