2.14 Controller hotfix.

Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2024
Starship Rubicon Game Banner
Genre: Action, Indie
Developer: Wickworks
Release Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2015
Lemme preface this with some history: the original motivation for me to develop Rubicon was to see if I could make a better control scheme for Asteroids using the mouse. The core mechanics of the game are centered around it. The trade-off between moving and shooting, aiming and steering, and being able to smoothly and immediately transition between the two. Any port to another kind of control interface is going to be just that: a port, awkward and a little mismatched to the design of the game itself.

Alas, the conventions and expectations of the shoot-em-up genre thereby seem to have taken me by surprise. I didn't expect people to demand controller support with such vigor. I was hoping people would meet the game on its own terms. I didn't even bother to do a final check for controller functionality before shipping the previous patch, which was a mistake: plugging in a controller doesn't work, the button just flashes angrily. That was sloppy of me, my bad.

Good news is that it's now fixed. Plugging in a controller at ANY point in the game and holding a button down for a second or so will automatically activate controller control. Bad news is that I'm still not happy with the implementation, I consider keyboard+mouse vastly superior for this particular game. I'm still poking around with it and hope to update soon with a slightly more elegant scheme.

Until then, I'd like to hear any criticisms of the current setup + suggestions. Controllers are not my forte, and I welcome the comments of those of you with more experience.

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