New Control Scheme Adventures

One of the biggest problems SunBots had at the end of last semester was its control scheme. The game used a dual stick setup, with the left stick controlling movement and the right aiming energy shots. Although our primary testers (~20 year old gamers) largely found this setup intuitive, we got significantly different feedback from the professors who played our game during greenlight deliberations, who generally found the setup a bit unwieldy. A dual stick setup requires a very high level of hand-eye coordination, which clashes conceptually with the rest of SunBots, which is generally casual-friendly.

Additionally, our game very strongly gives off a tablet vibe, due to its colorful aesthetic and simple concept. However, our movement alone made our controls too complex to work on tablet. On a planet, the player can only move one of two directions, clockwise or counterclockwise. However, simplifying this to a binary input is problematic. Left, right, up, and down mean different things depending on where on the planet the player is. On the north pole right is clockwise and left counter, but the opposite are true on the south pole. This led to us creating a sophisticated series of checks to properly translate the left analog input to what makes sense based on the player's general position, taking 8 different possibilities and condensing them into the two real outputs.

Since tablets don't have any buttons or tactile feedback, their range of input is limited. You only have so many discrete actions possible before they begin to blend into one another. Taking our complicated movement system and porting it to tablet would leave us with a mediocre product. So, we simplified, and cut direct movement entirely. Movement on planets wasn't ever a core part of our game; it was more a means to an end, the end being solar system movement. Now, the player has a constant velocity when on a planet's surface. They can press a single button (an easy input to port to tablet, once we begin seriously building tablet controls) to swap directions. This system works great; it never feels like you aren't in control, since the important control takes place in space. It just goes to show the power of simplification and outside the box solutions.