Why re-mappable controls are important (Dead Space 2 related)

[Hohum]

Yep, seems he's managed to get the desired response, and a decent one at that.

[sj33]

It's brilliant stuff. Whilst I don't blame the developers for overlooking this (how many of us were aware of how handicapped people play games?), I think it is great that this has highlighted a sector of gamers that may have slipped under the radar in the past, and if this emphasises the importance of the issue to developers and publishers in the future, then it is a positive development. I appreciate that such issues might not be so easy to solve later in the development cycle, but that's all the more reason why it is important for this to be brought to light sooner rather than later.

It irks me that certain people in the Eurogamer comments section try to take the upper high ground over this issue, and wonder why people expect such features in the first place. It's not really the point, the point is to highlight where improvements can be made to improve accessibility for the medium. The videos of Gareth show that gamers are gamers, and aren't going to be dissuaded that easily.

I do wonder how the blind guy on Eurogamer plays games. No disrespect intended at all, clearly s/he does play games, I'd just love to know how that works. As a person who is slowly moving away from gaming, I suddenly appreciate it that bit more.

[EDDIE M0NS00N]

Well EA have been buggers for not even including Southpaw controls in their games, so I think its time they sorted the situation out tbh.

[PeteJ]

What an amazing story. Gamers get bad press so often, perhaps often deserved if the voice comms in most games is to go by, but when something matters they really can get results.

I wonder if the Penny Arcade story made it to the Daily Mail? (when they raised millions).

It is about time developers started working towards certain standards. GiantBomb mentioned this the other day, always ensure there are certain options available (subtitles etc) and always put the option under the same menus.

[Hohum]

Whilst I don't blame the developers for overlooking this

Hmm... thing is though, being able to configure actions to any button you like is a fairly straightforward request (generally a game's input mechanisms are managed by the Windows DirectX APIs, so there's no technical reason they can't as far as I'm aware). Subtitles aren't hard to add either, and neither is having a colour-blind setting.

I'm not saying they should be going to massive lengths to ensure they cater for various individual scenarios, that's going to be next to impossible... but simple, relatively easy-to-implement features shouldn't be overlooked just because a lot of people won't care about them. Besides, although I could personally make do without, I do like to be able to re-map controls exactly how I want, plus subtitles are handy when playing late at night...

Edit: Actually, it looks like there may potentially be a very stupid reason for this problem to exist at all with regards to Dead Space 2:

http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=25207274#itemanchor_25207274

You can remap walk forward to any key you like, just not a mouse button. I'm also a programmer, so I remain unconvinced.

......

I think i may see the issue. Dead Space stores its control remappings in a file called controls.rmp

Looking at a binary diff of it after tweaking a few controls, it looks like it's a binary file that just stores the DX scancode of the key in a 8 bit field.

That's great, but the left mouse button dx scancode is 0x100. It won't fit. So rather than use a sane format, they just don't let you remap it.

Apparently the first game also actively blocked certain buttons from being used (in particular the arrow buttons), despite it being perfectly possible to use them to play the game (if you modify the configuration file by hand). That's verging on outright insanity.

[JamesS]

Hmm... thing is though, being able to configure actions to any button you like is a fairly straightforward request (generally a game's input mechanisms are managed by the Windows DirectX APIs, so there's no technical reason they can't as far as I'm aware).

That's not really true any more. Microsoft recommend against DirectInput for keyboard and mouse these days, and they also now have Xinput for joypads (though that doesn't support as many controllers as DirectInput). It's all a bit of a mess, really, and there's no longer a single API you can use for mouse, keyboard and joypads.

It's still not all that hard, but it's a chunk of extra testing, front end work and whatnot. Ultimately, it comes down to what other feature you want to cut in order to have full control remapping. Unfortunately (and I'm not saying it should be like this) it's one of those things that tends to drop off the end of a schedule.

[Neon Ignition]

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/287915/news/video-games-to-blame-for-rape-increase-tv-psychologist-makes-outrageous-claim/

The wider media outlets would be happy to promote positive stories like this but they just don't have the column space due to all the gamers that are playing games like Bulletstorm and becoming rapists.

The comments section on there is suitably high brow. Essentially:

'What's she on about, I don't have time to play violent videogames. I'm too busy raping'

[Salsa Party Animal]

It is nice to see things like that, I means it will help us to understand how physically
disabled gamers play games.

It is not just about subtitles support for deaf gamers.

[Hohum]

PC Gamer sent somebody out recently to interview Gareth, here's the article:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/02/11/interview-dead-space-2-disability-campaigner-gareth-garratt/

It's a good read. I believe he's also going to be mentioned in the next issue of the magazine (as they happened to be already working on a related article before Gareth's story came to light).

[Sketcz]

What a motivated and determined guy. It makes you realise how much in life you take for granted.

This raises an interesting issue regarding customisable controls. Why aren't we allowed to customise them to any degree in any game at any time? It should be a standardised thing in every single game, no exceptions.

There have been many instances where I've wanted to do something weird, like add certain controls to analogue stick click button, or remap things to strange places because it suited my play style, but nothing today allows this kind of freedom (on consoles any way).

What's infuriating is when they offer you A, B, C and D configurations, absolutely none of which alter what the X button does, and only exist to alter something superfluous and useless, like switching the shoulder buttons which you seldom if ever use anyway. I find it kind of insulting, since it doesn't allow customisation at all!

Its so nice when people come together to sort a problem.
Bet this games story doesnt make the daily mail.

God forbid that it does, they'd probably mess up the details like the mainstream press always does and have something like this as the headline:
Violent videogame causes disabilities

[charlesr]

And here's a blind guy

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/02/22/blind_man_plays_videogames/

[Brad]

Customisable controls should become NTSC-UK's campaign. To think that someone is unable to play a game just because X and O can't be switched (for example) is insane. That is a day's work at most surely.

[Flabio]

That is a day's work at most surely.

If it was, every game would offer it.

It's non trivial doing remappable controls (I've done nothing but fix control remap bugs for weeks now on the thing I'm on). Especially if you allow completely free 'map anything to anything'.

When looking at features that need to go in versus time taken, it tends to get the chop.

[charlesr]

Why isn't it a "module" that is the same-ish for all games though?

[Flabio]

Control simply hasn't permeated into game development as an abstract concept in the way that, say, pathfinding or physics has.

I've yet to work on two games that do it the same way.

Some games read raw button presses and use that to drive the game. That's a pretty old school way of doing things, and makes doing reconfiguration a complete git because there's no single central system to change, each part of the game is doing it's own thing.

That way of doing things persists right into the latter days of the previous generation.

A neater way to do things is to define 'game actions', such as 'shoot', 'reload' etc... and have the game run only off those. The code will then have a system that maps button presses to those game actions.

Where it falls down is where you have overloading, multiple actions on the same button based on context. In Fable 2, for example, holding A makes you run, but tapping it makes you roll, vault, open a door etc...

A naive remapping lets you shift the entire set of A button actions to a different button, but for true accessibility you really should be splitting those game actions so they can bind seperately.

That's an absolute BUGGER to do, especially if you havn't designed all that up-front (and noone ever does).

Basically, this is one of those things that everyone is astounded as to why it's not done, but it genuinely does end up being bottom of a long list of stuff like 'make sure it doesn't crash' and 'don't corrupt the save games', and so few people get vocal about it that it just gets ignored.

In a game where it's really all about control, it ends up being a major part of the design and gets the attention it deserves (look at the control binding options in the recent Capcom fighting games, for example).

There's no common library for it simply because there's no common set of game *actions* to work with, and because the source hardware and how you read it tends to sit behind custom API stuff that you can't abstract easily.