AU Diary: To Invert Or Not Invert
Do you invert?
The often hilarious HardCasual catches up with that grizzled old relic of the gaming scene, the Inverted Y-Axis.
“They say soon people won’t even need the Y-Axis all together,” mumbles Inverted, his tone crescendoing, “Well that’s a bunch of hogwash. The Y-Axis is one of the two most important Axes of today. If not ever.”
Despite his defiance, it seems like the days of the inverted look are coming to an end. Every new game opts for “uninverted” – or Normal Look, as it’s tellingly referred to – as its default control scheme these days. But it wasn’t always thus.
I was never a flight sim player, but I remember playing the heck out of Descent when it came out. Keyboard control only, I should stress, my right hand contorted over the number pad, agile fingers maintaining my ship’s pitch, yaw and banking motions. Pressing up to look down made perfect sense.
My first mouse look game was Terminator: Future Shock (pictured). The lessons I’d learned from Descent translated easily: of course moving the mouse forward would make me look down! That’s how the human head moves, forward to look down, pulling back to look up. Quake followed and with every subsequent first-person game I played on PC, inverting that mouse was the only way to go.
Something weird happened when I got my Xbox in 2002 and I began playing Halo. I struggled with the analog stick setup at first, in part because it was a scheme alien to my PC heritage, but also because for some reason pushing up to look down no longer made sense. My natural instinct was to move the crosshair around the screen rather than feeling like I was shifting my head through 3D space.
Over the years the two control schemes conflicted. On PC I still inverted; on console I’d opt for uninverted.
Then during a break from PC gaming around 2005/06, I lost the ability to play inverted. Console gaming had rewired my brain. When I returned to the PC – and I distinctly remember it being for Shadowrun of all things – I couldn’t play inverted any more. I tried… I really tried. After all, I’d been a PC gamer all my life, how could I let this happen?
But I failed. Today, I don’t invert at all, on console or on PC. I’m normal now. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
Do you invert? What was the game that taught you? And have you ever switched one way or the other?
Inverted Y-Axis Acknowledges Own Mortality [HardCasual]
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Comments
Consoles… Yes
PC… No
and my friends fucking hate it when we’re drunk and gaming.. or controller swapping a game.. “fucking inverted freak!”
I think it is probably an age thing. I am 36 and will always invert if given the op.
inverted. fuck yeah.
Mouse: Normal
Controller: Inverted. Always.
The first console game I played was Halo on the original Xbox at a friends house and my friend accidentally left it as inverted since the tutorial.
Which ones which?
I’m confused!
Depends entirely on the game. Generally, I don’t invert either direction, but some games default to inverting the controls.
What really gets me, though, is when they invert left/right. Especially in third-person games. I generally use panning the camera left/right to steer in third person games. Inverting left/right for the camera controls is actually in terms of the physics of what is going on the correct thing to do. You’re moving the position of the camera to the right, so the field of view shifts left. That doesn’t make it any less of an absolute brain-melter for me.
I always play inverted on console, but as mentioned before with a mouse normal seems natural as the mouse moves like that the rest of the time. I usually use an Xbox 360 controller on PC and what realy annoys me, inverted or not, is when new games don’t support controllers, (I’m looking at you Blood Money) sure people say “keyboard and mouse controls are 1337″ why do you want a controller, but surely they can just put the option in anyway in case some people disagree, the only time i find mouse is better is for RTS.
Only time i ever invert is in flying games, as it feels right to pull back on your toggle and have the nose of the plane rise. Any other games are just standard
I invert but none of my other friends or family does. Always find it hard quickly swapping after rounds of COD 5 on xbox to suddenly be looking at the sky not knowing whats going on.
Consoles must be inverted while PC has to be normal
As some have already said – inverted for flight sims only. For everything else it makes no sense to invert.
Perhaps you can invert for 3rd person games if you want to train as a camera operator. But even then it gets a bit weird when you push in for that over the shoulder shooting view. Cause most are going to want to push right to aim right. But following on with the ‘I am a camera man’ analogy, pushing right on the stick should pan your view left (as would be the case if you pushed right on the tripod stick you had your camera mounted to).
Nope. Non-inverted all the way. Where moving the ‘free-look’ stick up corresponds to shifting your view up. Left is left. Right is right. Simple.
Cause when you invert this axis your forcing an analogy that doesn’t quite fit. And that’s true whether you’re pretending to be a “movie camera operator”, or that the 2nd thumbstick is “your head on a stick”. None of those fit upon closer inspection.
Note: The “It’s like I’m flying an aircraft” analogy is perfectly fine but ONLY WHEN PLAYING FLIGHT SIMS!!!
I always get bagged for inverting. But it just makes sense to me. Ive been inverted since the days of old playing Quake. I can barely move on a controller unless its inverted its hilarious. Every time my friend hands me a controller the first thing i do is change it to invert. Invert FTW!
I have to use inverted for console shooters, and find myself inverting y-axis camera controls in platformers/third person games.
I used to play inverted with a mouse too, my experience coming from Ace Combat on PS1 made me think that it was the way to go, but I somehow started using un-inverted and I still use uninverted today for a kb/mouse shooter.
A joystick it just sorta makes sense to pull back to point upwards!
I get that people have grown up with inverted (I did. Playing FA18 Interceptor on the Amiga) and thus prefer it because it’s what they’re use to.
But how exactly does inverted ‘make sense’ for anything other than flight sims? Could someone please talk me through it.
I bitterly resisted inverted controls for many many years. Then two things happened. The first was that i became a film student which meant I was operating cameras where in order to tilt down you have to move the handle up and vice versa. The second was that I played Deus Ex without realising that inverted was on. It just felt natural to me. But when I played The Orange Box the controls instantly felt strange and unnatual. To my horror the options menu told me that i was on normal controls and suddenly the inverted look became my preference for all FPSs.THE END.
Trent – do you also invert the x-axis for fps? Cause to pan left with your film camera you’re pushing that tripod lever to the right. Im guessing no.
Most FPSs i’ve played don’t have that option. I’ve never tried. I’d also guess it would feel weird.
I always invert.. ALWAYS..
Im left handed, and use my mouse in my right..
Ive come across lefties that swap their mouse buttons.. maybe we should be talking about those freaks…
Just to add to my weirdness I used to use numpad for PC FPS’s as opposed to WASD..
Always inverted. Leaning/pushing forward to look down feels so much more natural and immersive. Interacting and moving as crosshairs on a flat screen really ruins the immersion for me.
As the author of the Hardcasual post, I feel it’s my duty to declare there’s only one way to play.
Inverted.
I said it before… Freak!
This is interesting. I don’t use inverted aiming with a mouse or Wii Remote, but I do for controllers.
Whats funny is inverted use to be the norm.
Now, you have to go into teh settings and set it to inverted.
Un-inverted has become the norm.
But inverted mouse? Thats just weird!