Games Done Quick
 

For the love of GOD guys, PLEASE put the default controls back to the arrow keys. The evidence continues to pile up just how bad people are at FPS controls on a platformer.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/240171282

SRB2 starts at 01:47:35 for anyone wondering, and Man, SRB2 definitely isn't newbie friendly I agree.

Actually, this is pretty stunningly good by comparison. There are a couple takeaways that we did already know, but overall this is WAY better than most of the new player videos I've seen, mainly because they're using FPS controls and thus aren't having as much trouble as a lot of people have with just the arrow keys. Normally I see newbies die over and over and over to the DSZ3 boss but this guy beat it first try!

For reference, the things we've already learned but this video heavily reiterates:

• Our default mouse speed is too high. That was my bad, sorry :(
• By default, we should have vertical mouselook off. Players generally don't want to look up and down.
• There are a couple of places where players are likely to get lost we've tried to fix in 2.2.

I know you're using this to say that we shouldn't use FPS controls by default but looking at this just encourages me in staying the course. These players are doing WAY better than the players who streamed their first play using only the arrow keys or analog.

Honestly... this didn't seem too bad. By the end of the run both players were moving pretty well. Sure, it took a bit for them to get into it, but it's a blind speedrun... if they were playing casually and took their time through GFZ rather than blowing through it they probably would've gotten used to the movement a lot sooner; especially if they took the time to mess around in the settings a bit (okay yeah, most casual players aren't going to do this either :/ ). I think what this does show clearly is certain rooms of the game that are poorly designed and/or difficulty spikes... but I think everyone is aware of those by now.

Lol DSZ3 Boss, seconds most dangerous boss in the game, right after the camera.

I'm not sure if this is an issue that effects everyone, but the lower the resolution I set, the higher the mouse speed sensitivity, at least in the SDL2 builds in fullscreen. That's really a bug that needs fixing since the default resolution is usually lower than people's native monitor resolutions.

Them immediately saying the block maze is a bonus area that doesn't lead anywhere is hilarious and I can completely understand why someone would think that. The area really does need to go. :V

Really, the default resolution ends up being the same as the screen for me.

The block maze room isn't really good, and easy for newcomers to get lost in very easily.

I'm in total agreement. When I was 12 and first played this game, I struggled to do anything with my controller with analog turned on. It was only once I switched to WASD, turned off vertical mouselook, and bound jumping and rolling to mouse that I actually learned how to play the game. It's comfortable, precise, and you never have to move your hands unless you're playing a wad with custom skills or multiplayer.

Swapping movement to the arrow keys would only result in right-handed players moving their keyboard to the extreme left, or hurting their left arm from having it crossed over for so long. And if you are playing a character with custom action buttons, you have far less options around the arrow keys than you do with WASD.

I didn't figure out to use FPS controls and put spin on "E" until I played Jazz Jackrabbit 3D (leak). the control in Jazz 3 just felt so natural and right, I replicated the experience in SRB2

I'm sorry, but no, that, I find, doesn't seem really intuitive.
Since the devteam's priorities don't exactly involve ringslinger and such, where being able to aim up/down is, quite obviously, very invaluable, so I shall focus mainly on the non-ringslinger gamemodes, with only a slight mention to ringslinger stuff.
Now, when you're running straight, yes, you do probably want a straight view. ...Which is provided by the center mouselook key in the form of Caps Lock
But in platforming, even in third person, you'd have to imagine that being able to control the camera to look more specifically would be more helpful than just being unable to do that, even being able to move the camera down would help with depth perception in platforming, something that would, presumably, be important in 3D platforming. And that's not to mention sections where you're moving up vertically.
Infact, it's a possibility that being able to vertically control the camera would help newer players get used to the jumping in platforming sections, especially if they're made aware they can center the camera.
I'm also aware that OpenGL has less problems with looking up/down than software, but even then, the problem with that is really only noticeable in first person, which I'm not even sure that newer players are aware at first they can switch between, especially for a feature only really made standard in 2.1, as you had to set a chasecam toggle bind in the previous versions.
And someone brought up in a Discord conversation this interesting moment, which mentions that new players being unable to move the camera vertically could enrage them:
Which would bring me to the next point, how many new players would try and change the options to make it better fit for themselves? As I'd imagine that a fair amount, instead of looking into the options, just jump straight into the game, and if they do happen to go into the options, what if they only change the keybinds with minimal attention given to anything mouse-related?
And imagine one of the new players which, with the silent majority arguement, would be a minority trying a netgame, let's also say they happen to join a ringslinger gametype server, they are instantly at a disadvantage because the experienced players are guaranteed to know about having to toggle vertical mouselook on, whereas there is no such guarantee for the newer player, the experienced ones would have to both know that it's a new player, and mention to them that it's a feature that needs to be toggled, which presumably would itself get tedious having to explain every time, and that's assuming said experienced players aren't tryhards that take every advantage they could get.

Along with that, I recall hearing that the control scheme the devteam is aiming for would be an FPS control scheme. Now, what feature do most FPS games, excluding some classic ones but i'll get to that shortly, have that, with that change, SRB2 by default wouldn't?
But as i've said, classic games like Wolfenstein or Doom don't have vertical mouselook, but the thing is, they can get away with it, because it isn't nearly as important of a feature for two reasons:

1. They focus more on shooting than platforming so being able to have vertical camera movement isn't as important.
2. In terms of ringslinger, those FPSes have a hitscan that doesn't care about height, but SRB2, even though it has one hitscan weapon, every single ring is restricted with height, including the rail that features said hitscan

And this next arguement doesn't have to do with anything gameplay related itself, but more-so the wording used in the specific sentence
That right there, sounds like a very blatant blanket statement. If that really is the opinion that the players in general have, then how about someone makes a poll if the players find vertical mouselook to be useful? Because without it, this statement seems like it has a fair amount of bias sprinkled into it, especially knowing that Mystic prefers software and singleplayer, the former of which, as I've previously mentioned and we all know, has problems with looking up/down in first person.

That was literally the best I've ever seen new players play SRB2. Props to those guys.

You do realize I'm not saying that vertical mouselook should be removed, right?

I'm saying that for new players, who are already struggling with our game's controls and camera, having the extra variable of being able to control the camera vertically has proven to be problematic. Just take a look at how often these players have the camera go significantly off of level when they gain no benefit from it. Neither of these players are using the vertical mouselook to check down or up. It's accidental. This isn't the first video to demonstrate this issue, either. If we want to introduce looking up and down, the mouselook key toggle is still a thing, but I think the use in third person mode is minor enough that it's not even worth talking about the feature at all. Any situation where the player is encouraged to look down to check that they can jump down is a level design flaw, not a reason to enable vertical mouselook by default.

If you're enough of an expert that you want the ability to look up and down by default, great! Change your control settings to enable the feature. Newbies already have enough to worry about without the potential to stare at the floor accidentally.

IIRC for some reason mouse speed is actually coded to be directly affected by resolution in SDL2 builds. I would have changed this already but I dread forcing everyone to have to reset their mouse sensitivity options in a 2.1 patch. =P

That and I haven't figured out yet if there was some sort of sensible reason for that "feature" in the first place.


EDIT: also, what's this about crossing my arms in order to move with arrow keys? this is falsely assuming the left hand has to do the movement. I personally use arrow keys and for that I use my right hand instead. I use my left hand to instead do all the other actions. And yes, I'm right handed before you ask. And no, I don't move my keyboard to the extreme left either.

EDIT2: Here we go, this is the point in the source code the resolution affects mouse sensitivity: https://github.com/STJr/SRB2/blob/SR...i_video.c#L853

(note: it used to be a different line before I changed some of the mouse movement code here to fix Windows 10 issues)

I wonder if it would be enough to considerably lower just the vertical mouse sensitivity a bunch by default instead of completely removing it?

Monster, the only reason I could think of right now is that maybe it fixes mouse movement speed in windowed mode? At least windowed seems to work right at lower resolutions for me. I can't see why it would be done otherwise.

...see, that doesn't make a lot of sense to me since, for windowed mode, wwidth == realwidth and wheight == realheight unless I'm mistaken (wwidth and wheight are the window's actual size, while realwidth and realheight are the game's resolution). This results in windowed mode sensitivities being all the same unless there's some edge case I'm not considering.

Yes. And I'm bringing up points why it shouldn't be turned off by default, even for newer players.
And I do find it interesting how that reply features the only quote from my post. Despite it probably not even making up just about 1/8th of it, not exactly ideal behaviour to dismiss most of a post if a certain part looks like nonsense.

First of all, you could just try to just fix/adjust the mouse sensitivity with the first idea you and Sryder mentioned, see how well new players handle the vertical mouselook like that, and then make conclusions based on that.

And we can agree, that leaps of faith are bad level designs, but what about situations where looking up is helpful? Or maybe jumping on small platforms in later levels where you really have to precisely land on them, like the CEZ2 platforms to the checkpoint with the ring arrow before the grapple tower as an example since CEZ is getting reworked in 2.2 anyway and the Megaman-platform section in ERZ2 that comes right after the lazer section with the crushers?

Along with that, since I've already mentioned that few games nowadays lack vertical mouse control and that there is a clear possibility that a worrying amount of new players don't look into options like in the GDQ video and/or they wouldn't have an idea you could turn it on/off ...Which was mentioned in one of the quotes in my post so that's one indication that atleast a part of my post was just dismissed so a newer player would probably expect that vertical camera movement just isn't a thing in SRB2, all the while remembering the other games they've played that did have said vertical camera movement, while, again, probably not even looking in the options menu.

Infact, along with the quote of an older player that mentioned looking up/down helped him back when he was newer, here are quotes from others that find looking up/down was still helpful, preferably without anything getting dismissed.
Now then, onto the last part.

If they're staring at the floor accidentally, they would have had to pull the mouse back, so either it is, again, the sensitivity issue, or just human error.

The basic issue is that we're expecting players to handle a control scheme they're not using for a platformer for a platformer. The more variables we can remove from the equation, the better. While I'm sure lowering it would help some players, removing it entirely is likely to help more players than just lowering it would.

Just because I'm not directly responding to a specific part of your message doesn't mean I didn't read it. I simply didn't think that responding to all of it would be particularly useful to the conversation. Your opinion is pretty clear, after all.

I'm not saying that adjusting the camera vertically is useless. I'm saying it has limited use. I think the key thing you're missing here is that the less things a new player needs to handle at once, the better. If we can remove gameplay mechanics with limited use, this means that the gameplay mechanics that are actually important are brought to the forefront.

Instead of thinking about it as "where can this be helpful?", think about it as "where is this really necessary?". Removing or hiding unnecessary features is a good way to reign in complexity, which is exactly what we're trying to do.

This here is the key thing I think is important. Yes, it's human error, but it's human error that they wouldn't have at all if the feature was disabled. I'm taking the view that between the benefits of having the feature enabled or disabled by default, having it disabled by default will benefit more players, and yes, I'm taking into account all the things I didn't directly reply to here. Disabling vertical camera movement by default prevents human error causing the camera to be pointed in an unhelpful direction, and in doing so makes it more likely that a beginner player will have a good first impression and stick with the game long enough for the controls to make sense. This is WAY more important than the occasional situation where looking up and down can be beneficial.

I do wish that this would have been elaborated on a bit more as to how that is the conclusion that was achieved, so there could have been extra input on it.

Alright, fair enough then. I suppose I can get behind that.

Do wonder how detrimental it is to not have it in said situations where its "limited use" comes in handy, but I'd imagine that'd involve playtesting either way, or atleast the levels to be designed around it.
But the other thing I wonder is if if the new player is used to being able to control the vertical view of a camera in other games, expecting to be able to do the same in this game, but finding that they can't, and again, there's a distinct possibility the new players or maybe even long-returning veteran players won't think that it can be changed via the options.
Noticing that, if the vertical mouselook being off by default idea passes, I do also atleast suggest that, if a player with vertical mouselook off ends up joining a ringslinger game, there should atleast be a warning for them to go in the options to turn it on.

But maybe the human error aspect could be curbed down enough with a slower default speed for mouselook to the point of being a minimal issue? Especially considering that for more severe cases looking way too high up/down, in situations with low enough sensitivity, would have to amount to a massive jolt backwards/forwards with the mouse, and not causing the oddity of some new players being generally unaware that vertical mouselook is an option unless the warning idea from earlier in the post is implemented anyway.

I mean if Mouselook were to be disabled by default you could just toggle it so its on and save it to config :v

...We've went over this already, but there's a fair likelihood that a portion of newer players either won't go to the options or won't be aware that it could be turned on/off.

As one of the weird, keyboard-only players, I literally cannot think of a single time in all of my replaying of the single player game where I lamented the lack of vertical camea movement.

There are times when it's helpful when doing particularly tricky movements (crawla chain-bouncing), but I think it's mostly useless for the majority of players. If you didn't have it, you quickly wouldn't miss it.

Former keyboard-only user here. On my end I can confirm there were times were I really needed to look up/down. An example would be after being launched by an spring. Seeing clearly the place where you land makes you feel a lot more secure on certain occasions, also in my point of view makes the game feel a bit more... Inmersive. I personally like to admire the landscape on some levels, a thing I could only do fully with the mouselook enabled, specifically with vertical camera movement. So yeah if I have to be honest mouselook really changed my experience of playing the game. I wouldn't call it "mostly useless" if you know how to properly use it.

Weighing in a bit more here, I turned vertical mouse look off as soon as I was able to find the option because it made me uncomfortable when the view to bobbed up-and-down as I made normal left-and-right movements. I've tried to turn on the vertical mouse look a handful of times, but I've never found any use for it. The way maps and platforms are laid out makes looking down wholly unnecessary, and if hazards are placed above the player, that's a problem with hazard placement, not with the camera angle.

If this were a normal, analog 3D platformer, of course we could expect players to know how to manipulate a full range camera. But in SRB2, it is a jarring first experience for new users and a redundancy for the advanced users.

Edit: In order for vertical camera movement to be useful in SRB2, the entire camera system would have to be reworked from scratch. The camera doesn't revolve around the character as in typical 3D platformers. Moving the camera down looks at the ground BEHIND your character instead of the ground at your character's feet, and looking upward is similarly nonsensical. This means you'll be scrolling your character off the screen if you want to move the camera up or down enough to actually see anything, and even then, that little tiny bit extra you can see is functionally useless because of where the camera is position. It's been functionally useless for gameplay as far as I've been able to tell, and it stretches polygons (in software and OpenGL) in ways that make the game look even more dated.

Again, do suspect that this would either be down to the mouse sensitivity being high by default, or human error depending on how much the mouse moved forward/backward.
But hey, this is your choice that you've made after finding out you can change it, so I can support that.
My concern, however, is that a fair amount of the newer players won't even know about it, potentially even never finding out before ditching the game.

This however is an interesting point, actually, which I was even discussing with one of the people that was quoted in my previous posts, since I do happen to know of a Doom-engine game that has such a third-person camera.
You might wonder how it goes around the software looking-up/down issue, and it actually restricts the camera from going above/under a certain angle if you use the software renderer. all the while also zooming in a bit in the third person camera
Camera angle restriction in third-person, Camera angle restriction in first-person
OpenGL is the default setting, however, and thus anyone who didn't turn on software mode won't be restricted by the limited camera angle, with a screenshot here demonstrating an angle looking down way more than software can.
Either way, this camera would be more orthodox with other 3D games instead of being like... ...Er... ...Looking up/down in 2D Sonic, I guess?
However, if the third person camera is changed, it would possibly be preferable if the "legacy" camera is kept in as an option for those old players that are too used to it, to quiet down the potential complaining.

SRB2 used to limit the camera angle like that in software. I'm not sure why it doesn't anymore. Either way I think immediately jumping on "vertical mouselook is always bad" is rather rash when you consider that both the default mouselook values are a little high, and the bug/feature(?) of fullscreen where lower resolutions have you turning faster. They even said in the video that the slightest twitches of the mouse turn you incredibly far, that's my experience with the default mouse sensitivity in low resolutions. While it's generally not that bad for me in windowed mode or native resolution. I wouldn't be surprised if the video had people at default resolution (640x400) on 1080p monitors in fullscreen. Because that's all the default. Look into the fullscreen mouse sensitivity and how high the mouse sensitivity is by default, then go to more drastic solutions if the problem is still there.

If it wasn't because I already know SRB2 well and tend to go into options of games before playing them, and then vertical mouse-look was disabled by default, I would probably think something along the lines of "when I move the mouse left, the camera turns left, but when I move it down, the camera does not turn down, ergo the camera is unable to ever turn down, which is pretty bad for a platformer in 2010+" or such.

And if vertical mouse-look was enabled, I would probably think something along the lines of "when I move the mouse down, the camera turns down, ergo I can just move the mouse a little up and down to look around".

So while yes, you can just go to the options and enable it if it's disabled by default... would you even go to the options, anyway? "You" as an individual might, but "you" as generally everyone trying out the game? I'm going to assume that far from everyone will do so. Even then, if you don't know that there's an option to enable vertical mouse-look (again, people might think there's not an option for it if the mouse by default does move the camera horizontally but not vertically), how far would you delve into the mouse options if the horizontal sensitivity feels nice enough by default (which it preferably should)?

So yes, I, too, am strongly against disabling vertical mouse-look by default. I wouldn't mind if the vertical sensitivity was lowered, as long as it would still feel fairly intuitive to use by default.


The default settings should not be nice and simple, but rather nice and intuitive, and there can be a big difference between those things. (This goes for all games, of course, not just SRB2.)


Not in vanilla SRB2.

I'm aware, I was just talking about the game demonstrated in those screenshots.

First thing I did when I noticed the camera was turning too fast is lower mouse x and y sensitivity, currently set it to 17 for both axis (mousesens and mouseysense) and this made the camera far more controllable and not shake-y imo, I don't think setting mouselook off by default would benefit new players much, soon you're going to have people complaining about not being able to look below them for precise platforming or landing after a spring launch, only to realize they forgot to check the options (can't blame them for that, It's like the default / recommended settings go against how the game plays) or they missed the mouselook toggle option, I believe the Real problem is how fast the mouse speed is set by default and not being able to look up/down.

I'm thinking that moving the mouse vertically should just barely nudge the camera in that direction by default. Enough to know that the camera does move vertically (so that the player can increase the sensitivity in the settings if they want to), but not enough that it makes a significant difference to your field of view.

Quick question for those bringing up issues with mouse sensitivity: if you can still play SRB2 with srb2dd.exe, how does mouse sensitivity compare on there for you (using the default values or whatever)?

Personally, I'd just have the whole mousesens and mouseysens covered in that tutorial thing you guys are making. Instead of having a basic tutorial where it just teaches you how to jump and roll, expand it a bit. Say you get to a section, and the game says something along the lines of "Good Job!, If you feel your cameras turning to quickly up and down or side to side, did you know you can change that? Give it a try. Try changing your horizontal speed to 10." Nope sorry you changed it to 11, try again. Good Job! Now try changing your vertical speed. Good Job!" You can also cover other important areas for new players. "Try changing your spin button. Good Job, change it back to its default now. Good Job!"
I understand that some people might find this annoying, but there are certain things that are just better to smash into new players heads early on so they don't go through any problems later on, even if it means a minor annoyance to the player in the tutorial.
One more thing after watching some of that video.... shouldn't chase cam off be the default? That'd also help a lot.

Personally I've always played the game with keyboard (unless playing multiplayer modes), and I don't remember using look up or down for anything, even knowing it was there.


Anyway, wouldn't it be better just to have a little tutorial in the game? After the first start, the game could ask once if you want to try it or not, and it could be an option in the main menu. I know that good games are supposed to not need it, but like you say, this is a platforming game with FPS controls. When I played Metroid Prime back in the day, having the game explain me the controls was just what I needed, and that's a game that used all the GameCube's pad controls. If you really want to help newbie players, that would help a lot more than hiding controls in the menu. That way you could tell the player too what options are in the menu, in case he/she wants to change them later.

Pretty sure they already confirmed they would add a tutorial in 2.2.

The basic thing it feels a lot of you are missing is that this isn't about polling. It doesn't matter how many people show up saying "vertically controlling the camera is essential" and "I never use it". People here know enough about the game to change the settings to suit their tastes. What we care about here is the opinions and reactions of people who are legitimately new to SRB2, and those people aren't going to be coming onto our forums to provide their opinion. There ARE methods of determining what true newbies want, though. Here are a few of the methods we use to attempt to gather that information:

• Looking at opinions on the game across the internet. Finding threads on SRB2 on forums unrelated to us can be a great source of candid feedback from newbies.
• Watching blind playthroughs of the game, like the one linked in this thread. While they often won't say directly what they're problems are, we can often infer it by watching what they struggle with. This is also a wonderful source for finding places in the level design where players get lost so we can try to give those places more direction.
• Actually presenting the game to people unfamiliar with it. This might sound shocking, but I have actively tested the game on newbies by handing friends who don't know about the game the reigns and seeing how they play.

Most of the conclusions you see me state about what "newbies want" is based on data gathered in this manner. One of the things I tried to do in 2.1 was make the game more newbie-friendly, but I totally failed because I hadn't gathered nearly enough data, or was ignoring the really problematic things. For instance, this is why there's that "tip" for Sonic telling you about braking, skidding for when you do so, and various other interface features trying to teach you things in 2.1. It turns out that wasn't nearly enough. This is the core reason behind things like automatic braking and directionchar, along with a lot of the other interface changes you've seen in previews. We really want to improve our new player experience, because it turns most players off from our game when they can't grasp how to play.

The default settings aren't actually necessarily what we expect new players to play with, even! The tutorial clearly states that you can change the settings and there's already text explicitly saying that you can change, say, the mouse sensitivity. What the defaults are designed to do is present a clear starting point that's going to help the most players possible. The less complexity in the default controls, the better they are for that purpose.

First of all, while I know that obviously won't automatically make everyone (nor even most) visit our forums, why not add a link to them, like, in the game tutorial for example. Chances are people who want to get involved more in the game and/or its community (or even just want some help) will actually do so, and I hope you know just how important the forum/community is for this game. Not the main site, the actual forums.

Okay, that is awesome. Why not text explicitly saying that you can disable vertical mouselook if you find yourself having trouble with it? Or if you feel like it isn't particularly useful to you? Once the sensibility adjustments get applied to the exe, of course, if some are needed.
That would definitely help fight the issue with people oh so unaccustomed to a game mechanic (mouselook with vertical) that, despite being maybe unconventional in platformers, is the standard in many other genres, and definitely not unheard of.
But of course, we cannot expect players to have ever played other games, am I right? Or grasp the concept of ...simply moving the camera back up once you realize mouse down means camera down, and in the future maybe trying to just move the mouse to the side if you want to just look to the side. Again, this when the mouse sensitivity issues get sorted out.

This is exactly the kind of statement that ends up producing ever more dumbed down versions of games. No, simple doesn't always mean better.
Would you cut the number of controls of a plane simulator game in half because "Nobody ever uses flaps anyway" or "Newbies have trouble with flaps at first"? or actually improve your tutorial on them?
This game isn't just "Sonic 1/2/3 but in 3D", it has way more depth to it, and hiding this away behind a default setting means people won't be getting the full experience the game has to offer. Be it crawla bouncing, or seeing where you're meant to go next in an ascending section (past just the next platform) or even just admiring the levels themselves (who knows, that up there could be a secret cave...).
SRB2 can be beautiful if you play it at its fullest potential, let's teach people how to do that with a badass tutorial instead of having people look for a setting they might never even find.

So I guess there's a text saying that vertical mouselook is a toggle too, right? I'm pretty sure there are players out there that are used to vertical camera movement in games.

Also, is "staring at the floor" a major issue? Especially with lower vertical mouse sensivity? The camera can be brought back to the center in matter of seconds, there's even a key for doing that.

Anyone going to answer my question from earlier? I believe mouse sensitivity didn't used to be so high (or dependent on resolution in fullscreen) before we moved to SDL2 (and may still be the case in srb2dd.exe), but I need people to verify this since I can't use my main desktop computer right now. Nor can I reliably go on Discord with the awful Wi-Fi connection on this laptop.

Did get a reply about it when bringing it up.
And I can confirm that, while trying 1.09 or 2.0 after being used to 2.1, the mouse sensitivity felt quite a bit different.

Also, just tried windowed DirectDraw myself, mouse movement does feel more sluggish than windowed SDL2 even on 1280x800, a green resolution.

Yes, this is a very common issue with newer players. At all mouse sensitivities, not just high ones. Part of why I know it's such a problem is because one of the questions asked from newbies is "can I turn looking up and down off?"

This sounds exactly like the type of person that would check if you can turn it off, you know. And the answer is yes. And the tutorial should tell you anyway.