Reverse mouse acceleration ruins this game.

[Chandalen]

I've searched the discussions and found that the devs have reverse mouse acceleration on purpose to limit turn speed. This is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ridiculous. You don't have to have reverse mouse acceleration to have a max turn speed, there's definitely ways to do it without making the game feel like garbage to play with a mouse.
This is pretty disappointing because I love the 6 degrees of freedom playstyle, but the controls with a mouse make it basically unplayable. Don't bother with this game unless you're playing with a controller.

[Luke]

Reverse mouse acceleration is a mis-characterisation of how it works. There's normal (positive) mouse acceleration unless your mouse is going faster than the maximum turn speed; after this speed it's entirely based on how long you move the mouse, not how far/fast (i.e. there's no 'acceleration' at this point, negative or positive).

We don't use capped acceleration to implement a capped turn rate - this is just a fundamental effect of having a maximum turn rate. As long as your mouse movements remain within what the ship can properly respond to you'll get a positive acceleration curve.

Apologies if it sounds like I'm coming down on you - I'm not intending to, I just don't want people to read this thread and misunderstand the game's controls/physics.

[roncli]

What are you talking about? From a long time Descenter, this game plays just fine with a mouse, and is in fact one of my favorite in the genre.

[Thermo]

I think this is just how people are used to this type of game, as they are expecting gameplay to be like Descent but fancier (Descent allowed your ship to turn as fast as you want).

I know I was first introduced to seeing this game by TotalBiscuit and in his Youtube video showing this game he speaks negatively about it as well.

To the Dev: Maybe make it more apparent that the ships have different turning speeds? We have no way to really understand that unless we read it from you, otherwise it does seem like you have negative mouse acceleration.

To be fair tho, I don't mind it after playing the game for more then a day. It is more something you have a learning curve with at first.

[gigawood]

Actually, totalbiscuit did notice it; but he said it was *possible* negative mouse acceleration. He left open the possiblitity that it was something else (max turn rate for ships).

[Luke]

Originally posted by Thermoluminescence:

I think this is just how people are used to this type of game, as they are expecting gameplay to be like Descent but fancier (Descent allowed your ship to turn as fast as you want).

Actually, that's not true - in Descent (at least 1 and 2, can't remember right now for 3) the maximum turn rate is actually (significantly) lower than in SL0.

To the Dev: Maybe make it more apparent that the ships have different turning speeds? We have no way to really understand that unless we read it from you, otherwise it does seem like you have negative mouse acceleration.

Not sure what you mean by ships having different turning speeds? The turn rate is the same throughout the game. Certainly open to ideas as to how to communicate this whole thing more clearly to players though!

[Polysorbate]

Originally posted by Thermoluminescence:

(Descent allowed your ship to turn as fast as you want)

What imaginary version of Descent were you playing? You always had a capped rotation speed and it was a core part of the movement system. If you were able to turn at arbitrary speed it would take away a lot of the challenge and immersion of flying around in a spaceship rather than being the typical FPS "camera with a gun in front of it".

To be fair though I can see why someone who hadn't played Descent in a while might not remember this, and I can see why a person playing Sublevel Zero for the first time might misinterpret the deliberate design decision as some kind of broken input system.

-----

Dev, since you're open to ideas here's a few I can come up with (bearing in mind I haven't bought the game yet, but I plan to):

- If you've got a tutorial you could add a message there.

- In the control configuration screen (I'm assuming you have one ) you could put a little message next to the mouse sensitivity setting which mentions that ships have a maximum turning rate regardless of the sensitivity setting, so what's being adjusted is how quickly rotation speed ramps rather than how fast rotation can be.

- You could add a visual effect indicating you've reached maximum speed. A mild black-out effect at the corners of your vision and your vision becoming slightly monocrhomatic if you rotate at/close to maximum speed for more than a few seconds, similar to the effect you get in games like Star Citizen when you're pulling too many G's. A similar effect might be cool for when activating an afterburner (if that's in the game). This would be helpful for new players learning how to fly effectively and I think lots of people might think it's a neat effect, but you'd need to include an option to disable it for people who find it annoying.

- This would be a huge gameplay experiment... probably not worth the bother... you could significantly raise the limit on rotation speed but punish players for rotating too fast using the aforementioned blackout effect and have it cause the player to get increasingly severe tunnel vision or maybe even black out altogether (lose vision for a few seconds) if done for too long. It'd basically be a "rotation afterburner" in the sense that it's a tool to get out of a jam but it can only be used briefly and takes time to "recharge" (indicated by your tunnel vision going away). Could be an interesting new movement mechanic and add more depth to the game if done right.

[Luke]

Thanks for the ideas :)

Originally posted by Polysorbate:

- If you've got a tutorial you could add a message there.

The tutorial is minimal, but we can probably work out a way to fit this in there!

- In the control configuration screen (I'm assuming you have one ) you could put a little message next to the mouse sensitivity setting which mentions that ships have a maximum turning rate regardless of the sensitivity setting, so what's being adjusted is how quickly rotation speed ramps rather than how fast rotation can be.

I've considered adding 'tooltips' to the control menu before, so if/when we do that, this would be a great thing to put in. Possibly more effective than the above, in that people who are worried about 'negative acceleration' will probably seek out the sensitivity settings, and then the information is right there without getting in the way for people who don't care.

The other two suggestions I think are a bit much for something that the vast majority of people don't seem to have issues with. They're good ideas, but I don't think they're a good fit for the game. Even a mild blackout effect could end up being distracting, and increasing the max turn speed with a penalty for hitting it would be a huge change to the gameplay.

[roncli]

Originally posted by Luke:

Not sure what you mean by ships having different turning speeds? The turn rate is the same throughout the game. Certainly open to ideas as to how to communicate this whole thing more clearly to players though!

For instance, the magnum-aht, phoenix, and pyro-gx all had different turn rates in Descent 3.

[Luke]

Originally posted by roncli:

For instance, the magnum-aht, phoenix, and pyro-gx all had different turn rates in Descent 3.

Oh, sure, but not in SL0 :p

[Polysorbate]

(Descent 3 was garbage)

[Chandalen]

Originally posted by Luke:

There's normal (positive) mouse acceleration unless your mouse is going faster than the maximum turn speed; after this speed it's entirely based on how long you move the mouse, not how far/fast (i.e. there's no 'acceleration' at this point, negative or positive).

That is blatantly untrue. It might be specific to my setup or you might have everyone tricked, I'm not sure. Next week when I have my webcam back I'll show you exactly what I mean, but when I flick my mouse accross my mousepad the ship should be moving at its max turn speed, not significantly slower than it.

[Luke]

Originally posted by Chandalen:

That is blatantly untrue. It might be specific to my setup or you might have everyone tricked, I'm not sure. Next week when I have my webcam back I'll show you exactly what I mean, but when I flick my mouse accross my mousepad the ship should be moving at its max turn speed, not significantly slower than it.

Excuse me, but I don't particularly appreciate being called a liar.

The ship has a maximum turn rate, and it takes finite time to reach that turn rate since it has rotational acceleration. Thus a quick flick means the ship spends all that time ramping its rotational rate up, not spending that time rotating at its maximum.

If you stamp on the gas pedal in a car for a split second, did you travel at 120mph for that same split second?

[Luke]

Originally posted by Punished Blart:

Yeah I've also been having a similar problem. It's not like what other people are describing but movement is blatantly buggier than it used to be.

Could you describe the issues you're having?

I found out in the bindings code that there is in fact mouse smoothing although that's not on the UI. I manually changed it and it seems to be helping so far.

Smoothing is in the mouse settings on the controls menu.

[roncli]

Originally posted by Polysorbate:

(Descent 3 was garbage)

Vicious lies. ;)

[roncli]

Originally posted by Chandalen:

...when I flick my mouse accross my mousepad the ship should be moving at its max turn speed, not significantly slower than it.

Out of curiosity, which 6DoFs have you played that do it like that?