Action button labels: poll

[_wb_]

Delta (Δ) is widely used to denote differences.


Pi (Π) is a mathematical constant everyone should know (ok, that's lowercase π but that looks almost the same as uppercase Π, depending on the font)


Omega (Ω) is the symbol for Ohm, the SI unit for electrical resistance. Christians may also be familiar with the letter for other reasons.


Chi (Χ) is quite well-known from the statistical Chi-squared test. It looks a lot like an X, so if you don't know it, it's not hard to describe it.


Lambda (λ) is known among computer scientists for lambda calculus / functional programming. Among gamers it's probably best known as the Half-Life logo.


Gamma (γ) is maybe not that widely known. It's the third letter of the Greek alphabet though, so people may have heard "alpha beta gamma" at some point (e.g. radiation).

There is obviously an issue here between where people live, the circles they move in, and so on. Things like 'should know' and 'quite well-known' don't seem to correlate with the people I know/country I am in. I am sitting with a guy right now who is into games and computing in general (university degree in computing related subject), but the only symbol out of the 6 above he knew was pi, with a bit of thinking of prompting he also remembered delta. He said the lambda symbol was something he was sure he had seen, but wasn't sure where.

There was a post somewhere on here that suggested a Pandora was shown to a parent, and then the parent was asked to press the X key, and they pressed the keyboard key instead of the button. Well I asked my mother about these Greek symbols and she honestly couldn't recognize any of them. Well; she recognized two things as 'triangle' and the letter 'x'. I then asked he to guess which key was 'Delta', which was 'Pi' and so on, to try and give her a chance of having some association what they *might* be, and this still didn't help. She thought the Omega symbol could be Pi because she thought it looked a little like a pie, and thought maybe Gamma was Chi, because she had heard of gamma radiation and thinks radiation is bad, and knows that X can be a symbol for bad/danger.

For me personally, I recognize Delta, Pi and Lambda by name. I have seen Omega but have only known it as 'Ohm'. Chi is not something I recall and Gamma is not something I recognize (although I have a feeling this would have been mentioned to me sometime during GCSE/AS Level physics). I have degree level education (I got a first class degree, graduated top of my class, in a computing related discipline). If these symbols were something I needed to know then I would them, but they either haven't come up, or if they did, I have since long forgotten them due to not using them for a long time.

@T4b: we were only taught about feta for triangles, so for right angle triangles it was 'feta', the 'right angle' and the 'other angle'. 

Why is everyone assuming that it essential to know the names of the symbols? Do you immediately know what the correct name is for # ^ & * [ ] { } | ` ? Is it important to know those names?

If some game tells you to press Ω, does it matter if you think "Omega" or "Ohm" or "Weird Open Circle" ?

If you don't know how to type or copy/paste the symbol, is that really a problem? PlayStation gamers probably have that problem all the time. Is the symbol called Square or Box? Does it matter?

Personally, If they are going to be labelled with their keyboard functions then I'm happy for them to be otherwise unmarked. 

If they have to have gaming labels though, then I still think alphanumeric combinations are the best way to go.  They are consistent with the shoulder button naming,  there's no learning curve involved,  and  it's easy to ensure that they do not conflict with anything else on the keyboard.

- Neelix

Unmarked would be a bad option in my opinion, I want games that refer to the buttons in a nicer way than "PgUp" etc.

G1 ... G6 is a nice non-ambiguous proposal and everyone can type/pronounce those. But it looks too "generic" to me, it does not have "personality". It reminds me of a universal remote control or something like that. Also I can't think of a logical order to put them in.

 

[Kiga]

Just compare how many people buy an iphone and how many will buy a Pyra while Pyra will be able to do a lot more than a iphone  being cheaper that's not logic,  also Pyra hasn't  the same advertising.


That's why people who chose Pyra are in search, in search of logic and not commonly used or easy to know.


Plus I don't know how many people like science in the community but there is no doubt more than in the majority of others device community (if they have a community). And the core love science.

You judge the logic of a purchase on the basis of capability while you ignore metrics such as status, build quality, usability and many others.

Pyra built quality are better than a iphone because it live longer. Other metrics are cosmetics which counts only because of outside elements. So they don't matter.

That said, I love science and I still think that greek letters are a bad idea.

It's your opinion

But the only real issue I can see with greek letters is to hurt some people's habits.

 

[Caine]

Why is everyone assuming that it essential to know the names of the symbols? Do you immediately know what the correct name is for # ^ & * [ ] { } | ` ? Is it important to know those names?

If some game tells you to press Ω, does it matter if you think "Omega" or "Ohm" or "Weird Open Circle" ?

Yes it is. It is of similar importance as disambiguation of the A key and the A button. It is vital for how we communicate about controls. The A key vs the A button problem can easily be solved by showing a picture of the button which you need to press (e.g. the key is square, the button circular). The GUI hints also addressed this problem. However, it forces you to communicate visually which is not always optimal and therefore we are having this discussion. The Greek symbols are negative in the verbal dimension, even moreso than the circular A button vs the square A key.

Pyra built quality are better than a iphone because it live longer.

Sorry, I didn't know you were the Pyra case-designer. I have never seen nor held a pyra case before, so I extrapolated the build quality of its predecessor (which was BAD) to estimate that the quality of the Pyra would be worse than that of an iPhone. Good to hear I was wrong. (Disclaimer: I hate iPhones, but I still expect that its build quality will be better than that of the Pyra).

That said, I love science and I still think that greek letters are a bad idea.

It's your opinion But the only real issue I can see with greek letters is to hurt some people's habits.

You are quick to dismiss my idea as just an opinion while your own arguments disregard the many points raised against the Greek letters in both this current thread and its predecessor. If you are not familiar with its content, then I refer you to the arguments therein.

 

[levi]

Why is everyone assuming that it essential to know the names of the symbols? Do you immediately know what the correct name is for # ^ & * [ ] { } | ` ? Is it important to know those names?

The fact that '()[]{}' have different names in English on each side of the Atlantic and nobody's ever thought to standardise them should perhaps say something.

As a UKer, I say brackets for '()', square brackets for '[]' and curly brackets for '{}'. USians use different terms, but I generally understand what they mean when they use them. IIRC those terms are 'parentheses' for brackets, 'brackets' for square brackets and 'curly braces' for 'curly brackets'. There's occasionally confusion when someone refers to something in brackets, but the context is usually clear.

 

[Kiga]

Pyra built quality are better than a iphone because it live longer.

Sorry, I didn't know you were the Pyra case-designer. I have never seen nor held a pyra case before, so I extrapolated the build quality of its predecessor (which was BAD) to estimate that the quality of the Pyra would be worse than that of an iPhone. Good to hear I was wrong. (Disclaimer: I hate iPhones, but I still expect that its build quality will be better than that of the Pyra).

Lol I'm not here for doing useless controversy. I'm not going to waste my time responding to all your cosmetics points it would not be logic.

As I said just after where you cut

Other metrics are cosmetics which counts only because of outside elements.

It's your opinion

But the only real issue I can see with greek letters is to hurt some people's habits.

You are quick to dismiss my idea as just an opinion while your own arguments disregard the many points raised against the Greek letters in both this current thread and its predecessor. If you are not familiar with its content, then I refer you to the arguments therein.

I'm not going to repeat over and over go read that thread yourself. I haven't enough energy especially because I don't care about label, I reached because I know that Greek letters are the only best choice. I hope ED isn't as attached to habits as you.

 

[_wb_]

Why is everyone assuming that it essential to know the names of the symbols? Do you immediately know what the correct name is for # ^ & * [ ] { } | ` ? Is it important to know those names?


If some game tells you to press Ω, does it matter if you think "Omega" or "Ohm" or "Weird Open Circle" ?

Yes it is. It is of similar importance as disambiguation of the A key and the A button. It is vital for how we communicate about controls. The A key vs the A button problem can easily be solved by showing a picture of the button which you need to press (e.g. the key is square, the button circular). The GUI hints also addressed this problem. However, it forces you to communicate visually which is not always optimal and therefore we are having this discussion. The Greek symbols are negative in the verbal dimension, even moreso than the circular A button vs the square A key.

I think the "verbal dimension" is less important than the visual one -- the most important communication is between game dev and gamer, and this will nearly always be visually, not some voice telling you what buttons to press. The next most important one is between gamer and gamer, but that tends to happen mostly in written media like forums, where again visual symbols can be used. I don't expect to regularly meet Pyra users in real life to talk about button combos.

That said, I would expect such dialogs to go like this:

- And then you have to press the strange button, I don't know what it's called, it looks like an O with an open bottom...

- It's called Omega.

- Right, so you press Omega to jump and bla bla

or maybe:

- And then you have to press the strange button, I don't know what it's called, it looks like an O with an open bottom...

- I don't know its name either, let's call it strange-O

- Right, so you press strange-O to jump and bla bla

but not:

- And then you have to press the strange button, I don't know what it's called, it looks like an O with an open bottom...

- I don't know what the hell that could mean.

- You know, the red button on the right that looks like a circle with some weird bits at the bottom?

- Nope, I still don't know what you mean. You have to say the correct name or else I can't possibly comprehend.

- It's this button right here! [points finger]

- No no no, you won't get away with it that easily! SAY THE NAME!

- Alright, I'll look it up on the Pyra wiki. [...] OK, the Omega button

- Oh, the Omega button, now I get it!

 

[Caine]

Lol I'm not here for doing useless controversy. I'm not going to waste my time responding to all your cosmetics points it would not be logic.

As I said just after where you cut

Other metrics are cosmetics which counts only because of outside elements.

Don't pull my words out of context. I left out the cosmetic issues because I don't give a damn about it. I merely raised those to contest your definition of logic.

Just compare how many people buy an iphone and how many will buy a Pyra while Pyra will be able to do a lot more than a iphone being cheaper that's not logic

Here you imply that a purchase is only logical if you optimize the price/capability ratio. I disagree with that and raise as an example that many iPhone buyers care about the status of the iPhone as well as its ease of use. Many people judge the Pandora as either too complex to use, too bricky and/or fragile and you dismiss that as illogical. I merely observe that those people have different requirements. That said, I don't think your requirements are very different from mine, otherwise we wouldn't be here having this discussion

All of this is not really relevant to the topic at hand, so let's focus on the labels of the keys.

 

[Caine]

or maybe:

- And then you have to press the strange button, I don't know what it's called, it looks like an O with an open bottom...

- I don't know its name either, let's call it strange-O

- Right, so you press strange-O to jump and bla bla

I think it will be more like:- And then you have to press the red button, you know the end key

In other words, as long as buttons are labelled with their usual binding then people will work around it.

<edit>With this I mean also labelled with their usual binding in addition to whatever gaming label we assign them</edit>

 

[Kiga]

Just compare how many people buy an iphone and how many will buy a Pyra while Pyra will be able to do a lot more than a iphone being cheaper that's not logic

Here you imply that a purchase is only logical if you optimize the price/capability ratio. I disagree with that and raise as an example that many iPhone buyers care about the status of the iPhone as well as its ease of use. Many people judge the Pandora as either too complex to use, too bricky and/or fragile and you dismiss that as illogical. I merely observe that those people have different requirements. That said, I don't think your requirements are very different from mine, otherwise we wouldn't be here having this discussion

I ain't agree, I don't have any requirements, just logic. For example ease of use. Pandora isn't harder to use, just uncommon. Maybe you need to take the time to learn it but why should you take time to learn how to use an iphone and not a Pyra? Well, assume that Pyra will take a bit more time to learn, how much time you spend having nothing to do?

So that's not logic.

The only almost no cosmetic argument against Pyra is  bulkiness because of clothing.

 

[_jr_]

Just for the record: I drew the greek letter shapes (both the lowercase and the uppercase ones from the various proposals) into the air and my chinese wive with non a science related education (a non-greek language major) recognized them all from basic maths and physics education at school (25 years ago).


But she does neither know card suite nor chess piece symbols.


But I agree with _wb_ that it is not that important to have prior knowledge of the symbols used for the action buttons.

 

[milkshake]

Why is everyone pushing non common button symbols it really is silly and will alienate people!

Kiga you are just plain wrong with most of what you say.

Wb the verbal aspect is as important as the visual if not more.

 

[Kiga]

Kiga you are just plain wrong with most of what you say.

:lol:

 

[God Ginrai]

The extra buttons can't be that close to your palm as the S pad black and white buttons where, as that's where the keyboard will be.

IMHO, that doesn't even matter, I couldn't even reach the white and black buttons comfortably on my code S controller. I always thought that it was badly designed compared to the Duke.

None of us know exactly what's planned, though if I had to bet I'd say it's likely to be the two extra buttons to the right of B and Y (using Pandora notation) or maybe slightly above also, so that X, B and new button 1 form an arc, as do A, Y and new button 2. It makes the buttons no harder to access than the existing buttons (you don't need to stretch any further) and wouldn't take up any extra vertical space.

 Actually, we do. EvilDragon said that they will be above and below the A button. (as horrible as that is) What you "bet" would have made logical sense, but it seems that logic is off the table for this issue.

Why is everyone assuming that it essential to know the names of the symbols? Do you immediately know what the correct name is for # ^ & * [ ] { } | ` ? Is it important to know those names?

Because it is essential.

# ^ & * [ ] { } | ` ? can all be typed on a keyboard. You don't need the names of them to communicate in text form with them. However, it does indeed become a problem when trying to discuss them verbally.

Unmarked would be a bad option in my opinion, I want games that refer to the buttons in a nicer way than "PgUp" etc.

I'd rather that than something that someone had to learn to be able to discuss.

G1 ... G6 is a nice non-ambiguous proposal and everyone can type/pronounce those. But it looks too "generic" to me, it does not have "personality". It reminds me of a universal remote control or something like that. Also I can't think of a logical order to put them in.

I'm pretty sure the alphanumeric suggestion involved one letter defining each row, and 3 letters defining each column. For example:


1 2 3
Z Z1 Z2 Z3
A A1 A2 A3
 That seems like a pretty logical order.

I think the "verbal dimension" is less important than the visual one -- the most important communication is between game dev and gamer, and this will nearly always be visually, not some voice telling you what buttons to press. The next most important one is between gamer and gamer, but that tends to happen mostly in written media like forums, where again visual symbols can be used. I don't expect to regularly meet Pyra users in real life to talk about button combos.

You are right about what are the most important forms of communication, however you are wrong about the ease of communication. I have pointed out numerous times that if someone doesn't know what the symbol is, they can not just use it for communication. Unlike these symbols that you used before, # ^ & * [ ] { } | ` ?, Greek characters can not just be typed on a keyboard. This makes them difficult not only for verbal communication, but textual as well.

-God Ginrai

 

[Neelix]

I'm pretty sure the alphanumeric suggestion involved one letter defining each row, and 3 letters defining each column. For example:


1 2 3
Z Z1 Z2 Z3
A A1 A2 A3

 
That seems like a pretty logical order.

That was my original idea yeah.  I started suggesting the sequential version when Tenka requested it.

That original suggestion was made with 2 rows of 3 buttons in mind though and breaking it down that way seems less logical with the now known layout...

Out of curiosity How would you apply an alphanumeric  layout given the following pattern?

 *   *

  *     *

 *   *

  OT:   hey that kind of resembles an OR Gate... 

- Neelix

 

[_wb_]

Why is everyone assuming that it essential to know the names of the symbols? Do you immediately know what the correct name is for # ^ & * [ ] { } | ` ? Is it important to know those names?

Because it is essential.


# ^ & * [ ] { } | ` ? can all be typed on a keyboard. You don't need the names of them to communicate in text form with them. However, it does indeed become a problem when trying to discuss them verbally.

Wb the verbal aspect is as important as the visual if not more.

Following that logic, maybe we should replace # ^ & * [ ] { } | ` on the Pyra keyboard with some more Latin letters. There can never be enough Latin letters! It will be very easy to discuss things!

Let's use this layout:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/78b42779397ed0927215b84cc2256430

</sarcasm>

 

[bzar]

Why is everyone pushing non common button symbols it really is silly and will alienate people!

Kiga you are just plain wrong with most of what you say.

Wb the verbal aspect is as important as the visual if not more.

Consider this meta-discussion. In this post I'm not saying what you wrote now or in the other cases is right or wrong in my opinion.

Please always back up assertions like this with a rationale. I've seen you doing comments like this on many threads and many times found myself wondering why you said what you did. It would be easier to agree or disagree with you if you added some basis on which your opinion lies upon. Just adding judgemental commentary without a rationale is not a constructive line of conversation and only causes further polarization and frustration. Try following your comments with a "because" or "since" in your head and find the root cause for your opinion. Then post enough so people understand why you feel as you do.

Thank you, have fun and please take this as the constructive criticism it's meant to be and not condescending nagging like it may sound to some

 

[milkshake]

I understand what you are saying but I have had enough of explaining why I think they are wrong and all that happens is reply with why they think they are right so nothing gets resolved and there is an infinite loop, so I took out my why's to keep it short and sweet.

 

[_wb_]

I understand what you are saying but I have had enough of explaining why I think they are wrong and all that happens is reply with why they think they are right so nothing gets resolved and there is an infinite loop, so I took out my why's to keep it short and sweet.

What is the point of repeating your position without adding new arguments?

Could you point me to the post in which you explain why the verbal aspect is as important or more important than the visual aspect?

I said:

I think the "verbal dimension" is less important than the visual one -- the most important communication is between game dev and gamer, and this will nearly always be visually, not some voice telling you what buttons to press. The next most important one is between gamer and gamer, but that tends to happen mostly in written media like forums, where again visual symbols can be used. I don't expect to regularly meet Pyra users in real life to talk about button combos.

to which you replied:

Wb the verbal aspect is as important as the visual if not more.

Does that mean you do intend to regularly meet other Pyra users to talk about button combos, and you consider that to be more important than visual communication from game dev to gamer?

 

[Klumpen]

Wb the verbal aspect is as important as the visual if not more.

Does that mean you do intend to regularly meet other Pyra users to talk about button combos [...]

*giggle*

 

[Majin Wamu]

The chess buttons was an interesting idea. It is a shame not many people really care for it. The Greek buttons is pretty cool looking too.