Controllers
Feb 02, 2016
When you think "point & click", the first thing that pops into your head is "game controller". Am I right? Yeah, I thought so. The "I thought so" part should be read in your best sarcastic voice, because we all know that is not what pops into your head.
Control schemes are always hard and one of the least favorite parts of making a game for me. I know people who live for it - and power to them - but for me, I just want the control scheme to vanish. It's an archaic connection between our bodies and our minds and it's unnatural at best. Maybe that is why I like a mouse and just pointing and clicking, but I know that is not natural for a non-inconsequential subset of humans, so in the end, there probably isn't a perfect control set up. I'm sure Holodeck designers of the Star Trek future hate UI and control scheme as much as I do, they are just dealing with a different set of impossible constraints.
Thimbleweed Park was always conceived to be a true point & click adventure game. With a mouse. And pointing. And clicking. It's the way god intended adventure game to be played. Look it up.
But there is part of me that enjoys laying on the couch, feet sprawled in unnatural ways across the cushions and playing a good console game with a controller. It's a very different experience than sitting at a desk with a mouse. When I'm playing PC games at a desk, I expect to be thinking and pondering. When I'm playing a console game with a controller, I expect to be more viscerally attached to the game. I expect to be doing something all the time.
That was part of the impetus for The Cave: build an adventure game that was designed from the start to be played with a controller and feel energetic.
But that isn't Thimbleweed Park. Thimbleweed Park was designed to be an adventure game played with a mouse. With pointing. And clicking.
That said, we've always wanted the game to be on consoles. It's a different audience and one we want to reach. I look at it as a challenge. How to make a point & click adventure game that is true to the roots (and to the Kickstarter and our vision), but is playable with a controller. And not just "barely" playable, but fun with a controller. Every bit as fun as it is with a mouse.
I don't think I've ever created a control scheme that didn't go though round after round of tweaks and complete restarts. The point & click scheme for Maniac Mansion didn't come out fully formed. It went though a lot of redesigns until we landed on what we did. Then it went through even more redesign for Last Crusade and even more for Monkey Island. Control schemes need to feel natural and sometimes that takes time. You know there is "something" wrong, but you don't know what.
The deceptive part of building a control scheme is that you can only talk about it so much. You never know until you play it. The most talked through control scheme can fall apart a mere second after trying it. Your brain figures out every hole and contingency, but your fingers just want to do something else.
We have an opportunity to show Thimbleweed Park as part of a presentation with Microsoft in March. I was hoping to punt on the deep controller work until later, but they are requiring the game be shown with a controller, so time to rejigger the schedule and move controller head-banging (in the bad way) up.
Controller support has been in for months, but only very basically where you move the cursor around with the thumbstick. We knew we needed more.
So the first thing I did was think of every game I could on console that might have solved a similar problem and then didn't look at any of them. I very purposely didn't want to see how others had dealt with this thorny issue so I wouldn't be tainted. I am not a console player so I thought maybe I could come at this from a fresh perspective. This isn't born out of arrogance, but more of the "too stupid you don't know it can't be done" line of think. Ignorance can be wonderful sometimes.
I'm intimidated by buttons. I like that a mouse has two buttons. Three button mice freak me out. Controllers have a lot of buttons, but console players don't seem to mind. My personal mission was to use as few buttons as possible and I feel like I failed in this regard. I'm using pretty much every button on the controller. My only saving is that many of them are optional, used only to speed the action up. You can still play the game with one thumbstick and the A button.
The game has two different controller modes you can switch between. One I call Classic, where you drive the cursor around with the thumbstick, the other is Modern where you drive the character around with the thumbstick. They are basically the same except for what the thumbstick does. All the other buttons function the same.
This is completely untested on real players, so I expect a lot to change once I do that. I like it, but I'm not the "target audience". I'm also sure I forgot something super important. I always do.
Now I'll go look at how other games solved this problem and realize I did it all wrong. Or not.
I've put together a short video of it in use, but it's hard to tell what happening without knowing what buttons I'm pressing on the controller. If I was fancy, I'd have a little controller insert showing you what buttons I'm pressing, but I'm not fancy, nor do I have a building full of people that run around and make slick videos for me, so you're stuck with this.
I'll update as the controller scheme gets refined.
- Ron
Well, but looking at your picture I thought it might work out to use the digital pad for the verbs. Here's my little extra idea I had: If the d-pad is not touched at all, let it focus on "Look at". Only if you push and hold it in one direction, it will highlight another verb. That way, it would snap back to the middle every time you let go of the d-pad. Luckily we have eight directions to push and eight verbs without "Look at" ;-)
Maybe you could take away one button from "skip cut-scene" and "skip text/dialog" as those buttons should do the same... Or will there be cut-scenes with dialog to skip? Let's just assume the button B is not assigned.
At first, the highlight is on "Look at", using the d-pad you select your verb, without letting go of the d-pad, you press B and enter the inventory mode. Now you can let go of the d-pad but the verb is still highlighted. In the inventory mode, the d-pad is used again but this time to select the items and go up or down. Pressing A would select item and verb and execute some action.
The same would apply to stuff on the main screen. Select them via the shoulder buttons, then press the d-pad for the desired verb and, without letting go of the d-pad, press A to execute the action.
I know, this is far from perfect... But I remember playing Maniac Mansion with a joystick on a C64, that was really far from perfect!
Thinking about this I was reminded of Grim Fandango, not that its interface is any good... But: You press one button to open the inventory and only see the inventory. Because that's all you need at that moment. It let's you focus on those things and makes the conrols easier.
But again: This will slow mouse users down. I didn't like it back then... Mouse users like to click on something on the screen and while the character walks to that spot, some action involving a verb and/or item can be prepared.
Maybe using a mouse or a controller should lead to different user interfaces in the end. But: Your proposal is already pretty good and way ahead of those poor point+click substitutions I've seen in many games.
OT: replying to your comment seems to have exposed a bug in your blog (wrong date/time displayed):
http://puu.sh/mUp6x/eccfd4e169.png
Having said that: The phonebook is animating in a not properly pixelated way. Will it be like the fireflies where you can switch to the one true Mode 13h and have them pixelated. It seems to me that the animation is so subtle, you won't see anything or it will look awkward...
They say one should not add options for good design, and they are wrong: Controversial products like Win8-10 would be so much better with more options to change things back to like they were...
For me the whole reason to choose pixel are is to gain from working with limitations. But as you rightfully imply, the advantage of living in the future is that we can choose which limitations we want to work with. Being someone who was born the year Maniac Mansion came out I can't really contextualise what it must have been like dealing with them when they were non-negotiable!
It looks nice... for a non-mouse interface. :D
As with your control scheme, the two input methods. In classic mode, have one thumbstick move the cursor faster around.
Press a bumper to change input methods.
D-pad left/right to change characters.
D-pad up/down to open/close the inventory.
Hold a trigger to open a verb selection wheel.
A to select.
B for default verb.
Y to look at/skip sentence.
X to skip cutscene/exit room/exit to map screen. Maybe use the other bumper to skip cutscene.
Hold both thumbsticks down to win.
Or you can use the PS4 trackpad and explain to Microsoft that it's much better.
but if you think about it for a while, why is there a need to move manually using a gamepad? I know its more pointy&clicky-like and personally I will love it on my PC with using a mouse but on the console and pad it somehows feels like a "feature" thats just an annoyance in the long run.
I know and love the oldschool adventures and I also know that the idea of a "smart cursor" eliminated a whole lot of fun and thankful moments to provide puns, but then again so did the disappearance of the good old parser...
Im not saying you should put the "press-space-to-highlight-all-the-hotspots" thing most modern adventures have in there (although you could, because if you stretch the game by making people hunt pixels you are a bad game designer!), but would it be so bad to be able to focus on all the objects in the room with the gamepad? It would surely speed up navigating and probably make for a less frustrating controller experience...
just my 2 cents.
Will the arcade machines really make a comeback? Maybe one of the games could be "Lust", so the game can contain "lust"...
There is always the slim possibility that a player will simply overlook an object.
By introducing the hotspot mechanism, you kill off pixel hunting of any form. Again, I'm sure I'm in the slimmest majority of players that actually enjoy pixel-hunting. If hotspots are implemented it all but kills my idea of a cool Easter egg/achievement where you place a 1-pixel object on the floor that is of a slightly different color. Maybe it's a button, maybe it's a piece of candy. In any case, finding that 1-pixel object would not be an integral part of the game- just an achievement if the player finds it. I was thinking it could be in a random room of the hotel, in a random spot on the floor (and it would be randomized when you begin the game, so it wouldn't be the same for every player/game).
Is each object's hotspot configurable? I was thinking that for each object, it would have a value of proximity- if your player was within that proximity, it would be added to the cycle-able list of selectable objects. Then, you could still add the gumdrop/button pixel hunt puzzle/achievement if you set that object's proximity value to a very low one, where you could only be able to select that object if you were standing almost right ontop of it.
Look at gumdrop.
"Ooh! A gumdrop! I nearly stepped on that thing."
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: GOODY, GOODY GUMDROPS!
Pick up gumdrop.
"It's orange. Or, maybe brown."
Use gumdrop.
"I'm not going to eat that!"
Use gumdrop.
"It does look kind of tasty."
Use gumdrop.
"And, I've got a sweet tooth."
Use gumdrop.
*shrug*
"Down the hatch!"
*chew* *chew* *chew*
"Mmm...Fruity..."
*chew* *chew* *chew* *chew*
"Man, that was tasty!"
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: ATE IT ANYWAY
I also like the way Mass Effect or Grim Fandango did it, where the character looks at the nearest object and it glows, so you select the object by walking up to it. Feels more natural if you don't have a mouse.
Point & click has been so much better. So I think that Ron did a much more reasonable job by providing a cursor.
PS: I think Ron's concept is very similar to Telltale Games's Tales of Monkey Island or Back to the Future. I just took a look at the console version of the latter one and they seem to have done it the same way by moving the cursor to objects selected via controller buttons. It might be a good compromise for consoles.
Btw., Sam & Max season 3 has the same Telltale interface, too.
Also, if possible please have an option to remap everything on the controller, as there will definitely be people unsatisfied with what you go with, no matter how slick it ends up. Not me though, I'll be using a mouse this time.
I used that i.e. to escape from Edna, saved my the precious time it too to move the pointer from the right side of the screen to the left.
One Suggestion (i posted this way back when Controller Support was first discussed): When moving the character with the left thumbstick i would hide the cursor and when the character movement is stopped and the right thumbstick is used the cursor should originate where the character is currently standing.
It makes sense: You walk where you want to do something, so the cursor should Start there too, no?
I think this is a good suggestion. It will make it into my next build.
I imagine it would be pretty hard to actively steer the character with your left thumb whilst pusing the right thumb to prepare a sentence.
When I played Monkey Island with a mouse for the first time, it was also harder than it has been later.
Norwegian adventure games fan
Really looking forward to playing this even more now!
You forgot the "shoot" button... how are we gonna shoot all the zombies and aliens in Thimbleweed Park if there's no shoot button????
I'd get up close to that wall in the Post Office, then crouch down, strafe to the right, then jump while crouching to get over the counter and then BOOM, hit the mail guy with one of the assortment of heavy artillery that happens to be lying around Thimbleweed Park.
Job done.
Can't understand that many companies put this as last, if they do, coz if people don't like from the beginning the controllings/keys etc., they place the game aside and never touch it again.
Customizing is the solution. Sad that many games sleep somewhere in the desk or harddrives, who dosn't deserve to take dust. A shame.
The Video and Photo looks fantastic in my opinion. At least you are on the right track.
One of my all time favorite Game Creators. Hey, everyone has their heroes. I have just an unusual one. ;OP
my two cents would be to use the up/down/left/right pad to select the verb as Zuglufttier suggested (and read elsewhere earlier in the blog), and then instead of cycling through room objects (using location and facing like you've done), have the first 8 potential objects all pop out from a central location increasing the text size until normal size at a distance where the text does not overlap. So, the room object that moves upward from very small text would be selected (after the verb is input) by pushing up on the move cursor stick. This would require some fancy code to get the layout all correct on where the object description starts from, and where it moves too, and how well the font scales.
Strangely enough I don't find the scrolling through inventory objects all that annoying. Somehow conceptually they are already being managed by the character.
Good luck with you unenviable task.
# QJoyPad 3.4 Layout File
Joystick 1 {
Axis 1: gradient, xZone 32767, maxSpeed 6, mouse+h
Axis 2: gradient, xZone 32767, maxSpeed 4, mouse+v
Axis 3: gradient, xZone 32767, maxSpeed 2, mouse+h
Axis 6: gradient, xZone 32767, maxSpeed 1, mouse+v
Button 1: mouse 3
Button 2: mouse 1
Button 10: key 71
}
If you're doing any kind of mapping from analog stick to mouse cursor, don't forget to make it adjustable (dead zone, accelleration, speed) because there just isn't one setting that fits every person.
And another thing: I WILL NOT use a control stick to move a character around. It's way to tedious. With properly configured cursor movement speeds on 2 analog sticks I can move the mouse cursor to any place on the screen with precision in a fraction of a second (not as fast as the mouse, but fast enough) and click there to have the auto-walk make the character go there.
Controller Support seems pretty good so far i think.
I played Monkey Island on my old PC and the adapted Version on the PS3.
Even though i thought it would be terrible to play it with a Controller i really got in to it very quickly.
Graphics looking sooooo nice, cannot wait to have it :)
In the Postoffice Window is a sign with:
Please mail something ?!
Do you need ideas for the sign ? :)
Greetings from Germany :)
Got it :) Needed a few seconds :)
Game looks good, looking forward to trying it.
The cursor moving directly to the object location is tween-friendly.
For me, old school, I prefer the mouse... even if I played the first adventure games with a joystick and a fire button in the top of the lever.
Great blog, btw!
I play both, consoles and PC. And honestly "Point & Click" on consoles for most of the time suck. For exactly one reason: you don't have a mouse to point and click :-)
That said: First thing I noticed is, that I like the "modern" scheme. A lot of games have this scheme of "use left thumb to move, use right thumb to look around". From that perspective I feel this would come naturally to me. What immediately struck me: I have to move my right thumb to select. The equivalent of that on PC would be "use mouse to point and then press keypad enter to select".
As a suggestion: Console players are used to change the "meaning" of a control by pressing a (shoulder) button. And they're also used to use combinations of buttons. Just an example in GTA you press a shoulder button (L1 on PS3) and your weapons wheel pops up. The controlstick changes it's meaning from walking to selecting. Let go of L1 and you have selected what was highlighted. Just tapping the button will cycle through.
Say you move and look around. You found what looks interesting. Left shoulder button makes the left stick become "select verb" (just highlight the verb to indicate something can be done now, maybe make the character become gray, or look at the player to intensify the focus switch) -> move left stick to highlight "look at" and let go of left shoulder. Tapping defaults to "look at". Character looks at.
You want to open a door. Use right thumb to move the cursor to the door, left index finger switches to "select verb", use left thumb to select "open", let go of left shoulder -> character moves to door and opens it.
Same goes for inventory but all on the right side. Right shoulder "move highlight to inventory." Example "give foo to bar": Move cursor to bar, left shoulder, select give (still hold!), right shoulder, select bar with right stick, let go of shoulder buttons.
Now that I've written it, it sounds very complicated. But as I sit on my beanbag with a PS3 controller in my hand, imagining it - yes I already play thimbleweedpark in my fantasy - it kind of makes sense to me. That may not be perfect, but the whole "I have to move my thumb away from the stick to the buttons/dpad" feels like breaking some flow.
Leave the D-Pad for changing character (something you would interrupt moving the cahracter for anyways). The buttons for skip cut scene/text seem ok to me. Select dialog line (use left stick to move up and down) could either be done by a pressing A or you again switch the meaning of the shoulders. This time to "select line".
Steffen, Fantasy-Thimbleweedpark-Player
MODERN:
- I feel uncomfortable, because I have no idea how about how far my character can see (or interact with things). Maybe pressing next + previous item together could dim the parts of the screen, which is not used for the quick cycle. (I guess that'll look like a bright circle around the character, and the rest dims a little.)
- Every action I perform with the mouse would be one of these:
-- click on object with default verb
-- click on verb, then click on object on screen or in inventory
-- click on verb (GIVE or USE), then click on object on screen or inventory, then click on object on screen or inventory
So I think there should be one button for default VERB interaction, like in your scheme. And one button for START interaction. When I press START interaction, the cursor jumps to the VERBS, i select one with the d-pad, and then it jumps and I can select the "nearby things on screen" and "inventory items" with the d-pad, and only if i selected GIVE or USE, I can select one more screen or inventory item.
CLASSIC:
I would be fine with controlling the cursor with one stick, and the other stick would be the "snappy cursor control". So if I used the normal stick and hovered over any clickable item on screen, it becomes available in the "already hovered over list" and I can roughly point in this direction with the snappy stick and it'll jump there.
Also I have to agree with others, it would be so funny if you could move the cursor with your arm and the kinect :) That could then even be an achievement (Actually pointed and clicked throughout the game!) :D
Anyhow, it looks amazing and I am so looking forward to playing the game :)
right trigger - select
left trigger - switch character
... as most players are right-handed and the select function is more frequented.
Furthermore, in this case, you would use your left hand for character control and your right hand for the GUI control.
P.S. Next ask will be for hjkl-keyboard control..
Not as a real two-player-mode but just a few lines of code that allow P2 to have their own cursor and move around. From the game world and command perspective there would'nt be a distinction and there is no need of a tweaked UI - just a simple way to allow player 2 to point out something or "let me try something" without the need of handing over the controller. I ask because my wife an I really enjoy playing adventure games on the big screen together and a second controller support à la Super Mario Galaxy could be a nice twist.
That game me a chuckle. Adding 2 player support, even side-sick support would break so much. We rely on the camera bring in certain places and trigger areas starting interactions so much that having a second person would require a significant amount of work. It's a easy trap to fall into, I've done it twice before (DeathSpank and The Cave). It sounds so simple until it's not.
Basically, the game takes input from any controller. Not sure if you'd have to add some kind of precedence- like any input from Controller 1 will take precedence over Controller 2 input...
Another idea: A while a go we played "Deponia" and there where hidden items throughout the game world for real pixel hunters. Nothing that was integrated in the story and the objects weren't usable - just collectibles. But it was a nice addition. Also: The hotspots weren't highlighted if you moved the cursor above them so you have to really LOOK for them. I liked it a lot! It also gave you an incentive to stay put for a while and enjoy the game art!
For Thimbleweed Park this could be lost criminal files that are scattered across the game world. You could watch the collected files from the UI and each would give you the portrait, name and short description of the criminal. A lot of potential for jokes and "easter eggs" right there :-)
Also the the skip cut-scene and skip text/dialogue button could be combined into one. Basically, when a cut-scene occurs, simply hold the skip text/dialogue for an extra second or so, and then the whole cut-scene skips.
This is how it's supposed to work. Not sure why it broke.
Maybe somebody could write a script that makes the cursor run through randomly curved trajectories, which would make it seem more like how it looks when you are using a mouse.
Furthermore, the speed of the cursor movements could be decreased.
x = x1 + (x2 - x1) n
y = y1 + (y2 - y1) sqrt{n}
I think it might be the easiest way, if you want to imitate movements of a mouse.
I'll keep it short. I have two suggestions:
- the pause button (snail) is missing? And how do you save/load/quit/restart?
- I can see why you want to add the hotspot selection, as it might be cumbersome to place the cursor on every object each time, but it might also give away too much (which does negatively impact the experience if it is too easy to spot objects. Between that and pixel-hunting, there is a sweet spot which is fun !). So my idea is to only allow an object to be quick-selected with the cycle button if this object has been unlocked before by a "classic" interaction. Except perhaps for BIG, boring objects like doors, maybe, but if the rules are arbitrary to not spoil some puzzles, it may get confusing. Another advantage is that it might be easier than having to face the character in the right direction each time to make something selectable (which you also don't need to do in classic P&C mode).
Also I can imagine there is a lot of play testing and thus potential "bug"-fixing involved to check all the cases when the actor moves around after cut-scenes or other short scripted events when interacting with object (usually walk to and face direction XYZ). If then the player has to reposition the character each time in order to interact with something else on the screen... I'm not sure and it should be play-tested off course, but it seems to be a possible pitfall to me.
The Gigantic Occult Bookstore seems a good stress-test for any controller scheme. Even on the PC it seems to be the one room where I would prefer to use a simple hjkl-type interface to snap to the next book instead of trying to move the mouse around.
1) a "fun" button
2) a "F117" mode in which if you pull down the cloche the character goes up, and can go stealth with alien technology
2) a "three" button
But another thing:
Will Gamepad-Control be available on PC as well? I know most people will prefer the mouse but hooking the PC up to the telly and playing from the couch is a thing more and more people get into.
On top of that, did you take a look at the steam controller? I do own one and while I dont really use it that much it comes a LOT closer to using a real mouse than using the thumbsticks on an xbox pad.
Now, I have no idea if you plan to put the game on steam and if thats a requirement to fully support the controller but even in its default "steamless" mode the controller is pretty usable as a mouse replacement. Maybe it works well out of the box and theres no code needed to adjust, but it would still be good if that was tested and approved beforehand :)
I will use Wacom pen with my Mac to play the game. It's often frustrating or even impossible to play some games with pen, but I think for this type of point-and-click game it's probably the best controller. My Wacom pad is also small, so I can lay on my couch and still use it easily with MacBook.
They look like this: https://www.wacom.com/~/media/images/store/gallery/accessories/pen/grip-pen-1-g.jpg
Now I wonder if there's a way to repeat a cut scene?! Probably this has already been discussed somewhere else, but I'm too lazy to read through all that stuff again.
And the second time, you pay more attention not to skip it!
(What a pity there wont be any...)
Oh well.
But, if it's not too costly, why shouldn't it be supported at least, for anyone who likes it? In the 90s all point & click game developers could make excuses very easily, because consoles didn't support mice at all. However, I'm not a market analyst, but nowadays it's possibly just a "chicken or the egg" dilemma. Why not believing in Say's law, even though the demand for mice, touchpads and trackballs on consoles has always been insignificant up to now?
It's just an idea. I don't know how elaborate it would be, of course.
The automatic selection of the nearby items by pressing the bumper buttons seems like a great idea. I wonder if you could implement something similar on PCs with mice -- no, I'm not talking about weird, freaky three-button mice; I'm talking perhaps with a gesture or a key modifier. I'm on a Mac, and use a trackpad, so gestures and multi-taps are sort of natural to me. :)
-dZ.
no friday questionsssss
so saaaaaad
Here is my solution for this problem: http://www.logitech.com/de-de/product/wireless-touch-keyboard-k400r
Works like a charm.. dont need no stinking controller therefor ;)
Great Blog, Great Game, Great Art! Have fun :)
If you have to use the cross buttons to select among different verbs, you should make it an easily automatic procedure. For example, if you want to choose "Look At" verb, you should press always the same combination of buttons to select it, not depending on which verb is selected at the beginning. It would be quite annoying to have the necessity of checking the "starting verb" each single time you want to select another one. Same case for the inventory.
As a possible and surely awful idea:
2 buttons (for example, two of the triggers at the back of the controller): left one to select verbs, right one to select inventory
3 buttons (for example, the left, down and right buttons of the cross): left one to select the left column, right one to select the right column and middle one (down in this case) to select the central column, either in the verbs or in the inventory.
-> And finally, the number of times you press one of these cross buttons makes you able to select the first, second, third... row either of the inventory or the verb matrix.
It may be more confusing when working with the inventory (because the matrix is not fixed, as in the case of the verbs) but it would be systematic enough to not be annoying at least to work with the verbs matrix.
Having said this, I don't really know how does your system work, so this may be just another stupid idea, so... this is the main reason I decided to post it here.
Left stick: move the cursor through the scene.
Right stick: move through verbs/inventory
Right trigger: activate the selected command.
Right bumper: activate suggested action.
I think that combining the left and the right trigger could save a lot of time moving the cursor around.
I had never played a P&C game since the ages of Broken Sword and Discworld on the PS1, and the "left stick to move cursor quickly" + "right stick to move slowly" seemed very natural, as well as using the bumper buttons to scroll through the inventory :) I did add the trigger buttons to make the pointer go even faster, though.
I don't really like the "modern" method, I hate having to move the character manually in a P&C. It just doesn't feel right, even with a controller. But I guess it's a matter of choice. (that doesn't apply to my game anyway, because it's first-person) For example Gray Matter on Xbox 360 (the only one I've tried in the last 15 years on consoles) was absolutely awful to play.
So the game would be support multi-user interaction!
Button 2: Secene // verb-inventory -switch
Button 3: verb // inventory -switch
type of interaction [hotspot-verb & hotspot-object ]
-if in the scene you select a hotspot, you automatically jump to verb area, where you can select a verb, or you can switch to inventory area (with Button 3), where you can select an item to use with that HS. If operation not sucessful, return to scene with cursor over hotspot.
type of interaction [object-object]
-in scene, press button 2 to jump to verb menu. Press button 3 to jump to inventory menu. Pick and item and choose enter, then choose the other item and press enter (enter= button 1). If not sucessful, return to inventory, first item choosen.
type of interaction [verb-object]
-In scene, press button 2 to jump to verb menu. Choose verb. Use button 3 to go to inventory menu, choose item. [you can also use button 2 and select a hotspot instead]
...
Additional notes: I would move the character with the arrows, giving it a more retro feeling (8 bit retro, but still...). Use the more sensible control for hotspots that really need that extra control one faster, the other one slower. Maybe use a lazy feature where you have a bigger trigger for the objects (maybe you can use a function to expand all the triggers of the game acording to their size?), or a magnet button, that if you press will lead to the nearest hotspot... not sure about that.
Button 1: cycle between [scene/verb/inventory] parts of the screen
Button 2: Enter.
I would probably use the index buttons for these, and if you press both at the same time, you can skip dialogs & cut-scenes. The button for changin the character could be Y. Arrows for walking. Analogics for cursor moving. Even if you use this cycle thing, I think I´d still use analogic cursor moving to at least let the player choose the direction in wich the object is.
I've been trying to use a PS3 controller connected via USB (already tested and fully functional with other games), but the game doesn't recognize it : (
Could anyone help me?
Bought my copy at GoG (macOS version).