If you want to read about my take on the control scheme for racing games on the ds without reading about HOW I came to the solution, then skip down to the line that starts with “BUT..” This control scheme is the way to go if you ask me, and there’s no real downside to it other than the fact that you loose some real estate screen property, but it’s a small price to pay for better controls… hm.. ok, so maybe I should just write the control scheme for you right here as well:

  • steer the vehicle using the touch screen
  • the trace pattern should be vertical, and to the left or right boarder of the screen
  • this free’s up a lot of space on the screen, enough to show the action on the touch screen as well

In conclusion, this means that the player is able to follow the race while at the same time see where “on the wheel” his/her thumb is. So in a sense it’s very close to the wii remote control option in “Mario Kart Wii”.

EDIT:

Opened up my DS and went up and down with my thumb at the right border of the touch screen, and tried to imagine how it would work… realized that you really wouldn’t need to put the view of the race down on the bottom screen since you actually can trace your thumbs movement on the touch-screen simultaniously as you watch the race on the upper screen with your eyes, so there’s really no need to put the view of the race on the touch-screen as well.

I’m beginning to ask myself, why haven’t this control scheme been used before on the DS? Doesn’t really make any sense… oh well, there’s probably something I haven’t thought about that makes it difficult to implement.

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One of the problems with Ridge Racer DS is that I think they wanted to simulate an analog stick, since with an analog stick you turn left by pressing your thumb left and right by pressing your thumb right. Pretty logical, pretty nautral, no fuzz. So the pattern you needed to trace with your finger, or stylus, was horizontally across the screen, and that’s logical if you are trying to simulate an analog stick, but it of course only becomes a lesser version, since you don’t have any tactile feedback (with an analog stick you can sense where exactly you are in relation to the centre since the stick gradually bends itself downwards from the centre). That was apparently one of the problems with that kind of control scheme. The developer–apparently aware of this problem–also had you choose between touch screen controls and normal d-pad controls.

And there isn’t any good option to simulate an analog stick or a steering wheel, but maybe it would have felt more natural if they tried to simulate a steering wheel instead, and with that I don’t mean frenetically making circle motions with the stylus, I actually only mean like having the pattern go vertical instead of horizontall, that would of course.. well.. not directly imly a rectangular cart (or aeroplane) steering wheel but it would maybe make more sense in such a setting (Mario kart, maybe even in a futuristic setting such as the one found in F-Zero). A vertical pattern would of course also be shorter since.. well.. The touch-screen is shorter on the vertical side, so you wouldn’t get a too large pattern to trace, and also, it would be easier to trace the pattern at the boarder of the screen so you felt some kind of resistance though I’m not implying tactile feedback here since you still wouldn’t know exactly where “on the wheel” you were with your thumb or stylus. The solution to that is of course a simple one, and not perfect, just place an icon to the right of upper screen that showed where your thumb was on the touch-screen. This of course shows why it’s a problem that Nintendo didn’t go for a touch-screen that recognised the stylus or thumb even before it touched the screen, because if they had implemented that function you could have the icon displayed in two different colors, one for when the sylus or thumb wasn’t touching the screen but just slightly above, and one color for when the stylus or thumb touched the screen. So with the current hardware you would actually have to steer to know where your thumb was “on the wheel”.

BUT.. here is another solution, and one that actually fixes the problem completely, if we have come to the conclussion that the trace pattern should be vertical, preferably as close to the left or right border of the screen as possible, that also means that we open up a lot of free space on the touch screen, space that can be used for displaying the actual game itself! that means that you can follow the thumb you use for steering with your eyes at the same time as you follow what’s happening on the screen with the race as well. THUS.. problem is solved.

This makes DS racing games a lot more fun, so I hope we will see new Mario Kart games with this control scheme in the future, or maybe an F-Zero game. Here’s hoping.

What should be done with the upper screen? You remember the clouds in Animal Crossing DS? Yeah.. well, there’s your answer.. or, maybe a display of the map showing all the racers location.. or both! :-O