Controller Woes

Curse you analogue controller!

Wow, it's been a few weeks since I last posted anything here. I should remedy that.

I think I will.

Let's talk programming.

When we last talked I'd been working on a Zelda-like for Linux and I'd made a bit of progress. One of the things I was testing was the ability to use a controller.

SDL2 makes it fairly simple to hook a controller up to your computer, find it and use it and I did tests that did just that. Using the left analogue stick I made a sprite move around the screen. This worked well for both horizontal and verticle moves. But there was a problem.

My sprite has a speed limiter (for lack of a better word) that should make the sprite move across the screen at a reasonable pace and this worked for both verticle and horizontal movement. The problem was that angular movement made the sprite speed incredibly fast. This is behavior I do not want.

The fix is easy, I think. The thing is I have vague recollections about this happening before a number of years ago and I was able to find then but not now. It's a math thing and I'm sure I could figure it out if I sat down and put my mind to it. Unfortunately I'm impatient and lazy so I want Google to answer my problem. That'll take time.

Despite the speed I dinked around with my little sprite mover and it felt odd to me to be controlling the sprite with an analogue stick. I really, really wanted to use the d-pad just like Zelda of lore used to do. It took me a few moments to whip this up and after playing around with it the angle/speed problem went away as I was using digital switch basically and it felt good.

Here is the problem. Kids these days expect to control everything with the analogue stick. I cannot say I don't blame them because the majority of games out there feel right when controlled via analogue stick. So, do I take the easy way out and only use the d-pad or, do I only use the analogue stick and appease the kids (while trying to make sure it (the sprite) runs at the right speed) or do I make life difficult on myself and do both. I mean, I already have to include keyboard control for those who might not have a controller I might as well add support for both analogue and d-pad control.

Keyboard control! Ugh! That probably means I'll have to figure out an elegant way to remap the keyboard for those who want that option.

Elegant, yeah right.