schellingb
[Feature Request] Snap to Action Wheel Selection
First, thank you for this amazing core. It's simple to pick up a few games from your youth and play them with a gamepad, bringing part of the PC gaming experience to a more console-oriented setting.
About that, there's the action wheel, a very ingenious solution for button shortcuts, like changing weapons on an FPS game. Usually, it's operated by the right analog stick or the d-pad, and it works mostly fine, but I notice an issue: it bounces back to the center (neutral selection) as soon as you release the action wheel button. If your timing is a little off, the wheel will be dismissed without a proper selection. On the other hand, if you make sure the stick or d-pad is all way towards the selection, you might input whatever action they're binded to, after the wheel is gone. Doesn't matter what you choose to do, you must be precise every time you summon the wheel, if you want it to work properly.
What I suggest is: if possible, it would be interesting for the selection to "snap" to whatever you selected in the action wheel, so it wouldn't bounce back to the center. It would alleviate much of the precise timing requirement. It doesn't even need to be made default, but be a setting inside the input section, in the core options. Something like Advanced > Snap to Action Wheel Selection (on/off).
Thanks for your time. Sorry if it this was discussed before, I searched and couldn't find nothing. Feel free to close the issue if this is the case.
If you look closely, when you release the stick or d-pad (while keeping the Action Wheel open) it will take a (very) short time to have the wheel-cursor move back into the center. So it doesn't instantly move back. It is possible to release the stick or d-pad a very short moment before releasing the Action Wheel button and it will still accept your selection. Maybe we can just make the "move back to the center speed" a bit slower and things would work for you?
If it were to snap to a selection and never back, how would you close the Action Wheel without actually inputting a selection? I feel like it's important to allowing the wheel to be closed without doing anything.
I occasionally run into these problems as well.
I think two Action Wheel options would be great:
- A wheel option that will automatically close when the analog stick reaches the center of an outer yellow zone of the wheel. It would essentially auto select the first item it touches. So when the stick reaches this area it will select the weapon and immediately close the wheel without having to let go of the Action Wheel button:
Using the center area of the yellow zone would be better than having to move the stick all the way to the very edge of the wheel, because when quickly flicking the stick it sometimes might not reach the very edge. So doing this would provide a more consistent input.
A snap option would work well with this, where the stick snaps in the direction of the nearest wheel item. Some games have wheels that work like this. It would be the fastest weapon selection method.
- And this:
Maybe we can just make the "move back to the center speed" a bit slower and things would work for you?
Check out Quake 2 on Steam, it works in a similar way and it's very good. It will remain on the selected weapon for roughly 400ms after you've let go of the stick. It displays the weapon/item selection with an arrow, but for DBP it could simply keep the outer yellow zone and yellow text highlighted for a similar amount of time.
I think both suggestions are great. Whatever solves the issue is fine, it's just that, as of now, you either unintentionally close the wheel without making a selection, or "overcommit" your input to make sure you select something. I'm aware a "perfect selection" can be done, but I feel the timing is way more strict than it should be.
Since it's difficult to please everyone, making the solution a toggleable option (or a dropdown list, maybe) could be wiser, so people may stick to the old behavior, if they feel like it.