Control feedback thread

Since the replies are from the perspectives of veterans who are disappointed in the removal of an old control scheme, I think the perspective of a new player such as myself is much needed. Handling Sonic is extremely slippery making the precise platforming sections in the later stages extremely difficult. The 2D section in Egg Rock felt OK so I'm assuming part of this is because Sonic's speed is hard to a 3D game around.

time gear said:

First of all, the option to thok in any direction as some have suggested would probably satisfy a lot of people who played analog mode solely for that feature.

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Fickle's control mod has that feature in addition to feeling much better to play than analog.

I did not necessarily walk away from this thread, just been busy, and feeling shame for the way I acted.

Rob said:

SRB2's default controls always, for all releases, assumed you were managing the camera. This is not something new to 2.2. if you were to go back and re-install 2.0 or final demo, you'll find "turn left" and "turn right" are defaulted to left and right keys. These are the exact same things as we have right now with the camera controls "look left" and "look right". We just changed where they show up in the options menu, and swapped the strafe keys to be move left and move right by default instead. But these are the same strafe functions from Final Demo era.

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I mean, I do remember that, but only now that I'm forced to remember it. The moment analog mode was added I turned it on and never looked back. In fact, my memory is hazy given how long ago it was (and I can't remember anything for crap anyway), but I may have been one of the people who originally requested analog mode to begin with, all the way back then.

Like, I have always been going on about this. Always always. I've been writing about SAGE for tssznews.com for more than a decade at this point and even over there, every year, there's at least one game where I have to have The Moment of "Sonic is a platformer, please don't expect me to control this with a keyboard." Unity has built in controller support, Game Maker has built in controller support, Clickteam Fusion has built in controller support, but there are always games that hit me with "Press shift to jump" like it's 1999 and I'm trying to play Super Mario All-Stars in ZSNES.

It's depressing to realize I may have hammering this point for that long, but it's also still the truth, as far as I'm concerned. I think I mentioned it on my blog, but 30 million users on Steam have connected a controller at least once to play PC games. The numbers are significant enough not to be ignored, and it's only going to keep growing.

Rob said:

Analog was suspecteed to be an issue before doing what we did for 2.2, and is (in part and not in whole) why we killed SA mode.

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While I'm not sure if I'm personally, individually responsible for analog mode, Sonic Adventure mode was definitely something I asked for (I mean, obviously).

Rob said:

What I saw was actually people finding analog and thinking it was SA style controls. And they would use it, and have a hard time doing lots of things and wonder why things weren't working.

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Well clearly the answer is to bring back SA mode and make it even better.

(I'm kidding.)

(Sort of.)

In all seriousness, Sonic in 3D has been a lot of different things over the years now. If people are booting the game up and trying to play it like Sonic Adventure, my inclination would be... so what? Like, even though they share some abilities, you can't play Sonic Generations like Sonic Adventure, either. And I know it's not a great game, but the same could be said for Sonic Lost World, too.

The point I'm trying to get at here is that you can't worry so much if it's reminding people of Sonic Adventure because eventually they'll just learn the other way of doing things.

Going between Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colors, and Sonic Generations is both very similar and very different with the way they handle trick systems, boost systems, the homing attack, etc. It can mess me up when muscle memory triggers in the wrong context, but it's never really been a problem that should be fixed. It's more on me for getting them mixed up, and and the more I play, the less it happens.

I understand you want to provide the best user experience for new players, but from where I'm sitting this could be a bit of helicopter parenting. Now, obviously, I wasn't there, so I guess I don't know the specific severity of the problem, but it seems logical that if they expect it to play like Sonic Adventure, and it doesn't, once that happens enough times they'll get the message, right?

Figuratively turning the world upside down with a top-to-bottom different control scheme seems a bit blunt. Like, yeah, it works, because you're bypassing that "oh so it plays like Sonic Adventure" muscle memory, but it's a bit of a nuclear solution.

Rob said:

I am a Sonic player primarily, and I am not sure I agree with this. I am very typically able to navigate the character to get him to move in precise lines and curves.

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CobaltBW said:

That's not true. In fact, out of all the characters, Sonic might be the most precise.

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Okay, this was poorly worded on my part. Let me clarify: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Sonic is so precise that to a certain kind of person he is the most imprecise. As Mystic noted about my video, I miss some Crawlas by only a few inches. Intentional? Yes, to a point. But when you're moving fast, the window for error on that kind of stuff is so razor thin that it's practically transparent. And it's kind of got to be!

This goes for a lot of 3D Sonic games. That's kind of the fun! Or at least the fun I like to have. That fly by the seat of your pants, I don't know if I'm going to survive this thrill ride. It's the Millennium Falcon flying in to the asteroid belt in A New Hope.

I know what you're going to say to that, and I get it: You want the player to still be in control! Of course you do. It wouldn't be fun if it felt random or too mean. But when it comes to Sonic, I think there's a line to be walked, that feeling like you're on the brink of losing control. You aren't, of course, you're still totally in control, but there's a dangerous feeling that's 100% necessary. That's the magic behind a good sense of speed. And it's that threat of being out of control that kind of goes hand in hand with a feeling of maybe not entirely being precise.

Because, like, F-Zero GX for example is also a very precise game, but it's possible to go too fast and get overwhelmed and even though you have all the tools to save yourself, it's not enough. Your brain isn't precise enough. The same thing happens in Burnout.

That's speed. That's Sonic. It's threading needles over and over and over at 300mph. At some point there's a part of your body that can't keep up and that's okay.

Rob said:

I think that we shouldn't be looking at "How do we implement platform controls" so much as we should be looking at "How do we bridge the gap between FPS and platformer." The base controls for 3rd person are still very much FPS. You could even reasonably imagine Sonic as the bullet you fire when you thok and the control scheme immediately makes sense.

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I think I have a fuzzy memory of someone many years ago, maybe Mystic, espousing the "Sonic is the bullet and you're shooting him" idea and I'd be lying if that did not at least sound cool.

And I get where you're coming from. I mean, SRB2 just won a Caco Award, you guys are obviously getting all kinds of recognition from the Doom Community now that I don't think has entirely been there in the past. From where I'm standing this feels kind of like a watershed moment where those guys finally stood up and went "Oh wow"

There's a reason to cater to that.

But I guess that just comes down to the core of what SRB2 is supposed to be. Is it really supposed to be a shooter? Because if you play the singleplayer campaign, it does not contain any shooting. It does not do anything that specifically requires shooter controls. It still undeniably plays like a platformer. If you really want to be bold, and really push the shooter controls, you would ideally design the entire game around them as an absolute necessity. No "I beat the game on a SNES controller."

I mean, like, going as hard as Super Mario 64 was designed for an analog stick. Enemies, and bosses, and level designs that can only be completed using strafing, and maybe even shooting, too. Really push the benefits of that control scheme to the max. Make it so that there is absolutely no question whatsoever as to why it needs to control that way.

But then you'd have to ask yourself: are you still even making a Sonic game at that point? The game isn't called SRB2, it's Sonic Robo-Blast 2. At what point are you no longer making a Sonic game? Was SRB2 ever a Sonic game? It certainly seems closer to one now, aesthetically and mechanically, than it ever has been in the past. Shouldn't that count for something? Shouldn't the controls reflect that?

BlazeHedgehog, thanks for putting my sentiments into words in a way I didn't know how to express before. Especially those last few paragraphs. That's absolutely where my mind's been since 2.2 launched.

I will second the statement mentioned in here that fickleheart's "simple mode" mod solved my issues with SRB2 completely, and I genuinely hope that the devs consider implementing it into the vanilla game as a permanent fixture. I'm now able to play SRB2 just how I like it with no hassle, and with basically everything asked for in this thread!

BlazeHedgehog said:

But then you'd have to ask yourself: are you still even making a Sonic game at that point? The game isn't called SRB2, it's Sonic Robo-Blast 2. At what point are you no longer making a Sonic game? Was SRB2 ever a Sonic game? It certainly seems closer to one now, aesthetically and mechanically, than it ever has been in the past. Shouldn't that count for something? Shouldn't the controls reflect that?

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So, I'd like to be extremely clear about something: I strongly dislike what official Sonic has become. I hated Sonic Heroes to the point where I sold it to a Gamestop for $6 over a decade ago and I still feel like I ripped them off. I never purchased an official 3D Sonic game after that, either. I tried out Generations when someone purchased it for me on a Steam sale and couldn't stand it, and I distinctly remember Sonic fans saying Generations was one of the "good" ones. I can't replay Sonic Adventure and its sequel because they have aged like milk left out in the sun since they were released. Why do I bring this up? Because I think it's important to think about why I hate modern Sonic, and the reason I'm even still here if SEGA hasn't produced a game in the franchise I like in 25 years.

It's because unlike official Sonic, SRB2 allows me to feel in control. Instead of fighting the god-awful camera at all times, I'm allowed to tell it where I want to point and the game will not object and turn it around the instant I try to move. I'm allowed to explore stages like I used to in the classic games and the game itself won't simply tell me to shove it because that's not how I'm "supposed" to play. Instead of a roller coaster design where my input doesn't really matter, my input directs my experience every step of the way.

The thing is, part of the problem with official Sonic, and why they've gone to fixed camera setups on a roller coaster, is because at the speeds that the franchise moves at, the Super Mario 64 camera design just doesn't work. SM64's design was an absolute revolution, and there's a reason why Sonic R felt laughable at the time because of it, but that doesn't mean that it's the only method of trying to control a platformer in 3D. SRB2 attempts a very different style of control by default, which I agree is not intuitive initially, but it allows us to design a game around Sonic's speed that doesn't rely on fixed camera angles and linear level design. We're not building a Sonic Adventure fan game; we're building something entirely new: a Sonic game that uses the classic 2D movement and gameplay setup in 3D. I get that you want a Sonic Adventure fan game, but that's just not what we're making here, and because of that we've made decisions that you're not going to agree with because our goal and your desires aren't matching up.

BlazeHedgehog said:

Okay, this was poorly worded on my part. Let me clarify: any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Sonic is so precise that to a certain kind of person he is the most imprecise. As Mystic noted about my video, I miss some Crawlas by only a few inches. Intentional? Yes, to a point. But when you're moving fast, the window for error on that kind of stuff is so razor thin that it's practically transparent. And it's kind of got to be!

This goes for a lot of 3D Sonic games. That's kind of the fun! Or at least the fun I like to have. That fly by the seat of your pants, I don't know if I'm going to survive this thrill ride. It's the Millennium Falcon flying in to the asteroid belt in A New Hope.

I know what you're going to say to that, and I get it: You want the player to still be in control! Of course you do. It wouldn't be fun if it felt random or too mean. But when it comes to Sonic, I think there's a line to be walked, that feeling like you're on the brink of losing control. You aren't, of course, you're still totally in control, but there's a dangerous feeling that's 100% necessary. That's the magic behind a good sense of speed. And it's that threat of being out of control that kind of goes hand in hand with a feeling of maybe not entirely being precise.

Because, like, F-Zero GX for example is also a very precise game, but it's possible to go too fast and get overwhelmed and even though you have all the tools to save yourself, it's not enough. Your brain isn't precise enough. The same thing happens in Burnout.

That's speed. That's Sonic. It's threading needles over and over and over at 300mph. At some point there's a part of your body that can't keep up and that's okay.

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Yeah, I know what you're saying. It's not that Sonic is imprecise, but that it requires precision from the end user. In many ways, it's a lot like comparing Sonic Adventure to a shotgun and SRB2 to a sniper rifle. In SRB2, you need to aim exactly where you plan on going, but in doing so you can hit your target from a mile away. In Sonic Adventure, all you need to do is be in the general vicinity of your target and the homing attack will do most of the work for you. And I think this analogy goes a long way when comparing the two games structurally; Sonic Adventure does a lot of the work on its own with fixed camera angles, automatic braking, a homing attack, and scripted speed segments. Sonic Robo Blast 2 has none of that. The midair ability doesn't lock onto targets, Sonic's movement is married to the momentum physics, virtually none of the level segments are automated, and all of the camera movements have to be determined by the player. This is a fundamentally different experience, and it's one that can't be sufficiently handled by a gamepad because the gamepad just doesn't have the level of precision as a mouse.

But this is why for anything we do automate at the core level for the player, it needs to be automated intelligently. The solution isn't to bring analog back, but to move forward with a new system that allows gamepad controls to be competitive with mouse and keyboard. Fickle's mod is a perfect demonstration of how this can and should be done.

BlazeHedgehog said:

But I guess that just comes down to the core of what SRB2 is supposed to be. Is it really supposed to be a shooter? Because if you play the singleplayer campaign, it does not contain any shooting. It does not do anything that specifically requires shooter controls. It still undeniably plays like a platformer. If you really want to be bold, and really push the shooter controls, you would ideally design the entire game around them as an absolute necessity. No "I beat the game on a SNES controller."

I mean, like, going as hard as Super Mario 64 was designed for an analog stick. Enemies, and bosses, and level designs that can only be completed using strafing, and maybe even shooting, too. Really push the benefits of that control scheme to the max. Make it so that there is absolutely no question whatsoever as to why it needs to control that way.

But then you'd have to ask yourself: are you still even making a Sonic game at that point? The game isn't called SRB2, it's Sonic Robo-Blast 2. At what point are you no longer making a Sonic game? Was SRB2 ever a Sonic game? It certainly seems closer to one now, aesthetically and mechanically, than it ever has been in the past. Shouldn't that count for something? Shouldn't the controls reflect that?

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Sonic Robo Blast 2 is always going to mean different things to different people. Some people enjoy the fact that it plays with first person controls, while others are more attached to the traditional platformer controls that Sonic games tend to be known for. I believe we have the tools to make it so that Sonic Robo Blast 2 is inclusive to both gamepad and M+KB. I think this should be a question less of prioritization and more about making sure that both control schemes are equally accounted for.

Ultimately, I think people just want a method to reduce the need to manual the camera with a controller because the level of precision being asked is a lot more unorthodox and weird on a controller than it is on a keyboard and mouse. Sure, it can be adjusted to, but it's not up for debate that there aren't really platformers out there that ask for this kind of commitment and obviously something needs to be done if you want people to get on board with your game.

The problem with old analog that fickle fixed incredibly quick was while it gave a controller player a more accountable way to move their character and reduce the need to manual camera, nothing was done for the instances where camera adjustment needed to be there. You're stuck with the direction the analog camera puts you in with no way to adjust other than two buttons that clearly aren't comparable to a full range camera movement or a reset.

I don't really know anything about SRB2 development but seeing fickle make a concept that works so well in such sort time makes it hard to believe any consideration was made for analog since its conception. Like, why on earth does analog gut camera control in the first place? Why was there no system in place to reset the camera? It cut features that should STILL be there but for whatever reason just aren't. It felt like whoeveer designed it looked too literal at Sonic Adventure manual camera and didn't think outside the box. The existence of their mod kind of upsets me, because even without all the nice extra features they added, I'm incredibly baffled that old analog was left as is with base game control cut from it for years, and the minute someone tries something, they find the solution almost instantly.

Cyron said:

The existence of their mod kind of upsets me, because even without all the nice extra features they added, I'm incredibly baffled that old analog was left as is with base game control cut from it for years, and the minute someone tries something, they find the solution almost instantly.

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I think I can understand the developers' point of view because I honestly can't stand playing with that mod. It's obviously much better than Analog mode, but to me it still feels kind of awful to play compared to the default gamepad controls (which is what I usually use. I don't even own a mouse).

Hypothetically, had I be the one to develop it, I would've scrapped my work after concluding that I hadn't fixed the problem. Which, obviously, would have been completely the wrong decision judging from everyone's feedback.

Tbh the 2.2 analog control that is now core instead of option in control options, Make me trouble getting used to it at first. But after spending few hours with default control mapping. I kinda got used to it and completing campaign was just matter of time.

If I keep play like that I just get to it even better.

the thok to camera facing... Actually its useful once you know how it works. Just maybe when you have few seconds before you fall to pits or hazards maybe problematic but this isnt an issue.

Overall I like it the way it is now.

So after playing around in the Single-Player campaign for a bit with the new controls they're starting to grow on me. I play with keyboard controls and back in v.2.0.6 I had these as my mapped controls:

• W,A,S,D - Move foward, turn left, move backwards and turn right
  
• Jump - Space
  
• Spin - Left Shift

So the transition wasn't too jarring with v.2.2's default controls being practically the same except for "A" and "D" being used for strafing (which I think was the default back then too?) and using the arrow keys to move the camera. It took some practice to learn it but I feel like it offers better control than my old tank controls, plus I think if I was a new player it wouldn't have taken me as long to get the hang of the new control setup.

Hi, on second thought I have more to say about the control argument, so here's some perspective after some time tinkering with the controls myself.

I think there's a fundamental rift in mindsets that's causing a lot of the disagreement. Some folks are pushing for the most capable control scheme, and some are pushing for the most comfortable or accessible control scheme. In SRB2's case, being optimal and being accessible have a few conflicting requirements from the control scheme.

WASD+mouse is objectively the most capable control scheme, no questions asked. Nothing will perform better than instant fine control over your direction at any time. It is not, however, comfortable for some (many?) players to have to manipulate their direction manually all the time, which the control scheme requires in any level that isn't a straight line. From an accessibility standpoint, some people don't have good enough motor control to operate the camera manually all the time they're controlling the player, and from a comfort standpoint, some people just prefer to have that off their minds as often as possible. This is where the appeal of control schemes like old Analog mode comes in.

Except Analog mode is pretty trash at accomodating this. The camera is wildly unpredictable and difficult to keep in line, and even trying to adjust it manually sucks ass because it's constantly fighting back. It ends up having the same problem as the standard controls on a non-WASD setup have - where people "get used" to it, instead of it being comfortable - with a much lower skill ceiling, because in this case, "getting used to it" also includes limiting yourself to actions that can be salvaged if a misbehaving camera catches on level geometry and pulls the entirely wrong way. We're all familiar with this by now.

Each of these control schemes has their own set of problems, if your goal is to maximize capability as well as comfort/accessibility. I'm going to outline some of the specific problems I tried to solve in my control addon, which will hopefully give some perspective both on how things can be solved, and what can be disputed if things can be handled better. Put under a spoiler tag since it's long-winded.


I think that's the most I can contribute to control discourse.

For my perspective (to repeat from my previous post), I've played with keyboard and mouse since not long after 2.0 came out. A few years ago, I adopted a keyboard-only tank control scheme, putting the turn keys on opposite sides of jump and spin, as a way to play casually when I didn't feel like finding a spot to put my mouse. (I play on a laptop, often in bed or in some other location where a mouse isn't really comfortable to use.) I hadn't played much SRB2 for a couple of years until 2.2 came out for reasons I'd rather not talk about, and honestly I was planning to skip the update until I saw Blaze's post criticizing the removal of analog. Trying to make a better analog sounded like a good challenge, so I took the opportunity and still haven't actually played 2.2 with an included control scheme or on a normal EXE, except to time attack ACZ2 once. It was a good chance to rethink how I played the game from a casual point of reference.

I guess one thing I'd ask, to anyone who's open to it, is to try out my mod, either on controller or with a keyboard-only control scheme, and play it from the beginning like you're new to the game, for as long as you want. Turn auto-brake on (it's a good feature for this). Forget your normal approach to playing. Accept right off the bat that you won't be as good as you are on WASD+mouse. I'm sure you'll still prefer kb+m afterward, since it is the most capable control scheme, but see if this is something you could enjoy playing the game as a beginner on, or if tweaking some settings gets it to that point. That's really the only goal of a control scheme like this.

(That all said, I don't think a discussion about "what appeals to newer players" is going to get anywhere by having a bunch of people who have played the game for years argue back and forth in circles about it. There's more value from getting actual new people's feedback on it. That's one of the reasons I stayed around the Kart community for much of my initial testing of the control mod; it has a lot of people who are already interested in the concept of SRB2, but have little to no actual experience playing it. I think there's a lot of good feedback to be gained from the people there.)

Cyron said:

Ultimately, I think people just want a method to reduce the need to manual the camera with a controller because the level of precision being asked is a lot more unorthodox and weird on a controller than it is on a keyboard and mouse. Sure, it can be adjusted to, but it's not up for debate that there aren't really platformers out there that ask for this kind of commitment and obviously something needs to be done if you want people to get on board with your game.

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While this is a fine argument...let's be real here: SRB2 already demands of the player skills literally no other 3D platformer ever requires. The game is fundamentally unlike other games in its genre that newbies are gonna stumble even if the analog control was perfect.

I've been playing SRB2 since 2002. I switched from keyboard-only to using mouse and keyboard during the final demo days, likely due to the increasingly elaborate level design (especially in modded levels) that practically demanded it. I couldn't stomach analog mode because it's awful for all the reasons multiple people have mentioned in this topic: it's imprecise to a fault, and camera control might as well be nonexistent due to how much of a pain it is to manage. So I stuck with M+KB because it was the best scheme. Not because I thought it was legitimately great, but because the alternatives were either going back to tank controls in newer versions with more complex level design than what I was used to in Demo 4.32... or analog mode. I stuck with M+KB for so long that I couldn't even imagine how SRB2 would play if it had normal controller support like other games. Somehow, I just kept believing that controllers were totally incompatible with this game, which was exclusively built on keyboard support and leaning more toward mouse usage with each major update.

And then I played fickle's mod and now I am a total believer in controller support. It made me realize how fun this game could be if it played like an actual Sonic game rather than an FPS. Honestly, given the choice between playing SRB2 with ultra 100% precision and playing it like a normal 3D platformer, I'm going with the latter now. In fact even as a longtime player, I don't understand why SRB2 has to be a game that demands precision. Even the classic games don't give you total control over Sonic at all times; there's a few automated segments here and there and the occasional speed cap and control lock when jumping out from a rolling state. The high-speed sequences involve holding down on the D-pad to make Sonic automatically go forward on slopes and ramps. And yet they manage to be fun because a big appeal to me regarding Sonic is flow. In fact I think maintaining flow is more important for classic Sonic than going fast all the time is, and more important than being in control at all times. It's why I don't mind some of Sonic 1's slower paced levels because even Marble and Labyrinth's worst segments are far more forgiving than some of SRB2's most brutal moments. And rather than me blaming controllers for not fitting SRB2's design philosophy, I kinda blame certain moments and even entire levels in SRB2 for not fitting in with the rest of the series, even the classic games.

Perfecting a thokked jump from 20 miles away to land on a single block isn't really my idea of fun. Trying to chain conveyor belt jumps in ACZ1 over a bottomless pit isn't what I find to be fun. That stuff is made for M+KB schemes, and I get that people get a kick out of mastering that level of precision that you can't really do in any other 3D platformer, let alone Sonic ones. But the reason I enjoy the old Sonic games, and many of SRB2's own campaign levels, is because I like running around in huge, open areas, rolling down hills, playing with level gimmicks, and being okay with not having to worry about where the camera is facing ever millisecond of the level. And the best parts about Sonic honestly don't require the level of precision that SRB2 occasionally demands of the player. I'm fine with fucking up parts if I can tell that the margin of error isn't incredibly tight. But at the same time I'm fine with sacrificing my ability to play AGZ efficiently if it means my back can finally rest against the back of my computer chair.

One other thing to mention is that, for kb+m control, I really don't like the default control scheme. Mose of your important actions - moving, jumping, and spinning - are managed with a single hand, while your right hand does nothing but wrist movements to control the camera. It's not comfortable trying to manage jumps with the same hand that also has to correct momentum. There's an importance to balancing how much each hand has to do on a default control scheme, and I think moving jump and spin to mouse buttons would solve a lot of this. (It leaves a bit of a conundrum for ringslinger, but that can be managed on three-button mice and ringslinger is hardly a focus for new players anyway.)


I personally use space for center view, a secondary action that can be held without having to focus on too much, and shift to toggle first-person mode. The keyboard-only layout I mentioned above accomodates for hand balance and turning comfort, too, at least for me; jump and spin are L and K, while turning is on J and semicolon (;). (It's not exactly intuitive, and I wouldn't ask new keyboard-only players to use it. I guess if this was to be reflected in the current keyboard-only scheme, jump and spin would be the up and down arrow keys?) Putting an equal amount of important actions on each hand, assuming we identify each movement direction as an important action (I think they are?), balances the work and helps reduce strain.

fickleheart said:

Mose of your important actions - moving, jumping, and spinning - are managed with a single hand, while your right hand does nothing but wrist movements to control the camera. It's not comfortable trying to manage jumps with the same hand that also has to correct momentum.

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This is a big part of the reason I use a totally jank, non-standard control scheme when I play KB only -

Move Forward/Backward - Up and Down arrows
Move Left/Right - A and D
Camera Left/Right - Left and Right arrows
Jump - S
Spin - Shift

Being able to use my right hand to brake while my left hand handles thokking feels great, and using the middle finger for jump is imo much more agile and precise than the thumb. I play standard WASD+mouse for ringslinger and it definitely feels harder than I'd like to maneuver though of course you get the benefit of being aim more accurately.

Kaysakado said:

This is a big part of the reason I use a totally jank, non-standard control scheme when I play KB only -

Move Forward/Backward - Up and Down arrows
Move Left/Right - A and D
Camera Left/Right - Left and Right arrows
Jump - S
Spin - Shift

Being able to use my right hand to brake while my left hand handles thokking feels great, and using the middle finger for jump is imo much more agile and precise than the thumb. I play standard WASD+mouse for ringslinger and it definitely feels harder than I'd like to maneuver though of course you get the benefit of being aim more accurately.

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That's pretty similar to my own scheme, except mine's even weirder! I usually play with a Switch Pro controller (I keep on trying to like fickle's mod, but it's just not working for me. Maybe an option to keep the camera locked in place when you jump?) but my keyboard-only control scheme is just pure jank.

Move forward - P
Move backward - ;
Move left: A
Move right: D
Camera left: L
Camera right: '
Jump: S
Spin: W

I love the default controls, plays very close to the new Tomb Raider Trilogy (which are also platformers). you move the same way you do in most modern games, WASD, and jump using Spacebar, and SHIFT for spindash (which is usually sprint in modern games) and turn using Mouse. Fairly easy to grasp. but that's just M+KB.

Btw Someone know what Orbital Looking does in Control Setup?

it makes the camera always focus on the player, so it never leaves the player's "orbit". So looking down would move the camera up to look directly at the character from above and looking up would make the camera get right behind the player facing up.

I know Mystic just said a few posts into the last page that the reason why he hates official Sonic games is because of how he didn't feel he was properly in control of the camera. However, I feel like the target demographic that we're trying to obtain new players from is this exact group of people who have played these games and are quite familiar with how a traditional 3D Sonic game's camera controls, and perhaps this is where some of the backlash against removing analog entirely started.

It may not be the most precise or optimal way to play the game but you can't deny that an Adventure style camera is what is going to be the most intuitive control style for people coming into this game from other 3D Sonic games. I don't think we're getting many new players from the DOOM community in here because they're interested in a 3D Sonic game based off the DOOM engine (Please correct me if I'm wrong), instead I think we're getting an influx of people who saw Kart or a thread about it on social media, or even a let's play on Youtube from a popular Sonic Youtuber and think, "Hey, here's that (sister, in the case of if someone were coming from the Kart community) Sonic fangame that I heard about! I should check it out!" and they go into it expecting it to play like adventure, because that's what people tend to try and emulate when making a fangame.

I know the dev team is set on axing analog and for good reason. However, the more I think about this subject, the more I wonder what will take more effort to do: Create an entirely new control type, or fix the existing one with some guidance on how to do it. These are things I'd consider before making the choice to kill analog.

For one thing, analog works perfectly fine when a camera angle that is not user-inputted is supplied to it, meaning that if you give it an awayview camera, it'll still react accordingly to the direction inputted relative to that camera angle. This could be used to create an experience similar to the Adventure games or even a modern platformer, but nobody has done this yet (except maybe one test lua script), and I feel nobody will because the people who do want to implement something like this either have the talent but don't care enough about analog to do something about it, or do care enough about it but don't have the talent to do anything about it. I fall under the latter catagory here, so I'd like to give my two cents to someone who does have the talent to pull this off my thoughts on how analog could be handled and could be improved.

First of all, analog's camera doesn't have supplied camera angles and awayview can't do the job, this is because it creates a jarring snap to where the camera is supposed to be moved to. I propose that a new system be implemented, either using linedef specials or sector specials, that allows for a camera destination object to be created. When this linedef/sector special is triggered, it causes the camera to move from whereever it is currently located towards the destination object. This way the camera pans smoothly to its new position while still maintaining a view on the player. A camera like this would create a new way to solve the conveyance issue that I feel this game suffers from. If you want to show the player something like a switch, a button, a secret (don't make it the focus and take away from the main path), a boss or enemy, or even what direction they should be facing, you could point them in that direction using this new camera system. From there, they'd only have to hold the analog stick or use the arrow keys to point where they want to go relative to that defined camera angle, instead of relative to where the character is moving towards as it trails behind the player as is how analog normally handles things.
Secondly, if the player pressed one of the camera rotation buttons, then camera control should be relinquished to them so that they can explore around something that the devs may not have thought as a point of interest for a brief period in time before the game regains control once the player moves into a new camera control sector.

I feel that Directionchar is less equipped to handle some of these things, as the camera and thus where the player moves is still using the player's real angle and the rotations you see are relative to that first and foremost. Thus you would have to isntead change the player's camera height, rotation, and distance instead of just using an object while the camera points at the player instead.
Another thing that I've seen mentioned a lot that Directionchar should've really had in the first place and I'm surprised it wasn't ported in, was the ability to turn off the character turning to face the direction the camera's pointing and also the ability to turn on character abilities sending you the direction that you're pressing instead of where the camera is pointing. I also feel that there should be a toggle for normal directionchar to automatically target bosses and have a corresponding flag for this (and analog mode if it were to be updated properly) to be triggered for other things too in Lua and/or SOC