Omnimaga

Calculator Community => Completed => Major Community Projects => Portal X => Topic started by: Builderboy on July 09, 2010, 06:50:03 pm

Title: Portal control scheme
Post by: Builderboy on July 09, 2010, 06:50:03 pm
So I currently have the portal gun set up so that you shoot relative to the 5 key at intervals of 45. But I wanted to get other peoples oppinions and ideas about this, should I keep it at 45?  Should I try to get 22.5 degrees by using multiple keys?  Is there any other ideas you guys can think of?
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: calcdude84se on July 09, 2010, 06:53:17 pm
It may be worth it if it doesn't slow it down to much. An alternate control scheme would be to be able to rotate the direction in which you fire, like the PC game (with the ability to quickly jump to any multiple of 45 degrees for convenience)
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: nemo on July 09, 2010, 06:56:47 pm
i think you should do it if it's fairly easy to implement. would it be possibly to have the user press a button, and you go into a mode where you can shoot at any angle? so you press a button, then a line appears above the characters head, and when you press the right arrow key it moves a couple degrees clockwise, and the left key makes it go counterclockwise. then the user presses a button and a portal is fired in that direction? if you can't do that/feel it's unnecessary, i'd definitely go for trying 22.5 degree angles.
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: Builderboy on July 09, 2010, 06:58:35 pm
The only problem I can think of with muli key press is that either there would have to be a delay in the portal shoot (since both keys might not be pressed at *exactly* the same time) or launch the portal upon release of a key, not a launch

and as for the variable angle idea, the reason I am hesitent is because you often times need to be able to shoot portals quickly in mid air and indont want there to be too long of an aiming time
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: calcdude84se on July 09, 2010, 07:01:12 pm
^ I suggested having variable angles but a way to quickly aim to any multiple of 45 degrees, which hybridizes those approaches. :P
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: Builderboy on July 09, 2010, 07:04:55 pm
That means that you lose fideliy in the air then tho right?
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: calcdude84se on July 09, 2010, 07:11:59 pm
What do you mean? You can just keep the angle the same when falling through a portal.
(This (harder to aim) has annoyed me in the PC game, but then again, it's better more realistic to the original IMO)
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: nemo on July 09, 2010, 07:13:56 pm
perhaps have a line emanating from the character constantly, showing where the next portal is going? the keypad would function as usual, so no matter where the line is pointing, if you press 8 the line jumps to 0 degrees, or pointing upwards. then you could press the addition button to make it move a little clockwise, and subtraction counterclockwise? or use the paranthesis buttons to control counter/clockwise.

new-ish idea:

you have a line that controls where your next portal goes.
( = move counterclockwise couple degrees
) = move clockwise couple degrees.
1-9 = move to corresponding angle and auto-fire a portal.
???? = fire portal
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: Builderboy on July 09, 2010, 07:18:24 pm
I'm thinking more on difficult levels where you may need to shoot more than one portal within a short Mmount of time and while flying through the air ect... Also I would have to seenif I could even get variable degrees working in thenfirst place.  I shall need to run some tests...  

So really we are boiling down to either 22.5 accuracy, or 45 jumping with variable degrees with other keys.
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on July 09, 2010, 07:46:47 pm
I think it is fine as it is, but it wouldn't hurt to try 22.5 accuracy
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: thepenguin77 on July 09, 2010, 10:53:16 pm
22.5 degree accuracy is really nice once you get the hang of it. In all reality, you probably only need to wait one frame to see if the other key is going to be pressed.
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: Builderboy on July 10, 2010, 12:18:46 am
Yeah I have decided to implement 22.5 degree accracy and see how it feels.  If the delay is noticable or no good then I can simply switch back.  Most of the time anyway you only need 45 degree, adding anything more than 22.5 I think would be overly ecxessive.   What's nice is that you can keep one hand on the arrow keys and one hand on the numpad, with the occasional [2nd] to grab a box.  So we shall see how it works implementing 22.5 then!   
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: Quigibo on July 10, 2010, 12:35:32 am
You might not need a pause at all if the framerate is low enough.  Personally I am liking the 45 degrees right now.  Even with a pause, I find it difficult to press 2 buttons at once with the same finger unless you're dragging your finger around like a touch pad which is not how portal would use it.  Especially if you design puzzles where the 22.5 degrees is a necessity to solve then it could get frustrating.

In addition, I think it would be cool to have another button like the decimal point also pick up crates so that way its more ergonomic and you can move, fire a portal, and release a box easily at the same time.
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: Builderboy on July 10, 2010, 01:29:30 am
Well I currently am getting a framerate of 33 frames per second so it's very probable that I may have to have a delay for multiple frames. I'll quickly test it out and if it's no good I will stick to 45, since it's intuitive and easy to use.
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on July 10, 2010, 02:37:42 pm
I personally had no issues with 45, except maybe when trying to shoot a portal from a great distance with precision it was harder
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: Builderboy on July 11, 2010, 05:43:17 pm
Soo i tried 22.5 degrees and it was a lot more difficult than expected to press the 2 keys needed with only one hand and still have it register and be accurate in timing.  That, and the fact that if you didn't press the 2 keys close enough together, it would result in 2 portals being shot, which would mess up what you already had in place, a side effect i didn't foresee.  As a summary, im sticking with 45 for user simplicity, and ease of use.
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on July 11, 2010, 05:45:12 pm
It's ok, it's not like 45° was THAT hard, after all ^^
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: calcdude84se on July 11, 2010, 06:14:57 pm
okay, that's fine. As was said, 22.5 was a bit of an unneeded luxury anyway. (No writing puzzles that need 22.5, then :P)
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: andrepd on August 24, 2010, 02:09:48 pm
hmm, well if you say so... anyways my opinion as a big portal fan is that 22.5 degrees would be the best option to line portals correctly. The ease of use is compromised when you are limited to an 8-directional fire line. It's limitating that you can only shoot portals in that precise range... As pressing the keys *exactly* at the same time is nearly impossible, the portals would be shot on release... Just my PoV... But if you tested and really felt that it's not easy to use then...
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: Builderboy on August 24, 2010, 02:26:50 pm
Yeah, it would have been nice, but the control just felt really delayed, and hard to use.  And since 45 degrees is the most that is supported, all puzzles will obviously be solvable with 45 support, so there is no worries there.
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on August 24, 2010, 05:02:04 pm
What Builderboy said. I agree 22.5 would have been nice, but we need to remain realistic in terms of calc hardware and language limitation. ALthough andrepd if you got a solution for Builderboy to make it faster (like Axe source code), feel free to share. :)
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: Builderboy on August 24, 2010, 11:19:32 pm
Well the problem isnt speed of the language per say, but the fact that since you need to *release* the buttons to shoot a portal, it makes it much less precise in terms of shooting, and it makes it feel like there is a delay.
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on August 24, 2010, 11:20:05 pm
aah yeah true. :S
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: Runer112 on August 25, 2010, 05:17:41 am
It sounds like I might be a little late to be supporting 22.5, but what about extending the radius of keys detected around the "5" key to 2? So instead of having just the numbers 0-9, you'd have all the numbers, "x2", ",", "(", ")", etc. going all the way around.
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: Builderboy on August 25, 2010, 12:38:20 pm
Hmm thats doesn't sound intuitive nor easy to program, not only is there a rough transition between the number pad and the operator keys, but it also uses the On key D:
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: Runer112 on August 25, 2010, 12:45:01 pm
Yeah, now that I think about it, it probably wouldn't be that easy to use on 84s anyways, because of the unaligned key layout.
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: thepenguin77 on August 25, 2010, 04:15:32 pm
I tried that in geometry wars. It doesn't work well just because of how big of a square that is. Going all the way from x^2 to enter just doesn't feel natural. Also, that method uses ON which works quite a bit different than the other keys. I'm not even sure if you could read it in axe.
Title: Re: Portal control scheme
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on August 25, 2010, 04:26:42 pm
Yeah I'm not too sure if a lot of people would like to have to use that many keys or such large range of keys just for shooting portals.