Toki Tori devs launch blog, tease news
by JC Fletcher 
{ Jan 20th 2009 at 2:37PM }
But as interesting as ego-boosting videos and rejected concept art is (really!), the most intriguing statement is included in the press release: "Stay tuned, because this is just the beginning. We will be bringing you more blog entries and exciting Toki Tori news in the coming weeks!" Toki Tori news, you say? Could WiiWare's first sequel (to a WiiWare game) be on the way?
[Via GamesIndustry.biz]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Abscissa @ Jan 20th 2009 4:06PM
I seriously hope (but doubt) that they patch the controls. Toki Tori would have been a great game, but the lousy controls just ruined it. (How in the world do you mess up the controls on a 2D puzzle game?!?)
ejamer @ Jan 20th 2009 4:18PM
I didn't notice anything wrong with the controls at all. What issues did you have?
velocitySTRIKE @ Jan 20th 2009 5:16PM
Same, the controls were absolutely fine for me, and the multiple options came in handy when I couldn't be bothered using both hands to play.
Two Tribes @ Jan 21st 2009 3:29AM
@Abscissa: What do you actually dislike about the current controls?
Abscissa @ Jan 21st 2009 12:10PM
It has two basic types of movement controls (Analog Stick and IR Pointing), both of which are horribly imprecise for this type of game (2D, tile-based, scrolling). Bottom-line, no 2D game ever has a good excuse for disallowing DPad movement. (In this case, both sideways-wiimote DPad and Classic Controller DPad.)
Sure, Wiimote-only mode uses the DPad to change items, but that's a trivial problem to solve: Allow 1 and 2 to change items and also allow IR-Pointing-based item-changing on the "zoomed-out" screen or the pause screen.
Two Tribes @ Jan 21st 2009 2:05PM
Thanks for your comments!
We actually play-tested this a lot. And to be honest we never had the feeling that D-pad controls were absolutely required to play this game the way it was intended. If you don't like the 'relaxed' IR controls, the stick controls on the nunchuck and/or classic controller should give you more than enough control in this game.
Toki Tori automatically walks to the next tile, so there is no need to precisely control Toki to that one pixel position you're looking for. Also the game, unlike a lot of other 2D platformers out there, doesn't require the player to precisely time his/her actions. There are hardly any time-based challenges in Toki Tori, further reducing the requirement to have a more direct control (whereas I still feel the stick gives you more than enough 'direct control', but one could argue that D-pad controls are far more direct)
Lastly, allowing the player to use the D-pad controls on the IR controller would interfere, like you said, with the way the player switches items. Not everyone likes to flick his Wii-remote to switch items, so we wanted to add a "shoulder button item switch" to the Wii-remote. Unfortunately many buttons, such as the (1) and (2) were rejected because of the odd location. So we decided to use the D-pad for that: it's easily accessible with your thumb, whereas the other buttons were not.
Allowing D-pad controls on the classic controller is definitely debatable, and we'll surely keep that in mind when designing our next 2D game ;-)
Thanks again for your input ;-)
Cheers
Abscissa @ Jan 21st 2009 4:29PM
Thanks for reading and responding! It's rare to see a dev company take such an interest to read and respond to comments out around places like this. You have my respect :).
To directly respond to your, umm, response:
I wasn't referring to the block-at-a-time movement. I have no problem with that, and I agree that pixel-at-a-time movement would have been inappropriate for Toki Tori. But frankly, the block-at-a-time movement makes analog-stick control even less appropriate than it already is in 2D games that do use pixel-perfect movement. I'll elaborate more, but part of the reason for that is that the decreased accuracy of an analog stick makes it much easier to accidentally walk an extra block farther than intended (a problem I've rarely had with DPads).
In my original comment, by "imprecise" I was referring to, for example, "move one square to the left" vs "don't move". With a DPad, that's a simple mapping to "button press" vs "no button press". But with an analog stick, such a "move vs stay" concept must be emulated by adding in concerns such as linear-distance-to-center deadzone, and angular-distance-from-cardinal-direction. Human thumb/finger motor control is just far less accurate when used in that way. And for many of the people who have ever been accustomed to DPads, such as myself, the difference in how accurate we can be is so noticeable that the analog-stick form constantly feels irritatingly awkward (despite the fact that I've been using analog sticks ever since the N64 was released).
Of course analog-stick control is better than DPad for certain types of games (racing, 3D platformer, etc), but that is because in those games, unlike most 2D games such as Toki Tori, the character's movement *is* essentially analog (and somewhat imprecise) in nature. Ie, "move in this general direction, by roughly this speed". But in a game like Toki Tori, the character's movement is essentially digital in nature. Ie, "move a block" vs "stay still".
The IR Pointing control is certainly nice to have, but it's still no more of an appropriate DPad substitute than the analog stick, albeit for slightly different (though similar) reasons:
First of all, Toki Tori's levels have scrolling, and that interferes with pointing. The player is effectively unable to choose the character's next destination while the character is moving. This may not sound like much, but it ruins the sense of really being in control of the character, and makes the gameplay feel clumsy.
Secondly, I assume you've noticed the enormous size of all of the Wii's built-in UI buttons (such as on the channel menu). This is because most people's hands aren't steady or accurate enough to use the IR pointing any more accurately than that. (More precision than that can be expected of the user in an action game, but only because the player's attempt at accuracy is typically an integral element of action-oriented gameplay.) Unfortunately, Toki Tori's tiles are too small for IR Pointing to be sufficiently accurate. (Theoretically, that could be solved by zooming the camera in closer, but for Toki Tori that would probably be unacceptable because it would prevent the player from seeing as much of the level as they should be able to see at once, thus requiring them to revert to the map view far too often.)
Also, I've noticed when using IR Pointing control that the game shows a trail indicating the character's path after it's been selected. This is nice, but it really should be shown before the player presses A. It's clear that much care was taken to make sure the character always takes the safest, most rational path, but the player is still left with the uncomfortable feeling of not knowing if the character is going to start out in the direction they intended.
Regarding timing, I have found that to be a regular problem on most of the maps with those green spiky crawling monsters (including the first map they appear on). It's far worse with the IR pointing, but even the analog control still feels awkward enough to throw off my timing. I end up having to follow this sequence of steps every time I try to pass by that creature:
1. Wait until the monster passes by and the path seems safe.
2. Move to the very last "safe" tile before the monster.
3. If I accidentally went too far in step 2 (this happens far too often), then back up (but hopefully not too far again, or not far enough) before the monster comes back.
4. Wait for the monster to pass by again.
5. Go (and hope I don't go the wrong way if I'm using IR control).
That's unacceptable considering that DPad control would allow me to perform the entire task in a very fluid, natural way just like any other game. The cumulative end result is that anytime I play Toki Tori, I feel like I'm fighting the controls more than I'm solving (commendably good) puzzles.
If you really want IR-Pointing users to be able to select items with the DPad, then there should be an options screen where people who have actually played videogames before can choose sideways-remote style (And preferably GC pad as well, if the game doesn't already support it. The Wii officially supports GC pads, so there's really not much reason to disallow it for those who want to use it. Even if the GC has a bad DPad, many people like myself like to use PS2->GC controller adapters.) Just because a particular control style can't be inferred automatically doesn't mean it should be omitted entirely for those who actually care and are intelligent enough to use something as simple as an options screen. (And anyone who doesn't understand options screens will just ignore it anyway. Win-win.)