SECT [ ZX Spectrum Next ]

Lots of fun and very swear worthy... Nicely Done!  

TJ

Hi,

I admit that I haven't yet had chance to try this out – and I certainly will. But my initial reaction to the news about the absence of keyboard controls is… Y'WHAT???! :-)

Other than a handful of games that were specifically designed for use with a light gun (and how many people had those…?), I have NEVER encountered ANY Spectrum game that lacks keyboard controls. Making a game joystick-only is an extremely Commodore thing to do, and thus a heinous crime and wholly unacceptable.

In all seriousness, though, I personally simply do not like joysticks and game pads. I never even owned a joystick in the 80s when I had my original Spectrums. On the Next, I do now have a joystick and a game pad, but I only really got them for testing purposes, and I rarely use either. I'd MUCH rather use the keyboard, every single time.

Objectively and dispassionately, it's a straightforward FACT that the keyboard is inherently more responsive than any joystick. The only instance I can think of where I can imagine that a joystick might be desirable is when you have a keyboard-destroying 'waggler' game of the Hypersports/Daley Thompson ilk, where using the keyboard can kill both your keyboard and your hands. And even that's arguable.

The point with a joystick is that the stick has to travel in the direction indicated. By contrast, on a keyboard, the only travel is in the depression of the key. Thus, on a joystick it takes time to move in a particular direction, and it's impossible to indicate more than two directions (i.e. diagonals) at once, whereas on a keyboard you could potentially press all the directions at the same time. (Not generally terribly useful, but nevertheless…) Ergo, the keyboard IS simply faster and more responsive in use than any joystick; it's a simple physical fact. With a game pad, maybe you can use it like a keyboard, maybe you can't; it depends on the pad. Either way, it's either equivalent to a keyboard or less good than a keyboard. It can only be said to be better inasmuch as you can pick it up more easily, and there are no other distracting and unnecessary keys. On the other hand, you're probably stuck with the four-key diamond layout for the direction buttons, whereas on a keyboard (if the keys are redefinable) you can choose the option of having horizontal controls under one hand and vertical controls under the other, which I for one generally much prefer. Moreover, assuming the keyboard is indeed redefinable, you can choose the layout that you find most comfortable and responsive.

In other words, I'm REALLY struggling to imagine any justification whatsoever for NOT including keyboard controls – especially on a Spectrum, where keyboard control is universal and joystick has always been an optional extra.

So I will give your game a go in its current form when time permits, but if it always requires a joystick, that will be a very substantial deterring factor against it for me. I very much hope you'll get around to implementing keyboard control before it's considered 'finished'.

PS It's similarly hard to imagine why keyboard controls "work poorly" for this game when the equivalent joystick controls presumably work fine. How can that be? How is it that up, down, left, right and fire are so hard to pull off on a keyboard, considering the evidence of 40+ years of Spectrum gaming, and hundreds upon thousands of previous Spectrum games, all of which use the keyboard and have managed to pull it off successfully over all that time? I think the end user needs to see evidence of the poor performance of the keyboard controls in this game, and be given the option of which control method to choose.

The above is of course intended in good humour, but I think my basic points are valid.

Top stuff, and thank you very much!

Keep going :)