Activation buttons is necessary. I need to be able to hand out dollar bills to strippers and hookers.
Eek! Don't remove buttons! I don't know why we need a minimalist approach but I do use all the buttons on the screen. Why get rid of what works? The analog sticks while not the best still do the trick. Plus I find that I don't really drag my thumbs in the first place You have access to the user interface. You don't like a button move it to someplace you don't use or put another button on top of the one you don't want but leave all the stuff for the rest of us that do indeed use it.
Are accelerometer controls for aiming hard to implement? With a calibration option, i think it would work well. I can only compare to controls in Vector Ball 3D to give an idea. Paddle as crosshairs. Make sense? Lol
+1 yeah, i normally don't care for accelerometer controls, but it seems like such a natural fit here where you are looking around in a 3d environment and need an up/down component...I'd love to see that implemented with sensitivity and neutral point calibration
If you're going to make accelerometer controls, make them optional. There isn't a single FPS I've played where I've liked it. I feel like I'm constantly fighting with them and they're utterly useless for quick aiming. I'm fine with tap to shoot options or dedicated buttons -- but I suppose you could appease some with optional elimination of buttons or retooling them in some way. As I suggested before: - Tack the jump button as a tap event to the POV stick and you'll take care of one button. - You could do the same for crouching (as a toggle) on the movement stick. There's another button gone. - When using a dedicated fire button you could have activation as a screen tap -- even make it so that you can tap on the buttons without having to look directly at the one you want to activate; when using tap-to-fire, a dedicated activation button will take the fire button's place. Or you could have both buttons available for those that want it and don't want to tap the play area at all. For the other things: - Take the powerups (adrenaline, medkit, jetpack, etc.) off the pause menu and make a new weapons selection menu like the save menu with a dedicated area for powerups. - Add optional on-screen buttons for quick access to powerups you might need immediate access to, like the jetpack and medkit. - I'd like an optional on-screen button for the Mighty Foot, too, so I don't have to toggle it as a weapon.
I think, the latest Cube version nailed the iPhone controls for an FPS. Take some minutes to check it, but then it's a pure bliss. Pitty, that this is more or liss a tech demo...on a 3GS it's running perfectly. So devs, please take a look at this and you can leave out most of your ugly buttons...
For what it's worth, it looks like George is doing a great job working on fixing the problems with this release. Yeah we shouldn't even be in this situation, certainly not with a release this big, but I think he knows that, and it does look like he's doing his best to make it right. I have a feeling we'll look back on this release as something that started badly but ended up really rather brilliant.
That sounds like a great idea! In fact, I'd love to see the more general version of this idea, where you can choose what action is assigned to each stick. For example, I'd personally prefer this configuration: Tap the movement stick to jump. Tap the POV stick to shoot. (I think this makes more sense than a separate dedicated fire button, since you won't have to move your finger from the POV stick to the fire button and back again. You won't be able to look and fire at the same time, but you couldn't do that anyhow... unless you're using more than 2 fingers, which can't be comfortable ) And if you'd like to remove even more buttons: You could assign an action to touching the screen with 3 fingers simultaneously. I've already seen some apps where touching with 3 fingers will open up the pause menu. (While using 3 fingers is a somewhat more complex gesture, you rarely need the pause menu anyway. Sounds like a great trade-off.) About auto-firing: No way Jose! That would take a big chunk of skill out of the game; you wouldn't feel like you're in control anymore. And if a game plays itself, it ain't fun! However, I wouldn't mind having an "auto-tilt" feature, where the game takes care of looking up/down for you. If your crosshair is near an enemy, the game will automatically look up/down to the enemy. (and snaps back to normal once the enemy's dead or your crosshair is too far off) While you'd take away a little bit of the skill involved, having to look up/down may be a little too complex for a mobile game like this, which would then cause unnecessary frustration. Essentially, moving around in Duke3D with auto-tilt enabled boils down to Wolfenstein 3D, which has already proven itself on the iPhone. One last thing: I'd like to add another vote to having dual sticks à la "Isotope: A Space Shooter", where each stick will reposition itself whenever you lift your finger and then place it elsewhere. It works extremely well in Isotope; it's one of the few fast-paced iPhone games where you never even have to think about the controls; it just works.
Yup, you could access it with the Tab key. I never really used it though. It won't help much if you're stuck; you sometimes have to look through every nook and cranny to find a clue on how to make progress. Things like cracks in the wall that you can then blow up with a pipe bomb.
I wanted to know if this is a bug or not. While playing the game yesterday, i went to the second level in L.A Meltdown and after getting the yellow access card and opening the door with it, i went up the stairs and shot at one of those Big Cans and then an item got out from it, then when i picked it up, i had to restart the whole level all over. Is it the item or is it some type of bug in the game?
You also wouldn't be able to move while you jump, which would put a bit of a damper on clearing wide pits/gaps. That's why I suggested crouching be stuck to the movement button as a toggle; crouching isn't a critical thing, you use it generally to get under things or crawl through narrow spaces which usually doesn't require quick action or multiple simultaneous actions. The problem with a 3-finger tap is that it's not always accurate because you don't always hit the screen with all 3 fingers at exactly the same time. Just play with Spawn Illuminati for a while and try to call up the menu; you'll end up taking more than a few screenshots (2-finger tap) the more you try. Good idea for single enemies, but you might end up fighting the look logic when there's multiple enemies in front of you at different altitudes. I do like the "D-Pads anywhere" idea where the screen is divided up into two halves and wherever you place your thumbs in each half determines where the D-Pad goes. However, that might be difficult to manage in conjunction with other on-screen buttons. However, it's something that could probably be worked out.
In prey all i used was the joy sticks, but after playing with duke 3d's i tried the digital or slider option. it was hard at first but once you get the hang of it, it is very comfortable(paired with TapShoot)
Hidden features... I wonder if things like the Map & Cheat Codes are all in the game with no current way to access them. If the original game code was ported, I think all that stuff should be in the iPhone version just waiting, no?
Oops, you're right! Hmm... *rethinking* What about this: Leave the Jump button as its own dedicated button; tap the movement stick to open doors/activate switches/... ; tap the POV stick to shoot. In the end, the best thing would be to make the interface as customizable as possible, then ship the app with easy-to-pickup default settings. (Of course, this would take up more development/testing time and effort, but I can wait ) Ah, I was thinking of an app like JellyCar (, which is free and pretty fun too). There, you don't have to tap with all 3 fingers at exactly the same time, but just one at a time (in the same fashion you hit Ctrl+Alt+Del ). Works just fine in that app. That's true. However, I think it's safe to assume that, in most occasions with multiple enemies, they're at (about) the same height. If not, the auto-tilt will have to choose which enemy has the highest priority. I'd suggest it focuses first on the weakest enemy (and otherwise, focus on the one that is heighest). Granted, there will be some occasions where auto-tilt won't do what you want it to do, but I think that's an acceptable sacrifice. EDIT: Heh, and I remember that Duke's icon would become bigger/smaller depending on your height on the map. Looks kinda funny when you're jumping whilst looking at the map
Well, when I was thinking of what to put as tap events on the sticks, I was trying to think of what actions have low priority while still being actions you make quite frequently, and won't conflict with the opposite stick. Thus, jump = tap right stick so you can move with the left, and crouch with the left stick. Activating things is even lower priority, but also used less frequently than jumping. You could swap out crouching for activation though -- but you might run into a problem where you have to activate three or four switches and want to strafe to move from switch to switch (the switches in the market of level 2, or the demolition panel further on the same level that takes out the building) but quick strafe movements could be misinterpreted as taps, which would activate a switch when you don't want to. It's fine as long as there's nothing mapped to two-finger tap -- but then why not use two-finger tap? Depends. When you enter the theatre from the outside door on the first level on easy mode, you've got two aliens more or less above and below each other; one at the back of the seats, and another up in the projection room, both shooting at you, so there's room for some auto-look confusion right off the bat. Heh, I used to use map mode that way sometimes if I got lost or couldn't figure out where to go next; sometimes it was just easier to see where you should go next this way.
