Thread by @lzsthw

I started playing Stranded Deep a few days ago and it's a really nice survival simulation, but suffers from the same clunky joystick controls that Subnautica, Windbound, and Astroneer all have. I think I've pinned down what's going on with these games and mouse vs. joystick.

When they develop the controls for the mouse they treat the "scene" as simply a flat projection, so whatever you can see can be picked up. I've picked up things an estimated 4m away with my hand using the mouse, and I can grab things when the mouse is nowhere near the object.

Meanwhile, with a joystick, I have to be within a realistic 1m range of the item, and put the tiny little dot exactly on it or nothing. This means it's entirely the programmers penalizing the joystick with "realism" and nothing to do with the joystick's motion abilities.

By comparison, the game "The Forest" (which is an EXCELLENT horror game NOT for kids) was clearly developed for the controller. You don't have to aim at items to pick them up at all. Aiming to hit things has a lot of range for accuracy. Same with other joystick first games.

I also forced myself to use keyboard+mouse for 2 days and I don't know how people do it. My hands were *killing* me, and if that's how you play and you have carpel tunnel syndrome, *that* is probably a big cause. I even tried using a Tourbox instead of keyboard and still pain.

So while all the other mouse-oriented survival games suddenly demand crazy accuracy with the joystick, The Forest is joystick first and works just fine.

I also went and got one of those fancy Microsoft XBox Elite 2 controllers with some interesting observations:

The default setting on that control is stupid. I went in and set it to a smooth curve with radial calculations and suddenly all the games work better. I don't know what their default interaction curve is but I think it's named "swinging brick can't stop level 2".

What I mean by that is without smooth radial motion on the two stick the act of moving to aim at something is a jerking motion, overshoot, and then jerk back, with no fine control. Using a smooth curve and suddenly it behaves like normal. Aiming is easy.

The Elite controller also has these totally useless triggers on the bottom that you can only map to some other buttons. What a WASTE. A primary problem with aiming with the control is not being able to stop your swing. The controller has two levels on each side...so....

It would be *far* better to repurpose these "triggers" to control two parts of the sticks:

1. Fine motion.
2. Stop immediately -> very fine motion.

Games could also access these to allow for simpler "cycle through crap I can grab" features.

The fine motion control would make that stick move slower in a smaller area, same as you get on high end mice.

The stop->veryfine would take your motion that normally kicks back due to the tension in the stick and stops it, then allows fine tuning.

But, it seems like the only people who buy the Elite controllers are people who play FPS games and want a "real trigger" action rather than a button, so I guess that means I get two levers on the bottom that I sometimes accidentally hit so I drop my weapon in the middle of combat

Incidentally, if you're into the Survival genre of games, and love horror then check out The Forest. Just started it today, but holy crap is it great looking, easy to control, and so far very brutal.

BUILD A FIRE NOW!