Today we’re celebrating the launch of Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales on PC! Like the PC version of Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered released earlier this year, this was a close collaboration with Insomniac Games, Marvel Games and PlayStation. We’re thrilled to bring the adventures of Miles Morales to new audiences and let PC players experience the rise of Miles as the new Spider-Man.
Configurability and customization are key aspects of PC gaming. At Nixxes we want to make sure the game is fun on a variety of systems ranging from handheld devices to high-end gaming PCs with the latest GPUs and ultra-wide monitors. Part of that was making sure Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales was playable with a variety of input options. You can play with a controller and there are many options to choose from. You can use a PS5 DualSense controller with a wired USB connection to enjoy the full DualSense controller experience, including adaptive trigger feedback and haptic response. The game also supports a variety of other peripherals and tons of remapping options with Steam Input. The game is also fully playable with mouse and keyboard, and an important part of this development was the creation of a default control scheme that gives players the feeling of being in full control when swinging around the net at high speeds or engaging in spectacular battles with Miles lead against enemies ‘ electric powers.
To give you more insight into the implementation of mouse and keyboard controls in Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, I’d like to introduce you to Bart Veldstra, Senior Systems Programmer at Nixxes.
“When we begin our work on mouse and keyboard controls, we first look at comparable titles and our own previous projects. This also includes third-person action-adventure games, so they give us a good idea of what we’ve tried and tested. Then we take stock of all the actions that the player can perform in the game, what actions are the most common and what combinations are possible.”
What follows next is a one-to-one mapping. “We simply map all the buttons on the gamepad to a key or key on the keyboard and mouse. For this first layout, we’re using keyboard shortcuts commonly found in games, like the WASD keys for movement and E and F for actions or attacks.”
Then the team starts playing with that basic mapping to see where there are potential problems, Bart explains: “One of the first sticking points that came up was the fact that you have to press two buttons to perform a finisher move . It’s easy on a gamepad and players are used to it. It doesn’t make much sense on a keyboard, which is a pretty complex instrument.”
“Based on this experience, we decided to create dedicated keyboard bindings for actions that use two buttons on a gamepad, such as Finisher, Web Strike, Yank & Throw, and Zip to Point. This makes it easier to carry out these relatively complicated actions.”
The sheer number of keys on a keyboard makes this possible, but it’s important to keep a balance when adding additional keys, says Bart: “Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales introduces five abilities for Miles. If we were to add these as new keybindings on top of existing actions, we would risk players having to keep reaching for buttons to press them. We took a step back to take a look at Miles’ abilities. They’re a modifier to your default abilities, so we decided to set their trigger as a modifier on the right mouse button. Holding the right mouse button and pressing the button for an action like punching or jumping will activate the variant. That way we don’t overload players with extra buttons.”
Finding a consistent approach when working on a mouse and keyboard layout isn’t always easy. The large number of abilities and actions available to players in both Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales proved challenging, says Bart: “For example, we juggled the dodge action. This is mapped to the Ctrl key, but how well this works depends on how big your hand is. We decided to keep this binding but also added an alternate binding for the side mouse button. If you have a gaming mouse with extra buttons, Dodge on the side button works really well.”
The goal of default keybinding is to make the most prominent game features most effective. With customizable keybinding, you can play Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales however you want. Bart: “We want to make sure people don’t have to twist their fingers when playing with the keyboard and mouse, but you can rebind any key you want. If you have a fancy mouse with lots of buttons, you can play the whole game with just your mouse.”
As mentioned, configurability and customization are key aspects for PC gaming, so in addition to multiple input options, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales features an extensive graphics menu with many customizable features, presets, and quality levels to choose from, including options for ray-traced reflections and ray-tracing -Shadows as well as the latest performance-enhancing upscaling technologies such as NVIDIA DLSS 3. For more information, see our previous blog.
We can’t wait to hear about your experiences playing Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales on PC, and we look forward to seeing more of your amazing creations in Photo Mode. Be sure to share them using the hashtag #MilesMoralesPC so we don’t miss out!
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales for PC is available now on Steam and the Epic Games Store.
Link your Steam account to the PlayStation Network to get early access to the Miles Morales 2099 suit and two skill points. The Link Portal can be found in the Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales game menu.
