Bucky Seifert on 1/9/2014 at 21:06

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Yes yes yes go ahead and call me a blasphemer, but sometimes I do prefer to just kick back with a controller than with a mouse and keyboard.

Anyway, anyone know if there is an optimal way to use Thief 2 with a 360 controller? Namely, make the game recognize the right stick and trigger buttons so I can use them for looking around and weapon/item use respectively?

Bucky Seifert on 2/9/2014 at 00:10

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Works like a charm, thanks Renzatic!

Now to go on being a heretic.

Blastfrog on 2/9/2014 at 07:45

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Thief arguably works better on a controller. Thief relies heavily on movement speed (hence why keyboard or d-pad is hardly ideal) and awareness of your environment, and it's slow paced enough that precise aiming is not needed quickly like a twitch-shooter would. Environment awareness is very important. Wouldn't it be cool to use some subtle rumble feedback for your every footstep so you get a more tactile feel for how hard your feet are hitting the ground? Sound is already a nice indicator, but you'd only feel more aware with true tactile feedback. It would also generally increase immersion with both that and more general uses, such as splashing into water, getting hit by an attack, etc.

For first person gamepad controls to feel more "proper" and not just unwieldy and tacked on, player movement should be analog. Turning/aiming should have per-axis timed acceleration. To further explain what I mean with turning/aiming, the aim shouldn't just be at full speed immediately, but rather have a fixed amount of time (easily under a second or even half of a second) for a speed cap to go from 0% to 100%. This would apply every time you move it from the center of the axis, which includes moving it to the other side. This would of course operate independently on both the X and Y axes, so if you're already turning left and you want to start aiming upward, you wouldn't be looking up at full speed because the Y axis acceleration hadn't kicked in yet.

While this decreases responsiveness a bit, it actually does increase accuracy. It lets you kind of nudge your aim along without having to worry about overshooting your aim. This can even be found in early PC games, look at Doom. When playing Wolfenstein 3D with the keyboard, you'd turn immediately at a fixed speed, and this felt inaccurate and bad. The same applies to the alpha versions of Doom. But when id Software made the SNES/Jaguar versions of Wolf 3D, they gave your turning a sort of momentum. The final version of Doom had you turn at half speed for a short duration before it kicked into full gear.

There's a reason that first person games designed to work well with inaccurate controls use this mechanic.

Renault on 2/9/2014 at 22:38

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Just for looking/searching around the environment, I think I'd go crazy without mouselook. Not buying the "half second or full second" argument - I don't know about you, but I can turn around and look behind me much faster than that, almost instantly. Joystick/pad response is just too slow.

Plus, I wouldn't want to give up any of my usual commands, and there seem to be too many for a controller. In addition to just the basic movement keys (WASD, jump, crouch, shoot, action), you also have:

Lean (3 directions)
Use item
Drop item
Clear inventory
Clear weapon
Map
Objectives
Zoom in/out

That's almost 20 total right there, and then I like to use individual shortcuts keys for things like:

Square lockpick
Triangle lockpick
Compass
All weapons (up to 9 separate keys)

I'm not saying it can't be done on a controller, but there's no way it's better that way, IMO.

Renzatic on 3/9/2014 at 07:33

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I'm past you a bit on that, in the sense that it's no longer a "sometimes" think for me. More often than not, I'm playing with a controller these days. I'll happily acknowledge that the mouse is the superior way to aim in any 3D game, but I'm good enough with analog sticks that I can play anything comfortably, and ended up liking it more because I can lean back and kick my feet up.