Everyday Shooter: Controls
Comments(3) Like I said before, I really knew very little about this game going in. One thing that I only just recently learned is that its original platform was the Playstation 3. Which means that it was designed for a PS3 controller, with its dual analog sticks. Which isn’t really all that surprising, given the gameplay…
Suddenly it struck me. I’ve been using the wrong controls. I had been using the keyboard, which limits me to eight directions of movement and fire, when I should have used my PS2 controller and USB adapter to get the intended 360-degree rotation.
I suppose I failed to think of this sooner because of the obvious Robotron influence. After all, Robotron used a pair of 8-direction digital joysticks. And for many years, in the days before dual-stick gamepads became standard, the best way to play Robotron adaptations or imitations at home was with a keyboard. 1This didn’t stop people from coming up with single-joystick solutions, but the results never had the feel of the original. The few existing console ports of Crazy Climber have the same problem. But Robotron is far from the only game to influence Everyday Shooter, or be referenced by it. Level 4, for example, draws heavily from Time Pilot, a game whose feel is more or less defined by the smooth rotation of an analog stick.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get my PS2 controller working under it. I don’t know why. The game makes provision for a gamepad under Windows, as evidenced by its options menu, but it just doesn’t recognize mine, no matter what I do. And this gamepad works without problems in other apps, so it’s not a hardware problem. Perhaps the game’s PS3 origins mean that it won’t accept anything so antiquated as a PS2 controller, even though it seems equivalent for this game’s purposes. At any rate, it looks like I’m stuck with keyboard for the time being, which makes certain parts harder than they should be. Fortunately, extra starting lives will compensate.
| ↑1 | This didn’t stop people from coming up with single-joystick solutions, but the results never had the feel of the original. The few existing console ports of Crazy Climber have the same problem. |
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Actually the game is designed specifically for 8-direction movement and shooting. Analog inputs are just quantized to digital movements (I believe Mak has said he prefers keyboard anyway).
(I use an Xbox 360 controller.)
I too use a controller because I find it easier to hit the diagonals, and the game is very obviously eight directional. (I wish it wasn’t: it’d be a lot easier to shoot down the Porcos.)
Huh. Okay, I guess I’m not going to try to get a gamepad working after all. I’m more facile with the keyboards when it comes to genuinely digital actions.
The thing that strikes me as especially weird now is that you can in fact fire in directions other than the eight cardinal ones, but only when you change the direction of fire and it slides smoothly from one cardinal direction to another. That’s what really convinced me that 360-degree fire was in the offing. But I guess not.