An idea for the new default gamepad mapping

[krazov]

First of all, I would like to say it’s more of an invitation to a discussion. Perhaps, Brad, you could link here more people that you know use pad. Anyway, let us begin.

I’ve been playing with a pad on and off for years (though summarised, it wouldn’t be more than six months), and I realised I always reconfigure prev and next buttons. Luckily, Doom has so little buttons needed that almost everything can fit in those 10 buttons, 2 sticks, and one D-Pad (read: 4 additional buttons).

(Image taken from here.)

No change:

• LSB (moving)
• RSB (turning around)
• LT (activating walk/run, depending on always run value)
• RT (shooting)
• A (use/open)

Intended improvement:

• LB and RB: prev and next weapon. At the moment—and correct me if I’m wrong—Y and B are used, but this means that to change weapons, I have to take mu thumb from RSB and I cannot rotate. Quite often, I have to change a weapon in the middle of the action, when backing from a potentially lethal situation. Now, those button zoom in and zoom out the map, but adjusting the map is an action rather taken in a safe situation. Hence,
• X and Y: zoom in (X) and zoom out (Y).
• B: switching map on and off. At the moment, a BACK button is used, so to turn off the map, I have to take my finger from a RSB (which is fine because I am in no danger) but then I have to take a long leap with my palm. In the beginning, the pad used to fell from my hands. And I don’t have small palms. B would allow me for a quick pick.
• D-PAD: currently unused, could allow for direct access of weapons: shotgun (top), chaingun (right), rocket launcher (bottom), and plasma gun (left). Clockwise. The only weapons not available this way would be BFG-9000 and melee weapons, the rationale being they’s least used. This is more for convenience because I will have to stop moving to switch weapon this way.
• BACK: with B opening the map, this could open menu.
• START: open the console. On rare occasions, I use the console to read a message that popped on the screen but I didn’t manage to read it.

In the menu, everything stays as it was.

I’m curious about what you think. And maybe some other people too.

[VGkav]

That's about what I use when playing Doom with a gamepad.

The shoulder buttons are strafe if the left stick turns (like in Doom PSX). And they are weapon switches when the left stick is also strafe, like in modern ports.

And in GZDoom I have put the 4 most important weapons on the dpad directions.

[bradharding]

Thanks Jon! Hmm, this has given me something to think about. The defaults I've always wanted to keep as generic and natural as possible, and I think I originally copied them from the BFG Edition version defaults. Now I see the Unity version defaults are different again. Let me play around with these controls for a bit and I'll get back to about it.

One thing I will work on straight away is that at this stage there is no way to bind the +console action to a gamepad control, only a key. Although I'm not a fan of the gamepad being able to open the console by default, I'll certainly allow it as an option.

[dftf-stu]

As someone who was first-introduced to DOOM back with DOOM and Final DOOM on the PlayStation, yeah... not a fan of the current controller-layout, and gutted there is no way to change it (at-least, the "Using a Controller" help section only gives one layout and says nothing more, and I looked in the doomretro.cfg file, and doesn't seem you can alter the bindings in their either).

Aside from Automap (SELECT), Pause (START - press SELECT while paused for the Menu) and movement (D-Pad), the PlayStation port would let you choose which button you liked for all the other commands.

Here's the layout I used to use:

It would be great if DOOM Retro would allow such customisation, as I was recently recommended to consider moving to this port from my current Crispy DOOM, but not being able to re-map the controls makes it a no-go currently (which is a shame, as I have been reading-through the Console Variables and there is lots of good stuff in there!)