Hello everyone,

I just got started with making games earlier this year, and I'm still very much a beginner. I made a simple game called 'Protector' which is a top down space shooter. When you press up, the ship goes in the direction it is currently facing and not necessarily straight up the screen. When you press down it goes backwards and not necessarily down. Left and right arrow keys rotate the ship and spacebar shoots. My only questions are: Is this the best control style for this particular game? If not, what would be better?

Thanks a ton!

Try playing around with what you feel most comfortable with. I'd say traditionally that control scheme is what most similar games use.

Alex

What you have are the classic and most popular (and natural) controls and is what is to be expected.

Thanks for the feedback! I showed the game to some friends and not all of them were able to catch on to the control scheme quickly. It may be that those who caught on quickly play more games than the others. I guess I can't please everyone.

Yep, those controls work pretty good. If you want to spice things up a bit you could try adding a strafe left/right control. Not sure where you would put em for the arrow keys, but if you use WASD then Q & E could strafe.

That's a good idea. I'll have to try that out. I think it could actually work quite well. Thanks!

Nice work with the game! Adding drift is another way to change how the controls feel. Depending on where you want your game to fall in the spectrum between simulation<->arcade, you might want to leave it how it is, or add some conservation of velocity.

Then you'll get into discussions about limiting top speed, how quickly a moving ship comes to a stop after you stop pressing forward, etc.

Great work with the particles, btw.

I didn't try the game, but perhaps the problem isn't the control scheme, but the movement scheme. Perhaps your acceleration, deceleration, turning rate, etc aren't tuned as well as they could?

Thanks Andy, about the particles and the ideas. I think you've hit it right on. I'll have to play with drift and other stuff. Thank you, Seth as well. I think it needs an overall tune up for sure. Its good for me to learn to do this stuff early on before I get too deep into the game's (or any future game's) development.