Hi Tom.
I'm afraid I completely disagree about analogue movement. The sort of sticks
your talking about, the 3D thumb sticks that directly calibrated player
movement to stick position, eg, far right = walk fast right less far right =
slower, didn't come into the mainstream world until the 32/64 bit era in
the mid 90's.
All the previous games, including classics like mario, sonic, MEga man etc
had a simple on/off input system, even for joysticks. I know this very
certainly because I have read the manual for my X arcade stick which
precisely imitates those movements, so have a vague idea at least how the
hardware works.
The way that all those 8 and 16 bit era games handled analogue movement was
much more to do with the software and game engine than the hardware. For
example, instead of having a character's walking speed be constant, have it
gradually increase when the correct direction is held. With jumps, have the
amount of time held on the jump button dictate the hight of the jump, in
combination with how much the directional buttons are pressed and what speed
the character was going.
Many games (like mario), also had a run button which, when held would cause
the character to run further and any running jumps be hier.
All of this is quite possible on a pc keyboard by simply tracking the time
spent holding the keys, indeed I've played freeware graphical games that do
this quite nicely so that playing on a keyboard isn't that different
technically to playing on a stick. indeed when playing the Pc turrican
remakes, I don't miss my old comador Amigar Zip stick half as much as I
would expect to :D.
So yes, the analogue thumb stick controllers could be used to create in game
movement, but certainly for something with the same movement model as all
the games of the pre 32 bit era had wouldn't be difficult at all at least
from a design perspective.
The problem however is firstly that as you said, if people have not
experienced the mechanics of mainstream games they do not know! the fine
differences in say Mario's walking and jumping speed, and secondly precisely
working out some mathematics to create a more analogue system of control
rather than just a basic press button movement model such as games like
Superliam and Q9 have.
Perhaps this is where writing some tutorials or basic formulae for
programmers would be helpful.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
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