aerojockey

Quick question--it's so hard to Google for answers like this one: Is the sign convention for PC joysticks or D-pads something I can generally rely on?  It seems that the horizontal axis is positive right, and the vertical axis positive down, and the horizontal axis has the lower axis number.  If that's true for all joysticks, then all I'd have to do to detect the correct axis mappings is to ask the user to move the joystick around the perimeter a few times.  If this is inconsistent then I'd have to map the horizontal and vertical axes separately.  Thanks.

I was just wondering if anyone has any advice on how to approach this.

I'm pretty close to a releasing a 3rd-person action-adventure demo I've been making; I just need to tie up controls and other loose ends.  I used a Logitech Rumblepad to develop the game.  But in order to reach as many people as possible it should be comfortable to play with keyboard and mouse, and be flexible to other gamepads.

I'm not much of a PC gamer (ok I don't play PC games at all) so I don't really know much about how PC games handle controls at all.  I figure that's the main problem here, so I guess I'll just get hold of some PC games and do whatever they do (and I'm happy to accept suggestions for any PC games that do an exemplary job with controls).  But I wanted to see if anyone who's faced this problem has some advice.

Does anyone know of a project to collect gamepad definitions?

Thanks.

Hello,

I am more or less done with a short first-level demo of my game, and the main thing it is missing is voiceover. (I will mention that the game really is designed for voice and would suffer for not having it.) I want it to sound better than a bunch of my untrained friends over a webcam microphone.

Problem is, I have no idea how to go about recording decent-quality voiceover. I figure for voices I could get a good deal on some drama students from the nearby university. For recording, I don't know. Rent a studio? I don't need a world-class sound stage but cheapest ones I could find around here are pricey. Buy or rent equipment and do it in my apartment? Don't know what equipment I should get. I'm pretty much an audiophobe. Plus I'm not sure about bringing random college kids to my abode. I have a budget in the hundreds of dollars for this (no fixed number, it's a trade-off at this point).

Does anyone have any experience or at least has some educated advice?

Note: My question is only about recording. I have no questions about post-processing; I'm all good there.

Thanks.