Author Topic: The EA-slagging parade  (Read 14287 times)

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
It would still have to compete with Half Life, Unreal and Quake. It's about as hopeful as expecting Titanfall 2 to compete with Battlefield and Call of Duty.

We live in this weird world where in several cases games as a cultural medium are bettered by companies making bad decisions. People being angry about games being cancelled is part of that, because those people are invested in games as a cultural medium rather then as an industry.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
Joysticks were a mistake.

  

Offline MP-Ryan

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
Joysticks were a mistake.

Evergreen post right here.
"In the beginning, the Universe was created.  This made a lot of people very angry and has widely been regarded as a bad move."  [Douglas Adams]

 
 
Re: The EA-slagging parade
Joysticks were a mistake.

That's what she said.

 

Offline deathspeed

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
I never would have played FreeSpace, MechWarrior, Starlancer, Crimson Skies, Dark Star One, Jane's WWII Fighters, or any other flying or mech game without a joystick.  I tried Freelancer and did not enjoy the mouse controls.  I don't need Star Citizen levels of immersion, but a joystick really adds to the experience for me.
Maybe someday God will give you a little pink toaster of your own.

 

Offline MP-Ryan

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
I never would have played FreeSpace, MechWarrior, Starlancer, Crimson Skies, Dark Star One, Jane's WWII Fighters, or any other flying or mech game without a joystick.  I tried Freelancer and did not enjoy the mouse controls.  I don't need Star Citizen levels of immersion, but a joystick really adds to the experience for me.

It's not that joysticks are bad; it's that building a game around a specific peripheral that not everyone may have or want to have is a bad idea.  FSO is perfectly playable with M+Kb too.
"In the beginning, the Universe was created.  This made a lot of people very angry and has widely been regarded as a bad move."  [Douglas Adams]

 

Offline Buckshee Rounds

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
I never would have played FreeSpace, MechWarrior, Starlancer, Crimson Skies, Dark Star One, Jane's WWII Fighters, or any other flying or mech game without a joystick.  I tried Freelancer and did not enjoy the mouse controls.  I don't need Star Citizen levels of immersion, but a joystick really adds to the experience for me.

It's not that joysticks are bad; it's that building a game around a specific peripheral that not everyone may have or want to have is a bad idea.  FSO is perfectly playable with M+Kb too.

Well Guitar Hero would disagree with you there. There's something about joysticks specifically that limits wider appeal.

 

Offline deathspeed

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
I never would have played FreeSpace, MechWarrior, Starlancer, Crimson Skies, Dark Star One, Jane's WWII Fighters, or any other flying or mech game without a joystick.  I tried Freelancer and did not enjoy the mouse controls.  I don't need Star Citizen levels of immersion, but a joystick really adds to the experience for me.

It's not that joysticks are bad; it's that building a game around a specific peripheral that not everyone may have or want to have is a bad idea.  FSO is perfectly playable with M+Kb too.

I agree that building a PC game around a specific peripheral to the exclusion of M+Kb is a bad idea.  I've tried some console to PC ports that almost require a gamepad, as they are nearly unplayable on the mouse and keyboard that virtually every PC already has.  But it is also a bad idea to focus only on M+Kb and specifically exclude those peripherals.  People who already have a joystick or racing wheel or gamepad want to the ability to use them.  Freelancer is probably a fine game, but having that choice taken from me pissed me off so I never gave it a fair chance.  I would enjoy Ace Combat Assault Horizon more if it natively supported a joystick instead of just a gamepad. 
Maybe someday God will give you a little pink toaster of your own.

 
Re: The EA-slagging parade
I never would have played FreeSpace, MechWarrior, Starlancer, Crimson Skies, Dark Star One, Jane's WWII Fighters, or any other flying or mech game without a joystick.  I tried Freelancer and did not enjoy the mouse controls.  I don't need Star Citizen levels of immersion, but a joystick really adds to the experience for me.

It's not that joysticks are bad; it's that building a game around a specific peripheral that not everyone may have or want to have is a bad idea.  FSO is perfectly playable with M+Kb too.

Well Guitar Hero would disagree with you there.

And where is Guitar Hero now?

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
I preferred rocksmith 2014 edition.   I get to use my real guitar.
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
People who own and want joysticks will always be in a tiny minority so as long as a game is viewed as 'a joystick game' it's kind of ****ing itself over.

Plus coding peripheral support for joysticks is AWFUL. The guy who did Enemy Starfighter/House of the Dying Sun has vowed to (probably) never work on another space sim because having to deal with joystick bugs was so bad.

 

Offline Det. Bullock

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
People who own and want joysticks will always be in a tiny minority so as long as a game is viewed as 'a joystick game' it's kind of ****ing itself over.

Plus coding peripheral support for joysticks is AWFUL. The guy who did Enemy Starfighter/House of the Dying Sun has vowed to (probably) never work on another space sim because having to deal with joystick bugs was so bad.

I think it's just that the death of the spacesim and the more accessible flight simulators has basically erased all the know-how about programming for a joystick, so few people know how to do it and when most developers need to do it they have to learn from scratch.

I remember that the joystick bugs in XwVM were solved rather quickly using the same libraries HoTDS used, the more problematic were from Thrustmaster for some reason while "older" models like mine worked pretty much from the get go, the only other major issue was the throttle slider axis which for a while never quite got to 0 or 100% for some other reason.  But that was also because they had people with various hardware testing it to find the problems early and never worried too much bout programming for the shoulder buttons/triggers throttle which is usually the most problematic aspect of programming with only gamepads in mind.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 

Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
XwVM = X-wing Vs Marvel?
Campaigns I've added my distinctiveness to-
- Blue Planet: Battle Captains
-Battle of Neptune
-Between the Ashes 2
-Blue planet: Age of Aquarius
-FOTG?
-Inferno R1
-Ribos: The aftermath / -Retreat from Deneb
-Sol: A History
-TBP EACW teaser
-Earth Brakiri war
-TBP Fortune Hunters (I think?)
-TBP Relic
-Trancsend (Possibly?)
-Uncharted Territory
-Vassagos Dirge
-War Machine
(Others lost to the mists of time and no discernible audit trail)

Your friendly Orestes tactical controller.

Secret bomb God.
That one time I got permabanned and got to read who was being bitxhy about me :p....
GO GO DEKKER RANGERSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
President of the Scooby Doo Model Appreciation Society
The only good Zod is a dead Zod
NEWGROUNDS COMEDY GOLD, UPDATED DAILY
http://badges.steamprofile.com/profile/default/steam/76561198011784807.png

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
I think it's more that joysticks destroyed space sims than vice versa. God bless Xbox controllers, that's how I replayed TIE Fighter and Xwing Alliance recently.

 

Offline Det. Bullock

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
XwVM = X-wing Vs Marvel?
X-Wing Virtual Machine, an ongoing attempt to recreate X-wing in Unity, I helped with some Joystick testing back at the beginning of the project.

I think it's more that joysticks destroyed space sims than vice versa. God bless Xbox controllers, that's how I replayed TIE Fighter and Xwing Alliance recently.

I don't deny X-wing Alliance was ruined by requiring a stick just to boot up, but there are plenty of people who played X-wing and Tie Fighter with mouse and keyboard. It's more that for some reason people feel more immersed by controlling a real person that moves like a skating tank rather than controlling a vehicle that moves in a semi-plausible way.

Besides, aiming with thumbsticks sucks no matter the genre, it's a compromise at best compared to a mouse or a joystick.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2019, 09:27:04 pm by Det. Bullock »
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
If joysticks killed space sims, then how are hardcore racing sims that often support four-figure customized setups still alive and thriving?

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
Because, like NFL games, they appeal to a hardcore audience with a very specific interest in a real world thing.

 

Offline Det. Bullock

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
Because, like NFL games, they appeal to a hardcore audience with a very specific interest in a real world thing.

You could say the same thing about flight simulators.
"I pity the poor shades confined to the euclidean prison that is sanity." - Grant Morrison
"People assume  that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,  but *actually*  from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more  like a big ball  of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff." - The Doctor

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: The EA-slagging parade
So I guess my follow-up question is do you think that the lack of a "real thing" makes space sims all that different?  And if so, why?

And with the joystick-programming issue, was that mainly because of the sidelining of DirectInput, or because hardware manufacturers can't manage any sort of consistency?