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Played flying games first. Inverted ever since.
Same, I played this wwii flying ace game on the PC before any other game had movement in 3 axis (axes? axises?) and it just stuck. Even back in goldeneye, inverted. It’s like imagine if the joystick was poking out the top of your head
Tilting your head. I get it yeah! 😝 Makes sense.
Axies* 🙃
Axes* 😉
Ah it’s one of those sounds different but spelled the same f*ckers.
Only when controlling flying crafts.
Even then I leave my view stick verted.
It’s largely an age gap I think. The first generation of FPS games on N64, PS1, etc used inverted controls, so if you’re an old man millennial like me, that’s how you learned to play.
Then in later generations (PS2/3 and on) this changed and inverted became an option, rather than the default (or in some games, only!).
Thus younger gamers are used to “standard” and older gamers used to inverted.
It’s funny, I’m a millennial as well. I remember those inverted games and it feeling wrong to me. Once I started finding “regular” games it always felt better imo
Killzone on PS2 was the first game I played that wasn’t inverted and it took me several hours to figure out why aiming was so hard
Yeah, that’s why I played inverted for the longest time. Took a break from gaming for a bit and have since switched to standard.
I have absolutely no idea when I expect the y axis to be inverted or not. Every new game I expect the opposite of how it is.
Did, I guess. For the past ten years. All 3d games make me too sick to play them these days.
some old-school players because they learned mouse/controller camera movements on simulators. think what a pilot does when they want to tilt up: they pull, so you pull the mouse toward you, ie “down”
To this day I play flight sims inverted like that, but normal FPS feels unnatural to invert the camera
I played inverted for quite some time in the early days. It always made sense to me because i imagined holding someone’s skull, when you tilt up, the eyes go down. I switched when playing games like counter strike 1.4 and on. I can honestly play both equally, i just stuck to “normal”
Halo CE “recalibrating your MJOLNIR suit”
I used to play inverted. If it wasn’t inverted, I’d flail around helplessly. Then one day, inverted didn’t feel right, and I had to switch. It’s been that way ever since. Sometime during the PS2 era I think. I played equal numbers of PC and console games up to that point. Dunno why it happened.
I use inverted Y look with pad controls. Because that makes so much more sense. (Normal mouse look is fine)
I like how many new games show accessibility settings on start but it’s still rare for them to have both subtitle settings and invert Y right there. And always a celebration when they are.
Games that don’t even let you invert Y are hella silly. I’m so glad Xbox lets you force the invert. Gotta figure out if you can do that in Windows/Linux.
In Steam (Windows/Linux) you can set any button on the controller to be whatever the hell you want. Another button, a mouse, a command, keyboard, anything.
That’s part of the appeal.
I recently built a tp camera rig for a game and in the process completely lost orientation and somehow converted myself into inverted. Games that I had in progress suddenly felt wrong for a while after that. I think I’m just very aware of the camera now instead of the view.
image
This just feels natural. It’s kinda like using “natural scrolling” option on a touchpad. Why would you ever want it to move the opposite direction?
The difference is that most people think of it is moving their face rather than holding a camera.
I wonder if this correlates with the preference for laptop touchpad’s natural scrolling vs. traditional scrolling.
If the first game you ever played with a stick was a flight simulator, then down is up.
I remember playing the original Rainbow Six game in 1998 inverted. Can’t remember why, or if that was the default, but I got used to it and haven’t been able to use the controls backwards since. Besides, if you lean forward you look down - why would controls be any different?
if you lean forward you look down - why would controls be any different?
By that logic, tilting the stick to the left should either make you look to the right, or just rotate the view without actually changing the direction you’re looking in
Tipping makes sense. Idk it’s like if the joystick is the top of your character’s head.
If you see the stick as the top of your character’s head, you’d have to twist it to look left or right. Tilting it would just rotate the image you see under that mental model
I agree. But it still feels right for up and down which is the only thing at issue.
No reason up and down can’t make sense that way and left and right be for rotating a different axis. Like driving a car with a joystick doesn’t mean if you expect pushing forward makes it go forward then logically when you go left or right on the stick you expect the car to strafe.
Wellllll in most driving games you accelerate and brake with the triggers though, and the left stick does nothing on the vertical axis :P
Okay for real though, I’m not here to tell anyone how to game. Use whatever feels right for you, and having the option to invert stick axes is a great inclusivity feature I’d never argue against! I just have a little too much fun arguing with people trying to rationalize something that really just doesn’t need to be rationalized to be valid.
I just have a little too much fun arguing with people trying to rationalize something that really just doesn’t need to be rationalized to be valid
We have that in common.
It seems like there’s an argument for axes of rotation to be made but I can’t find it. Or at least why a sliding window isn’t the optimal steering strategy for first person gaming but I can’t find the race.
To be fair, I am not even (outside of flight based games like aerofighters assault once upon a time) an inverted thumb stick user…
Mind blown. That actually never occurred to me.
Yep. And for me, it changed. I played fps on controller my whole childhood, I was always standard. I started playing less controller and more mouse and keyboard as I got older.
A few years ago I started flying fpv drones.
Recently tried to use a controller again? Whoops I can only play inverted now 🤷♂️
Same here. But “downward stick is flying upwards”. I play regular, but the horizontal axes inverted when in 3rd person mode. In first person I’m looking the way the stick moves, but in 3rd person I move the camera where I point the stick. Like Lakitu in Mario 64
Elite, Wing Commander, and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe shaped me before looking up or down was even a thing in FPS games.
Same. The first few PC games I played in the mid 90’s were ms flight sim and my dad had the joystick. Then MechWarrior 2. Also inverted by default. Tbh it’s a perspective shift. In most games with 3rd person I usually don’t invert. But if I’m first person I have to invert.
Yes!. I remember when my brother and I played our first 3D fps (half life), we both agreed it made more sense to invert the y axis. I hadn’t even considered all our history playing joystick flight sims as an influence
Also probably if you played Descent
There it is. Old guys unite!
I was this way up to roughly the Xbox 360 era.
And then it just didn’t feel right any more. In fact neither way felt right for a while.
Now I’m a right way up boy.
Literally just realized this is why I always invert.
Except I have to change from the default in flight simulators too.
Well first game I played was pacman and down was down!
Or anything on the N64. Nintendo really loved inverted y in the early days of analog.
Before that the down-arrow key was “up”.
Only in Ace Combat or Project Wingman.
Everywhere else down is down and up is up.
The best games shuffle your controller inputs at random on startup to promote mental flexibility and problem solving skills.
I think it’s the original Halo that asks you to look up or down during the tutorial, and then chooses your input method based on what you press.
Was a neat way of doing it.
I think the third (fourth?) Ratchet & Clank also did that.
2 and 3 do the same diagnostic routine, and Reach asks you to look at a building in the distance.
I was pretty new at console FPS when I first tried that game, and I had never realised before then that people might play inverted. Tripped me out.
This is funny to me, because it took a really long time for me to realise anyone used anything other than “inverted”. I remember when I was first presented with the option, I became very confused, because of course I selected “normal”, but then it turned out “normal” was the wrong way around…
Wow, that’s an interesting way
Me: right stick
Computer: … Welp
I did most of a Dark Souls playthrough with a PS3 controller that was breaking down. There’s a tiny foam block on the inside that, after some years of abuse, will flatten out and trigger spurious inputs if some controls are pressed too hard. This caused an interesting challenge, since after panic-rolling, I would usually stand back up disarmed (d-pad right/left swaps that hand out for an alt item which was empty). It seemed kinda/sorta natural that way, and didn’t know that wasn’t a game mechanic (in this already ludicrously hard game) until I talked to some friends about it.
Edit: I made it through about 75% of the game like this.
what kinda games do you play???
I’ll let you know when I figure out how to get to the title screen.
StarCraft 2 coop has a mode called vertigo, which every 15 sec rotates your camera by a random angle… I had headache for 2 days…
More like “I start this new game and try to look at my feet”…
I exclusively play inverted. I find it also gives better control while playing FPS games.
I like to imagine inverted players control their character by grabbing a stick on the top of their characters head
It’s more like the analogue stick is representing your characters neck. IRL you pull your neck down to look up, and vice versa.
There’s issues with all the analogies. If I tilt the stick left, if it was my neck, then I would roll my neck to the left and I’d need to twist the stick to look around. Perhaps this is the missing control scheme we’ve been waiting for.
Sure but then with this perspective, shouldn’t left and right also be inverted??
I care more about the vertical inversion than the horizontal one. Not certain why. Have played with horizontal inversion on before and it didn’t bother me much after a minute or two.
Not necessarily, IMO. You tilt your head back to look up, but you don’t tilt your head left to look right.
I think it’s an issue of mapping potentially 6 axes of movement to a 2D plane. They don’t all line up the same way. Left and right in the game line up with left and right on the mousepad, but up and down in the game map to forward and back with the mouse.
Thinking of the mouse being glued to the top of your head works better for me.
No because when you look left your head doesn’t tilt right. When you look up your head tilts backwards
No your using a reference point at the back of you head to say its tilting back when you look up, if you keep the same reference point for the horizontal axis you are turning the head to the right to look left, etc.
I thought the reference point was the top of the head not the back
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
You’re a monster
