Analogue input schemes

I'm currently messing around with several prototypes and I'm primarily making them for gamepad and I'm using my two analogue sticks in various ways. I feel like games made for gamepads should also have good keyboard controls as well, but I'm not sure the best way to translate the controls.
For example, using the two sticks to control two hands independently in a first person perspective game, or for a driving game where I use one stick for analogue steering and one for analogue acceleration. I'm aware that a standard PC setup generally has a mouse(or at the very least a trackpad) which can be used in lieu of an analogue stick, but you only usually have one of those.
The driving game seems easier to translate, making either steering or acceleration digital. But what would you do in situations with the hands or other dual analogue setups?
 
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Sn3akyP1xel

Guest
Tricky one. Smooth values, which digital doesn't take well to. But here goes.

You could use the amount of mouse movement for the analogue aspect. From a visual 'dev testing' perspective it would be like a circle with a point at the center (the circle representing 360deg of movement), the center point being the default position of the hands, moving away from the mouse initial position would move the hands. The distance they move would depend how far you moved the mouse in a direction from default center point.

Then you have the matter of two hands! So I'm thinking, two mouse buttons :)
It could make sense to use left click for left hand, and right click for right hand. With the control method used only when a key is held, like 'alt' or something. The moment you let go of the mouse button or alt, it would drift back to the default (center point) hand position.
 

flerpyderp

Member
This might not be that helpful, but the thread reminds me of when I played Splinter Cell Chaos Theory on PC and had no idea how you were supposed to play with mouse and keyboard, because a gamepad's left analog stick lets you use variable movement speed in order to sneak around and stuff. Obviously not something you can do with just WASD. It turned out that scrolling the mousewheel while moving would actually scroll through the different movement speeds. I thought it was odd at first, but it actually felt quite natural after some practice.
 
Oh wow, I never played Chaos Theory on PC. Great game though.
Actually, I hadn't considered the mouse wheel but that's a really interesting solution they had, and I think that could potentially be worth trying out too!
For the driving sections of my prototype I guess I could use the wheel to control acceleration.

Thanks for your reply, it was more helpful than you thought.
 
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