Mouse Support for Marble Movement - re: Trackball Support

[Doyle Kenady]

Is there any chance this game will support mouse for marble movement? I have a STEAM arcade cabinet I have built with a trackball. Honestly, its insane to me how many marble games are on steam and none support my blessed trackball :(

To answer anothers question: The only game I have found on steam that supports trackball where it technically works is Hyperbowl. But its also Hyperbowl and it only works OK. I would love to add games like crazy for trackball. I dont have many

[Marbalista]

So, the game already supports Mouse control of the game, to a degree. Unfortunately, its probably not in the way you have in mind. Let me explain...

The game requires you to move a marble dexterously around various levels. So far, the game started dev on keyboard, and later mainly using a combo of XBox One and 360 controllers. It was found that Analogue joys for movement AND camera control worked best.

Of course, in combo with moving and adjusting the camera, you also need to do 3 actions, and soon, it may be 4. Right now the 3 are Jump, Break and Turbo. The 4th is going to be some kind of Usables, like collecting Energy balls, and using them. So, you need TWO analogue controls ideally, plus 4 action buttons.

So, if we DID design the game to work on a trackball (for movement?), it would really need some kind of Auto-Camera, to do the camera work for you. We did actually have an Auto-Cam feature in the game early on, but is has been neglected since we added manual camera control. As this give you better control, so testers have generally prefered it.

So, YES the game might be controllable on a Trackball and 4 buttons, but the camera would be tricky without Auto-Cam really getting a lot of buffing. For now we dont plan to do that, unless mass demand is there from many customers.

[Doyle Kenady]

How about if I can just swap between the two? Meaning the first and second analogs that you mention? Right now I believe its WASD or analog joystick for movement and mouse for camera. If I could flip it, I could use it.

[Marbalista]

The game IS configurable to a degree, I have added controller mapping, but it has focussed to day on keyboard and joypad control, as I would imagine 99% of users would be focussing on these.

You know, talking about this in a theoretical way, will only get us so far I guess...

If you buy the Early Access, then I would be happy to work with you, to try and get the rollerball to be usable. Thought to be fair, it would not be my 100% top focus. But any tweaks to the config UI that would make the game more configurable, I'd certainly be up for. And you could then test any of these specific tweaks as they are released.

If you tried the game, and did not like it AS A GAME, you could then always ask for a refund.

[Phantom Spaceman]

Originally posted by Marbalista:

So, if we DID design the game to work on a trackball (for movement?), it would really need some kind of Auto-Camera, to do the camera work for you. We did actually have an Auto-Cam feature in the game early on, but is has been neglected since we added manual camera control.

Speaking as an old school gamer and arcade enthusiast, when I saw this game, my first thought was "trackball controller." It seems like that would be an essential part of the game experience. I would much rather be focused on trying to finesse the trackball controller than to drive the camera view. I know that's a big ask, and probably not at all how the game was designed or built - but what turns me on about this game is very much like what turned me on about the original Marble Madness arcade game. Watching the video, I actually found myself pantomiming trackball movements with my hands.

Visually, it looks like it would be an awesome trackball game, and us trackball owners get terribly excited about such things.

Anyway, that's my two cents. Good luck!