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So, after playing Ace Combat and Armored Core on the 360 for a while... I've started digging around for better designed controllers for the 360.

I like it's grips, but these two games (3, technically, since I have AC:4 & AC:4A) in particular require access to all four shoulder buttons on a regular basis. Which is a painful experience after a short time with the 360 remote.

So far, I've only found people wanting to make a 360 remote work with their PS3... and this converter deal which looks like it would work, aside from needing me to get a wired 360 controller in addition to the converter...

But that seriously makes me wonder why no one can design a controller that actually works... The Playstation remote actually annoys me a great deal with it's grips laid out horizontally like they are, I greatly prefer the vertical grips of the Xbox and Game cube. Yet those have their own issues... The "bumper"/Shoulder-1 buttons being the worst of them. (Though the D-pad on the 360 seems to have serious faults, and all the controllers I've tried are a crapshoot on if it'll detect the direction you're actually pusing. Especially if it's Down.)

Not that the Playstation remote's shoulder buttons are that great either... the shoulder-2 buttons honestly need to be slightly tilted under so that the fingers can rest on them easier...

And of course, none of the companies would authorize a third party controller that actually improves on the original controller...

It's a side effect of the twin motives of ease of use (ie, no fingertip buttons under the controller) and proper analog movement (which is never used by any game anyway). Even if the 360 buttons were closer, you couldn't do a PS-style 'finger rock' to hit the other one, because of the shape of the lower analog trigger.

Indeed, though for Armored Core I always ended up using both index and middle fingers to get the best response time possible...

At least for all the ones post 3, where they finally realized that dual analogs had been standard issue since the last half of the prior generation, and finally programmed in support for more FPS like controls. Prior to that, it was almost necessary for other reasons.


Edit: Though for your post, sounds like you're saying they're failing as hard as they can.

Well you play Ace Combat games; do these games use the long-travel analog for fine throttle control? Bugger all driving games do; they just use three-position 'off-on a bit-on a lot' stuff. The giant travel on the z-axis may be a waste of time.

It's a shame the controls for Armoured Core got good long after the games themselves became a broken parody of themselves, really.

Yeah, that huge z-axis is part of what makes four fingering such a pain. The real problems being for Ace Combat, the added control of the rudders is hugely useful, but a pain to use.

While for Armored Core... You really need to rig the firing to the shoulder buttons so you can aim as well. But the thruster controls need to be mapped there too because they're literally all that can keep you alive long enough to kill anything bigger than an MT...

Besides, Armored Core was always broken, it's just gotten faster and more silly since 3. (Heh, there're at least 3 "Four opposed ACs are trying to kill you" in 4 & For Answer... At least the AI doesn't cheat its ass off as much in those two.)

By 'faster' you mean the LEVELS are over faster, but the loading has dramatically expanded.

Heh, if people know how to program, we wouldn't be seeing 5th (6th?) generation, high profile games with more glitches than bargain bin NES games.

But eh, like I know's been said, the public laps the shit up. Complaining all the way, but still voting the other way with their wallets...

This thread interests me because it's this issue that set me against the 360 controller before I used it; on like a decade of games I got really used to the 'finger rock' thing to go between l1/l2 and it certainly wasn't possibly on X1 controllers and they set up the 360 controllers to deliberately make it difficult. Of course, aside from 'sim' games like AC and AC (whoa, lol) 360 games don't need the motion so it hasn't been an issue for me for years and I much prefer the size and stick/d-pad of the 360 controller.

Although the d-pad is certainly fucking balls. Remember back in the day where d-pads went the way you pressed, or it was a 'spongy' 'unresponsive' shit d-pad? Those days, over.

Aye, some of the stuff I've found in this search suggests it's actually not the connectors fault on the D-pad. But that useless little ridge surrounding it apparently interferes with it.

Also apparently they made an improved version... but it's going to be a limited edition thing in every region but NTSC, though supposedly the original s-controllers were the same way.

(I've also found a few odd balls who made the 360 wired remote work with the PS2. )

Silly question, but couldn't you have one custom made? It's just some molded plastic. Shouldn't be that hard to find a company that could do it.

havokeff wrote:Silly question, but couldn't you have one custom made? It's just some molded plastic. Shouldn't be that hard to find a company that could do it.

You could indeed. The controller could be a lump of silly putty somehow, as long as the signals that are sent back to the machine are the same as what it expects.

Stark wrote:Well you play Ace Combat games; do these games use the long-travel analog for fine throttle control?

Very rarely. Usually you're either in full A/B or cruise, with bursts of full airbrake in dogfights. Actually I'm surprised Andrew gets much use out of the rudder, I only use them on the levels where you fly through tunnels, and even then only rarely. In a realistic sim you need the rudder to control slideslip, but basically all the maneuvers you do in AC are insane high G ones where it isn't terribly relevant. The thing I actually miss from the PS2 AC games was the pressure-sensitive analogue control of radar zoom; not possible on the 360 due to the lack of pressure-sensitive face buttons.

Bugger all driving games do; they just use three-position 'off-on a bit-on a lot' stuff. The giant travel on the z-axis may be a waste of time.

The only racing games I've played that actually benefited from fine throttle control were Gran Turismo 3 and 4 (during cornering). I don't have anything comparable on the 360 so I can't comment on how well its triggers work for that. I agree that the travel is a little excessive; I guess it's supposed to make shooter games feel more like using a real gun, but if so that's a useless novelty.

Starglider wrote:

Stark wrote:Well you play Ace Combat games; do these games use the long-travel analog for fine throttle control?

Very rarely. Usually you're either in full A/B or cruise, with bursts of full airbrake in dogfights. Actually I'm surprised Andrew gets much use out of the rudder, I only use them on the levels where you fly through tunnels, and even then only rarely. In a realistic sim you need the rudder to control slideslip, but basically all the maneuvers you do in AC are insane high G ones where it isn't terribly relevant. The thing I actually miss from the PS2 AC games was the pressure-sensitive analogue control of radar zoom; not possible on the 360 due to the lack of pressure-sensitive face buttons.

They do provide a little bit more fine control during dog-fighting with the less agile planes. (Mostly in situations where they're three inches to the left of the reticule, but actually turning would throw off your momentum and let them shoot off the screen. Wouldn't be so bad, but I'm trying for the "Clear campaign with guns only medal.")

But yeah, it's mainly tunnel and strafing runs. Thankfully, most of the tunnels in this game are optional.

The thing I actually miss from the PS2 AC games was the pressure-sensitive analogue control of radar zoom; not possible on the 360 due to the lack of pressure-sensitive face buttons.

I would say, however, that having your weapon select button on X rather than Back is far more useful than having analogue map zoom anyway, especially in 6 where you have far more SP weapons and will be using them more often. Map zoom is something you use when you're deciding where to go next, so it matters less that you're taking your thumb off the stick to use it, whereas weapon select is something you'll use in a fight, so you need finger gymnastics to use it if it's all the way over on the wrong side of the pad.

Starglider wrote: The only racing games I've played that actually benefited from fine throttle control were Gran Turismo 3 and 4 (during cornering). I don't have anything comparable on the 360 so I can't comment on how well its triggers work for that. I agree that the travel is a little excessive; I guess it's supposed to make shooter games feel more like using a real gun, but if so that's a useless novelty.

Forza has full analogue mapping for throttle and brakes. You need it if you want to even think about playing with the driver aids off.

I've played Forza2, and it doesn't seem like proper analogue. Just like everything else it seems to have a very limited set of 'positions' instead of just reading off the axis. It's not as bad as most games where nothing happens till you pull it halfway, but it's not the infinite-response careful balancing act the triggers would ALLOW it to be.

It's always confused me why they gave huge-travel triggers a linked axis (perfect for 'proper' throttle control) and then in 99% of games ignored it and just used 3 position. Irritatingly, the 'full on' is usually 75-100% instead of a Gamecube-style 'click' so it's a pain to hold the trigger near the threshold most of the time.