Video Games

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 3:57 am

Heath Robinson wrote:I don't have a gamepad. It appears, however, that a game I want to play on my PC does not let you use a keyboard to play it (for some reason).

I do, however, have a keyboard. It appears that I need the impossible, though. I need something that will duplicate keyboard input and reinterpret it into gamepad input.

This sounds a little backwards...what I've seen of gamepad drivers is they take the gamepad input and convert it to keyboard inputs. I'm sure there are other gamepad drivers out there that don't do it that way, though.

From a programming standpoint it's certainly doable, but it beats me whether anyone has actually done it.

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 6:15 am

Parthenon wrote:Sorry to extend the topic further but
Heath wrote:Map one key to each aspect of the input (or, in the case of directionals, a combination of keys).
I'm curious as to what you mean. For example if you wanted to convert a trigger into keyboard inputs, how would you do so? If I remember correctly from having a quick look at XNA probably about a year ago, each trigger has a huge number of possible values, either 128 or 256 ( I could be thinking of the X and Y values of the analogue stick having that range). How can you recreate that with a keyboard?

And most pads have four triggers, four face buttons and two sticks, all of which are analogue and would need more than one key. How can you get access to enough keys to be able to control them all without getting easily confused?

Obviously I'm missing something here. Or my knowledge of programming is even worse than I think it is.

Keyboard_input == MAPPING ? MAX_VALUE : MIN_VALUE

Like I said, it's trivial. In the case of directionals it needs only to subtract the mapped value of one key from that of another.

It's all trivial, but I don't know the interfaces, and I hate GUI programming.

Surgo,
Windows, at least, presents a secondary interface to get all the fun analogue info out. Apparently the game I've since given up on playing (which isn't a professional game) made use of this interface exclusively for ingame actions.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 6:41 am

I don't get it. Let's say your directional stick only has 4 settings (no movement, sneaking, walking, running) into each of the 4 directions. That makes for a total of 48 non-zero states for your movement stick. Do you propose to use 48 keys for this?

IGTN · Post by **IGTN** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 6:54 am

That would be silly. It's two separate controls with seven states each: forward throttle and side throttle. So that's already down to twelve keys

Combine that with multi-key commands (i.e., shift-S, control-S) and you have it down to four.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 6:55 am

You are aware that most keyboards do not allow more than 4 key presses simultaneously, and for some keys not even that?

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 7:04 am

Key mapping is easy.

What's hard is changing pointer types from say, a joystick to a mouse or a stylus.

-Crissa

Heath Robinson · Post by **Heath Robinson** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 9:17 am

Murtak wrote:I don't get it. Let's say your directional stick only has 4 settings (no movement, sneaking, walking, running) into each of the 4 directions. That makes for a total of 48 non-zero states for your movement stick. Do you propose to use 48 keys for this?

#DEFINE map( X) ( X ? MAX_VAL : MIN_VAL)

StickY = map( RIGHT_MAP) - map( LEFT_MAP);
StickX = map( UP_MAP) - map( DOWN_MAP);

I don't need "perfect", just "holy shit, I can actually play this game now".

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 10:29 am

Yeah, making digital > analog or analog > digital isn't impossible, or even really hard.

I'm tempted to buy a couple cheapo controllers and tearing out the mainboards and soldering in the button controls from my dance pads... I miss those things.

-Crissa

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 12:21 pm

Heath Robinson wrote:I don't need "perfect", just "holy shit, I can actually play this game now".

Depends on the game I guess, but if you are fine with going down to binary controls a keyboard version is definitely doable.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 7:06 pm

Ah, I see, you're pretending that the gamepad is solely binary values. So four keys for each stick and one for each trigger. I immediately counted that out since it seemed really stupid to me.

I may have to get MP3 out of the library then. Thanks for the description.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 11:07 pm

No, I'm not. I assume:
- At least the stick on the pad is analog (or rather, 3 non-zero values)
- The keyboard is binary
- The keyboard will only support 4 keypresses at a time
- Most games will not need more than a direction and 2 buttons at the same time

Given the above you can successfully map a game's commands to the keyboard if you are fine with losing your analog control and dropping down to binary. I guess that will work fine for some games and will stink for others.

Mapping the movement to more than 4 keys, while giving you fine-grained controls with only a single key used will work fine ,at the cost of being nearly unusable. Adding a shift or caps-lock modifier to the movement will either end up as a toggle or will use one of your precious keypresses. Again, this may be fine depending on the game. Finally, if the game requires you to press more than 2 buttons while moving you are in trouble as (as far as I know) most keyboards do not support this.

And finally, if you trying to emulate one of the modern gamepads with multiple analog sticks and 8 analog buttons and your game actually uses those I can't see how you can use a keyboard for this as the sheer number of simultaneous keypresses is already too much for your hardware, even if you did manage to find a decent key layout.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 11:41 pm

Actually, keyboards support hundreds of keypresses at a time now, tracking when each key went down or up. Most games do not use the analog values for the keys in a gamepad.

Even so, merely being able to move keys around on a gamepad arbitrarily would make most games far more playable.

-Crissa

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 1:10 am

I'm now confused as to whos referring to who now. I was referring to Heath's "#DEFINE map( X) ( X ? MAX_VAL : MIN_VAL)" as pretending that the analogue stick can only do binary.

Isn't

I wrote:pretending that the gamepad is solely binary values.

and

Murtak wrote:losing your analog control and dropping down to binary

pretty much the same thing?

But anyway. This topic has gone on long enough and is probably boring a few people.

New one:

What is your opinion on random drops in games based on chance that you can't feasibly grind? I've heard stories about items with a 1 in a million chance of spawning but they seem really retarded to me.

I'm playing a game called Fire Emblem which is a turn based strategy game much like Disgaea or Final Fantasy Tactics except that if a character dies then they are permanently dead.

During the battles if one of your characters ends their turn on specific tiles of the map then they have about a 5-40% chance of picking up a hidden item (varies turn to turn, is based on stats and is 65-100% if the character is a thief). A couple of these items are really important and useful items and in one case a secret character.

However, this seems really really stupid to me. You are heavily encouraged to finish the mission in as few turns as possible so stopping on every tile is completely stupid. On easy or normal you can save during battle and reload it several times and try out each and every tile with your thief but that is really silly and time consuming.

Over this and the last game which did the same thing I've come across about 2-3 items randomly (a couple of playthroughs of the last game and most of the way through the first of this).

To me this is pretty silly and encourages you to cheat to find everything because lifes too short to explore every tile to be reasonably certain within a 90% probability that you've found everything. If it was random within a region then maybe, especially if you could spend a turn searching to definitely find any object there, but this is normally one single tile.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 1:29 am

Presumably the point is to sell guidebooks. It's similar to items hidden off-screen in Final Fantasy/Shadow Hearts/Whatever, or Pokemon that can only be found in specific locations in Battletoads Pokemon.

And yes, that is pretty retarded.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 5:47 am

I've played Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance.

It had something similar to that...

Well, actually, in that game, it was mostly the people you could recruit. Some of them were pretty extreme (Talk to the recruit with one person, and then beat him with another, talk to them with two people, in order, talk to them in one chapter and talk to them again with the same person in another chapter...)

But they gave a nod to what you're talking about in a desert level. Which has one of the best recruits in it. If you go to a certain square in the far corner of the map, you pick up an awesome-as-hell sword.

If you pick up that weapon as one of two characters, the recruit comes out of nowhere and joins up.

That level also had items hidden in squares and the like.

Edit: Eesh, forgot the important bit.

I don't exactly mind grinding, but having super-lower percentage drops from super-rare enemies...Yeah.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles was annoying like that. When you beat a level, you got a randomly generated loot pile from the boss and could choose one item from it. At high levels, you can get the materials to make your race's artifact-level stuff. Except most of the materials come from extremely rare sets from bosses. I did it for one race, then never again.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 5:54 am

Yeah, in FFIV redub, I haven't seen any of the super-rare items, 'cepting the pudding, and that came far too late to matter.

It's nice there's a random things that can make a game neat and interesting. But that shouldn't be the only way to get them, and they shouldn't be required to get ahead in the game.

Another game, Eternal Sonata, has a thing where you're supposed to talk to people twice and then trade items throughout the game... But if you miss a couple steps, you permanently get shifted out of the trade and miss that entire part of the game. And you can't ever get a second 'magic book' or whatever, and that just sucks 'cause you need to expend the first one to open a locked door.

-Crissa

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 6:42 am

Parthenon wrote:Isn't
I wrote:pretending that the gamepad is solely binary values.
and
Murtak wrote:losing your analog control and dropping down to binary
pretty much the same thing?

No, that is the opposite actually. The keyboard is binary, not the gamepad.

Crissa wrote:Actually, keyboards support hundreds of keypresses at a time now, tracking when each key went down or up. Most games do not use the analog values for the keys in a gamepad.

Do you have a source for that? I'll try to dig up a source too.

Crissa wrote:Even so, merely being able to move keys around on a gamepad arbitrarily would make most games far more playable.

Amen.

Draco_Argentum · Post by **Draco_Argentum** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 7:59 am

I hate random drops, my hatred increases exponentially and the drop rate decreases.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon Jul 27, 2009 11:40 pm

Murtak wrote:
Crissa wrote:Actually, keyboards support hundreds of keypresses at a time now, tracking when each key went down or up. Most games do not use the analog values for the keys in a gamepad.
Do you have a source for that? I'll try to dig up a source too.

No, I'd have to be primary source on that one. It's just a function of how advanced PCs have become of late; we no longer process the information of the keys on a single chip, but instead emulate it in software. Keyboards always had a really complex state situation so that they could have so many unique keys, just now that it's not hardware limited, it goes straight into the OS.

Now, the game itself might only be able to understand the ups and downs of so many keys at once... The limit for World of Warcraft, for instance, is three - at four it forgets one of the prior ones. It also forgets keys that have been down too long with a certain number of additional keypresses. So your target game will limit you more than the hardware itself.

-Crissa

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 12:41 am

This seems to disagree.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 2:05 am

Okay, so various modern keyboards suck. Remember they have software drivers and may use combos for smart keys instead of letting the OS handle it.

On my Mac I can handle seven modifiers plus two primary keys without any trouble with the base OS; my nostromo can chord up to ten, depending upon my programming skill, etc.

-Crissa

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 7:04 am

I'm building a character on Quest for Glory 1.

Anyone know if it's even remotely possible to beat the Weapon Master?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 7:52 am

Yes.

Keep building your skill and keep fighting him. I don't know if it's possible to beat him on the first try regardless of your skills but it is possible to beat him.

If you want to build your Weapon Use skill, though, fight monsters instead. It goes up slower but you spend less in-game time doing so--though in-game time isn't an issue in the first QfG.

My recommendation for your first time through Quest for Glory is to make a thief with Magic Use--while you don't get the kickass sword and shield combination (unless you're sucking some blue frogs on the parser version) you can do almost every other sidequest in the game except for one. And that one's tiny anyway.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 9:32 am

I've been through the game.

As near as I can recall, my Fighter's skills are like this:

Str: 100
Vitality: 100
Agility: 100
Intelligence: 57
Luck: 100
Weapon Use: 100
Parry: 100
Dodge: 94, or thereabout
Throwing: 70-something.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Tue Jul 28, 2009 10:20 am

Allright, I beat him.

I guess I was being too defensive. It took several tries, but I found a combination of slashes and parries which pushed him back pretty regularly.

Edit: Oh, yeah, I'm playing through QFG on all three classes (straight) and trying to make some awesome people to import into the second game, just for kicks.

I think I'll work on the Thief next...