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Comment by rux | Hacker News Reader

Descent's control system is for me what cemented the "invert Y axis" on the mouse for controlling first person gaming forevermore. My brain absolutely clicked with the 6DoF mindset, but it has meant that all FPS games from that point on had to conform to it, even if the game wasn't in any way flying-based.

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A mouse for Descent? We used to play with both hands on the keyboard- look, slide, and spin on the number pad, move, fire, etc. on the far left side. We're we alone?

That’s the way I started but eventually used two FlightSticks. Banking movement with one hand (forward, backward, sideways), rotating around two axis with the other (barrel roll, pitch), and the thumb sticks I used for up/down and left/right. Although I might misremember some details. There was a time when I really wanted to add a pair of pedals, too. Ah, to have that much time to spare again.

I play Descent I and II today, on period hardware. How do you hook up two joysticks and have them be used in the game?

Ouch. "period hardware". That does it - I'm officially old.

I'm 62. I'm period hardware.

look into "period hardware" which is itself a "dual joystick" (typically literally sold for use in descent). it's a gimmick that sold i.e. why have one joystick when you can have two. Then you should just have a single i/o interface to your MIDI game port.

The Macintosh version of the FlightStick had an ADB (Apple Desktop Bus) plug that had a port on the other end so you could plug in another device. It’s been 30 years. Do you think I might misremember? Maybe it was a FlightStick and a Saitek joystick? If you are running the original game on period hardware and tell me that the software wouldn’t know how to tell two different joysticks apart regardless of which type, then I guess I’d have to admit that there’s something fishy with my memory.

most people nowadays play on source ports (D1x-Redux is the current top of the heap) that support multiple controllers.

Yeah flightstick was the way to play Descent, I used a Logitech Wingman Light. Never tried two sticks, always controlled strafing with keyboard

The wingman was amazing. Lot's of leeway and light and smooth. It seemed to have been built for environments like descent, where your fighter swooshed gracefully through space under any 3d angle.

THE way to play Descent was with a Spaceball Avenger. I was a beta tester for one, holding it in your hand was like your brain interfacing directly with the ship. Sadly the sensors broke over the years and I'm settling for joysticks.

I dug around in my archives and found this post, someone is running Descent in DOSBox on an XP machine and using two USB joysticks and xpadder to set it up.

https://www.reddit.com/r/retrobattlestations/comments/zcycoq...

Two joysticks ruled.

You weren't alone, but we just used more hands.

I usually did navigation, and my grade school aged son did the shooting while sitting on my lap.

Now he's 33 and I'm 64, we'll have to switch places.

Hello old me! :) My 6 year old son broke two spacebars firing the Phoenix Cannon one summer...

bwahahaha, I love that!

The Circle of Descent continues....

I would sometimes play “co-op“ with my little brother, navigating with a flight stick and the number pad while he managed weapons and firing. It’s fun to see decades later that we weren’t the only ones to play Descent this way!

I did this with my boy too, it was so much fun and great bonding over easily understood teamwork!

No mouse here, only carpal tunnel. I tried playing a few years back and my right hand was locked up within a few minutes.

Inverted Y players unite!

Descent also contributed to my ruined brain, along with Flight Simulator 95. Cannot play without inverted Y.

"Inverted Y" is what Wright brothers had on the Flyer.

The left hand writers serve the wicked one. The inverted ones are the devils! Burn them at the joystickstake!

Me too!

The first game I played with mouse support in the 90s, I believe, was Flight Simulator 3.0, and I think by default (?) it was set up for inverted mouse (or was MS-DOS Star Wars: TIE Fighter, can't remember).

Since then, when I started playing other FPS games with mouse support (like Quake and similar), this mode prevailed.

However, the biggest challenge came years later with FPS games for smartphones - retraining my mind to play with non-inverted orientation. Quite an adventure!

I got made fun of for being a Y-inverted person, but I had my revenge when none of my non inverted friends could reliably control the bucket on a front-loader I had rented. Neener neener.

Inverted Y for joystick/thumb stick makes sense to me and is what I use...but inverted Y for mouse!? That's just crazy :)

It was SO annoying when it turned out Crysis 3 does not respect this setting in the VTOL-flying sections.

I got so used to the inverted-y that it's the first thing I change in the game setting as I just can't play on normal settings on any FPS. I wish that inverted-y was the default for all games. I don't know when I got used to the inverted y, perhaps while playing X-wing or maybe Quake.

X-wing contributed, but so did any flight game really, like Star Fox for the SNES. It only made sense to play Duke Nukem, Quake, and Descent with the same controls.

For me it’s entirely context based. If it’s a flying game, I can only play it if Y is inverted. For an FPS, I can only play without inverted Y.

There’s no real difference between except the context. I just got used to playing FOS games one way, and flight sims the other, and now my brain is wired that way.

Even in games where you can frequently switch between FPS and flying, I can only do both if there’s a separate Y invert setting for each context.

It's exactly the same for me. With one exception: Freelancer. There "pointing" with the mouse just felt more natural because you control the guns at the same time and don't really control the ship but instead tell it where to fly.

Yeah, now that you mention it, is the same for me. I don’t think it’s an exception though since it’s really more like arming than flying, as you said.

I also think that's where they wanted to go to. I read some previews that they planned on having an even more indirect control scheme with you being able to buying better control computers that offer better maneuvers. But we all know how messy the development process of Freelancer was...

For me, I can't play with inverted y on mouse at all, can't with gamepad for ground based games, but for flight based games on gamepad, I can't play without inverted y.

It's quite frustrating at times.

I genuinely have no idea how people can stand inverted Y in an FPS. It makes no sense! You're controlling the way you look, not nudging the nose of a spacecraft. I'm very thankful that it's not the default.

If i remember correctly, inverted y used to be the default even for early FPS games. The option to turn it off (opt-out) was added later. The default was inverted (opt-in) even later.

It wasn't a universal default, some games like Quake and Chasm did not have reversed Y by default while others like Duke3D and SkyNET had reversed Y by default. Though all of them had an option to reverse Y, i can't think of an FPS that did not have the option.

And TBH i'm not sure how much defaults played a role back then, they all pretty much had very weird defaults :-P.

I recently came across my first game where not only is the non-inverted Y the default, there's also no way of setting inverted Y as an option! Consequently I can never play Genshin Impact. The lack of a setting is seemingly a long-running issue in forums, as the developers seem to be ignoring requests to implement it.

Old games all had what is now called "Inverted Y-axis".

I assume they took it from aircraft controls, that are pull = pitch up (both stick, joystick and yoke-controlled). Counter-Strike ruined it :)

I wonder if I am the only one who wanted to invert both axes when playing a third-person game on a gamepad.

Ultimately, I found both control schemes equally unintuitive in practice, I'll have to wait until someone manages to make modern Zeldas work with a mouse.

Same for me, did make it annoying when playing halo and switching controllers every time someone died in campaign.

> "invert Y axis"

Sidewinder Pro reporting in. Is there any other way?

Trackpad scroll direction is the new inverted y axis.

this happened to me! thought I was the only one :D <3

Same for me I think. It was Descent Freespace on my grandparent's computer and ever since I've been an inverted look freak (/s).

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