Nuke; the reason I was much more outspoken wasn't your post, but jr2s, I'm sure you would use a script, or something similar, rather than doing it code side, so that we could invalidate the people who are effectively cheating in multi.
i dont really consider it cheating. what input code essentially does is scales down the potential values a an analog source to a range of between -1 and 1, and that number is used as a scaler for the engine physics to decide a target velocity (or rotational velocity in case of roll/pitch/yaw) that the physics engine will try to attain based on the ship's table settings. the variable is qualified in that it can never go above 1 nor can it ever go below -1. no matter what physical source the variable comes from, it will always be in that range. improving the mouse, (or keyboard or joystick for that matter) will not effect the maneuverability of the selected ship. and also mouse joy is not exactly as easy or newb friendly as you make it out to be, go play elite with a mouse and tell me how much it improves your accuracy. privateer 2 is another example, damn impossible to play that game with a mouse.
also freespace's mouse support was dodgy from day one. of course it was still the era of the joystick, and a decent joystick could be had for $30 and a high end joystick was a fraction of the price of today's mid-range hotas. many gamers then had joysticks. [v] didnt spend too much time on the mouse support for the game, they just wanted to provide some support for people who didnt have a joystick. now joysticks are kind of an expensive oddity. only people who really own them are heavy into flightsim genres, and people from fps/rts circles are sol. so better mouse support could only bring more people into the game. if it makes one more fps gamer want to play freespace because the mouse support doesnt suck, so much the better for the community. you can still get a cheapie or use a game pad. ive used a wiimote, it was not easy flying.
id like to show up in a multi game with a wiimote, and id struggle to get a kill, of course youd bet the only person id managed to shot down would claim i cheated. furthermore mouse joys could be emulated quite easily with third party software. glovepie could do it. could even toggle modes as well. glovepie is scriptable and can pose as any controller you could imagine. ppjoy also has a joymouse proggy. people who wanted to "cheat" could use that, it works at the driver level so the game would have trouble distinguishing it from a joystick. just to point out that the game can do nothing about these things. at least if its supported at the engine, you have some control over it.
I'm still in two minds about that anyway, since it'll basically mean everyone will use the mouse.
no it wont. good mouse or not id still use my joystick. its hard enough to round up players for a decent match, i sure as hell aint gonna wait for players that use ch hardware and a trackir to come around for a fair fight. id like fly against people who are doing the best with their chosen hardware, while i do the best with mine. certainly noting is stopping me from using a mouse, except my own preference for the joystick.
Making the mouse the defacto control mechanism is pretty ****ty to start with, since there are mods (mostly TCs) that just ASSUME you use one already. For people who are good with joysticks or keyboards, TCs/Mods that are based on mice play, are not enjoyable. Not at all.
well thats up to the tc devs. just because they decide to use the fs engine, doesnt mean they should be forced into making a fs clone. say you wanted to make a freelancer clone, it would feel wrong with a joystick. or an rts, joystick certainly wouldnt work there. and this goes both ways, mods can be made to emphasize joystick play. cockpit demo certainly has features tuned specifically at enhancing hotas play.
And frankly, not everyone WANTS to play with the mouse(The Joystick is far more fun, no?). If you make it the best control mechanism in EVERY regard though, that's what will happen, and FreeSpace will be worse off for it.
everyone can pick their favorite input method. just because flying with the mouse has a couple of new features and options, doesnt mean it will turn every mouse player into a super human death machine. and it certainly aint gonna make joystick enthusiasts use a mouse when they have a perfectly good joystick at hand.
Can you really not see how this is a bad idea? More-over, your argument about 'taking advantages of new technology' doesn't hold up when you're talking about the mouse, the mouse was around with Volition created the game.
that statement i made had nothing at all to do with mice. it was mostly geared twards new joystick technology, and motion controllers. to support them by extending joystick support.
Volition /balanced the game/ including the mouse already, and changing it to "have everything", especially the manuverability of a joy, and then the sniping control it currently has at the press of a button, could not break gameplay balance more.
game balance seldom revolves around input. starcraft 2 certainly doesn't cripple the functionality of high dpi mice in favor of less advantaged players with old skool mice. hordes of korean gamers using less than state of the art hardware, and kicking serious ass, certainly could attest to that. fairness is not so much achieved in that all control methods are made equal, crippling some and improving others. fairness is achieved by giving everyone the same options and letting people use the one that best suits them.
Now I know very little about code(I can follow explanations about it, and make a little sense of decently notated code but beyond that..), and appreciate the hard work by the SCP guys, but these proposed changes have obvious gameplay, and game balance effects.
The two pilots that have most likely put the most flight time in, and certainly the most multiplayer flight time in, dealing with people using all kinds of interfaces, are telling you it will break the game.
Please listen :<
if these pilots are playing in legit matches and winning using mice, it probibly means that they are pretty badass, mainly because the existing mouse flight method is horrible. maybe you consider that these pilots are good not because of their choice of input, but that they are putting in so many hours. franlky id rather better support mouse play, and bring many more players onto the servers, that to leave it as is and keep the same dwindling pool of players we already have. im sure if you put as much time into your joystick as they do with their mice you might stand a chance at beating them.
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