Controls Design

Controls are the main way player interfaces with the game- so it's important that they work well. I have several questions on this topic I'd love to explore.

• How do you decide what buttons to map to each action?
  • Sometimes I've noticed controls just design themselves after a bit of trial and error, but I don't always know why they work when they do.

• What do you do when you run out of buttons?
  • There's only so many "prime" buttons on controllers/keyboard. You can't reach them all at the same time!

• How important is it to make your game controls similar to other game controls?
  • Popular games or just prolific genres seem to have written the book on how controls should work- but some genres don't have standards at all.

 

Interesting idea.

As far as deciding the initial button mapping - I'd imagine that's based on accessibility. For instance, on a controller the A (Xbox) or X (PS) button is the easiest "face" button to reach, so that might be for commands the user is expected to make use of frequently. Such as Assassin's Creed's parkour movements.

Then you have X (left middle) and B (right middle)(I don't remember the PS symbols). It probably varies some, but I've found X to be easier to use consistently. Additionally, in some case you'll have combination presses like A + X. Your thumb will cover both A and X relatively easily, but good luck doing that with A and B.

So A and X naturally lend themselves to actions the user performs frequently and with some precision. B's not too far behind, and then you have Y (top), which might be used for a less frequent action. Say, X for quick weapon attacks and Y for heavy attacks.

Of course some of this is dependent on the controller as well. The 360 controller has very bulbous face buttons, while the Dualshock's are much lower profile, and probably easier to use.

Something worth mentioning - while in the Western world something like A (or the bottom button) is typically used to "confirm" an action, in Japan it's actually a different button (I believe it's the right button). Additionally, the menu (which is frequently the Start button or Select in the west) is occasionally triangle, or the top button

AS far as running out of buttons is concerned, in that case one can make combo presses, such as holding down a bumper then using the face buttons. I believed Dragon Age Inquisition did this on controller.

I'd imagine that the more similar your game is in other ways to popular games, the more "necessary" it is to have a common control scheme.

One should always provide the option for customization, however.

 

I'd first consider why. Is there perhaps a more elegant or intuitive way to control the game?

This is the most important thing. If I'm designing a new car, I'm not going to switch the positions of the accelerator and brake pedals from the standard.

But as EternalAmbiguity writes, it's nice to offer customization. My car has an extra brake "pedal" on the steering wheel, which is surprisingly convenient in stop-and-go city driving.

 

@LMan - you have helped me nearly as many time as other frequent forum users, though you have only posted a couple handful of times.
So with that gratitude in mind I will provide my insight - even though I've had one too many Vanilla Crown straight up on the rocks this evening - but DAMN is that good! All forum users over 21 - you should really try it!!!!

Simple - what is comfortable to you - and after releasing a demo ask users if the controls are comfortable. Comfort is numero - uno. I reference older GTA and all Red Dead Redemption games which cause cramping the longer the player plays. - Don't do this.

Refer to @TonyLi suggestion.

For super popular games you have to play the game without controls in mind. If you blank controls from your mind - if you start experiencing cramps or discomfort in your hands - start thinking about if the controls were changed - would the experience be more enjoyable.
If hands do not start to hurt or you start hitting the X button to fire the ultimate fire ball but O is the mapping and you start questioning why the devs hard mapped that feature - WTF - sure as hell you are going to improve the controls over a popular game that has tons of followers.

Back to my crown on the rocks!

 

Speaking of the differences between xbox and ps controllers brings to mind the way that the buttons on gamecube controllers were sized according to their accessibility.

Using button placement in combos is a really good idea, I hadn't thought about that. Usually when I see it implemented, the combo has some relation to the function of each button independently- (b = punch, up + b = uppercut.)

Other times, one button becomes a dedicated "alt" button, which changes the function of other controls. (Holding "crouch" alters all your actions to "low" forms of themselves.)

 

That's a great point with the brake pedal application. Building on top of standards is always preferable to re-inventing the wheel.

In regard to running out of buttons, consider if the most elegant design was a 90s flight stick, and you needed to handle applying those controls to a less elegant but more ubiquitous joypad.

 

Good point. I guess it comes down to finding the most elegant control scheme for your hardware constraints. In first person shooters, aiming is far more accurate and responsive with a mouse than a joypad. Console developers found an elegant solution for the hardware they had to work with by implementing aim assist.

 

I suppose this is a teeny bit tangential, but one should consider the possibility for a user's alternate approaches.

I knew someone (who knew someone) who played Half-Life...with a joystick.

So yeah, user choice is valuable.

 

Many good suggestion, I'll just add a high level overview:
Control AND interface tend to be grouped in three category: head (assessing information, camera), hand (interaction with the world), feet (navigation or selection)...

You have as action modifier:
- press (action at the push the button)
- release (action at the release of the button)
- charge (action after sometime holding the press)
- tap (push and released quickly)
- combination (multiple button at the same time)
- mode shift (one button press change or toggle function of other button)
- menu (open a menu for selecting action)
- pause (action is taken after a duration after button has been pressed )
- sequence or combo (action change base on history of press, released, charge, tap etc ...)
- context (all of the above change based on the current game context, for example object you interact with AND/OR current game mode like dialogue sequence)

The main issue is how frequent and critical one action is needed in a particular context, those must be easily accessible, shooting have move to trigger in console FPS because you can aim and fire at the same time, while faceplate button mean you have to stop aiming, secondary action can be pushed to more complex control scheme. Player literacy matter (for example are you using the same lay out than other games? or do the player must relearn everything?) as much as player proficiency (how hard it is to pull up move?).

 

I think following standards is hugely important to facilitate players getting into a flow state. But what do you do if you're trying a new concept that has no standards?

 

I think there's some psychology/affordances at work in controller design as well.

Triggers on a joypad are similar to a gun trigger in that it operates with the same motion and finger. There's a kind of association there that I think isn't by accident.

Placing triggers on the left and right has a similar association to the pedals on a car. Right side for gas, left for brake. It would be odd to swap them, as it would be logically inconsistent with how cars work.

The D-Pad is similar to joysticks in that it provides a 2D input, but it doesn't feel as good to do joystick things with the pad. Conversely, it is very common to map individual functions to directions on the d-pad, like so:

Sometimes, these functions are re-mappable, like hotkeys. Sometimes these controls don't even have a visual feedback element that shows you what function you picked. This is something you would never do with a joystick without an onscreen radial menu and bullet time mechanic.

 

• When/Why should you think about redundancy in controls?
  • It's common to use both WASD and Arrow keys for the same functions- why the redundancy?

A bit of context for what brought this up:

I have a spaceship that I want to control with 6 degrees of freedom.

I wanted to get the feeling of a dogfighting sim, so I have a throttle mechanic for forward/backward motion, rather than a gas/brake mechanic.

Left stick controls your aim/heading, right stick applies lateral thrust for strafing up/down and sideways.

I put the throttle control on the D-Pad Y axis, and I added a double-tap mechanic to quick-set the throttle to full/0/reverse. This works pretty well, but I didn't like that I had to take my thumb off the left stick to set the throttle.

My solution is to put the same mechanic on the right hand stick, but instead of a double tap, I click the stick and then flick it in the direction you want to adjust the throttle. The way I figure it, at least you have a choice of which thumb to use.

It seems to work, but is it dumb to have redundant controls like that?
Should I automate a control instead so that the computer gives you an "extra thumb?"
Or does it create skill depth because there's a choice of which stick to give up for a moment?

 

Imagine my confusion, when I played COD on a PS3 for the first time, where they use the buttons for aim and shoot and the triggers for throwing grenades. I imagine it is because their triggers feel kinda spongy and weird, compared to the xbox 360 gamepad (on which the asymmetric analog stick placement feels weird).

If you mean click and hold the stick and then move into a direction and release it, then I think it's a bad choice. It's really hard for me to make that kind of movement in a controlled way. The learned behaviour is move the stick first and then click it, like sprint in COD.

For what it's worth in Elite Dangerous I used RB and LB for increase/decrease throttle in 25% increments. That's quick and precise enough for regular gameplay.
And I love the "yaw into roll" feature that they have. Move the right stick a little bit, and you change yaw, move it a lot and you roll into that direction because roll + pulling up is the fastest way to turn. It just makes sense to me that way and feels intuitive. On the left stick I had strafing left, right, up, down. That way it was reasonably close to the kind of games I'm used to playing. The problem is with the metric ton of other controls you need to play that game. They have the best controller rebinding and alt-mapping system I've ever seen in a game, but I just couldn't remember the vast amount of button combinations that I had set and I had to go back into the menu to look them up often.

I don't think redundancy is the problem, but with any reasonably complex game you'll run out of buttons/sticks so fast, that you don't want to waste any. Especially when it's about controlling something like a spacecraft or similar.

I think you should try to design controls so that giving up control of that stick isn't an issue in a situation where you need to press the other button. E.g. you don't need to aim while you're out of ammo and reaching for the reload button.

Some people have very different preferences or existing habits though, so a number of different control schemes makes a lot of sense. E.g. Deus Ex Mankind Devided does a great job of that. At the start of the game it asks you what you prefer of these 3 options:
a) the controls you are used to from the previous game
b) the controls the devs think are optimal for this game, but will require getting used to
c) a control scheme closer to typical FPS games like COD

I went with c) and I'm very happy they provided that choice. That way I could feel right at home from the start. And I never felt like the controls are holding me back.


I noticed the three things I miss most when playing with controllers are: F5, F9, and F12. And just now I found out that "controller companion" (available on steam) supports setting the select button as a modifier key for a second mapping set. So I have the X home button on the controller set to F12, because I like collecting hundreds of reference screenshots while playing, and select + LB/RB are now mapped to quicksave and quickload. That way I no longer need the keyboard at all and have a very fluid gaming experience. Now, what I don't understand is... why isn't something like that standard on consoles? It's neither hard to learn nor to implement, and quicksave/load has been common in pc games for a long time.

 

Well they're also discrete button presses. They aren't analog movement like a joystick is (or like a joystick is attempting to approximate with its fine control). So it's not the same at all really.

 

This looks relevant to the topic:
http://gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/

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How do I avoid the feature-creep aspect of taking controls serious? I think my game would be suited better to mouse and keyboard than gamepads, and it doesn't look like a genre that must have gamepad support. But nowadays I really prefer playing with gamepads myself, so I can understand when people make decisions based on that - I've started to do too.
But I also know that making a good implementation of gamepad controls, with seamless transitions, and a UI that works equally well for both, and auto-adapts as soon as you touch the other input device, would add a heavy chunk of work opposed to just focussing on mouse and keyboard.
I think "save it for the sequel" would be the sane choice, but I have a hard time just commiting to that.

 

@Martin_H - Two facets to not skimp are Controls and Camera. (Scott Rogers in Level Up! argues that the big three are Camera, Controls, and Character, and with a flexible definition of Character I agree.)

In most things, I'm all for paring down to the bare essentials. But in this case I'd argue for implementing really good controls and camera in this game, not the sequel. I don't think fancy features like custom mapping are necessary, but the controls have to be responsive, comfortable, and just work. If you think gamepad will fit for your game, it might be worthwhile to implement a solution that you can reuse in this game and others.

 

You were absolutely right- LB/RB are the best place for the throttle controls in my situation- the ease of use is worth more than what I lost by having to move the functions I had there already, Plus, fine throttle control is not even that beneficial- I think I like the 1/4 increments better.

I think something I'm getting out of this thread is that more options is almost always better than picking one option for your players and expecting them to adapt.

Ideally:

• Have "new" mechanics added to more standard controls instead of replacing them.
• Have multiple schemes that conform to different control standards for players who expect things differently based on what genres they may be more familiar/comfortable with.
• Have the ability to re-bind controls to account for personal tastes.

 

True, but you do have to read input from it like a joystick in Unity.

 

Yes, I 100% agree. I didn't mean to imply I want to skimp on the controls, just that I'm not sure adding gamepad support at all is a worthy time-investment, because if I'd do it, I'd want to polish them well and would need to think about a ton of extra things.

My game looks reminiscent of an RTS, but you (at the moment) only control 1 unit. But that unit has up to 9 weapon turrets that you individually aim and shoot, and they'll have individual characteristics each, like limited firing arcs, min and max ranges, varying turn speeds etc.. So the leftmost 3x3 block of letters on the keyboard is for "activating" the turrets, and while you hold those keys down they'll aim for the worldspace location the mouse cursor is hovering over, and left click triggers them to shoot. The 3x3 block of buttons corresponds to where the turrets are placed on the unit, because no one can remember 9 different regularly changing weapons mapped to individual buttons without them following a logical system. The spatial relation is easier to grasp, and you can always just look at your unit to see where a turret is. Other controls are right click to move, double right click to keep moving in that direction, left click to rotate towards a location, double left click to keep rotating towards that position for easier circlestrafing, shift right click to queue up moveorders in a chain, middle mouse button hold to rotate the camera, middle mousebutton hold + w,a,s,d to scroll the camera (hold shift to scroll faster), mousewheel to zoom in and out, and F to recenter the camera on your unit. Those are the basics. The fancier extra features are R to toggle turret targets between positions relative to the moving unit and fixed worldspace locations, T to fast forward time, V to enter a different stance (not sure I wanna keep that one), and hold space to toggle a different kind of weapon mode where "activating" turrets with the 3x3 letter block does not re-aim them, but triggers them instead and left click still just rotates the unit while you do that. That last one is so that you can either pre aim turrets to cover an area and then fire them while rotating the whole unit to move the firezone around your position, or you can switch the turets to lock to worldspace position and then easier aim one set of turrets actively and quickly trigger a few shots from turrets that are pre-aimed on let's say something stationary that will explode when you shoot it.

You see why I'm hesitant to commit to adding a gamepad version of all that? I'm not saying it's impossible, but it most likely would be a step back in terms of how efficient you can play and needs adjustments to gameplay elements to really make sense. The 3x3 letter block could find its equivalent in the 8 directions + neutral position of an analog stick, but that really isn't the same in terms of functionality because you can't activate more than 1 turret at a time. And just "having" gamepad support sends a kind of message that I might not want to send, because RTS-ish games with insanely complex micro don't tend to have controller support, and those that do tend to be more simplified, like Supcom 2 (not even sure it has gamepad support on pc, but I've played a demo of it on the xbox 360).

 

I agree; this sounds like a keyboard+mouse game.

 

I found this one interesting and I'm warming up to the idea to making more and more things optional/configurable.