Duality ZF (by Xona Games)

[MrPopo]

I can't quite get my head around the fact that the A button shoots. I picture myself with the controller in hand, with each thumb on a stick for each ship. My fingers are free to hit the triggers and bumpers. How do you hold down A while still manuevering both ships?

Wow, I cannot believe I typed out that mistake. The A button shoots in solo play. In dual play, it is auto-fire!

EDIT: In fact, ABXY all shoot in all modes. Just in case anyone wants to use another button. And the dpad is supported, too.

Hahaha, ok, that makes a lot more sense.

[bobbynewmarkiii]

- Triggers = smooth morphing
- Bumpers = stepped morphing (to accurately access hybrid modes you like)

- this sounds correct to me.

Which trigger does what? I want to poll you. Picture yourself controlling one of the Duality: ZF fighters. It has spread by default. You can morph it to laser. Which trigger do you pull to do so? Left or right?

- I want to pull the trigger of whichever hand is controlling the fighter's who's weapon I want to change

EDIT:

I just re-read your post, and i'm a little confused - lets say the dark blue fighter is controlled by my left thumb - I would assume that it would be easiest to change that fighter's weapon with the left bumper and trigger, and vice versa with the right thumb and trigger / bumper... Don't quite know if this is the way you have it working tho...

Anyway - I'm thoroughly looking forward to playing this... No health bars... 30 minute 1cc's... sounds perfect:)

EDITED EDIT:

Ok, so I see that both weapons change at the same time, so my comments above appear moot... I'm sure you will arrive at the correct solution - all of your choices this far appear to have been well judged.

[MrPopo]

My suggestion is to have the right trigger/bumper switch to whichever fire mode is the most useful "defaul", which I'm guessing is the spread. You generally want to map the right hand shoulder stuff to default fire, since that's the standard. The biggest mistake you can make when developing a game is to buck the standard controller mapping trends.

[Jason]

My suggestion is to have the right trigger/bumper switch to whichever fire mode is the most useful "default", which I'm guessing is the spread. You generally want to map the right hand shoulder stuff to default fire, since that's the standard. The biggest mistake you can make when developing a game is to buck the standard controller mapping trends.

Good point. In the game play, both buttons are used equally, since you're constantly switching from one to the other. In my playtesting, I didn't find either one seemed more proper than the other. Given that, I think you're right in that the 'default' (for beginners anyway) spread should be the default shoot button, which is the right trigger. I think I had it in reverse due to: spread is the default, so if you want laser, press the default fire button (right trigger), since otherwise, if you press that button, you're already in spread mode, so nothing happens. The fact that both buttons are used equally makes it difficult to solve optimally.

[Matthew Doucette]

(EDIT: I edited this post slightly since original post. It's hard to explain this stuff.)

Apologies for the my lack of clarity in my long answer, and on the "which trigger does what" poll. I should have asked that poll in terms of solo play, not dual play. So, here it is again: Solo play, pressing a, shooting, spread shot, a large enemy comes up, I yell at you to pull the trigger to switch to laser, which do you pull?

I find that the trigger controls are not "default" controls, but "special weapon" controls, and what I mean is they are similar to bombing the screen if you could. And in this sense, the laser is more "special" than the spread. So, when converting from spread (slower bullet speed and slower fire rate) to laser (faster bullet speed and fire rate) you accomplish something quickly and effectively, especially because you are also aiming and concentrating on a specific target. In comparison, when converting from laser to spread, it is a slow down feeling, not a fast feeling, and more feels like you are stepping "out of" the special firing mode (which is the laser) and not concentrating on anything in particular.

So in that sense, the laser is the "special" mode, and deserves that "default" trigger, which is the right one.

But, who knows, some gamers may just use laser all the time.

I think no matter what we choose, someone is going to want the triggers mapped differently.

[Ivo]

I think one good control scheme would be to have the ship spread by default, and when the right trigger is kept pressed it focus (laser), and pressing the left trigger would swap the default to laser such that then if you wanted to spread you would have to keep the right trigger pressed.

As you have analog triggers you could have a half pressed right trigger be one of the "middle" configurations (partial spread), and a full press (while maintained) is the non-default taken to the extreme - usually this would be the fully focused laser (but left trigger toggles the default, so no press would be laser and full press would be fully spread).

In this case I presume most players would never even have to use the left trigger at all - gamers that prefer spread as default could just use laser when they want to, and gamers that prefer to have laser on most of the time could similarly just toggle at the start of each game. Keeping the controls simple.

[Matthew Doucette]

Ivo, that is an interesting control idea.

I cannot remember but I think Jason tested this out already and rejected it. I'll ask him about it. The problem with the Spread..Laser slider being mapped to an analog trigger is we have "spread guide lines" that are drawn during spread/laser transition to give immediate feedback as to the size of the spread. The image below shows this. Waiting for the bullets to give feedback on the spread is not quick enough when in the midst of intense action. However fast our bullets move, they are not immediate. Plus it's hard to read the bullet spread size when moving around. Whereas the guidelines work like a laser sight, almost. So, if you try to maintain a spread/laser hybrid shot, using the analog trigger at 50% let's say, you will be unable to maintain exactly 50% and these guide lines will continually show up, where they are suppose to show up for the change and then quickly fade out to not clutter an already cluttered screen. The other problem is, of course, it's hard to maintain specific spreads/laser hybrids. And we are not sure which hybrids will be popular. Yet another problem is it removes the bumper controls that "snap" and stick to the specific steps throughout the spread/laser hybrid possibilities. How much will this "snapping" be popular? We have no idea!


(Here you can see the spread/laser guideline. The spread is opening up and the next shots will be the first "step" of a spread/laser hybrid shot. This first step would only be a slight spread with mostly laser. The bumper controls, as they are now, would snap to this first step immediately.)

I will talk to Jason about this idea. So, I appreciate you bringing it up!

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

What I'm wondering is if we could ever see a Dreamcast release? You could use the twin sticks for the dual ship mode and I'm guessing it wouldn't be too hard to transplant it from the PC version.

Anyhow I'll probably grab this when it releases.

[Jason]

I routinely use a spread/laser hybrid especially during multidirectional mode to ease the need of aiming. Sometimes the spread is so wide that I compress some of it into a laser, since I don't need to shoot things directly to the side, and those bullets are better used shooting forward, and killing those enemies faster. These firing schemes would be very difficult to do if the amount the triggers are depressed dictated the amount of spread vs. laser -- pretty near impossible.

The likelihood of a Dreamcast version would depend on XNA support on that platform; since I cannot see me rewriting the code from scratch. With a single source I already have the entire Xbox 360 and PC platforms. It would have to sell very well to warrant the development time for release on older platforms. I'd prefer to spend that time making Duality II.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

Don't forget that the DC is a Windows CE machine. Plus it's a great way to make a profit; at around $20-30 per copy a DC version could be very profitable and worth the time to transplant the code with a few new features/modes/levels thrown in.