Gamepad support

[mot]

I wonder if it's worth it to add support for gamepads to a PC/Mac game. Any statistics on how many people have them?

And how to do it properly? To you as players, is there a game that does the controller setup/calibration really well or really poorly? Stuff like choosing the correct controller out of the available ones, axis, buttons for each player etc. I have no reference point I could even look at for inspiration...

[vjvj]

Some statistics would indeed be interesting.

I am planning to support gamepads at the moment. I think the main thing about controller calibration is to make sure the user can just press the keys/buttons he wants to bind, as opposed to the crappier method of having the user select a game action and then scroll through all available buttons.

As far as analog stick goes, I have no experience there...

[Pyabo]

Yes, please! Considering how easy it is in most cases, you should definitely include gamepad support. You generally don't have to worry about calibrating them, assuming you've got a game that really just needs digital input.

No idea on statistics, but you'll make me happy at least. :)

[Drake]

My game (http://www.rabidlab.com/games/dodgethatanvil/download.html) has fully configurable gamepad support, including a prompt to select your preferred gamepad when more than one is present. I only collect statistics from players of the web browser version, but that data suggests that only 0.9% of my audience actually uses a gamepad, versus 54.9% for keyboard and 44.2% for mouse. So, not very encouraging from that standpoint. On the other hand, gamepad support (and the general flexibility in input options) is often mentioned as a positive in reviews, so I think its inclusion has helped sway some of the opinions that count.

[Pogacha]

GamePad support is really easy on windows, it isn't as easy on mac, but what I'm sure about is that if the user has a gamepad and cannot play with it in your game he will feel annoyed.

It will depends on the kind of game, but I guess if it uses the keyboard arrows, there must be gamepad support.

[GolfHacker]

Dirk Dashing uses SDL and it supports gamepads nicely. SDL treats gamepads just like a joystick. There wasn't anything special I had to do.

[oNyx]

>Any statistics on how many people have them?

Such a statistic would be pretty meaningless. The percentage is audience specific. Eg if you like platformers or shoot'em ups it's far more likely that you'll buy a gamepad sooner or later. Or if you only play mouse driven match3 games, why would you buy a gamepad? :)

If the preferred input scheme for your game is a gamepad, well, implement it then. If it isn't, implement it if you feel like doing so. It's easy enough to do with LWJGL (use the new ControllerAdapter (http://java-game-lib.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/java-game-lib/trunk/LWJGL/src/java/org/lwjgl/util/input/ControllerAdapter.java?view=markup) as dummy if no controller was found - it will make your code a lot simpler).

If you aren't sure how well a gamepad would work, you can test it with JoyToKey. It allows you to map your gamepad to keyboard or mouse events. I also use it for Flash or Applet games (and generally all games where that was forgotten).

[Videogame Biscuit]

I don't think there are a lot of PC or Mac gamers that use a gamepad, but since it's so easy to implement I'm gonna use it for all my future projects. I use Torque Game Builder, and with that it's as easy on a PC as on a Mac, since the same project can be compiled for both platforms.