Thoughts on Gamepad Support
My game, Isolated Assault 2, is being built for computer. When my friend asked to play it, he tried to make it work with a gamepad, and it didn’t…
I never thought about people who use gamepads, but I figured “why not add support anyways?” I started testing with my own gamepad to see how my game actually played…
Turns out, my game was TOTALLY DIFFERENT. Playing with a controller feels more compact and comfortable, but reduces accuracy and precision. Keyboard and mouse are generally better because of the amount of buttons and precision, but I can see how people got used to FPS’s on the xbox.
The second problem that came up was the fact that my gamepad had only 1 analog stick, but my friend had 2. (using an xbox controller I think) It was impossible for me to look around.
How do you solve these? Well, for looking around, we can see that Lucasart’s Battlefront 4 for the PSP used the x, square, circle, and triangle for the looking around buttons. And for other actions it had to incorporate the back buttons and arrow keys which a strong selection system. I tried using this for my gamepad, and it actually worked pretty well. However, for some reason, Unity defaults some buttons to keyboard buttons to “make it easier”. In the end, you have to change almost every single control to fit the gamepad, but I think it’s worth it 😉
For the precision problem, the only thing that could make it easier is adjusting the sensitivity (which is already an option) but there is no way to navigate the menus without a mouse, so the game isn’t completely gamepad compatible, but it’s enough to work, and as long the instructions are clear, I think this system works. I mean, who runs a computer without a mouse? 😛
Happy Gaming, Ludum Dare <3