Gothic and Dualshock 4
Gothic is a series of games that were developed from 2001 – 2008 Piranha Bytes, in Russia the localizers were (everyone who wanted) 1C, Russobit-M, Akella, Snowball.
The plot of the game tells about the adventures of the nameless protagonist, sentenced to hard labor for an unknown crime. The character is sent to the Valley of Mine, surrounded by a magical barrier that serves as an obstacle to returning back.
The series consisted of 3 games:
— Gothic;
— Gothic II + DLC Night of the Raven;
— Gothic 3 + DLC Forsaken Gods;
This is, very briefly, if you are interested in this – welcome to the reviews, there is all the necessary information on the game. And today I want to talk to people who have heard about the game, but for a certain reason could not fall in love with this wonderful game and this reason is – control.
What’s the problem?
A young reader will ask me, and I will, of course, explain (that’s why I started it all).
Problem #1: all actions in the game occur by pressing 2 buttons – Action + Forward
Problem #2: uncomfortable running (turns are made by pressing the Q and E buttons and feel quite sharp)
Problem #3: lack of mouse support (well, more precisely, there is it, but the ease of using it in the game leaves much to be desired)
Let’s look at the default controls using Gothic II as an example (there is a game, there is no difference)
As shown in the menu
What does it look like in reality?
I find this control extremely inconvenient (especially for a right-handed person), all control is concentrated on the left hand. As you can see in the pictures, CTRL is responsible for the “Action”, which is usually located under the little finger, and the “Forward” button is under the W/middle finger. And if you get used to it, picking up items, opening chests and talking with characters goes well, but when it comes to a fight, your fingers begin to get tangled in a knot, and your hand gets incredibly tired after 10-15 minutes of playing. Here I probably need to explain what the combat system is (within melee combat).
Combat system
In all-jackpots-casino.uk order to start a battle, the hero needs to pull out a weapon, and aiming at the target occurs automatically.
Combat is based on 3 elements:
1. Attack – Action + Forward/Step left/Step right;
2. Block – Action + Back;
3. Dodge – Forward/Backward/Step left/Step right.
The block turned out to be extremely inconvenient; in 2 hours of playing I was not able to block a blow even once (possibly because I only used it against animals) so I used evasion.
As a result, the fight was built according to the following principle: CTRL+W, S, S, CTRL+W, S, S and so on. And if you forget to release CTRL when pressing S, you will die, if you forget to hold CTRL when pressing W, you will die. And maybe this sounds like stupidity, but my fingers got tangled and my hand got tired very quickly, as a result of which I decided to change controls.
First change of control
As shown in the menu
What does it look like in reality?
With this action, I unloaded the left hand and made it easier to work with CTRL (releasing the hand is easier than thinking about a separate finger on the hand), in addition, I assigned various little things, such as jump, magazine, drawing a weapon and others, to more intuitive keys. The only thing I left was the turns on Q and E, since I was already a little used to these buttons.
I went through the entire first part with this control, and although sometimes it caused me pain, I still enjoyed the game and even started playing through the second part of the trilogy..
But then I got a PS4, and I forgot about Gothic for a year.
Second change of control
A year later (yesterday or the day before) I came across the ArtemMars blog, about the charms of the first Gothic. Suddenly, something woke up in me, trembled and forced me to install Gothic II, throw crack patches on it and so on. But then the controls flicked me on the nose again, and yet I’ve only touched the keyboard for a year so that I can use social media. sit on the nets. And then I thought about my PS4 gamepad.
Having scoured the Internet, I found that the keyboard is emulated by a gamepad, the Joy to Key program. I couldn’t find where to buy it, so I concluded that it’s distributed free of charge (if not, don’t bother me). Then I started assigning keys to buttons. Just in case, I’ll explain, I have version 5.0.1, although the last one is already 6.0.1. if I’m not confusing anything.
What it looks like on the menu
What it looks like in Joy to Key
What does it look like in reality?
The advantages of this method:
— Turning left and right feels smoother, due to the fact that we run forward by pressing the D-Pad and turning the character on the Right Stick, which is actually very similar to console control;
— “Action” is under one hand, and the blow itself is under the other, making it easier to control “Action”;
— All other buttons are at hand; you don’t need to stretch your little finger across the floor of the keyboard (probably this is a dubious plus, since this is, in principle, an advantage of the gamepad over the keyboard, not related to the game).
And I would continue to rejoice and play like this if it weren’t for the bug. No, the bug is not related to the controls, but to the loading of the game. Actually, at the end of loading, the picture on the screen takes on a manganese color, which can be easily treated (by switching to windowed and then full-screen mode) with the combination Alt + Enter. Everything seems to be fine, but I load into the game indecently often, almost every battle with an enemy provides me with one or even two loads. Accordingly, after some time, I got tired of reaching for the keyboard and I started thinking about how to switch to windowed mode from the gamepad.
Third change of control
I went back to Joy to Key and started looking for key combinations, but everything turned out to be much simpler. When determining the assignment of keys, the program offers to assign 4 different keys to 1 button, I don’t think that the developers intended that the user would use this to create key combinations (because then there would probably be some signs indicating this), and yet it works.
Now I can fix the boot bug without going to the laptop. After playing for a few more minutes, I thought: “But the strokes in Gothic are also key combinations.”! Actually CTRL+CURSOR UP, why not create a new configuration and test it and I created.