Control issues

[ThreeSon]

Does the 'Focus' button do anything by itself, or does it always need to be pressed in combination with the fire button?

It seems like an unfortunate design decision. It would be simpler and easier to play if the Focus+Fire function were mapped to a single button instead of two. That and the lack of leaderboards are the only serious drawbacks I've found to what is otherwise a pretty solid pair of shmups.

[BPze]

Focus button alters your movement speed and (moreso in Zenodyne R) weapon fire from your ship. You can bind both buttons together but I'd advise against it as the game is built around you having that mobility.

[ThreeSon]

Originally posted by BPzeBanshee:

Focus button alters your movement speed and (moreso in Zenodyne R) weapon fire from your ship. You can bind both buttons together but I'd advise against it as the game is built around you having that mobility.

Thank you for replying so quickly. I understand that the purpose of the focus button is to slow down your ship and alter your fire pattern, but why do I have to press both the focus and the fire buttons to do that?

Why not have one button (the Fire button) that fires the primary pattern while moving at normal speed, and a second button that fires the secondary pattern and moves the ship at a slower speed?

Unless there is some reason that you would want to move your ship at a slower speed while not firing, this seems like unnecessary extra finger work for a game that requires pretty nimble dexterity.

These are the only two shmups I can remember playing (I've played a lot of them) that require you to hold down two buttons to enable an alternate fire mode.

[bobyheaven]

Focus fonction....not working.......:-(

[Felix :)]

Focus button not working. Doesn't slow down the ship and also does not focus the shots.

[BPze]

To clarify my earlier statement, I should say that in Zenohell specifically, only the unlockable ships have alternate weapon modes upon pressing the Focus button (default is SHIFT), but *all* ships have alternate speeds.

In all fairness though, aside from the weapons, there's zero visual queue in Zenohell to tell you if you're pressing the button unlike some other shooters that add visual flairs. We actually had one in early prototype builds but it was found to be more distracting which this game already suffers a lot from in terms of visual quirks.

I'll look into adding a visual queue in the upcoming beta to remedy this and possibly some other fixes, stay tuned.

[BPze]

Bumping this once more to say that aside from the new beta being live for people to try out (cfr. the announcements post), the player code's been overhauled as follows:

- inputs are normalised, removing some jank around player movement and button combo presses
- added a subtle slowdown silhouette to visually show when a ship is using the focus button
- implemented ThreeSon's suggestion of making the focus button also fire weapons, bringing the system on par with Zenodeath (the newest game in the series)

Going to close this thread now that we have a resolution - sorry it took so long, real life sucks - please let me know if you find any additional problems in the pinned beta thread. :)