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Keyboard Flight Controls

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GreenSeed
#41 - 2014-11-15 22:33:38 UTC
would be great to have a way of setting an orbit around an imaginary point in space, or around our target. the current mouse controls have that on the new wheel controls. so the feature is there, all we need is a key we can held pressed, then move the mouse and set an orbit radius, add another key to set "keep at range" and we are set. all this without having mouse input on the overview, just to fine tune the selections such as orbit or range.

this would also require to set a target as "primary" and keep it as primary even if we lose lock, we would still need to re lock ofc to shoot at it if we lose range or get jammed, but we always use that target as a reference for our commands. this way we lower or reliance on the overview to set anchors, this paired with the new change to clones would lead to a LOT of people re subbing just to have cheap skirmishes with frigates.

i know i would.
Bienator II
madmen of the skies
#42 - 2014-11-16 00:21:58 UTC
found a bug: it seems if you use the kb ship controls the ship is not properly reset when you dock and undock again. and can come sidewards out of the station if you dock/undock a few times

how to fix eve: 1) remove ECM 2) rename dampeners to ECM 3) add new anti-drone ewar for caldari 4) give offgrid boosters ongrid combat value
Tomiko Kawase
Perkone
#43 - 2014-11-16 02:50:56 UTC
I mentioned this in the "Little Things" thread, but I think it would fit here as well.

In light of the WASD control scheme, I thought it would be a good chance to rebind all of my keys. The problem with this is that it's literally a nightmare scenario with the UI. Each key you want to rebind needs to be unbound before the game will let you rebind it. The game should simply unbind the previous key, let you know what function was unbound, and then have an apply button to actually commit the changes. Additionally, certain buttons need to be unlocked for binding, specifically "tab." Defaulting tab to swapping between your different targets is a lot more intuitive than having it close all of your windows.

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Vincent Athena
Photosynth
#44 - 2014-11-16 05:21:32 UTC  |  Edited by: Vincent Athena
I tested it out, and found a problem.

I first aimed my ship as close to straight up as the game allows. Then I tried to turn. The ship quickly flattened out to the horizontal plane. I could not do a climbing turn.

This is not what I would want. If I am climbing, and want to turn, I want to also continue climbing. Basically, this means the left-right control should adjust the azimuth of my velocity vector, and the up-down, the elevation.

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Bienator II
madmen of the skies
#45 - 2014-11-16 06:10:23 UTC  |  Edited by: Bienator II
CCP Nullarbor wrote:

Can I do rolls / flips?
No, since EVE physics are not like a dogfighting game and likely never will be. There is an obvious up and down in space and your ship cannot turn upside down.


i thought about that a bit and i don't think you would have to change server-side physics at all to allow loops or rolls. If the client would be able to deal with full 6DOF rotations, it could just loop and automatically roll after the loop and the server would not even notice it (since for the server a player is basically position vector + velocity vector without orientation vectors). Ship orientation is only really interesting for the client and does not influence any damage calculations.

how to fix eve: 1) remove ECM 2) rename dampeners to ECM 3) add new anti-drone ewar for caldari 4) give offgrid boosters ongrid combat value
Tikitina
Doomheim
#46 - 2014-11-16 06:47:41 UTC
Bones Outten wrote:
WOW!!!

I am not a noob, but am a Vet Eve player, but more so an FS user from 1995 through FSX & MS Flight development.

Any kind of many movement in a space ship fight game is an improvement & would bring on some proper dog fighting scenarios, especially those used to the WASD shift/ctrl/space group of players.

I agree; my first impressions of Eve from a long long time ago where based around flight simulator, Elite, Wind commander experience & the lack of direct flight input was debilitating to get used to.

Needless to say (without making Eve a flight simulator) some things need to be considered for those likely to go down the manual control (Stick) route:

The vector of the ship is in conflict with the turn & mass, the ship coming out of a turn up or down, when the ship should keep it's turn while modifying it's vector via delta-v.

Also coming out of a bank or nose up/down automatically makes if very 80's arcady, this also stops any form of immelman or other interception manoeuvres for dog fights. Need to be able to push past north or south for rolls, more variation in intercepts.

Following on from other posts, no direct input flight game would offer the vector for your own ship/craft, only for those of others for intercept or turret/gun tracking target purposes. But a chase camera option & a sitting in the pilot seat option IS essential.

I think the feature (for me) is a long awaited one. My biggest gripe being the spherical collision detection of most objects in Eve, not allowing you to hug objects, park close, hide behind objects, all weapons seem to magically ignore these objects when you are behind them or your enemy is (or even a friendly getting in the way) If this last paragraph is fixed it would make for a Very interesting game in eve (especially for fleet fights around stations or in asteroid fields). When behind an object you should be invulnerable to all but a homing missile (of sorts)

Either way it makes for expansion of the point click, click weapon & wait for enemy to die mythology & will allow people with real Stick skills to earn names within Eden.

I love it & on the edge of my seat to see where CCP takes this (or as usual F`s it up LOL, maybe they'll listen, but history teaches us otherwise)

Signed (not so bitter) Vet.


Maybe someday the Devs will get around to adjusting the physics model for Eve.

But until then, this seems like a nice addition to the game.
Rivr Luzade
Coreli Corporation
Pandemic Legion
#47 - 2014-11-16 08:28:22 UTC
I find the controls a bit inconsistent and squishy: While up-down is very responsive and makes the ship stop going up or down immediately if you release the key or press the opposite direction, left-right feels a lot less responsive and it takes some time for the ship to stop turning or start turning into the opposite direction. Something along the lines of "Oh, I see you pressed that key a second too long. How do you like the 720s I am doing right now?"

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Chirality Tisteloin
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#48 - 2014-11-16 11:22:42 UTC  |  Edited by: Chirality Tisteloin
Bones Outten wrote:

Following on from other posts, no direct input flight game would offer the vector for your own ship/craft, only for those of others for intercept or turret/gun tracking target purposes. But a chase camera option & a sitting in the pilot seat option IS essential.


Dear Mr Outten,

from the perspective of getting EVE a bit more flight-sim-like, this comment is understandable and while I believe the pilot seat option should be left to Valkyrie, I agree with you on the chase camera.

However, many people play and like to play the game zoomed out, as a tactical SIM, rather than dogfight game. For this type of gameplay, showing the velocity vector of your own ship would enable the usage of WASD steering. It would just relay the same information that you get from looking at your ship in zoomed in mode.

Showing the vectors of other ships is a matter of game design, greatly impacting the level of information available to a player. While I find the idea interesting, this has to be left to the Game Designers to decide.

Greetings, Chira.

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M'aak'han
C-7
#49 - 2014-11-16 12:44:29 UTC
Keyboard flight control is an interesting addition to the game that should help new players stick a bit longer by giving them more time to look at the full picture now that they need less time to get accustomed to the particular fight controls of Eve. Moreso now that the UI is going along a "more things visible in space, not only in overview" path.

Most of the friends I managed to drag into trial where disappointed or plainly disoriented by not being able to fly with keys/joystick, despite them being fully aware Eve was not a dogfighting simulator - I was very clear about that before inviting them.


I just tried the feature a bit, and had the feeling that having to continuously turn the camera around when not in tracking mode was somewhat confusing. As such...
CCP Nullarbor wrote:
Follow camera
Yeah this would be pretty cool. We have it on our list of things to investigate, possibly as some variation of the tracking camera.
...I think a 'follow' feature would be more than just "pretty cool" in this regard. Smile


Even better, and that could please video makers a lot, would be the possibility to lock the camera in a certain position around the ship, I mean not necessarily in a forced 'follow from behind' but rather any angle like 'facing at 1 o'clock' for example. I tried to simulate such a view mode some time ago and thought it provided a very nice immersion feeling. Absolutely useless in PvP, but still very nice effect when PvEing or recording for your lastest alliance recruitment trailer (or whatever else.)
Andreus Ixiris
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#50 - 2014-11-16 17:18:45 UTC
CCP Nullarbor wrote:
Can I do rolls / flips?
No, since EVE physics are not like a dogfighting game and likely never will be. There is an obvious up and down in space and your ship cannot turn upside down.

This isn't really a justification for not allowing true flight control, Nullarbor. You don't need to turn EVE into a dogfighting game to put this sort of functionality into the game.

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Adrie Atticus
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#51 - 2014-11-16 18:31:34 UTC
Andreus Ixiris wrote:
CCP Nullarbor wrote:
Can I do rolls / flips?
No, since EVE physics are not like a dogfighting game and likely never will be. There is an obvious up and down in space and your ship cannot turn upside down.

This isn't really a justification for not allowing true flight control, Nullarbor. You don't need to turn EVE into a dogfighting game to put this sort of functionality into the game.


Eve's combat system doesn't allow for 1st person dogfighting mechanics and would be hell to actually implement all the functionality into a new format. There is no real need to shove manual control into Eve and no need to implement it further unless it doesn't remove developers from actual game mechanics and their improvements (POS code, sov changes so state 2 biggest ones).
Cordo Draken
ABOS Industrial Enterprises
#52 - 2014-11-16 19:23:55 UTC
So yeah, none of the movement keys work after re-mapping and clearing out the defaults. BTW, that in itself, removing the defaults alone would make this transition suck. Arrow keys would make more sense... but, it's just not working for me. Some of my clients won't even show the ship.

Tried clearing the Cache, and relogging on. No help.

Reading the other posts, it's obvious that this option, which I think having this option is good, definitely needs more polish and testing BEFORE you just throw it out on TQ.

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Owen Levanth
Sagittarius Unlimited Exploration
#53 - 2014-11-16 19:44:08 UTC
Feedback:

The manual controlls worked surprisingly smooth, but with the caveat that I immediately confused myself because the camera didn't move with my ship. Now I have to look if I have a camera-setting to bind the view to the orientation of my ship.

Even though the controls are kind of binary either-or the movement of the ships still give the feeling of smooth movement, which is a rather good illusion. Thanks to the graphics, I guess. P

One point which sprung at me immediately: The controls only work if you already have some speed. If you warp somewhere for example, you have to first get your ship moving into a direction before you can change it with the manual controls. Bad, please change this. Maybe make shortcuts for acceleration/decceleration?

Right now I would use keyboard-keys for some fine-tuned movement, but if this gets better later on, I can see using my joystick for real.

I've tested with my trusty old Logitech Attack 3, with the keyboard-keys bound to it with an external program. Hope you add real joystick-controls soon!
Jack Tronic
borkedLabs
#54 - 2014-11-16 19:45:32 UTC
Owen Levanth wrote:
Feedback:

One point which sprung at me immediately: The controls only work if you already have some speed. If you warp somewhere for example, you have to first get your ship moving into a direction before you can change it with the manual controls. Bad, please change this. Maybe make shortcuts for acceleration/decceleration?



They already exist.
Saberlily Whyteshadow
Perkone
Caldari State
#55 - 2014-11-16 19:57:10 UTC  |  Edited by: Saberlily Whyteshadow
Need to reduce the momentum from Pitch and from Roll movements. Having slower response times (might be due to the 1 tick/sec server response) means having to do a lot of over correcting. Especially noticeable on very fast/small ships.

Add a direction indicator in the form of a"Fixed Forward Cross hair" or a short visual "Laser Pointer" effect that gets longer the faster the ship moves to help with piloting when zoomed out (that only the ship pilot can see).
Can make them on/off or only come on when manual piloting.
Owen Levanth
Sagittarius Unlimited Exploration
#56 - 2014-11-16 20:17:15 UTC
Jack Tronic wrote:
Owen Levanth wrote:
Feedback:

One point which sprung at me immediately: The controls only work if you already have some speed. If you warp somewhere for example, you have to first get your ship moving into a direction before you can change it with the manual controls. Bad, please change this. Maybe make shortcuts for acceleration/decceleration?



They already exist.


Do you mean stuff like "Approach" and "Orbit", or do you mean actual "Go Faster" keybinds?
Arla Sarain
#57 - 2014-11-16 21:07:10 UTC  |  Edited by: Arla Sarain
I think a lot of people will be dying.

The loss of control after interacting with the overview is annoying as hell.

The bad: conflicts greatly with module activation (and overheating) and other actions in game for those who use F1,F2 ... Fn and 1,2 ... n for shortcuts. As well as the zooming out to 100x habit.

The good: its awesome. The feeling of being in control.

The catch: It's poor - left/right controls it on the horizontal plane; up/down is ok. IMO you should put effort into resolving left/right to be along the plane parallel to pitch angle. Otherwise flying in a cylinder is very unintuitive. The problem is that would require computation since you don't have the whole "dogfighting thing"

I applaud the endeavour.
Bones Outten
Council of Economic Advisors
Bitter Vets n Noobs
#58 - 2014-11-16 21:17:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Bones Outten
Adrie Atticus wrote:
Bones Outten wrote:
WOW!!!

I am not a noob, but am a Vet Eve player, but more so an FS user from 1995 through FSX & MS Flight development.

Any kind of many movement in a space ship fight game is an improvement & would bring on some proper dog fighting scenarios, especially those used to the WASD shift/ctrl/space group of players.

I agree; my first impressions of Eve from a long long time ago where based around flight simulator, Elite, Wind commander experience & the lack of direct flight input was debilitating to get used to.

Needless to say (without making Eve a flight simulator) some things need to be considered for those likely to go down the manual control (Stick) route:

The vector of the ship is in conflict with the turn & mass, the ship coming out of a turn up or down, when the ship should keep it's turn while modifying it's vector via delta-v.

Also coming out of a bank or nose up/down automatically makes if very 80's arcady, this also stops any form of immelman or other interception manoeuvres for dog fights. Need to be able to push past north or south for rolls, more variation in intercepts.

Following on from other posts, no direct input flight game would offer the vector for your own ship/craft, only for those of others for intercept or turret/gun tracking target purposes. But a chase camera option & a sitting in the pilot seat option IS essential.

I think the feature (for me) is a long awaited one. My biggest gripe being the spherical collision detection of most objects in Eve, not allowing you to hug objects, park close, hide behind objects, all weapons seem to magically ignore these objects when you are behind them or your enemy is (or even a friendly getting in the way) If this last paragraph is fixed it would make for a Very interesting game in eve (especially for fleet fights around stations or in asteroid fields). When behind an object you should be invulnerable to all but a homing missile (of sorts)

Either way it makes for expansion of the point click, click weapon & wait for enemy to die mythology & will allow people with real Stick skills to earn names within Eden.

I love it & on the edge of my seat to see where CCP takes this (or as usual F`s it up LOL, maybe they'll listen, but history teaches us otherwise)

Signed (not so bitter) Vet.


We don't have guns mounted on the nose, it's dynamic tracking. If they were mounted hard on the ship you'd limit the tracking of guns to the agility of the ships and limit the depth of the game. Turning Eve into a flight sim (it's a submarine sim at the moment at best) would alienate most of the players as you'd have to buy-in into a joystick just to play a game you've been playing for 11 years already.

What you describing is Eve Valkyrie and it's coming near you in close future, you might want to check it out. No, you don't need Oculus to play it. Only way to facilitate for manual control is to remove all the depth of the combat in the game and that is not something I personally want even though I'm not against some dec spending weekend hours to improve on this feature.


TBH I cannot think of any Aeroplanes or ships with guns mounted on the nose, nearly always, in wings or pod, some even auto track.

Even if it's dynamically tracked, being able to track (with your own ship), to intercept a ship manually improves, your turret tracking against a target. I am very aware of Oculus, Valkyrie an even the developers involved. My post wasn't intended to give the impression of wanting it to be a flight simulator (I have those already, if you'd read the post)
My post was sympathising with the point and shoot WASD modern game player, any action to improve "Movement" within the game is all good in my books. Also it's movement based, those happy with the point & click movement it shouldn't affect. Any game is only as good as it's players make it; no matter how much you click to follow target, the game will always be beaten by a good player willing to perform intercept manoeuvres to improve their hit ratio. Eve follow target lags & doesn't predict very well where shot will land, a player would learn & utilise this.

You last comment about hobbling the whole game to to make this work or removing depth of combat is a very 2 dimensional attitude; There are NO "Only" ways in development/software writing & bug fixing/improving Eve. Else the "Only" way POS & Sov could be improved by CCP would be to scrap it & start again, with your opinion the auto pilot button in all flight sims, therefore must be game breakers, as that is just the opposite of how Eve works.
Owen Levanth
Sagittarius Unlimited Exploration
#59 - 2014-11-16 21:18:33 UTC
Arla Sarain wrote:
I think a lot of people will be dying.

The loss of control after interacting with the overview is annoying as hell.


I just combined both with a lot of fancy keybinding. Targeting, for example, works like this with my testing-setup: I'm controlling the ship with my joystick and left hand, while my right hand uses the mouse to point at brackets I want to target.

One of my buttons is bound to ctrl+left mouseclick, so I press that button and target. F1 and other module-keys are also bound to the joystick, so I can just press buttons on it to fire, for example.

Works astonishingly well, especially since I can bind those stupid multiple-key shortcuts to single buttons. Easier on my memory/reflexes.
Kailii Severasse
KuiperNano
#60 - 2014-11-16 21:23:43 UTC
Great new feature. Found myself getting a bit disorientated from time to time though. The option of a tracking camera from behind to follow the ship (like in third person adventure games) might allow the player to better gauge the direction they are travelling, while still allowing for a free form camera for those that would prefer it.

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