Dev Day Diary: Target System

This post might be completely indecipherable without the use of diagrams and glossy photos ... if so, please ignore.

So the problem I have right now is making a non-analog control system enjoyable. Harder than it sounds when one considers that some kind of analog device has become standard on pretty much everything but Nintendo's handhelds ... and even the DS has ways to compensate that via the touchscreen.

So I'm just pushing the ship around, getting a feel for how it plays with eight compass points and ... well, it's not bad. The real problem is that without some kind of grid system, it gets to be a real pain to aim at anything. You have to resort to drifting just to line up a shot, because your eight points might not be matching up with your target's eight points (insert diagram here).

The solution might be some kind of targetting system. Sort of like a 2D version of Panzer Dragoon. The system would handle the compensation between angles and could be accurate based on variables like speed and distance. This would get the player back to worrying more about their basic positioning rather than fussing against the controls to get a precise location.