Playing with a gamepad ?

bcelmo · Post by **bcelmo** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 11:40 am

First of all, i`m sorry if this question has been asked before but i couldn`t find a thead about it
Now, my question
Is there anybody here that plays pc shmups (danmaku mostly) on mame or doujin with a gamepad and using the analog stick for movement? I know from experience that i have better results by using a keyboard because i`m a long time pc gamer that is used with it but if i play with a gamepad and use the analog stick it feels much better. However the game becomes leagues harder. I hate the D-Pad of any controller, that was one of the reasons that made me skip the NES, SNES, Megadrive generation of consoles (that and Wolf3d and Doom on PC). I can`t play with a d-pad, for me it feels impossible.
Is there any good player that can 1cc games with the analog stick ? Is it possible to get used to it in such a way that you can do all that funky little movements to dodge 100`s of bullets in mushihimesama ?
I currently own this PC gamepads:
http://www.ptchip.com/lojainf/images/t_00033045.jpg Thrustmaster Firestorm Dual Analog 2 - best gamepad ever, even better than PS2 Dualshock, useless D-Pad which is almost unusable because it registers more than on direction every time
http://www.obchodnet.cz/inshop/pictures/00095580.jpg Genius Maxfire Blaze 2 - very good d-pad, better than any other i tried, analogs are kinda too sensitive
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/pro ... large.jpeg - Logitech Rumblepad 2 - kinda meh, good analogs, i love the form because it resembles DualShock

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 11:42 am

mmmh analog stick sounds like a bad version of a regular stick to me, you can probably get good with it but it will probably handicap you a little bit. However you can get really good playing with a keyboard or D-pad no problem : there are examples of good players that play with those controllers.

1CC-ing a game is nothing impossible, even with a super crappy controller. Erhune 1CC'd DoDonPachi playing with a guitar from Guitar Hero. But making a good score in a hard game is another story, and although playing with a small controller handicap like the analog stick could be probably won't prevent you from making high scores if you work on it, you're just going to fail a little more frequently than if you played with something else that's more accurate.

tbh I definitely recommend sticking to the keyboard, it's a perfect controller and if you're already used to it that's more power to you. If it really feels that bad to you and you want feel over performance, perhaps you should just buy a regular arcade stick. It will slow your progression though.

freddiebamboo · Post by **freddiebamboo** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 2:33 pm

What Prometheus said, just play with what you are comfortable with. Also, there are 10 pages of bitching, whining and arguments in this thread;

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... pad++stick

bcelmo · Post by **bcelmo** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 4:40 pm

freddiebamboo, prometheus thanks for the reply

@freddiebamboo: i read all the 10 pages of that old thread and found only 2 posts dealing with analog sticks - both said they suck

. What i am asking of people is if there is anybody out there that actually had performant runs on any STG with an analog stick of a gamepad, not the D-Pad. I don`t really care about arcade sticks because they are not available at all in my country (Romania) and ordering one is out of the question because of the final price of the package ($150 for the ctrl itself + $50 shipping and prolly 19% VAT cause i`m in fuckin europe). With this ammount of money i could buy a japanese xbox for the great shmups out there. So i`m stuck with gamepads.
My conclusion out of the 10 page thread is that prolly if one is used with an analog stick of a gamepad he could have the same results as with an arcade stick. I am sure that it allows the same range of movements

BTW i am by no means a good player and have started playing bullet hell STG`s just a few month ago so maybe my opinion is not the best out there.

BryanM · Post by **BryanM** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 5:12 pm

If the sensitivity threshold is set sensitive enough; sure why the hell not.

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 5:36 pm

You can be the first good player to play with an analog stick to prove it's a good controller for STGs as well ;]

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 5:43 pm

freddiebamboo wrote:What Prometheus said, just play with what you are comfortable with. Also, there are 10 pages of bitching, whining and arguments in this thread;

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... pad++stick

Lol I had missed that thread, icycalm nonsense again. "I have never seen anyone 1CC a Cave game with a pad." No ? How about a GuiTar ?! -_-;;

freddiebamboo · Post by **freddiebamboo** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 5:59 pm

PROMETHEUS wrote:
freddiebamboo wrote:What Prometheus said, just play with what you are comfortable with. Also, there are 10 pages of bitching, whining and arguments in this thread;

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... pad++stick
Lol I had missed that thread, icycalm nonsense again. "I have never seen anyone 1CC a Cave game with a pad." No ? How about a GuiTar ?! -_-;;

Yeah, it's a very amusing thread. I kinda miss icy for the hilarious arguments he could create

croikle · Post by **croikle** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 6:02 pm

Icycalm <3.

Is there video of Erhune performing his guitar run? I'd love to see that.

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 6:06 pm

PROMETHEUS wrote:You can be the first good player to play with an analog stick to prove it's a good controller for STGs as well ;]

Snapdragon, an old Western Ikaruga player, was known for playing Ikaruga with the Gamecube's analog stick. He got some of the best scores of any Westerner (over 32mil, ALL, no miss).

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 6:15 pm

^ yeah, i was about to say. my 24 mill on the cube version was done on a regular GC pad's analog stick

whatever is best for you dude

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 6:24 pm

croikle wrote:Icycalm <3.

Is there video of Erhune performing his guitar run? I'd love to see that.

yeah he was on some French channel dedicated to video games performing that guitar run in Dodonpachi. I don't know where you can get that video though, I'll ask him.

EOJ wrote:Snapdragon, an old Western Ikaruga player, was known for playing Ikaruga with the Gamecube's analog stick. He got some of the best scores of any Westerner (over 32mil, ALL, no miss).

Well, there you go bcelmo, analog stick's fine ;]

Enhasa · Post by **Enhasa** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 6:25 pm

I'm not going to get into this dumb debate about what is better, but I will say that if you're considering switching, just go ahead and try it without worrying about adjustment period. It's certainly nothing to concern yourself about in the long term. Even though I had gamed almost my whole life on keyboard on PC, I switched to pad (I have a lot of console experience) and instantly became significantly better with essentially zero relearning. I switched to using my left hand to mouse and that only took a couple days to get used to (even though I'm right-handed). George Stratton had a famous experiment in the 1890s where he wore glasses that made everything look upside-down, and it only took him a week to fully adjust.

About analog, Snapdragon famously got 3rd in Atari's Ikaruga competition using the GC analog. If you haven't used it, it's terrible, although to be fair the GC d-pad is even more terrible, lol. You can read about this on this very outdated page. Yet another talented gamer lost to MMOs somehow (my only theory on this is that they snapped and decided it would be more relaxing to drool at screens instead).

Keyboard tip: learn to control down with another finger so you don't have to use middle finger for up and down (although depending on the shmup, some don't require fast up/down switching). I use my thumb. I also use the numpad so num0 can be down, or even num2 is an improvement. If numpad isn't supported, or you like to wasd or whatever, use autohotkey to remap keys. It's a really useful program in general.

Analog tip: either do this in the drivers (e.g. xbcd), keyboard emulator (xpadder), or the game/emulator itself, but definitely set your deadzone, gain, sensitivity, etc. how you want it. Since often you want 100% say left, to be able to do that faster, set it so you don't have to move the analog fully left before 100% triggers. (Some analog sticks by default are physically capped this way. The N64 analog, IIRC, defaults to ~70% and you can move faster in some games simply by removing some plastic around the analog.) A logarithmic scale makes the most sense since you are able to get to 100% easily, yet have more fine control just past the deadzone. Another extremely important thing, especially if you are mapping analog input to digital 8-way, is to adjust the degrees that map to each direction. If you find that you are sometimes accidentally moving diagonally instead of straight left, you can set the diagonals to be smaller.

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 6:46 pm

Enhasa wrote: About analog, If you haven't used it, it's terrible, although to be fair the GC d-pad is even more terrible, lol.

I really like the GC's dpad. It's all I used to play Ikaruga. I got a 29mil ALL with it.

bcelmo · Post by **bcelmo** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 6:56 pm

thank you very much for the storm of wonderful replies

Enhasa, also thank you for the tips. I am not planning to switch from kb to gamepad because i am actively using both. I have a lot of console experience and 10 times more pc gaming experience. I have been playing games for the last 15 years on anything i could get my hands on. On the kb side yes, i am able to use both hands for movements and any key setup and i can use my thumb for down. I know that i am better with a keyboard. It`s natural for me.
About the deadzone - i can configure it for all my gamepads from the drivers but i figured that the smaller the sensitivity, the better because that way it would allow for better precision movement, albeit slower. I`ll try what you said
Edit: is there a way to configure controller sensitivity in mame ?
Edit2: found it

MathU · Post by **MathU** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 6:58 pm

The Gamecube's analog stick is excellent. I've single credit cleared Chaos Field with it as well as the D-pad. The D-pad is decent; it's just very small.

gs68 · Post by **gs68** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 8:01 pm

The only shmup that seems to work well with analog is Gradius V, mainly because you can be at max speed and still be able to move slowly.

ChurchOfSolipsism · Post by **ChurchOfSolipsism** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 8:21 pm

Simplicity is what I like best about modern danmaku shooters. One speed for your ship (two in Cave games... although I think the system works perfectly and is really simple), one weapon, a million bullets, and that's it. I hated it when they introduced analog sticks into gaming, I don't want to have anything on my gamepad/ joyboard apart from a d-pad/ joystick and buttons. Fuck everything else.

Lot of blabla, dude just play the way you feel most comfortable with and have the most fun.

captpain · Post by **captpain** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 12:10 am

Keyboard with each finger independent and joysticks seem to make the most sense to me from a logical standpoint. Well, that being said, people get extremely good with all types of controls.

Ixmucane · Post by **Ixmucane** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 10:08 am

There are a number of newer games that are designed for analog sticks (usually dual analog sticks), but a typical shmup has no use for variable lever displacement or for arbitrary movement directions.
Some good performances with inferior or aberrant controllers have been mentioned, but they can be attributed to the unusual tastes and talents of the involved people.
Using a controller that feels bad is merely difficult, the player's possibilities aren't limited; a great joystick with a busted microswitch that doesn't register all movements reliably, on the other hand, would be crippling.

Personally I'm used to real joysticks (which after my Commodore 64 period I only enjoy in extremely rare arcade visits) and to keyboard+mouse for PC games; I find most games unpleasant or unplayable when I use a touchpad rather than a mouse (except when standing perfectly still is useful).

I've recently bought a gamepad for two purposes:
1) Street Fighter II on MAME with six buttons (no keypress conflicts) and 8-way lever movement (allowing all moves at long last: pressing a number of direction keys, four of which are not the arrows, with very tight timing is neither a realistic plan nor something that I would enjoy to learn);
2) dual analog games, which are meant to be played with the thumbs: any keyboard arrangement would require too many fingers and suffer from keypress conflicts.

It was a failure on both fronts: for fighting games the D-Pad and the analogs are too clumsy for quick movement and the buttons are too small and hard to reach with enough fingers; and the analogs have a slightly square hole that snags the lever in the corners whenever I try to turn around. (I'm considering buying a second gamepad with round holes.)

bcelmo · Post by **bcelmo** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 11:26 am

If u consider buying a new gamepad i recommend the Thrustmaster Firestorm Dual Analog 2 which is around $20 and had great analog and bad dpad or the Genius Maxfire 2 which has very good dpad and average analogs

Mortificator · Post by **Mortificator** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 1:15 pm

Ixmucane wrote:It was a failure on both fronts: for fighting games the D-Pad and the analogs are too clumsy for quick movement and the buttons are too small and hard to reach with enough fingers; and the analogs have a slightly square hole that snags the lever in the corners whenever I try to turn around. (I'm considering buying a second gamepad with round holes.)

Ah, the Logitech Dual Action. We're not the only players who've enjoyed using one of those. I actually had good results on fighting games with the D-pad... for a couple of months until it wore out. Logitech does make a version with round holes; I know someone on this board has one, though I don't know if the pad goes bad or it has any other problems.

I don't know how Logitech got this good reputation when every peripheral of theirs I've ever used has been a piece of shit, though to be fair every PC gamepad I've used had been a piece of shit too. I just use a USB adapter with a PS1 controller for the time being.

glitch · Post by **glitch** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 1:57 pm

i started my adventures in bullet hell playing on analog sticks, but once i started to get the hang of precision dodging i switched to d-pads. if you can't configure the sticks to be hyper-sensitive, the travel and threshold are always gonna cause lag and inaccuracy.

serious question: with a DIGITAL stick, you also have quite a bit of travel before the microswitch activates. does this not induce lag too?

bcelmo wrote:If u consider buying a new gamepad i recommend the Thrustmaster Firestorm Dual Analog 2 which is around $20 and had great analog and bad dpad or the Genius Maxfire 2 which has very good dpad and average analogs

i dig Thrustmaster's T-wireless: good d-pad AND sticks. PC/PS2/PS3 compatible and you can remap everything to anything, for those who like shot on d-pad left and d-pad left on right analog stick click, or whatever (actually i use this one to play PCB games on my friend's supergun, the configurability is really neat). comfy to hold, too.

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 2:02 pm

glitch wrote:serious question: with a DIGITAL stick, you also have quite a bit of travel before the microswitch activates. does this not induce lag too?

Yes it does and it's a bad thing. Playing with sticks is just a bad habit really ;] (that's my biased opinion but it's also what I really think of sticks so far :p) but it doesn't matter that much. It's just going to kill you when you're trying to make direction changes too fast. I think players who play with sticks are just forced to imagine different paths through patterns because they can't do quick changes of direction. In the end it's enough to play even the hardest games, because they were designed to be playable that way.

captpain · Post by **captpain** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 3:34 pm

PROMETHEUS wrote:
glitch wrote:serious question: with a DIGITAL stick, you also have quite a bit of travel before the microswitch activates. does this not induce lag too?
Yes it does and it's a bad thing. Playing with sticks is just a bad habit really ;] (that's my biased opinion but it's also what I really think of sticks so far :p) but it doesn't matter that much. It's just going to kill you when you're trying to make direction changes too fast. I think players who play with sticks are just forced to imagine different paths through patterns because they can't do quick changes of direction. In the end it's enough to play even the hardest games, because they were designed to be playable that way.

What about Suzo 500s or Mag-Stiks? Barely any travel at all... Also keep in mind you are able to control these with all parts of your hand working together.

PROMETHEUS · Post by **PROMETHEUS** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 4:03 pm

I don't know, never tried. Why would controlling with all of your hand be a good thing ?

captpain · Post by **captpain** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 4:11 pm

PROMETHEUS wrote:I don't know, never tried. Why would controlling with all of your hand be a good thing ?

It's possible to rapidly transfer any necessary amount of force with a lot of control when all of the hand/fingers/wrist are usable. Combine short throw with very clear directions (and clicking feedback also) and it's really not that different from a keyboard.

Pads on the other hand don't make sense to me, though I realize people get good with them. I just can't get comfortable with using only my weak little thumb when I have my whole hand available.

Elixir · Post by **Elixir** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 7:08 pm

freddiebamboo wrote:What Prometheus said, just play with what you are comfortable with. Also, there are 10 pages of bitching, whining and arguments in this thread;

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... pad++stick

Personally I only play with my feet, like the Japanese pros do.

RackGaki · Post by **RackGaki** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:59 pm

PROMETHEUS wrote:I don't know, never tried. Why would controlling with all of your hand be a good thing ?

http://www.slagcoin.com/joystick/pad.html

Anatomically speaking, the wrist and forearm can be moved much more quickly and accurately than individual fingers and thumbs. Try moving your thumb from neutral to the various directions in a small sized area. Then try moving your entire hand in a near fist in the various directions on a bit larger scale. Which is faster, less awkward, and more responsive and accurate?

For what it's worth.

Post by **undamned** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 2:59 am

RackGaki wrote:
Anatomically speaking, the wrist and forearm can be moved much more quickly and accurately than individual fingers and thumbs. Try moving your thumb from neutral to the various directions in a small sized area. Then try moving your entire hand in a near fist in the various directions on a bit larger scale. Which is faster, less awkward, and more responsive and accurate?
For what it's worth.

Huh. I wonder if there are some legit studies on that. I always mavel when I watch video's where you can see the hands of pro players on cabs. I'm visualizing some of top fighters w/ their subtle finger movements even in intense battle. I find myself more full-body playing when I'm in an intense battle, heh.
-ud