Games Done Quick

Mystic said:

If you have an issue (like, say, newbies not understanding the controls), you don't want to create a single fix and just assume that'll solve it for everyone. You want to put in backup fixes and other strategies to try to help as many people as possible. A tutorial would clearly help some people learn our game! That's a great idea, and that's why we're making one, but it won't help everyone. We want to help those players who, say, think they know what they're doing, skip the tutorial, and don't actually know what they're doing. This is the reasoning behind a huge number of the changes in 2.2. It's not that the tutorial is a bad idea, it's that the problem is big enough that we should try multiple solutions so that if one solution doesn't work for someone, another one of them might.

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Fixing our camera's handling of vertical motion does not solve the core issue here. No matter how you set up the camera, looking down is going to point at the floor on flat ground, not a helpful direction.

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...So you'd fix the problem with, along with the tutorial stage, the simple fix of turning vertical mouselook off by default instead of fixing the camera to be like in Jazzz's second gif and second embedded picture in the post and the other game which I've posted screenshots of before?
It could just as easily be in the list of those other multiple solutions y'know, if disabling vertical mouselook would have its own consequences and all.

Interesting you mention the floor issue again though, because Jazzz did some research before making the demonstratory fix for the camera, when gregory_house replied to Legendary Emerald Wonder what they think of Jazzz's proposal by the way, and while the software third person doesn't look like nonsense, it does er...
Look at this:

Notice how the software comapisons do seem to go along with how the third person software version screenshot of that other game I've posted screenshots of where it zooms in more instead doing it like OpenGL and not zooming in at all.
And since the third person camera system SRB2 has seems to be unique, and, at the same time software rendering being quite unfit for such a unique camera, it does seem like it is, interestingly, an SRB2 problem.
And even if it doesn't fix the "core issue", wouldn't it be better to implement fixes to make the camera camera function like so instead of doing nothing to fix the "vertical mouselook in third person doesn't work on an axis and is instead a swivel" issue?
Because that itself looks like a valid issue itself if Legendary Emerald says the camera we have right now is close to useless.

The problem is that players are moving the mouse to change the camera sideways (as we intend them to do) and also moving it vertically unintentionally. Making the camera work better would be great for those who want this functionality, but these people aren't using this function on purpose.

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I still imagine that, considering the default mouselook values would be changed anyway and thus presumably curb down the amount of players having such a problem, it would be better to split off the players who don't want vertical mouselook instead. Especially considering you've already said

Default off, player desires vertical mouselook: Camera operating fine but suboptimally. Player can still play the game fine.

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For which I'd also guess that, since just about every popular modern-day game with a third person camera that was released, the amount of players that would desire and even expect vertical camera movement is greater than those that wouldn't.

Lach said:

Mystic is right. There's no reason to have the fundamental control setup be overwhelming for new players when it would take an experienced player two seconds to revert any training-wheel defaults they disliked and save new players the trouble of trying to figure out how to make their experience more comfortable.

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Here's the thing though, considering Rubine's quote in my very first post on the thread, being unable to move the camera vertically, especially in an age where casual players would be used to it, that the inability to move the vertical camera by default would turn off potential new players, especially the ones that could skip or not pay attention read the tutorial section entirely so they would still not know about turning it on. This is, of course, under the assumption that the tutorial doesn't stop you altogether until you toggle a feature in it.
And probably cause complaints, be it those who join the MB for those that care enough to join the community to make a help thread about it or the ones who wouldn't be involved in it but either record it for the world to see or are Mystic's playtesters.
But yes, i do imagine that Rubine's idea which is a quote in Jazzz's post could be a very good solution, those that would care for vertical mouselook wouldn't need to go and find it in the options menu to turn it on, and vice versa for those that wouldn't.

It's hard to know if we can even trust other data gathered from new players when we have to consider:
Maybe the resolution bug was affecting mouse sensitivity a lot. Did they change default resolution?
Maybe the default mouse sensitivity had been changed further still there.
Maybe the players have an incredibly sensitive mouse anyway.

How can we trust all this data when these factors can be skewing the results a high degree by themselves?

That said I do agree the default behaviour the 3rd person camera has when looking up and down is pants. I imagine it wouldn't be too impossible to change it to be a more "orbital" camera with a bit of trigonometry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7c4bsnZrVk
A proof of concept "orbital" camera. In software it does definitely have issues with looking up and down too far, but then the current camera does too anyway, and looking up and down too far is literally never useful with that camera. I'd say it's an improvement even if it's not perfect.

NotablyPrettyCrazy said:

For which I'd also guess that, since just about every popular modern-day game with a third person camera that was released, the amount of players that would desire and even expect vertical camera movement is greater than those that wouldn't.

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Reminder that this is also a platformer game in which the default expected control scheme is WASD + Mouse. SRB2 controls so fundamentally differently to almost every other platformer out there (barring very early PS1-era platformers that used tank controls, most of which didn't have vertical camera movement either) that it's hard to really say what people are going to expect.

One thing I did notice from a quick test is that, even with both x and y mouse sensitivity values set to be the same, vertical camera movement seems far more sensitive than turning. This might partially account for why new players might end up staring at the ground.

I will say that regardless of whether or not mouselook is turned off by default, changing the camera to act more like a proper 3rd person camera would be a massive improvement.

I gotta love how the excuse for keeping vertical mouselook in the default initial controls is to perform Crawla bounces.

As if first time players are crawla-bouncing....

Makes about as much sense as another argument for not implementing a certain other feature that keeps being asked for for debunkable reasons, But I'm with Mystic on the Camera issue.

SSNTails said:

I gotta love how the excuse for keeping vertical mouselook in the default initial controls is to perform Crawla bounces.

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...No.
That's not only highly ignoring all of the other arguements brought for the reason of keeping it in, but also missing the context. Crawla-bouncing was mainly used as a demonstration in Sryder's proof of concept camera, which I have to say is way better than what we currently have and could work in software too if the angle restriction is re-added for it, as well as an arguement gregory_house had for Legendary Emerald, which even then was mainly just looking at the cliff instead of doing actual bouncing.
Infact, in my replies I have made zero mentions of crawla bouncing unless you for some peculiar reason count the camera comparison pic as a direct link to crawla bouncing
Crawla boucing is nowhere near as important of a reason as the rest that were brought up, and even then, like I've just said, it was mainly for demonstrational purposes/arguements.

Infact, on the topic of context, lemme bring up this arguement as well.
Mystic says that some playtesters and/or new players asked if they could turn vertical mouse movement off, but here they have context to know why they'd want it off.
If vertical mouselook was off by default, especially if vertical mouse sensitivity gets turned down by default too, and the message in the tutorial mentioning that vertical mouselook can be turned on is later on in the stage itself, said newer players wouldn't even have said context.
Now, what would happen if said newer players don't have said context?
They could get a few thoughts going through their head, such as them thinking that the developers of the game underestimate their mental capacity to handle vertical camera movement with a mouse and, if Sryder's camera inexplicably doesn't get implemented, get false expectations for what the vertical camera movement would be like.
So when the ones that read the tutorial and turn it on, they would possibly get either thoughts of "Oh, they've turned it off to hide that they couldn't make the camera work usefully" which could make outsiders laugh at SRB2 again, or, if they can look past the staring at the floor/sky more so in software functions of the camera we currently have "...Well, vertical camera movement isn't much of a hindrance, why'd they turn it off?" with the latter thought potentially looping back into the mental capacity part.
And the ones that don't read it in the tutorial could end up annoyingly pestering "Why doesn't this game have vertical mouse movement?", which could serve as yet another reason why it should be turned on by default and being able to turn it off being the thing that gets mentioned in the tutorial.
If it gets turned off, due to the lack of context on the new players' part, you'd effectively end up replacing complaints with different complaints, which is why it wouldn't make sense to do it that way.

With the 2.0 GFZ hole-in-the-wall being removed in 2.1, newer players wouldn't know that some of the players back in the previous versions got confused due to it despite the checkpoint being visible in 2.0 but there is atleast one account of one going the wrong way on the MB, as well as the shorter "waterfall" right at the start of GFZ1 being taller so Sonic can't shortcut by going past it and apparently confusing newer players, newer players wouldn't be aware, or the old-new players wouldn't remember it was short enough for Sonic or even the GFZ hole too, but with vertical mouse movement they'd be used to being able to do that in alot of other modern-day games, which also would cause them to start asking questions about it.

glaber said:

Makes about as much sense as another argument for not implementing a certain other feature that keeps being asked for for debunkable reasons, But I'm with Mystic on the Camera issue.

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...Interesting. Wonder why it's kept in vague words like "another arguement for not implementing a certain other feature that keeps being asked for" and "debunkable other reasons" instead of stating what the arguement itself is as well as stating said debunkable reasons for exactly why it wouldn't work?
It would be good to know what those are, would help further the conversation either way, no harm in revealing what those would be.

you asked for it.

Not having super Knuckles because Super Knuckles was not Synergetic in Sonic 3& Knuckles and making you want to just run around as if you were just super sonic and not wanting to glide and climb as super knuckles.
(this one was given on the Discord server)

For clarity, I'm indifferent to what actually happens with default mouselook in the end, since I will just turn it back on anyway regardless. What I am concerned about is the validity of the data used to make the decision and the fact that the current default camera just makes things worse by never being useful for looking up and down anyway. Yes, currently there *is* no reason to have vertical mouselook in 3rd person mode... But that's only because the camera is awful enough that there is no functional use of it.
Crawla bouncing definitely wasn't what I was trying to show in the video for a reason to keep mouselook, it was more that I was trying to show that this alternate camera is far better in the usage of looking down to lower places and actually knowing what you're going down to.

All of that said, this *is* a 3D platformer. One that can sometimes have lower paths that you fall down to if you mess up your platforming, If that happens you want to be able to know what you're falling towards, the current mouselook does not allow that.

Here is the bottom line guys, and Mystic already said it earlier. Vertical mouselook is very complex. A third dimension of camera is very complicated, and the gain is just not good enough to have it default on. Every argument I've seen here for having it on applies to, and only to, advanced players. Vertical camera demonstrably confuses new players. The video this is topic about shows that it confuses new players.

Look, bottom line, and I get that this is going to annoy people, is that we are actively looking to find things that make newer peoples' lives harder and make them not be a problem anymore. This is one of those things that doesn't have payoff by being on by default, and frankly, no argument anyone here could make is going to change that, because the perspectives of everyone here is that of someone who is very familiar with the controls.

Start showing us actual new players who benefit from it, and then we'll actually have something to talk about. Until then, this particular argument of whether or not we keep vertical look as deaulted on is just going to go around in circles, so I'm ending that portion of the discussion after 4 pages of nonprogression.

Mystic said:

By default, we should have vertical mouselook off.

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Actually, you could just leave it on but set it to a lower value. If I remember correctly, you can set the horizontal and vertical mouselook speeds separately in the options menu.

This might actually be a little bit better, because if you turn vertical mouselook off entirely, then moving the mouse up or down gets translate into moving Sonic forward or backward. That in itself is not entirely intuitive either, but I could have an experience bias there.

Alternatively: I don't remember how the default controls are set for keyboard, but we should consider moving the Mouselook key over to L.Shift, if that hasn't been done already. This allows players to easily switch between looking up/down and looking straight ahead. As others have mentioned, having mouselook on is useful for making decisions around vertical terrain, but I think the key issue here is trying to get the best of both worlds, and having the mouselook key nearby is pretty handy for that.

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.

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They're also playing with a version of the game that doesn't have the overhauled controls in place, so whatever difficulty they're having here could be entirely alleviated through the new update. I agree with keeping keyboard and mouse default. Reverting to arrow controls would simply mean skillgating our newer players from reaching anything past the third zone, and that's really not a viable solution.

CobaltBW said:

Actually, you could just leave it on but set it to a lower value. If I remember correctly, you can set the horizontal and vertical mouselook speeds separately in the options menu.

This might actually be a little bit better, because if you turn vertical mouselook off entirely, then moving the mouse up or down gets translate into moving Sonic forward or backward. That in itself is not entirely intuitive either, but I could have an experience bias there.

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Actually, there are currently two separate options, mouselook and mousemove, which can counter-intuitively be on at once (which leads to mouselook taking precedence).

Both should be disabled by default. It doesn't help to change one mechanic people aren't handling well with another.

Mystic said:

Actually, there are currently two separate options, mouselook and mousemove, which can counter-intuitively be on at once (which leads to mouselook taking precedence).

Both should be disabled by default. It doesn't help to change one mechanic people aren't handling well with another.

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Oh that's right, isn't it? In that case, keeping both off does seem the most logical for default controls.

Mystic said:

Actually, there are currently two separate options, mouselook and mousemove, which can counter-intuitively be on at once (which leads to mouselook taking precedence).

Both should be disabled by default. It doesn't help to change one mechanic people aren't handling well with another.

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Holy shit, I literally had no idea turning them both off led to a horizontal-only mouse camera. Perhaps they should be renamed (if they haven't been already)? Having both "Use Mouse" and "Mouselook" as options confused me until just now.

Also on that topic—what's the difference between the "Force" and "On" settings for Use Mouse?

I like Knightofchao's idea (from page 3). I think having two controls explicitly labelled for beginners and advanced players would be a good compromise, no?

Sounds like a good idea to me, First time startup would tell the players to choose between beginner control scheme which has mouselook turned off by default and advanced players control scheme with mouselook on, a win for both sides.

Why? Advanced players already know what they want and how to change the controls to suit their play style. The whole point of the default controls is to provide a good starting point for those that don't know what they want yet.

I dunno, I feel like it should be apparent for newcomers that the game indeed has mouselook and that it's up to them to decide whether they want to use it or not, you can give them a tip below the choices stating that they can change the sensitivity ... etc to suit their needs.

This ain't MechWarrior 2



The whole reason Sonic Team made Sonic 1 playable using a single button press (jump) is because they thought the Mario controls were too complicated.

With that userbase in mind...

I kinda agree with this, SRB2's controls aren't confusing, they're very similar to what we're already used to from most Sonic games or even 3rd person platformers in general, It's just the mouselook.