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Best way of switching between keyboard/controller? (lemmy.world)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Many games support both keyboard/mouse and controller input. Many users (myself included) may wish to switch their input method mid-game, but what is the best way of handling this?

There are two potential solutions:

Have the two input methods combine and reach a consensus (e.g. pressing W on the keyboard while moving the left thumb stick to the left will cause the player to move forward and left)
Have only one input method work at any given time, but switch automatically depending on what the player most recently used.

Technically there is a third option, which is to have the user manually switch between the two input methods in a menu somewhere. I don't consider this a real option because the user experience would be terrible.

So, which solution do you think is better and why?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Ideal for me is auto-switching with a debounce time.

There's been a few incidents where I'm using my gamepad and accidentally bumped my desk/mouse and completely lose my orientation in game. With a debounce, one form of input needs to have completely stopped for a certain period (say 500ms) before starting to register movements on the other input device.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think I'd find that annoying. If a player wanted to quickly switch to the other input method in an intense moment then they'd just be waiting for half a second for their inputs to register. They'd probably think the game is bugged!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I just pulled 500 randomly. I don't know how long it would take me to throw the gamepad and reach for the mouse. 50 might be more realistic. The point is just to prevent accidental bumps.

I also came in with that comment fully expecting younger and much faster players with their 240Hz monitors to disagree profusely.