Control Scheme?

[light_rises]

Originally Posted by dannythefool

Maybe so, but to me that sounds fairly silly. The only valid reason to change something is if the change is an improvement. If it turns out that it's not, there's nothing wrong with admitting a mistake and going back.

The problem is with the part I bolded, though. Unless, say, Telltale's inbox is flooded with thousands upon thousands of emails decrying the new control scheme for MI, there's no way they're going to change it. Making their new games "console friendly" while still doing what they can to make the controls intuitive for PCs seems to be Telltale's goal from here on out. So simply "going back" isn't an option. At all.

What is constructive at this point, though, are suggestions for improving the current W&G/future MI controls. Basically:

The only valid reason to change something is if the change is an improvement. If it turns out that it's not, there's nothing wrong with admitting a mistake and asking for suggestions on how to turn said change into an improvement.

... instead of just reiterating "Bring back point-and-click!" ad nauseum. I'm speaking as someone who prefers point-and-click too -- compared with the current W&G keyboard controls, that is. The room for improvement exists. That's what we should zero in on, in a way that stands to help Telltale improve the new controls until they've become as intuitive* as humanly possible.

Originally Posted by LuigiHann

And personally, I enjoy the somewhat side-on look that the Sam and Max and Strong Bad games have had so far. Part of the charm of a great point-and-click adventure is that the worlds are laid out like paintings.

That's ... a really interesting point! Now that I think about it, just about all of the Sam & Max environments look and feel very much like interactive dioramas. (Whoa, wait -- SAM & MAX 205 SPOILER AHOY! -- so wouldn't that imply that the Personal Hells may in fact be oblique yet incredibly meta references to the nature of many adventure game environments?! A huge stretch, but still ... !)

One last point: Several people have mentioned how the direct controls are somewhat justified in W&G due to its cinematic nature, while the same can't be said for MI. The Monkey Island games may have never offered a super-cinematic experience, true. But with these particular controls -- or at least something close to them -- being used here, why not now? I have no idea if that's what Telltale's planning to do in this case. But if so, I can't help but think of the added sense of cinema as a boon.

--

* Which isn't to say that the W&G controls lack any intuitiveness. In fact, I tend to think they're quite intuitive -- just significantly less so than point-and-click. So long as you're not playing W&G one-handed on a number pad, point-and-click will always have that edge over any two-handed keyboard/mouse configuration. But playing two-handed doesn't have to be the Kiss of Death either, IMO.

[dakotha]

Duh just giving this information in case someone didn't know from the console side:

The Secret of Monkey Island was released on Sega's Mega-CD (Sega CD in the US) system that attached to the Sega Megadrive 16-bit (Sega Genesis in the US) system. It also supported the Sega Mega-mouse input device sold separately (a two button mouse) but could be played with the joypad too. Both ways worked flawlessly. I don't like IF the controls are sacrificed on the console altar but gonna play it anyway.

Hopefully this is not another decision based on consoles...seen them more than enough already.

Edit:

I have to edit my post to bring some other opinions to this too.

Even if the controls weren't mouse-driven, I'm totally gonna support TTG for giving new MI games...this is just something unbelievable that I didn't think would happen ever. This is unbeliavable news. The price of the game is nothing..already pre-ordered.

And also feedback: moving the character with the keyboard would be bad, because:

- clicking anywhere with the mouse you want is far more easier and fast
- turning on the keyboard was slow and annoying in Grim Fandango and MI4
- you can easily get stuck or don't find the best route with the kb, with mouse you could just point to a place and your character would go there or not.

[Sven Viking]

Come to think of it, I suppose part of the problem is that if you're going to direct control, it seems like you should go all the way ala Psychonauts or something. Into an actual 3rd-person game where you run and jump about. I think that'd be an awful idea for Monkey Island, but direct control within a more point-and-click-style setup just seems incongruous and unnecessary.

Yes, King's Quest games/etc. have always been direct-control, but that was also always quite awkward, and point-and-click controls were invented to specifically improve upon that.

[werpu]

Originally Posted by Sven Viking

Come to think of it, I suppose part of the problem is if you're going to direct control it seems like you should go all the way, ala Psychonauts or something. Into an actual 3rd-person game where you run and jump about. I think that'd be an awful idea for Monkey Island, but direct control within a more point-and-click-style setup just seems incongruous and unnecessary.

Yes, Kings Quest games/etc. have always been direct-control, but that was also always quite awkward, and point-and-click controls were invented to specifically improve upon that.

I agree here too, full 3d ala psychonauts or tomb raider would be neat, but that would mean to force people into a gamepad, because face it games like tomb raider or psychonauts do not scale well into mouse keyboard combinations because of the floating camera problem!
(Believe me I have been through that in games many times and have settled for a gamepad for exactly those games, I even remapped Psychonauts to get rid of the mouse keyboard controls that way)

You also open a can of worms with games like that for people with older machines, which funnily are often adventure gamers. In my experience adventure gamers machinewise often are the most conservative people.

[Sven Viking]

Mouse & Keyboard can work for third-person games in same cases, e.g. Max Payne. Agreed that it normally lends itself more naturally to a gamepad, though.

[Diduz]

Hi, Nick!
Could you tell us if you support more joypads this time around?
Implementing a character-relative movement could be nice, too.

[werpu]

Originally Posted by taumel

A mouse is way better accelerated and more precise and dealt with especially in an analog way than any console controller i have used so far, simply due to how it's done technically. And there is quite some room for improvement if you would like to enhance it both from utilising the hardware's abilities as well as what you could tweak/add on the logic side.

This is only true to 2d centric movements, WSAD in shooters with a mouse works only so well because you control sort of 2 dimensions with a mouse and a third with the keyboard.
For third person perspectives with free floating cameras gamepads are superior to any mouse driven interface, I have been there and for those kind of games I usually revert to a dual analog stick gamepad.

Problem is that games like Dreamfall or Wallace and Grommit are somewhat corner cases, you dont have a free floating camera and they although 3d are somewhat 2dish, so I am not sure if point and click works out too well or not too well. All I can say is that most games trying that perspective opted for keyboard/gamepad controls (Dreamfall, first alone in the dark etc...)

Funny thing is Gabriel Knight 3 as far as I can remember used a mixed approach, either wsad mouse, or mouse only with right mouse button and directional arrows, that one worked also more or less well.
But GK3 had a free floating camera in many areas!

[werpu]

Originally Posted by Sven Viking

Mouse & Keyboard can work for third-person games in same cases, e.g. Max Payne. Agreed that it normally lends itself more naturally to a gamepad, though.

The problems with a mouse keyboard combination begin to start as soo as you have a free floating camera, you dont have a second analog input needed for good camera control. All I can say is give it a try, play Tomb Raider as example with mouse keyboard and then run it through a dual analog stick gamepad, you can see that the controls in the keyboard mouse combination are awkward at best.

As for mouse only, as I stated before the mouse itself lends itself naturally to 2d movement only, but there are ways to work around that for non action games. The game having it done best so far as posted before is Gabriel Knight 3, probably the prime example on how to do a mouse only interface in a pure 3d environment!

[Chuck]

Originally Posted by taumel

Have you guys did some serious research in what you could do with a mouse steering?

Yes. The trick is finding one that feels right and really feels like you're moving the character around naturally. You may see something come of that, maybe not. But we've tried and are continuing to try lots of stuff.

Originally Posted by light_rises

That's ... a really interesting point! Now that I think about it, just about all of the Sam & Max environments look and feel very much like interactive dioramas. (Whoa, wait -- SAM & MAX 205 SPOILER AHOY! -- [ spoiler removed ] A huge stretch, but still ... !)

It's not a huge stretch: that was one of the ideas behind using the dioramas. It's a gag about how all the environments are like stage sets without 4th walls. (Maybe not a particularly funny gag, but that was the idea, anyway).

And just so it's clear: all the stuff I'm saying about controls is in regards to Telltale in general, not necessarily anything specific to Monkey Island. The guys working on MI may be able to give you the details later on, but as you can imagine they're all pretty busy right now!

[Ignatius]

I havent played WG so i guess i will be testing this right on july.

But it seems like you got a 50% of in-game actions working with mouse, and a 50% of in-game actions working with keyboard; we are given a half of each, and the result doesnt make a whole.
In a very (but very) pragmatic way: If in the past i used only one hand to do all the actions and now i have to use both hands to do the same actions, i dont know how that improves things.
Maybe it does in ways i havent seen yet, cause like i said, i will test it on july.

[Armakuni]

How about this -

If you have some mouse solution you're not entirely happy with and won't include it in the games because of that... why not put it in anyway, as an unsupported feature you can only enable by manually editing some config file or something like that?

It would be better than nothing.

[tredlow]

Well, as a follower of the MI series, I am hoping for the classic Sam and Max controls. But as a general PC adventure gamer altogether, I wouldn't mind the WG control scheme, since I never had any problems with it.

The classic scheme is better, of course, but the WG controls aren't hellish as well.

[Eiden]

Looking back I feel MI3 was the best for controls, it didn't have all the "push, pull, take, punch, make cup of tea" options of the previous games that get really tedious if you're stuck and you have to try each one on every object. Yet it still allowed full control from the mouse, with a bit of choice on what to do with objects, i.e. you could use an object with another in your inventory which has so far been absent in Telltale games that I've played.

I really dislike with a passion the last Monkey Island game's controls and feel it was dumbed down like this so it could be ported to consoles. Wallace and Grommit's controls aren't too bad as you can still do lots with the mouse, but sometimes the direction characters go when you walk is counter-intuitive and it would be so much better if you could also click to walk/run with the mouse too. How hard could it be to add that in? it's there in Sam and Max after all.

[moomoocow]

Hi all. Usually I dont do web forums but for a new Monkey Island game I´ll make an exception

After jumping and dancing through my office celebrating the rebirth of the possibly greatest adventure series of all time my euphoria has turned into worries remembering the horrible piece of crap Monkey Island 4 was.

Adventure games are meant to be played using the mouse and I can not imagine any control scheme involving the use of a keyboard or even worse gamepad which comes close to the comfort of point and click mouse controls. I do not know which market is more important but its just not fair that PC-gamers will no longer receive the best possible gameplay on their systems because you want to squeeze out some extra bucks on the console market without investing the resources to implement two user interfaces which would certainly be the way to go to make as many people happy as possible.

Even with the new sucky controls I´ll still buy MI5 (because it´s still Monkey Island) but I guess I will play it like I did the last one. Finish it as fast as I can with a walkthrough and sell it afterwards cause I know for sure I wont touch it again.

I hope this change in quality is more like an accident and not what to expect from TTG in the future. Fortunately lots of adventure games are being released again (and most have traditional point and click controls) so I could afford missing out on whatever comes after MI5, even though it would not be very satisfying as I really like what you did with Sam & Max.

Do not put your good reputation at stake and say yes to point & click

[_oMeGa_]

I just played the W&G demo, the controls aren't that bad at all. It's seriously not that much harder, you guys. You just have to use buttons to move and open the inventory. I don't see anything hard about that.

[Sven Viking]

Originally Posted by werpu

The problems with a mouse keyboard combination begin to start as soo as you have a free floating camera, you dont have a second analog input needed for good camera control. All I can say is give it a try, play Tomb Raider as example with mouse keyboard and then run it through a dual analog stick gamepad, you can see that the controls in the keyboard mouse combination are awkward at best.

As mentioned, I know third-person games are normally best suited to a gamepad/controller (for the reasons you mention). I was just saying that a few (Max Payne in the example) do work well with a mouse/keyboard combo, generally because they play more like first-person shooters.

Originally Posted by _oMeGa_

I just played the W&G demo, the controls aren't that bad at all. It's seriously not that much harder, you guys. You just have to use buttons to move and open the inventory. I don't see anything hard about that.

I'm not saying that it's particularly hard, or a deal-breaker (though it is for some people). I'm just saying that it seems like a step in the wrong direction. It may not be that much harder, but it's generally more cumbersome, and why complicate things unnecessarily?

[Shwoo]

I don't understand how having to use a keyboard is such a horrrible thing that it'd spoil the whole game. I prefer point and click, but it's just a preference. If I have to use a combination, and it's not incredibly frustrating to play, I'm not complaining. And the Wallace & Gromit controls did not make the game frustrating to play. The only problem I had was that sometimes I couldn't find hotspots with the mouse. Other than that, it was just different. That's all.

[Sven Viking]

Originally Posted by Shwoo

I prefer point and click, but it's just a preference.

The thing is, I haven't really heard from anyone who prefers the alternative, aside from those already using gamepads/console controllers.

As I've said, I'll buy the game either way, but I'm curious as to the reason for the change. Point-and-click was good enough for Telltale before, and it seemed to be good enough for everyone else too, at least before the Xbox port. If the change is only for the benefit of those using gamepads, I don't see that retaining optional mouse-only support should be so difficult to arrange for the PC (and Wii?) version.

Edit: If the camera needs to be rotated or something, maybe that could be mapped to the keyboard or, alternately, handled by touching the screen edges or holding middle mouse?

[werpu]

Originally Posted by Sven Viking

The thing is, I haven't really heard from anyone who prefers the alternative, aside from those already using gamepads/console controllers.

As I've said, I'll buy the game either way, but I'm curious as to the reason for the change. Point-and-click was good enough for Telltale before, and it seemed to be good enough for everyone else too. If the change is only for the benefit of those using gamepads, I don't see that retaining optional mouse-only support should be so difficult to arrange for the PC (and Wii?) version.

Actually the mouse keyboard combo is more or less standard wsad + pointer for picking up and doing things, it is far from the broken controls of grim fandango and monkey 4!

It is however somewhat subpar to a mouse only interface if you want to use the mouse! Especially since you are used to double clicking a hotspot and having the character going towards it, now you must be near the hotspot, sort of in reach to be able to do that!

Best thing is simply to download the W&G demo and give it 15 minutes to get used to it to find out if you can live with the controls or not.

If I had not a gamepad I probably would not like it either, but since the gamepad for me gives me more comfort (due to being able to play it on the sofa in the living room) i don´t mind it, and I never felt that the controls were as broken as in MI4 and Grim Fandango!

[moomoocow]

Originally Posted by Shwoo

I don't understand how having to use a keyboard is such a horrrible thing that it'd spoil the whole game. I prefer point and click, but it's just a preference. If I have to use a combination, and it's not incredibly frustrating to play, I'm not complaining. And the Wallace & Gromit controls did not make the game frustrating to play. The only problem I had was that sometimes I couldn't find hotspots with the mouse. Other than that, it was just different. That's all.

Why should we torture ourselves playing with sucky keyboard controls when there is a better option ?

Adventure games have always been point & click and just because of some extra sales on the console market they are now gamepad or keyboard-mouse combination ?

All this talk about innovative controls and trying to create better controls is nonsense and indeed is PR-talk by Telltale. Its all about getting the game done faster and therefore its all about money.

Maybe they should sell an addon which enables mouse support.
Imagine the possibilities after all those PC-gamers paid for acceptable game controls...

Bah. This kind of killed my good mood. There is going to be a new Monkey Island game and it will suck. Great

PS : A new Monkey Island is announced and the hottest topic on those forums is a discussion about how the game controls are gonna suck. I think that shows that TTG is about to do a mistake and should at least consider implementing additional mouse control to make everybody happy.