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I've read some early reviews of a licensed alien shooter where they complain about how confusing the control scheme is - left stick for movement and right for a

I've read some early reviews of a licensed alien shooter where they complain about how confusing the control scheme is - left stick for movement and right for aim. Before Halo it wasn't really intuitive I guess?

cubefox 1y ago
Yeah, that's another point: the modern first-person controls you describe were once thought to be counterintuitive compared to the old Wolfenstein style controls. A similar point holds for third-person games: Before Super Mario 64, all third-person games had Wolfenstein style tank controls where left/right rotates the character in place and up/down makes it move forward/backward. E.g. Tomb Raider or Mega Man Legends. The idea to make character movement relative to the camera viewpoint wasn't obvious. (Though the Tomb Raider developers tried to work around this to a degree by fixing the camera behind the character, which prevented to most counterintuitive control issues Mega Man Legends had, but also meant free camera rotation was impossible.)
ziml77 1y ago
That's really strange because that setup was effectively the default for N64 games. Stick under your left thumb for movement and the C buttons under your right thumb for camera control
- cubefox 1y ago
  It's not strange because it's not really true. The default controls both of GoldenEye and Perfect Dark used the stick for moving forward/backward and turning left/right. Turok did use the c buttons for walking and the stick for looking though.
  - ziml77 1y ago
    Forgive me sounding like Claude, but you’re absolutely right! I’ve played platformers from that era recently but it’s been a long time since I touched the shooters. I was mixing them up in my recollection. The shooters had a weird mix and for some reason even though Goldeneye had a bunch of control scheme options, none of them let you put all movement on one input and all camera control on the other.
    - cubefox 1y ago
      I'm pretty sure both GoldenEye and Perfect Dark had (non default) control options where movements were on the d-pad and camera on the analog stick. For GoldenEye see "Solitaire" and "Goodnight" here: https://goldeneye.fandom.com/wiki/Control_style https://goldeneye.fandom.com/wiki/Control_style
      - nemomarx 1y ago
        I also remember one of them having some option to use two controllers at once to have two sticks?
        ziml77 1y ago
        Yep! It was a very cool idea, though you were seriously lacking in easily accessible buttons so I didn't stick with it.
      - ziml77 1y ago
        I think the problem I had with the left-half controller layout is that it still used A and B but they were hard to press. Same problem with holding 2 controllers in the center. The N64 controller definitely was not the greatest design for shooters. (And now that I've tried to use one more recently, not a great design in general for larger hands... mine don't really fit the center grip)
        cubefox 1y ago
        But the linked page indicates you could use the right half rather than the left half of the controller. So the c-buttons (rather than the left d-pad) for walking and the stick for looking/turning. Turok style. The "Solitaire" preset even has the Z trigger for firing. Which sounds pretty good. Of course having an actual stick for walking would have been even better, but buttons aren't that bad, considering that PC games still use them for walking to this day. I'm actually wondering why PC games never converged on a "left joy-con" style controller with a stick and buttons, for one hand, while the other hand holds the mouse. I guess the ordinary keyboard is good enough so there wasn't much pressure to replace it.
ChoGGi 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Resurrection_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Resurrection_(video_game... (For anyone else curious)
- nemomarx 1y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3du770/alien_resurrection_ps1_gamespot_review/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3du770/alien_resurr... and the particular quote I was thinking of for the record.

cubefox 1y ago

Yeah, that's another point: the modern first-person controls you describe were once thought to be counterintuitive compared to the old Wolfenstein style controls. A similar point holds for third-person games: Before Super Mario 64, all third-person games had Wolfenstein style tank controls where left/right rotates the character in place and up/down makes it move forward/backward. E.g. Tomb Raider or Mega Man Legends. The idea to make character movement relative to the camera viewpoint wasn't obvious. (Though the Tomb Raider developers tried to work around this to a degree by fixing the camera behind the character, which prevented to most counterintuitive control issues Mega Man Legends had, but also meant free camera rotation was impossible.)

ziml77 1y ago

That's really strange because that setup was effectively the default for N64 games. Stick under your left thumb for movement and the C buttons under your right thumb for camera control

cubefox 1y ago
It's not strange because it's not really true. The default controls both of GoldenEye and Perfect Dark used the stick for moving forward/backward and turning left/right. Turok did use the c buttons for walking and the stick for looking though.
- ziml77 1y ago
  Forgive me sounding like Claude, but you’re absolutely right! I’ve played platformers from that era recently but it’s been a long time since I touched the shooters. I was mixing them up in my recollection. The shooters had a weird mix and for some reason even though Goldeneye had a bunch of control scheme options, none of them let you put all movement on one input and all camera control on the other.
  - cubefox 1y ago
    I'm pretty sure both GoldenEye and Perfect Dark had (non default) control options where movements were on the d-pad and camera on the analog stick. For GoldenEye see "Solitaire" and "Goodnight" here: https://goldeneye.fandom.com/wiki/Control_style https://goldeneye.fandom.com/wiki/Control_style
    - nemomarx 1y ago
      I also remember one of them having some option to use two controllers at once to have two sticks?
      - ziml77 1y ago
        Yep! It was a very cool idea, though you were seriously lacking in easily accessible buttons so I didn't stick with it.
    - ziml77 1y ago
      I think the problem I had with the left-half controller layout is that it still used A and B but they were hard to press. Same problem with holding 2 controllers in the center. The N64 controller definitely was not the greatest design for shooters. (And now that I've tried to use one more recently, not a great design in general for larger hands... mine don't really fit the center grip)
      - cubefox 1y ago
        But the linked page indicates you could use the right half rather than the left half of the controller. So the c-buttons (rather than the left d-pad) for walking and the stick for looking/turning. Turok style. The "Solitaire" preset even has the Z trigger for firing. Which sounds pretty good. Of course having an actual stick for walking would have been even better, but buttons aren't that bad, considering that PC games still use them for walking to this day. I'm actually wondering why PC games never converged on a "left joy-con" style controller with a stick and buttons, for one hand, while the other hand holds the mouse. I guess the ordinary keyboard is good enough so there wasn't much pressure to replace it.

ChoGGi 1y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Resurrection_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Resurrection_(video_game... (For anyone else curious)

nemomarx 1y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3du770/alien_resurrection_ps1_gamespot_review/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3du770/alien_resurr... and the particular quote I was thinking of for the record.