The Battlefield series has always been pretty supportive of colour blind modes, alternate controls and accessibility in general, so this is a positive response from DICE.
It’s not something you see often, so it’s understandable why some developers would overlook or miss out on certain control systems. One of those is the legacy preset, a control scheme that emulates those from the era of the Nintendo 64.
For the uninitiated, it maps strafing to the same stick as looking up and down. DICE explained it well when they introduced a legacy scheme into Battlefield 4. “LEGACY swaps only the X-axes on the thumbsticks, resulting in a soldier control scheme similar to N64-era shooters where moving forward and turning were on the same thumbstick.”
The precision of modern controllers means that most don’t want to have turning and movement on the same stick, so it’s understandable why DICE wouldn’t have included it for the Star Wars: Battlefront beta. But it can be incredibly useful in certain situations.
User Vantezzle posted on the Battlefront beta forums that they struggled to enjoy the Star Wars: Battlefront beta because the legacy sticks preset wasn’t included. “I need it because I find it extremely difficult to operate both sticks at the same time and in BF4 I had no troubles thanks to that preset so please … is there any chance that you will add it for the full game,” they asked.
Another user put the question to Dennis Braanvall, the lead multiplayer designer at DICE Stockholm, and the response was swift.
@The_Poolshark we are looking into it asap
— Dennis Brännvall (@DICE_FireWall) October 13, 2015
It’s a shame it wasn’t patched into the beta, but DICE has always been good at supporting accessibility. The Battlefront beta alone shipped with three colour blindness settings, for instance, and Braanvall’s reply indicates that they’re not about to forget users like Vantezzle either.
Comments
5 responses to “DICE Investigating Legacy Controls For Star Wars: Battlefront Thanks To Disabled Gamer”
Nice cheery piece of news
Mmmmmmm, good vibes feel good!
There are programs that he can uses to emulate keys. He could set this up and vastly expand his gaming options.
This is true, but sometimes it’s nice for a company to acknowledge your situation and do something to directly address it in their games instead making the user hack their way around it.
EDIT: I’ve always had a strong interest in accessibility with regards to gaming so these things are always good to read. I’m a full able bodied person myself but knowing others out there in a more difficult situation can also have the same fun as myself makes me happy.
Colourblind mode is a lifesaver. Every time someone says, our team has green tags………..FFFFFFFFFF