In last week’s episode of our Game Development Show, we added support for controllers to Project Spaghetti. Shooting and ducking worked fine on the buttons, but a direct translation of 8-way movement to the analog stick was not so great.
Unlike a directional pad (the kind of buttons you remember from an old Nintendo controller), a stick implies smooth movement, so even if it changes the game from the keyboard version, we’re going to see how it goes allowing players full 360 degree movement with the controller, while keeping the sprites representing one of eight directions.
We never want to get in a situation where we force an uncomfortable or awkward control scheme on our players in an attempt to protect a system concept because awkward is never fun.
Assuming we succeed at our goal of making the controller feel natural, we’re going to go even a step further toward tailoring the game to what players expect by allowing them to define their own controls!