Well, I know I mentioned I wasn’t going to post anything for a while, but I thought of some funny stuff that is appropriate for a developer blog. Although Retro/Grade is fully playable with a gamepad, it also supports guitar controllers for those who prefer to try a more unique take on our reverse shoot ‘em up gameplay. However (especially for the public PC demo), providing guitar compatibility was a very difficult process. In order to support all the guitars, I had to test each model out and figure out how DirectInput mapped the controls, which varied based on the model and platform. We supported controllers for Wii, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, which ended up being a lot of different controllers to test. (Here’s the list of what we ended up supporting) Since we are an indie shop and don’t have the resources to purchase a ton of guitar controllers, I concocted a plan that actually worked quite well. I bought a guitar at the Sherman Oaks Best Buy, which is very close to our office, plugged it into my PC, and got all the information I needed from it. Then the next day, I returned it and repeated the process. I did this for over a week. Not once did I get any resistance from the customer service desk, so I’d like to thank them all for (perhaps unwillingly) helping me make the public demo the most fun to the largest audience of people. I tried to do it at different times of the day, but I definitely got the same clerk more than once, but maybe they didn’t notice, or they just plain didn’t care.
Anyway, the indie saga continues! As you may be aware, 4 new guitar controllers just came on the market. From Activision, there is the Guitar Hero 5 controller. For the Beatles: Rock Band, they released the entire signature instrumentation from the Beatles: the Gretsch Duo-Jet, the Rickenbacker 325, and the Höfner bass – the latter is only available in the $249.99 bundle. Anyway, the explosion of music game peripherals and the possible difficulties of supporting them must have attacked my subconscious because this morning I had a nightmare relating to this.
Basically, in the nightmare, I was at a store, and I was trying out the new Höfner bass controller and playing The Beatles: Rock Band. The controls were all different, and the bass controller had different knobs and sliders as well as a completely different thing instead of a strum bar. It was like a rotating disk with a little dimple for your thumb to turn it. I was worried how on earth I’d support it and concerned about the cost of the bundle in order to get the hardware to test it out. Anyway, that may seem like a tame nightmare to some, but boy did I ever wake up anxious!
-Matt
PS. For those keeping score, Band Hero has a bundle that will probably come with some sort of guitar. Who knows if it’ll be yet another model! It appears that Lego Rock Band is bundleless, so although having a guitar made out of Legos would be sweet, it doesn’t appear to be in the cards. I haven’t been paying attention to the 3rd party peripheral manufacturers, but there are a ton more that I’ve never tried that I am crossing my fingers hoping they have feature parity with the name brands.
