Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

I have to admit I'm never comfortable with 6DOF shooters. Even a full HOTAS setup doesn't really solve control problems in such game. I usually use throttle for forward and backward movement, stick for pitch and roll, and rudder pedals for yaw, but I still couldn't find ideal controller axis for lateral movement, either vertically (up down) or horizontally (left right). Until now, I've been using hat for such movement, but it isn't very comfortable nor precise.

It should be noted that no real-life vehicle has Descent-like freedom of movement though.

I don't know if you have a 'hat' on your joystick, but the oldschool setup for the few people who played early D games with full HOTAS was something like:

Joystick: turn L/R, pitch U/D
4-way hat: strafe U/L/D/R
Throttle: forward / reverse
Buttons on throttle: roll left / right

...but from what I saw at Descent parties in the '90s, it was far more popular to use a joystick (or even a mouse) and the WASD keys. HOTAS setups were expensive!

For the record, here's my control map (when not using the keyboard only). I usually play with the mouse these days, but my joystick scheme was similar:

Mouse: pitch & turn
Mouse 1: Fire primary
Mouse 2 & 3 (middle / right) : accelerate forward / backward
Alt: fire secondary
WASD: strafe U/L/D/R
Left ctrl / space: roll left / right (try it!!)
Caps lock: afterburner
F: flare
R / T: cycle primary / secondary

There are some other keys (Q & E duplicate forward/backward for example) but those are the basics! I've been playing Descent games for 20 goddamn years with this setup, so it does work. 😜

Also, make sure you play with 'push forward' to pitch down and 'pull backward' to pitch up, flight sim style. These days the cookie-cutter FPSes call that "inverted Y axis" but in the Original Descent era it was the proper orientation of the Y axis.

I used keyboard only and was quite comfortable in navigation back in the days of D1 and D2. I tried it again a few years ago and just couldn't repeat the experience 🙁

This DEMO looks nice...

I usually play Descent with the WASD + mouse configuration similar to the default settings in the Sublevel Zero prototype. Never really tried it with keyboard only, at least the default keyboard configuration doesn't seem super comfortable.

Yeah the default keyboard config is rubbish. I basically use my same config as above only with the num pad taking place of the mouse or joystick. 2/4/6/8 control pitch & turning, kp-enter fires primary, kp+ fires secondary, 0 drops a bomb, 1 & 3 duplicate roll left/right and 7/9 duplicate forward/backward. It works for me.

If this thing reaches $189 000 before the end of my workday today, I will up my pledge to $120. Just saying. At this point I no longer am "buying a game", I'm "helping some old (online) friends make a game."

They won't make it in time and they made a poor choice on the Collector's Edition price. They want $500 for it? Give me a break. Oh, and I personally like my collector's editions unsigned.

Suck it, "responsible financial decisions." Nobody asked for your opinion.

xjas wrote:

Yeah the default keyboard config is rubbish. I basically use my same config as above only with the num pad taking place of the mouse or joystick. 2/4/6/8 control pitch & turning, kp-enter fires primary, kp+ fires secondary, 0 drops a bomb, 1 & 3 duplicate roll left/right and 7/9 duplicate forward/backward. It works for me.

Doesn't this control setup cause great strain to your right hand?

I've been testing the Linux build, and it runs well enough. I sometimes hit a bug where the screen gets a large white bar on it. Still, it brings back that old Descent feel very nicely.

I hope they bring back the cockpit view like in the old game.

dr_st wrote:

xjas wrote:

Yeah the default keyboard config is rubbish. I basically use my same config as above only with the num pad taking place of the mouse or joystick. 2/4/6/8 control pitch & turning, kp-enter fires primary, kp+ fires secondary, 0 drops a bomb, 1 & 3 duplicate roll left/right and 7/9 duplicate forward/backward. It works for me.

Doesn't this control setup cause great strain to your right hand?

Err, no? My three main fingers are on the arrow keys and my small finger is on enter/plus. It's pretty much how your hand sits if you just rest it on the num pad.

I did not mean in terms of positioning, but in terms of use. It appears that you operate most of the common actions with the right hand, and only a few with the left.

Not really, pitch/roll are done with ctrl+space usually and fwd/backward are q/e if I'm not playing with a mouse. I duplicate them on the right hand in case I need to but usually use them on the left. I'm kinda ambidextrous with the controls so if the finger on one hand that operates something gets tied up I can use the other hand. 😜

I have a LOT of playtime using this control scheme and have basically adapted it to every FPS or flight game I've played since. I am one of those people who spend 20 mins re-mapping all the keys before I even think about starting a new-to-me game.

In on-topic news Overload has passed $201k! I might be in for one last pledge bump.

Let's just pretend I live in an alternate universe where this makes sense.

Raised like fifty grand in the last few days I think.

I don't think this will get funded in time, and I have no money.

Unrelated rant: Also everytime I view the kickstarter page firefox goes to 100% CPU for literally no reason. Literally. No. Reason. I even blacklisted kickstarter from running javascript and it still happens.

I wish there was a browser that isn't so full of retarded issues like this. Or atleast with a way for me to debug them properly, I can't even run the "Performance tracker", it just sits there frozen when I click the button to start profiling.

^^ The lowest tier to get the game is like $25. 😀

Seriously they just raised about twenty grand in less than a day, and it looks like there will be a flurry of activity in the final 24h. Definitely has a chance of making it.

The Kickstarter site works totally fine for me under Opera and Vivaldi ... not sure what's going on with your setup as I can't imagine Firefox itself would be the problem. It may be trying to autoplay a video and load a couple rather large animated gifs on the page at the same time?

Watching the network connections it loads everything on the page and then Firefox just stays at 100% CPU so long as the page is open, I have no idea what's going on. Even with javascript and iframes disabled it just wastes time.

I seriously don't have money to spend. I just barely scrap by what I can.

220k right now. Hope it gets funded.

laxdragon wrote:

I hope they bring back the cockpit view like in the old game.

Awesome, question answered.

Wow, this is super cool, totally hope it gets funded!

People gotta put money into it man...