Sprint control is a "no go"

[bikuhl]

Can't play it anymore, cause the sprint-jump method
(Hold LT, jump, Release LT, hold direction key, press LT again..)
Please devs, you must be kidding. Don't drink and code.

[Pimez]

It's really just "press [SPRINT] again after a jump", you don't even need to hold the direction key. And um... I personally wouldn't complain "having to release [ATTACK] for each attack" as well...

BTW, here is a dev-intended trick that virtually gives you unlimited stamina during sprinting:
1) [LT] Sprint
2) [B} Jump
3a) [A] Attack right before landing
3b) [LT] Sprint to cancel landing-lag AND roll without using stamina
4a) [LT] Sprint at the end of the roll to cancel the rolling-lag
4b) [LT] Sprint again to re-engage
Basically [LT] -> [B} -> [A] & [LT] -> [LT] & [LT] for unlimited stamina
(The normal sprint-jumping is [LT] -> [B} -> [LT])

It's a pretty fun button-combo once you're used to it. Of course you can just sprint normally without jumping and it's fun too, but pulling this combo off is one of the many small things satisfying in this game.

There is also no devs with an 's' here because there is only one programmer

[bikuhl]

Thanks for this hint. But i have to use the direction stick, cause
i have to change the direction two times to reach the top platform.
And i don't think that this is only optional. So, the game stops exactly
her for me working. (At the very beginning)
The sprint/jump combo feels very unnaturally for me. Sadly.
I don't want to fight with my controller instead of fighting enemies.
As i often said, the controls are the MOST important aspect of nearly
every game, cause this is the way we interact with it.
With such a stupid control bug the game is only worth half. :(
The problem is, you have to press LT again to continue the sprint,
instead of keeping the speed after landing.
And i don't want to learn unlogical control schemes. The controls should
fit the player and not the other way around.

[Pimez]

Quick note: If you are doing a sprint-jump, you should release [LT] as soon as you jump, not wait until you have landed.

Originally posted by bikuhl:

i have to change the direction two times to reach the top platform.

I am assuming you're referring to the Anuri Pearlstone in the first dungeon? Yeah, I agree that the platforming challenge there is a bit too strict, perhaps a bit too difficult as a tutorial. Good thing that this puzzle is completely optional and can be skipped.

Originally posted by bikuhl:

The sprint/jump combo feels very unnaturally for me. Sadly. I don't want to fight with my controller instead of fighting enemies.

Some people feel the same way as well, and the controls took them a while to get used to. Good thing is that there are only a few buttons you need during combat, and I mostly only use these buttons for basic combat:
[Left] [Right] [Jump] [Attack]
So yeah, I don't find the need to fight my controller very often, in dire situations or not.

Originally posted by bikuhl:

The problem is, you have to press LT again to continue the sprint, instead of keeping the speed after landing.

There are not many places in this game where both "sprint-jumping is preferred" AND "you want to continue sprinting after landing". Also, you normally don't want to sprint mid-combat, because while you can jump further, the trade-off of less air-control and stamina-cost are often not ideal. Plus, I find the levels in this game usually designed such that "normal sprinting is preferred over sprint-jumping".

Originally posted by bikuhl:

And i don't want to learn unlogical control schemes. The controls should fit the player and not the other way around.

I completely understand how control schemes can make a game unplayable for some people. I myself cannot get into Dark Souls despite having tried it several times already. While the control schemes in Phoenotopia is not demanding at all ( you can almost get through the whole game with just the 4 buttons mentioned above ), the best I can do is trying to help people understand the controls better, which often might not be enough... orz

Anyway, the movement trick I noted above is more for veterans. It needs you to be already familiar with the controls first, and it combines the knowledge of all 3 movement tricks - "attack landing lag", "landing lag cancel", "roll cancel", so normal players aren't expected to know that.

And to be fair, I am more grateful than not being able to sprint at all. There are games that only allow you to do short-dashes, so you have to keep pressing and releasing the [Dash] button for those games, which I find annoying. Here, you can simply hold [Sprint] and Gail would automatically run forwards for you, and you don't even need to hold [Left] or [Right] for that. Again, I'm super grateful.


(Here is an extract about the design philosophy behind needing to "re-engage" the sprint after jumping)

Originally posted by Quells:

As for the sprint jump, it's intentionally non-controllable. It presents a tradeoff vs the regular jump - it gets more distance, but gives no control. As for how the sprinting works, that's another intentional design choice. I had in mind Mario Kart's "boosting" mechanic - in that game, you have to press "jump" at the apex of a hill, and doing so would result in a speed burst - it's not possible to simply hold "jump" and auto-get all the speed boosts in mario kart. I've, similarly, designed Phoenotopia to be very "pressy". So to maintain a high speed, you have to disengage and re-engage in the sprint button constantly, knowing when to let go and when to press. It's too late to change the mechanic now, but I've taken notes that a good chunk of people aren't fans of the system and will take that into consideration for the next game (if there is one).

[Урал Interceptor]

You can bind sprint-jump to one button through steam controller settings.

[Ninita]

Add me to the list of the people who hate the way sprinting works in this game.

The standard controls for sprinting have always been "your character sprints as long as a specific button is pressed" (Mario-style) or "your character starts sprinting after it has walked a certain time and keeps sprinting as long a the direcction is pressed" (Sonic-style).

And in both of those control schemes, your character DOES NOT MOVE if no direction is pressed (unless there's also a dedicated button for another type of movement, such as a dash, but that's another matter).

You can't change decades of habits on a whim for just one game and expect that people will like it or even get accustomed to it at all.

At least, give us the possibility to choose between your control scheme and the standard one.

Besides, when you're making a platform-heavy game, one of the most important things to keep in mind is that the character should be fun to control and this means that the control scheme should be intuitive (Miyamoto himself told this in an interview).

If the player struggles against the controls instead of struggling against your level design, you did something wrong.

TL;DR: standards are standards for a reason. ;)

[0x57A1CFA117]

I am literally at the point of using cheat engine to try to figure out the location to trample the is jumping type of boolean flag so that I can just spam jump to skip these stupid annoying parts that require OP described. It's either that or I don't play -- yeah to me, the sprint system really IS that bad. Ninita summed it up best with two lines:

"You can't change decades of habits on a whim for just one game and expect that people will like it or even get accustomed to it at all."

and

"TL;DR: standards are standards for a reason. ;)"

It's like when someone, I forget what game it was, but actually happened, basically threw wasd out the window for movement... The knee-jerk thought that came to mind was NOT, "Wow! You guys are innovative, way to go. Good job! We REALLY needed to have a different movement keymapping standard. It's been that way too long and we need change. Not because it doesn't work well. It works perfectly, but because it's been that way too long!". I instead thought, "No. You're not being innovative, you're not being revolutionary. You're not going to be the ones credited for starting some kind of amazing keymap standard; all you're doing is just pissing off the majority of people for forcing players to adapt and adhere to a whack mapping you think should be a standard and are demonstrating how out of touch you are. Control standards that have been in use for as long as they have been are in use because they because they work well not for any other reason" lol

[Dusk_Army]

Originally posted by 0x57A1CFA117:

I am literally at the point of using cheat engine to try to figure out the location to trample the is jumping type of boolean flag so that I can just spam jump to skip these stupid annoying parts that require OP described. It's either that or I don't play -- yeah to me, the sprint system really IS that bad. Ninita summed it up best with two lines:

"You can't change decades of habits on a whim for just one game and expect that people will like it or even get accustomed to it at all."

and

"TL;DR: standards are standards for a reason. ;)"

It's like when someone, I forget what game it was, but actually happened, basically threw wasd out the window for movement... The knee-jerk thought that came to mind was NOT, "Wow! You guys are innovative, way to go. Good job! We REALLY needed to have a different movement keymapping standard. It's been that way too long and we need change. Not because it doesn't work well. It works perfectly, but because it's been that way too long!". I instead thought, "No. You're not being innovative, you're not being revolutionary. You're not going to be the ones credited for starting some kind of amazing keymap standard; all you're doing is just pissing off the majority of people for forcing players to adapt and adhere to a whack mapping you think should be a standard and are demonstrating how out of touch you are. Control standards that have been in use for as long as they have been are in use because they because they work well not for any other reason" lol

As much as I see the point you're making and generally agree with it, not all standards are standards for a good reason. There's a trend (or was, it's been about five years since I've played a game to which this applies) in which many games used the L3 button (click the left control stick on a controller) as the sprint command. It makes sense; you're probably already using that stick for movement, and it logically follows to control boosts to speed with it, right? Except that it also is probably something you'll be doing a lot, to the point that it wears out the controller much faster than, say, holding down one of the triggers or another button.

Change is not inherently good or bad. It just is. Sometimes it's for the better, sometimes it's for the worse. And sometimes you don't realize how awful something is until you're exposed to something different. I don't think it's really fair for anyone to crap all over the developer for experimenting a little, especially over something as minor as this. I struggled a bit with the sprint controls in Phoenotopia when I first started playing, but they're not so bad as to make me want to chuck my controller at the screen. We're not talking, "Hold two buttons on the opposite side of the controller to move and fire at the same time," (which was actually used in a couple of the Metal Gear games); you have to hold down one button. In fact, you don't even have to press the movement buttons at all, the button just makes you sprint in whatever direction you're facing.

If anything, once I got used to it, I found the sprinting controls to be a lot tighter than they are in similar games. No momentum screwing me up after a running jump, for example. It's not all bad.