No, it doesn’t, but if only a subset of your target audience owns or is willing to buy a particular peripheral, what’s the incentive to a developer to support it, much less require it? I.e., where’s the market for it? It still boils down to money - as in, how are you going to make it off your game?
I think that’s why truly specialized controllers are usually included with specific games, rather than sold separately: e.g., DDR dance pads, Karaoke Revolution’s microphones, Guitar Hero’s guitar, etc. Those games are designed in tandem with the controller. You’ll still see things like driving wheels or arcade sticks for fighting games, but these just take the standard controller and reshape it.
This is part of what makes the Revolution so daring, IMHO: they’re trying to reinvent the game controller fairly radically, which requires developers to reinvent their interfaces, which (ideally) give birth to new game ideas.
Ah, but the best thing about the Revolution controller is that you can plug another one into it. That enables developers to do whatever they choose for an attachment so specialized attachments should be more common and can simply be shipped with the game.
I honestly don’t see what makes the revolution plugin ability much different from a standard custom controller already.
#1 It makes it wireless. Basically all this seems to do is preserve the ability to plug stuff in. Otherwise custom controllers would have become more expensive with the need for radio gear.
#2 It lets you make a simpler peripheral because the 1-handed nature of the remote means that it can still be used. This seems to me to be the only real difference. If you want to make a DDR or GH mat or guitar, wouldn’t it still cost the same? Why then is there any more incentive to make these kinds of addons?
I played the hell out of multiplayer C&C:Red Alert on the playstation, using link cable & 2 TVs. I have nothing but fond memories of it, but there have been some pretty big strides in UI technology in this genre, and I don’t know if I could go back to a more limited control scheme.
I don’t know, I did this all the time in Kingdom Under Fire:the Crusaders, pretty much exactly as you describe it. Never had a problem. And hell, I played through the whole of Warhammer: Dark Omen on the playstation. That was a great game.
Id really have to play these console versions to comment on the differnce between the PC versions and see if they pulled it off. I can only remeber one console port of a PC RTS. I cant remember what it was, only that the console versions was completly gimped compared to the PC version.
Fuckers, quit having these cool threads on RTSs while I’m gone!
RTSs coming to console is inevitable, and it’s really interesting seeing developers wrestle with how to do it. I think Ron Millar’s Goblin Commander was underappreciated for its little paradigm twist. Then there’s The Outfit. I think both games owe a lot to Sacrifice.
I actually saw the Xbox 360 version of Battle for Middle Earth II at EA right before I went to GDC. Louis Castle also gave a talk there, presumably on their console interface. The strange thing is that they’re not changing the gameplay one iota. This is the full-featured unadulterated version of BFME2 on the 360, but driven with a gamepad. Yikes.
Does it work? I think it might. Does it work as well as it does on a PC? Absolutely not.
About 30 minutes after I first heard about the revolution controller, I started thinking about how Rts games could work on there. I would think though that some of the advance controls(formations, stances, even hotkeys) would have to be adjusted or scrapped to fit on the controller. Of course the unit Ai would need to be advance to make up for these issues.
It was. It was one of the most horrible kludges of a control system I have ever seen.
Suprisingly, the N64 port of the original C&C was much better in this respect. It was actually playable, though it suffered from some horrid framerate issues. It still did not hold a candle to using a mouse, of course.
Oh, you and your infatuation with Sacrifice! You scribble little hearts around “Tom + Sacrifice 4ever” in your notebook, don’t you?
As has been pointed out, RTS has been on consoles for 25 years now - there’s no “coming” involved, they’ve always been here. [Unless you speak specifically about RTSs in the C&C/Warcraft mold, of course, which are less common, but I’m presuming your definition is not that narrow.]
That said, their interfaces don’t usually mirror PC RTSs - nor should they. Direct ports don’t make much sense: you customize your interface to best suit your controller. Otherwise, you might as well presume that a flight stick and a steering wheel are interchangeable.
Somewhat, each pikmin is good for something, and with pikmin 2 you have two guys so you can split them up into two groups. I found it easier to only bring 10 or 20 pikmin at one time to fight boss since it’s easier to control that way.
