I recall someone who build some automated system to measure input latency on gamepads, who gathered data for a bunch over different interfaces, which is a subset of that. They had some sort of automated testing system, moved the controls automatically with a microcontroller-driven system.
looks
Neither of them are what I’m remembering, but it looks like multiple people have built input latency databases.
Everyone left out there that ever thought they might give gaming a shot did so during the lockdown, and they either stuck with it, or they realized it wasn’t a forever hobby for them
looks dubious
That seems like an overly-strong statement.
There’s a point where the whole world has access to video games. And we’re getting closer to that time. There are certainly limits on growth approaching. But I don’t think that we’re to those limits yet.
unique mobile subscribers in 2023, indicating a 43% penetration rate
That’s not even smartphones. And even smartphones can only run certain types of video games. There’s a lot of the world that still is constrained by limited development.
I mean, it’s not publicly-available either; it’s just available to a select group of testers.
I haven’t been following the game’s development. But my guess is that the devs are going to prioritize targeting the machines that they’re using to do development of the thing. They won’t be using a Deck to develop the thing. This probably won’t be the only tradeoff made, either – I’d guess that performance optimizations aimed at the Deck or other lower-end machines might be something that would be further down on the list. I’d guess that any kind of tutorial or whatever probably won’t go in until late in the development – not that that’s not important to bring new users up to speed, but it’s just not something that the devs need to work on it. Probably not an issue for this game, which looks like it’s multiplayer, but I’d guess that breaking save or progress compatibility is something that they’d be fine with. That’s frustrating for a player, but it can make development a lot easier.
Doesn’t mean that those don’t matter, just that they won’t be top of the priority list to get working. What they’re gonna prioritize is stuff that unblocks other things that they need.
I worked on a product in the past that had a more “customer-friendly” interface and a command line interface. When a feature gets implemented, the first thing that a dev puts in is the CLI support – it’s low-effort, and it’s all that the dev needs to get the internal feature into a testable state for the internal people. The more-customer-friendly stuff, documentation, etc all happens later in the development cycle. Doesn’t mean that we didn’t care about getting that out, just that we didn’t need it to unblock other parts of the the development process. Sometimes we’d give access to development builds to customers who specifically urgently needed a feature early-on and were willing to accept the drawbacks of using stuff that just isn’t done, but they’re inevitably gonna be getting something that’s only half-baked.
I mean, if it bugs you, I’d just wait. Like, they aren’t gonna be trying to provide an ideal customer experience at this point in the development cycle. They’re just gonna want to be using it as a testbed to see what works. It’s gonna inevitably be a subpar experience in various ways for users. The folks who are using the thing at this point are volunteering to do unpaid testing work in exchange for getting to play the thing very early and maybe doing so at a point where they can still alter the gameplay substantially. There are some people who really enjoy that, but depends on the person. It’s not really my cup of tea. I dunno about you, but I’ve got a Steam games backlog that goes on forever; it’s not like I’ve got a lack of finished games to get through.
At the time of writing, the action game is in closed beta, and it doesn’t offer native controller support. However, it does have an option that players can use to play the game with a controller.
With that in mind, the game is likely to feature controller support when it releases on PC, as it is expected to be Steam Deck compatible.
However, you must keep in mind that since the game is still in early development, it doesn’t offer any key binding or customization feature.
Additionally, even with a controller on default settings, some key actions in the game may not be mapped, so you might encounter limitations during gameplay.
In the near term, if a keyboard can do what you want, if you can dig up macro software for your platform that can look for specific gamepad combinations and send keystrokes as a result, I imagine that you could make it work that way.
I’m not familiar with this, but it sounds like it’s practical to just take a mouse, buy new mouse switches, swap them out, as long as you can solder. So if you’ve got another mouse that does what you want – and it sounds like you like the Logitech G305 – you can probably just modify it, if you’re willing to put in the effort. I’d read up on this further before going that route.
This post specifically deals with replacing the switches on a Logitech G305 to make it silent:
there don’t seem to be that many on Steam that catch my interest.
I don’t know the situation on consoles, but on the PC…
I am not a pinball expert, though I do enjoy video pinball, but none of these are what I’d call the major PC pinball engines with reasonably-realistic physics, things that do a lot of tables. Look at these:
Visual Pinball. I was not able to get this working on Linux the few times I’ve tried or to successfully get access to the forums that distribute tables (some kind of broken registration system). This is, as I understand it, what a typical person uses if they just want to make and distribute a free table. It also has many bootleg implementations of commercial tables. Open-source Source-available, though only runs natively on Windows.
Pinball Arcade. IIRC, these guys used to have a license for some major physical table distributors, like Williams, and had it expire. I have this, and the engine hasn’t been updated in some time. I run a high-refresh-rate monitor, and IIRC it has a limit of 60Hz, probably because the physics engine also runs at that rate. I don’t think that it’s getting a lot of updates, and I had some trouble running it last time I tried. This would not be my recommended engine unless it’s the only place to get a table that you specifically want.
Zaccaria Pinball. Good if you want elderly pinball, pre-solid-state-electronics era, electromechanical pinball tables. They have some tables that they developed, not copies of real-world tables, that I personally like more than their real-world tables. They don’t have implementations of real-world tables for some major popular US manufacturers.
Pinball FX3 (less old than Pinball Arcade). Not bad, but replaced by the below Pinball FX.
Pinball FX (despite the name, newer). This is the only one off the top of my head that can do high-refresh-rate, and it’s also being kept current. It has a lot of stuff that I’d call fluff and would rather not have, like toys that animate more than on the real-world tables and sometimes obstruct your view, animations to wait through, and such. Also has some kind of online-DRM system that takes a sec at startup. Some of this can be turned off. Places a lot of emphasis on this virtual pinball basement full of virtual trophies. Has occasional very brief stutters for me. Many of the non-real-life board are wide, designed around a present-day portrait-orientation computer monitor, which feels weird but is more friendly to, say, a laptop with a fixed orientation monitor, though maybe not what you want if you’re going to set up a dedicated pinball computer with portrait-orientation monitor. Lots and lots of non-real-world licensed tables associated with movies and the like that I’m not really enthusiastic about; I would recommend trying those tables before buying them. This is probably what I’d look at if I were aiming to get one today, as the engine’s the newest.
I think that all of these let you download the engine and try out some basic play (IIRC Zaccaria has time-limited plays on tables that you don’t own, and Pinball FX has a rotating collection that you can try for free), so you can just install them and see what you like, but if you’re looking for a starting point with something reasonably modern and with a bunch of tables, these are probably where you want to look.
If you don’t have a strong preference as to tables and are also just feeling around for something to try, I personally like some classic real-life Williams tables, Medieval Madness and Tales of the Arabian Nights. Neither is too rough in terms of draining down the side channels, in my humble opinion. The Addams Family is also a popular table.
Note that if you haven’t touched video pinball for a long time – like, I played a few games in the late 1990s and then was away from it for a while), these engines also simulate nudging the machine and doing so is expected during play.
EDIT: If you’re willing to hit Reddit for information, /r/videopinball and /r/pinball exist; they were where I got some information back when. If not, there’s !pinball – not a lot of life yet, but, hey, each additional person adds to it!
EDIT2: My understanding from past reading of said forums is that Visual Pinball is considered to have the best physics, but is fiddly to get working and get tables working on (and I don’t think that this was said from the standpoint of someone trying to run anything on Linux, just Windows).
EDIT3: I would also recommend not purchasing a great many tables unless you’re sure that you’re actually going to play them. Yes, you can buy the equivalent of multiple arcades full of virtual machines at one swoop thanks to modern technology, but…I have tables on all of the commercial engines here and personally find that I play a very small percentage of the tables that I have. Pinball, I think, benefits from becoming familiar with particular tables.
It has an engine that permits recording and “rewinding” gameplay, with a lot of interesting quirks, like elements that don’t rewind. Puzzle platformer based on that.
It was a fascinating thing technically, and the creator did a lot with that capability. But IMHO it’s not otherwise exceptional, like graphically or such.
One button, a lot of resistance to push on the stick.
After that, an elderly Logitech gamepad from the 1990s that had a D-pad that rolled diagonal way too easily. IIRC it had a screw-in mini-joystick that could attach to the center of the D-pad. Don’t remember the model. White case, attached directly to a joystick/MIDI port.
After that, I think the NES controller. I have no idea why people like those or actually buy recreations. Yes, nostalgia, but the ergonomics on it were terrible. Hard buttons, sharper corners on the D-pad than is the norm today, and a squared-off controller made the thing downright uncomfortable to use for long periods of time.
I was pretty happy with my most-recent Logitech gamepad – I think an F310 – but I had another from the 1990s that was terrible, had a D-pad that rolled to diagonal movement far too easily.
Your age 30 is fine. Age is always an excuse, but mostly not true.
It’s fine for single-player shooters, which are less demanding, but speaking as someone who has packed on some decades, your reaction time definitely becomes a noticeable factor over the years for competitive multiplayer games. I definitely can’t play competitive twitch shooters nearly as well as when I was 18, which is about when your reaction time is at its best.
That being said, there are shooters where twitch time is less-critical or roles or play-styles that focus less on it.
And I don’t see how someone couldn’t learn to play with a dual-stick or trackpad (or trackball, for that matter), which is what I think OP is talking about. I haven’t had any problems picking up new input methods…that just takes time. Took time to learn when I was 18, too.
I mean, twin stick gamepad or to lesser extent touchpad just isn’t going to be as good as a mouse for an FPS. A good mouse player will beat a good touchpad or gamepad player.
And the problem with the Deck is that it has a PC game library, and a lot of those are designed with a mouse in mind. Console FPSes usually adjust the game difficulty so that playing with twin sticks are practical. Enemies give you more time to slowly turn around without inflicting enormous amounts of damage. Auto-aim assist is common. Ranges are shorter. Stuff like that.
If this is a single-player game – which it sounds like you’re playing – you can reduce the difficulty to compensate for the input mechanism.
There’s an input mechanism that some people developed for twin-stick gyro controllers called Flick Stick, which someone else mentioned; Steam Input supports this. The mouse is still going to win, but it’s an improvement over traditional pure-stick input.
There’s also some input mechanism which I think was different from the “Flick Stick” approach – though maybe I’m wrong and misremembering, didn’t have an interest in exploring it – that IIRC someone put together using Steam Input. The way it worked, as I recall, was that one could tap the thumbstick in a direction and it’d immediately do a 90 degree turn. The idea was to provide for a rapid turn while keeping sensitivity low enough to still permit for accurate aiming. But I’m not able to find the thing with Kagi in a few searches, and it’s not impossible that I’m misremembering…this was only a single video that I’m thinking of.
I don’t think that there’s any trick to learning this, just playing games and picking it up over time. I mean, I was atrocious at using a keyboard+mouse when I first started doing it, and ditto with twin-stick FPSes.
You could also attach a keyboard and mouse, though I think that that kind of eliminates the point of the Deck, at least as long as one also has a PC to play on – it might make sense for someone who just uses a Deck and a phone.
is there an easy FPS game where I don’t have to move or shoot too fast
Play games that are designed for consoles or which have a gamepad mode, rather than a keyboard+mouse PC game. They’ll be tuned for controller limitations. Like, can you play Halo comfortably with the Deck? That was designed for a gamepad originally, and it’s available on Steam (though I’d note that it requires a Microsoft account, which you may-or-may-not be willing to do).
This also talks about some limitations of thumbstick aiming (if you’re using thumbsticks and not trackpads). It might be possible to tweak some of these, like sensitivity or dead zone, but I’d assume that for a given game, the developers have already chosen pretty reasonable defaults.
For those who haven’t played the series, VATS is an alternate aiming mode where one can pause (or in later games in the 3d series, greatly slow) the game, select a certain number of targets depending upon available action points, and then have all those shots taken in rapid succession, with the game aiming.
I’d say that VATS is kind of a “path” than a purely alternate input method in those games; you need to make a VATS-oriented build, though it’s true that it makes it possible to play the game with minimal FPS elements. Like, in Fallout: New Vegas, VATS provides major benefits close-up. While VATS is active, there’s enormous damage reduction applied to your character, IIRC 90%, so for short periods of time, they have enormous damage output and little risk. They can also turn rapidly and target multiple enemies, probably better than a player manually-playing could. At close ranges, VATS is just superior.
But VATS suffers severe accuracy penalties at range. Whether-or-not a target is moving doesn’t affect VATS accuracy, but range does a lot, whereas with manual aiming, whether-or-not a target is moving makes a big difference and range doesn’t matter much. As a result, VATS isn’t great for sniping, which is also an aspect of the game. You can do it (especially, oddly-enough, with pistols, in Fallout 4, where the Concentrated Fire perk lets later shots in a flurry of pistol shots at range be very accurate.
In Fallout 76, VATS provides such dramatic damage benefits that I’d say that it’s impractical to play a non-VATS build – VATS is required to get damage up to a reasonable level later in the game.
EU won’t commit to answering whether games are goods or services.
I think I’d have a category for both.
You can’t call an SNES cartridge a service, but similarly, you can’t call, oh, an online strip poker service a good.
I suspect that most good-games have at least some characteristics of a service (like patches) and most service-games have at least some characteristics of a good (like software that could be frozen in place).
I think that the actual problem is vendors unnecessarily converting good-games into service-games, as that gives them a route to get leverage relative to the consumer. Like, I can sell a game and then down the line start data-mining players or something. I think that whatever policy countries ultimately adopt should be aimed at discouraging that.