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Re: Driving: Tank, Arcade or FPS?
Now that I am not doing a billion things at once I will go over more in depth what I am talking about.
So generally speaking video game developers sink a lot of time into control systems when they make a game. When playing a game the controls should be either engaging and fun to use (like in the case of the original Wii it was supposed to be fun and involving to do those motion things) or to make it feel like there is no controller you are just plugged directly into the character you have. When you have a poor control system in a video game it really shows. When moving if you get stuck on objects its frustrating. When the inputs are delayed you feel sluggish and clumsy. When the control system is your enemy the game isn't difficult because its challenging its because the game is not responding the way you want it.
That is where GTA drive tackles a number of issues, the original GTA's were 2D top down so they don't count and can go away in this discussion. But as soon as GTA went 3D it faced this wall of problems. With top down games your vision is done for you and it moves with the character so you don't need any controller input. When you move to 3D there is no way to have a character see in a 3rd person perspective and still see the entire world. It is just not possible, that being said this forces one of the vision controls onto the joysticks (keeping in mind most console controllers have 2 joysticks*). With only one joystick remaining lets look at the other tasks that need to be accomplished in order to fully control your character in a 3D environment. Now that we can see the world we can navigate through it. Most navigation is done with the other Joystick on a controller because it provides movement in all directions, its a simple obvious solution. But that is if you are controlling something that can move in all directions.
Remember grand theft auto is done in cars a lot... That is the Auto part, in this aspect you don't actually need to move left or right because most cars don't strafe, instead you need to turn in a car. This makes putting movement on one joystick detrimental because of the zones of control on the joystick. When a joystick is in its neutral state most games treat it as dead. This means you get no input. The cardinal directions are just as simple you are either moving forward or backward, or in a position where you are turning. It is the diagonals that get sketchy. Since you are limited to a circle on most joysticks when combining forward and left you get these fuzzy zones where you can only move so fast while turning. This isn't actually ideal because this ties the speed and turning together in a way where you lose a lot of control.
To tackle this issue (and make it feel more like driving a car) the developers of GTA said "Well what if when driving a car instead of having to push forward to drive forward and backwards to drive backwards we switched those to buttons." That is the basis of GTA drive that you have one button for forward and one button for backwards and now your speed and your turning are never tied together. Since it is also supposed to emulate driving it is more like that because the button for forward and backwards is used to accelerate to desired speed but I digress.
Translating GTA drive to robotics we can start off with the same thing. Take a standard kitbot, and on the controller have one button be forward and one button be backwards. So if we take the left joystick and make it at its neutral state make the robot go (when pressed with a forward or backward button) at a set speed of say 50% of its total. As you tilt the stick forward you slowly increase the speed until you are at 100% and when you tilt it back you decrease the speed. The difference between this and movement being on one stick is that controllers are really limited on inputs. When you take only the forward tilt on a joystick as forward and backwards as backwards you only have a small area to define your speed**. With GTA drive in theory you have a larger area for controlling speed.
* yes I know the N64 had one joystick but were talking about good controller design
** There is a work around to that but I don't want to ruin the surprise yet
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HERO 俺を讃える声や 喝采なんて 欲しくはないさ
I liked my team more before they stole my jacket. Play is for kids this is serious...
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