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That smug self-righteousness doesn't suit you. I suggest you try on something slightly more humble. The question is not 'do they exist'. The question is, 'how

That smug self-righteousness doesn't suit you. I suggest you try on something slightly more humble. The question is not 'do they exist'. The question is, 'how many'? More specifically, how many are in the target market? It is unrealistic to expect shoestring-budget indie games to cater to every person on the planet.

PavlovsCat 12y ago
Anything intended as more than a 5 minute gimmick should have configurable controls anyway IMHO. That, to me, settles this debate right there, at least when it comes to games. Yeah, it would be nice for browsers to recognize the keyboard, but no wait, that's still not really useful, because then you still need to be able configure your keys, and once you have that, browser recognition of the keyboard layout would just make it possible to set a smart default config - which would be cool, don't get me wrong, but I wonder if this is really that big of a "pain point" right now.
clarry 12y ago
How many hours does it take to make a game? Now how many hours does it take to implement a basic usability feat such as rebindable keys? I agree that if you're spending a week or two to mash up a shitty excuse for game, then the fifteen to thirty minutes to make keys rebindable might be prohibitive. I hope this is not indicative of indie games' quality today, but if it is, then the people in this thread are right to criticize these games for it. I'm pretty sure though that most real (indie or not) games aren't slapped together in a week. No, you're spending hundreds of hours at a minimum on design, code, assets, testing, marketing, all that. Even if you needed a few hours to make the keys bindable (unlikely unless your code was horrible spaghetti to begin with), it's still going to be far below 1% (bullshit figure) of total development time. I can assure you that more than 1% of people would find it a useful feature. In Europe alone you have a few hundred million people who are almost guaranteed to have a keyboard layout different from US-QWERTY. As far as games go, we're in the same market even if English isn't our native language. Even in the English speaking Americas you have people who happen to use a layout other than QWERTY. And you have people who use e.g. split ergonomic keyboards (with or without QWERTY), on which some bindings are just unusable. For example, the Kinesis Advantage Pro is contoured such that the fingers sit naturally in the home position. Index finger on F. In this position, ESDF is very usable. WASD is completely unusable. Even on a contourless split keyboard some bindings need to be changed because it's hard to reach for the other side of the split (the other hand is using the mouse). Then you have some left-handed people who use the mouse with their left hand... And whatever happened to user preference, God forbid? You can have a perfectly normal keyboard and a standard US-QWERTY layout, and you can still find that you would prefer to play the game with different bindings. Really, bindability is basic usability and it's not hard to implement. It wasn't a problem in the 90s, not even for small indie shops. Yes, a few developers forgot or neglected to do it, usually out of ignorance. But they never gave these bullshit excuses about time and money and oooh every second counts...

PavlovsCat 12y ago

Anything intended as more than a 5 minute gimmick should have configurable controls anyway IMHO. That, to me, settles this debate right there, at least when it comes to games. Yeah, it would be nice for browsers to recognize the keyboard, but no wait, that's still not really useful, because then you still need to be able configure your keys, and once you have that, browser recognition of the keyboard layout would just make it possible to set a smart default config - which would be cool, don't get me wrong, but I wonder if this is really that big of a "pain point" right now.

clarry 12y ago

How many hours does it take to make a game? Now how many hours does it take to implement a basic usability feat such as rebindable keys? I agree that if you're spending a week or two to mash up a shitty excuse for game, then the fifteen to thirty minutes to make keys rebindable might be prohibitive. I hope this is not indicative of indie games' quality today, but if it is, then the people in this thread are right to criticize these games for it. I'm pretty sure though that most real (indie or not) games aren't slapped together in a week. No, you're spending hundreds of hours at a minimum on design, code, assets, testing, marketing, all that. Even if you needed a few hours to make the keys bindable (unlikely unless your code was horrible spaghetti to begin with), it's still going to be far below 1% (bullshit figure) of total development time. I can assure you that more than 1% of people would find it a useful feature. In Europe alone you have a few hundred million people who are almost guaranteed to have a keyboard layout different from US-QWERTY. As far as games go, we're in the same market even if English isn't our native language. Even in the English speaking Americas you have people who happen to use a layout other than QWERTY. And you have people who use e.g. split ergonomic keyboards (with or without QWERTY), on which some bindings are just unusable. For example, the Kinesis Advantage Pro is contoured such that the fingers sit naturally in the home position. Index finger on F. In this position, ESDF is very usable. WASD is completely unusable. Even on a contourless split keyboard some bindings need to be changed because it's hard to reach for the other side of the split (the other hand is using the mouse). Then you have some left-handed people who use the mouse with their left hand... And whatever happened to user preference, God forbid? You can have a perfectly normal keyboard and a standard US-QWERTY layout, and you can still find that you would prefer to play the game with different bindings. Really, bindability is basic usability and it's not hard to implement. It wasn't a problem in the 90s, not even for small indie shops. Yes, a few developers forgot or neglected to do it, usually out of ignorance. But they never gave these bullshit excuses about time and money and oooh every second counts...