Gamepad question

I don't necessarily know where else to put this, but I do have a question concerning a gamepad for SRB2.

The gamepad I have is a little, well...slippery, I guess, in terms of controls, since the control pad makes the character automatically turn at full speed, and the control stick is very sensitive since it takes very little effort to wind up making me overshoot what I was aiming for.

It was definitely a step up from using the keyboard like I have been, but it's kinda hard to aim in the right direction since the control stick, albeit being easier to use than the semi-unresponsive control pad, tends to turn left or right when I'm trying to go forward or backward.
http://thumbs3.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/m6D__S_nOzAvFcN8XznR-0w.jpg
My controller is an AxisPad, and I'm not quite certain how old it is, but my question is this--is there a recommended gamepad to use with this game, like an Xbox 360 controller? If I can find one, I'd like a controller that allows easier movements, so I can control where I'm going a little better. >w<;

Shibuyah-kun said:

It was definitely a step up from using the keyboard like I have been..

Click to expand...

Doubtful. Keyboard w/ mouse definitely seems to be the best method of controlling SRB2 nowadays, since the ability to strafe is key in many level designs. With movement set to WASD, turning & horizontal camera movement set to the mouse, and mouse-look turned off (personal preference so that I don't accidentally look up or down,) SRB2 is the best controlling 3D platforming game I have ever played.

Playing analog was certainly possible, and I did so for many years, but once I made the switch to mouse and keyboard, my skill increased dramatically and I never wanted to go back. It was like someone flipped on a switch in my brain and I suddenly understood how the game was played.

Having said all this, if you don't own a mouse or can't use one for some reason, a logitech controller is what I used back in my analog days. Set analog to "off," set turning/horizontal camera movement to the right and left bumpers, like Mega Man Legends, and you can get a bit more control out of the... controller. But you'll never get the precision of mouse and keyboard with anything but those two inputs, I don't think.

Note: I've never tried to play with ONLY keyboard, but I've read it is possible if you are used to playing old FPS games, so I won't knock it until I've tried it.

There aren't really any recommended gamepads for the game, mostly because nobody plays with a gamepad. If you're willing to search a bit, I've done gamepad experiments with a Super Pad 64 hooked up through an N64->USB adapter and found the analog stick rather responsive, though any N64 controller would have the same feel for the analog stick and first-party controllers handle better, at least IMO. It all depends on what you prefer, though; I like resistive analog sticks that are easy to half-tilt, so my opinions might differ from yours.

One thing is that I assume you're playing in Analog mode (which would make sense), and the current Analog mode is... very bad. I'd like to get to making it better to control at some point, but that's not a high priority at the moment and a lot of tweaks are subjective.

Legendary Emerald said:

Doubtful. Keyboard w/ mouse definitely seems to be the best method of controlling SRB2 nowadays, since the ability to strafe is key in many level designs. With movement set to WASD, turning & horizontal camera movement set to the mouse, and mouse-look turned off (personal preference so that I don't accidentally look up or down,) SRB2 is the best controlling 3D platforming game I have ever played.

Playing analog was certainly possible, and I did so for many years, but once I made the switch to mouse and keyboard, my skill increased dramatically and I never wanted to go back. It was like someone flipped on a switch in my brain and I suddenly understood how the game was played.

Having said all this, if you don't own a mouse or can't use one for some reason, a logitech controller is what I used back in my analog days. Set analog to "off," set turning/horizontal camera movement to the right and left bumpers, like Mega Man Legends, and you can get a bit more control out of the... controller. But you'll never get the precision of mouse and keyboard with anything but those two inputs, I don't think.

Note: I've never tried to play with ONLY keyboard, but I've read it is possible if you are used to playing old FPS games, so I won't knock it until I've tried it.

Click to expand...

Well, about this--I've never really been too good with multi-tasking the mouse and keyboard together. I admit that I haven't tried it with SRB2, but when I tried it for a game a few years ago, it didn't really "click" per say. I guess I'm a little too clunky for that control-scheme, since I seem to do better with all the buttons in a somewhat relative radius, which in this case, was the keyboard only. It did offer good control in terms of how far I wanted to go, but more than half the time I was too busy getting turned around to progress very smoothly. Thank you for your answer though, Emerald, I appreciate you taking the time to write this quite a bit! I tried playing with analog on, but, it felt a little too...free, so to speak, so I changed back to the default. >w<

RedEnchilada said:

There aren't really any recommended gamepads for the game, mostly because nobody plays with a gamepad. If you're willing to search a bit, I've done gamepad experiments with a Super Pad 64 hooked up through an N64->USB adapter and found the analog stick rather responsive, though any N64 controller would have the same feel for the analog stick and first-party controllers handle better, at least IMO. It all depends on what you prefer, though; I like resistive analog sticks that are easy to half-tilt, so my opinions might differ from yours.

One thing is that I assume you're playing in Analog mode (which would make sense), and the current Analog mode is... very bad. I'd like to get to making it better to control at some point, but that's not a high priority at the moment and a lot of tweaks are subjective.

Click to expand...

Ooh, I see--I bet that worked nicely~ The N64 controller has a nice number of buttons, and I'm sure that mapping things out worked rather well. I don't know if I myself would use the 64 controller, but I find it really awesome to hear that it worked so well! I actually agree with you in regards to the tilting of the analog stick, since having to apply more pressure to go faster is easiest to me--my AxisPad's analog stick is much too sensitive I think, since it doesn't take much to wind up all over the place. ^ ^;

Well, I admit that I turned on Analog mode for a bit, and it did seem to do okay control-wise, but...well, it didn't seem too practical, since I couldn't move the camera with the gamepad, and it felt too different from what I was used to, even if being able to see the entirety of the character was nice. Thank you for replying to my question guys, I wasn't expecting to receive this awesome input, and was quite surprised by how detailed your posts were~ I honestly felt as if I was learning a little something from all of this, and you both were helpful to me in this! I'll look into the controllers a bit more for now, but I'll let you guys know how that goes. ^w^

Shibuyah-kun said:

Thank you for your answer though, Emerald, I appreciate you taking the time to write this quite a bit! I tried playing with analog on, but, it felt a little too...free, so to speak, so I changed back to the default. >w<

Click to expand...

Forgive me if I misread your post, but turning ON analog was the opposite of what I recommended, actually. Analog makes it so that turning (rotating the character) does NOT move the camera. With analog OFF, turning (rotating the character) moves the camera along with the direction the character is facing. With analog off, you will only see Sonic's back most of the time, and that is what allows you the best vision to make jumps.

So, to make clear my preferred control scheme...

Camera: On
Analog: Off
Always Mouse-Look: Off
Use Mouse: On
Mouse Move: Off
Invert Mouse: Off
Mouse Speed: To your own preference, but I keep it about an indent away from the left side of the bar.

Forward: W
Strafe Left: A
Strafe Right: D
Backward: S
Turn Left: NOT USED
Turn Right: NOT USED

Mouse 1/Left Click: Jump
Mouse 2/Right Click: Spin/Spindash

This way, the mouse controls turning, jumping, and spinning, and the left hand only has to use WASD.

This will serve you well with everything EXCEPT the first-person multiplayer FPS modes, which will require something different.

For using a controller, I think it is half-fully useful, mostly for playing a small distance away from the computer screen. I use an Afterglow PS3 wireless controller, which allows me to be on the other side of the room playing SRB2, but this controller works wonder in co-op only (since i have a decent amount of control with the 2 analog sticks.) But if you try to play an FPS, switch to the Keyboard and mouse immediately. Turning through keyboard keys are slow, and fast, and it doesn't help that the controller faces the same problem. What I am hoping in the future is that the dev team could make an adjustable turning speed for analog and keyboard players (mostly for analog). However, there is a way to use a 6-axis controller for gaming in general. Try getting the XPadder program, which takes your Controller and maps it to keyboard keys on your keyboard. You can also map the mouse controls to the controller, and if you can set a good mouse sensitivity in srb2, you can play srb2 with fast looking speed!

Legendary Emerald said:

Forgive me if I misread your post, but turning ON analog was the opposite of what I recommended, actually. Analog makes it so that turning (rotating the character) does NOT move the camera. With analog OFF, turning (rotating the character) moves the camera along with the direction the character is facing. With analog off, you will only see Sonic's back most of the time, and that is what allows you the best vision to make jumps.

So, to make clear my preferred control scheme...

Camera: On
Analog: Off
Always Mouse-Look: Off
Use Mouse: On
Mouse Move: Off
Invert Mouse: Off
Mouse Speed: To your own preference, but I keep it about an indent away from the left side of the bar.

Forward: W
Strafe Left: A
Strafe Right: D
Backward: S
Turn Left: NOT USED
Turn Right: NOT USED

Mouse 1/Left Click: Jump
Mouse 2/Right Click: Spin/Spindash

This way, the mouse controls turning, jumping, and spinning, and the left hand only has to use WASD.

This will serve you well with everything EXCEPT the first-person multiplayer FPS modes, which will require something different.

Click to expand...

If I could suggest any better mouse buttons, if your mouse has a mouse wheel, use mouse wheel click for spinning, left click for firing, and right click for jumping, you can also use the mouse wheel to scroll through the weapons.

Legendary Emerald said:

Forgive me if I misread your post, but turning ON analog was the opposite of what I recommended, actually. Analog makes it so that turning (rotating the character) does NOT move the camera. With analog OFF, turning (rotating the character) moves the camera along with the direction the character is facing. With analog off, you will only see Sonic's back most of the time, and that is what allows you the best vision to make jumps.

So, to make clear my preferred control scheme...

Camera: On
Analog: Off
Always Mouse-Look: Off
Use Mouse: On
Mouse Move: Off
Invert Mouse: Off
Mouse Speed: To your own preference, but I keep it about an indent away from the left side of the bar.

Forward: W
Strafe Left: A
Strafe Right: D
Backward: S
Turn Left: NOT USED
Turn Right: NOT USED

Mouse 1/Left Click: Jump
Mouse 2/Right Click: Spin/Spindash

This way, the mouse controls turning, jumping, and spinning, and the left hand only has to use WASD.

This will serve you well with everything EXCEPT the first-person multiplayer FPS modes, which will require something different.

Click to expand...

Ah, sorry about that, I didn't mean to confuse or anything--I had turned on the Analog mode to see how it worked, but I didn't stick to it since I didn't like it. It felt a little too...free, I suppose, even if seeing the character's sprites in entirety was nice.
I don't know if I'll ever get very good with using the mouse and keyboard in tandem, but I'll give it a chance sometime to see how I do. X3

Duon the Adventurer said:

For using a controller, I think it is half-fully useful, mostly for playing a small distance away from the computer screen. I use an Afterglow PS3 wireless controller, which allows me to be on the other side of the room playing SRB2, but this controller works wonder in co-op only (since i have a decent amount of control with the 2 analog sticks.) But if you try to play an FPS, switch to the Keyboard and mouse immediately. Turning through keyboard keys are slow, and fast, and it doesn't help that the controller faces the same problem. What I am hoping in the future is that the dev team could make an adjustable turning speed for analog and keyboard players (mostly for analog). However, there is a way to use a 6-axis controller for gaming in general. Try getting the XPadder program, which takes your Controller and maps it to keyboard keys on your keyboard. You can also map the mouse controls to the controller, and if you can set a good mouse sensitivity in srb2, you can play srb2 with fast looking speed!

Click to expand...

Ooh, really? I have an Afterglow PS3 controller too, but I didn't know it could be used on the computer--how do you set it up? I might want to try that, and see how good it does, since it does a nice job on our PS3. 8D

Still, does that mean my gamepad is a 6-axis controller? ...Well, if it is, the Axis in it's name makes sense. I've never used the XPadder thing before, but I'll look into it, thanks Duon! ^w^

Duon the Adventurer said:

If I could suggest any better mouse buttons, if your mouse has a mouse wheel, use mouse wheel click for spinning, left click for firing, and right click for jumping, you can also use the mouse wheel to scroll through the weapons.

Click to expand...

This is a good setup, too, and doesn't require a completely different control scheme for platforming and shooting. For people that switch between the two often, it will be useful.

But, personally, I can't stand pressing down on the scroll wheel as a standard action in a game. And I spin much more often than I shoot, since I hardly ever touch multiplayer.

I've used a few gamepads recently, starting with the exact same one that you have. However, mine broke, so I had to switch to something else, I ended up modding my PSP and using an app called "FuSa Gamepad" basically turning every button into a USB controler mapping, it worked for a little while, but I found that I was running out of buttons to map things to.

Finally my dad ended up buying me a PlayStation 2 USB adapter which works rather nicely, I have square mapped to spin; X mapped to jump, the left analog stick mapped to turning and moving, the right analog stick mapped to strafe and looking, and L2 and R2 for rotating the camera (I usually use analog mode and it works for me, I can see why people dislike it though). The joysticks are a little sensitive, but other than that it works well for me. Note that this is all just a matter of my opinion.

If your controller is making Sonic shoot at full speed no matter what, you're probably using one through DirectInput, which SRB2 doesn't like, in my experience. Any game pad working through that doesn't have any analog sensitivity. This is from what I've observed, however, so I could be wrong on what exactly is causing the issue.

It's an odd problem that nobody has been able to address for years, but it's only on Windows, at least. Any controller I plug in while playing the Linux port has perfect analog sensitivity. (I can land on top of street poles if I wanted to. It could still use more traction, but that might have more to do with sprites than the movement system.) While on Windows, the game gets really picky about which one has analog sensitivity.

For instance, my generic DragonRise USB controller works fine with analog mode, but any XBOX 360 controller, or a USB-modded original XBOX pad? No luck for you.

I feel like this issue gives a false impression of what analog mode is like for a lot of people, but the keyboard might still make more sense for the more competitive multiplayer guys. I, however, enjoy single player and coop, so using a controller is more relaxing for me.

The input issues with XInput controllers (i.e. analog oversensitivity due to higher resolution analog data) on srb2dd do not exist on the sdl2 builds.

SRB2's analog mode by default is sloppy and imprecise garbage. I made a thread a while back in an effort to make using a controller more tolerable: https://mb.srb2.org/showthread.php?t=38298

The guide was made with an XBox 360 controller in mind, but I think it should work fine for most USB controllers.