You can set up controllers in the settings menu :) There’s just no default binding.
Not trying to be mean but I basically expect most games these days to autodetect controllers.
It sees the controller, you just have to tell the game which buttons and axes do what.
Quazi, I like what I’m reading here, and the videos I’m watching look right up my alley, but…
Any plans to bring this to GOG?
If you promise to bring it to GOG someday, I’ll happily buy it first on Steam and then on GOG.
Or IndieBox! I’d LOVE to see a physical IndieBox release. I’ve been a subscriber there for over a year.
Otherwise…Um, I’ll be forced to buy it just on Steam. How’s that for an ultimatum?
I was going to threaten to not buy it at all then, but if I’m being honest, I don’t think I can resist. I’m just itching to give this a try!
Oh don’t worry, it didn’t seem mean.
I’ve been working on auto-detection among other updates but couldn’t complete them just yet cause school has got in the way (I’m a full time student). In the beginning figured most controllers don’t really have the same layout so it would be kind of moot to auto-assign buttons, but i’m seeing a lot of players think there’s no controller support because of it, and a large proportion are simply using the 360 controller. I hate to see people turned off by little jank like that which is only a few afternoons work to fix, so i’m definitely going to!
I’d love to do IndieBox but they need your game to be cross platform and it’s just not possible with our 7+ year old engine with no cross platform support :(. I’m planning on looking into GoG soon, but no clue if/when we get on there. We’re definitely not trying to force people to use steam, all we really want is for them to find and enjoy the game. With that said i apologize it’s only on Steam right now!
With all that said, If you get the game thank you! I’m always overjoyed to see people get excited about it!
Cool! I can definitely appreciate how difficult both school and making games are, even on their own.
What framework/language did you use?
We used a really old (but completely free/open source) game development program called Construct (Construct Classic nowadays, since they made a newer version with different features). Construct uses a weird block-coding system that’s pretty fast to develop in, and it has support for custom stuff done in C++ if you need special functionality (you usually don’t, there’s very few things you can’t do with the default kit). All the drag-and-drop junk is pretty much converted to fast C++ using DirectX9 for rendering so it runs really fast, while being really quick to develop in aswell. This software/engine was quite good at the time we started development (2010), but nowadays it’s pretty terrible compared to what else is available for free, i’d never recommend anyone to use it anymore.
Back then Unity was a lot more expensive to use, and gamemaker lacked a lot of functionality. By comparison this software was completely free to use, with no royalties to pay for whatever you made using it, AND it had extremely good performance, with the drawback that it was windows only. Development lasted a lot longer than we though on this game and we saw so many alternatives we wish we had available at the time appear. Because of our choice we can’t really do a lot of things we wish we could, like multiplatform support. It also makes implementing some functionality tricky, since we need to find workarounds and hacks to get a lot of stuff working properly (like controller detection :P) but I always manage to find some way to fanagle things into working.
My advice to anyone who wants to develop games now is to find a good easy to use engine, rather than struggle with writing their own or using an obscure framework. I’m by no means new to programming things in traditional languages “the hard way”, but there’s just so much to do in making a game that all the time you spend doing things the hard way ends up being time wasted. As an independent developer working on every aspect of the game, you want to be able to focus on the game more than the machinery. For this reason I’d really recommend people to use Unity, and perhaps if they want to focus heavily on 2D, Gamemaker is quite good. Unreal is kind of difficult to use unless you’ve got a lot of experience in game development and have a small team of people. I know I’m certainly going to be using Unity for my future projects though.
The problem is when you have never played before, you don’t really know what might be the best way to set anything up - I should think a developer (or someone well versed in the game) could create a fairly comfortable initial setup and it could be used as some sort of default controller profile, maybe? Speaking as someone for whom this kind of game is just made to play with a controller, it’s a fairly odd barrier to entry that needed to be overcome. Just my two cents.
What was the thing they did?
OMG you can DO that? I NEVER would’ve thought of that. How awesome!
Nah, no need to apologize. Your explanation makes perfect sense. I always prefer to buy on GOG, but when I have to, I have no problems buying on Steam first, and then again on GOG when it’s available there. I don’t do it often, but it’s not a huge amount of money, and I’m totally for supporting the devs.
Heh, I’d never heard of Construct the game engine before this thread, but now apparently the second iteration of the engine is on sale.
Every so often I remember I have this game in my library and reinstall it. Looks like I bought it a bit over six years ago. Perhaps this time I will make some progress!
It’s funny to think of a game, search it up and see that not only is there a thread, you also have the last post in it. Looks like that 360 controller autodetect update never made it out, sad to say. This would be such a perfect Switch game.
I wish I was better at this game. It’s so good.
Aint that the truth. I swear I could beat this game if the controls were better, because being able to deal with your inventory efficiently and quickly massively improves your survivability. At least that’s what I tell myself.
I love this little game. Just made 662 feet, a new personal best!
Wait, there’s an inventory?
Dammmnnn that’s impressive
Consistent