Action button labels

[Saber]

Well, that's what it looks like now. Let's see if you can dazzle us.

Commencing Dazzle:


 

-God Ginrai

Just a couple questions GG.

 
Sure!

Are the face buttons all the same size and are they smaller than the Pandora's action buttons? I'm assuming they are shrunk down like the DS.

 
I'm fine with them either way. The Pandora buttons are actually slightly larger than the GP2X buttons, IIRC, and I found the GP2X buttons to be the perfect size.

It's hard to tell, but is the X button right up against the right nub, and are X, B, A, Y in a cross pattern, or are they in a lean more like on the SNES controller? They look like a small cross though.

The X button is close to the nub, but not right up against it. The extra room was created by moving the nubs closer inwards, since there is empty space between the Start, Select, Menu buttons and the Nubs that can be used for positioning of the buttons. This optionally allows us to move the dpad a little inward if anyone felt it was too far out to the side.


As for the ABXY buttons, they are in a cross pattern. It was made clear to me in the 6 button topic that there is a large number of people who want that.

-God Ginrai

Thanks for the extra details. I don't own a Pandora anymore but I do remember the buttons being a bit puffy in size.

As suspected, I thought you'd push the nubs closer to the center as you wrote in the other thread, but I have to ask, won't migrating them make the nubs more difficult to use with the shoulders, and if we do as you suggested and perhaps move the D-Pad inward a little as well, won't we further add even more accidental keypad presses due to the overlap of our hands(the abductor pollicis brevis) hovering over these positions?

Anyways, just a concern unfounded or not I have. 

 

[God Ginrai]

Exactly. Looking at that comparision, learning the Greek for emulation looks like quite a mess compared to the Saturn Mapping. I added the Sega Saturn since you were missing it. Looking at this, I see 3 consoles that have a perfect match with the Saturn Mapping, whereas with the Greek Mapping, nothing matches.

Well, for PlayStation and PSP (let's say those are 2 consoles) the Greek letters are a pretty good match. Is Sega emulation more important than PlayStation emulation? No idea, I don't want to start a discussion about that

We don't need to start a discussion about that. The fact of the matter than with the 3 Sega consoles with an exact match, and 2 Sony consoles with a kinda-sorta match. Even if you were to suggest that was an exact match, that's still more consoles that match the Saturn Mapping.

Well, you'll have 128 non-standardized codepoints in a one-byte-per-character bitmap font, it's not like you'll have a hard time finding some space for 6 greek chars...

I don't think all developers will be as eager as you seem to be to create those bitmaps themselves.

-God Ginrai

If you aren't going to put in the effort of porting something, then don't.
Besides, you could always just use unifont, if you really want to use a bitmap font...

Don't be elitist. It's better to encourage more people to try to port than to scare them off by telling them they may as well not if they're not going to do it "right".

Thanks for the extra details. I don't own a Pandora anymore but I do remember the buttons being a bit puffy in size.

As suspected, I thought you'd push the nubs closer to the center as you wrote in the other thread, but I have to ask, won't migrating them make the nubs more difficult to use with the shoulders, and if we do as you suggested and perhaps move the D-Pad inward a little as well, won't we further add even more accidental keypad presses due to the overlap of our hands(the abductor pollicis brevis) hovering over these positions?

Anyways, just a concern unfounded or not I have. 

Honestly, I don't believe moving them that amount will cause any problems with using them with the shoulders.

As for accidental keypresses... Considering that:

• Your map goes inward on the top row
• I've never had an accidental keypress with my Pandora
• The keys have quite a lot of give before they finally register a keypress

I doubt there would be any problems.
-God Ginrai

 

[_wb_]

I like that font: http://howmanyarethere.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/greek-alphabet-image-v5-resize1.jpg

That is a pretty font indeed!

That Pi and Omega look real good. Maybe the Chi looks too much like an X though.

If we need two more labels for the 4 extra keys, which ones should we take?

I half-jokingly proposed Gamma and Nu (so the words "Pyra" and "DragonBox" can be "spelled"), but Sigma and Psi are maybe better choices.

 

[Exophase]

Guess my preference gets summarily ignored again (except by God Ginrai, thanks).. would have been nice for someone to explain why they don't like it, but oh well.

 

[Natsu]

Guess my preference gets summarily ignored again (except by God Ginrai, thanks).. would have been nice for someone to explain why they don't like it, but oh well.

I saw it, but I forgot what it was. Mind posting it one more time?

 

[Exophase]

I seen it, but I forgot what it was. Mind posting it one more time?

http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15736-action-button-labels/page-4#entry318401

 

[Natsu]

I seen it, but I forgot what it was. Mind posting it one more time?

http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15736-action-button-labels/page-4#entry318401

More like

   γ


χ     β

   α



What would the two other buttons be?

 

[Saber]

I seen it, but I forgot what it was. Mind posting it one more time?

http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15736-action-button-labels/page-4#entry318401

I like it. Alpha and Beta as choices are recognizable enough to do the idea justice on the real thing for the layman consumer.   

 

[Saber]

Thanks for the extra details. I don't own a Pandora anymore but I do remember the buttons being a bit puffy in size.


As suspected, I thought you'd push the nubs closer to the center as you wrote in the other thread, but I have to ask, won't migrating them make the nubs more difficult to use with the shoulders, and if we do as you suggested and perhaps move the D-Pad inward a little as well, won't we further add even more accidental keypad presses due to the overlap of our hands(the abductor pollicis brevis) hovering over these positions?


Anyways, just a concern unfounded or not I have. 

Honestly, I don't believe moving them that amount will cause any problems with using them with the shoulders.


As for accidental keypresses... Considering that:

• Your map goes inward on the top row

-God Ginrai

Inward on the top row? Do you mean the X button? If you do, it should by estimates be as error-free to use as the right nub on the Pandora.

 

[Exophase]

More like

   γ

χ     β

   α



What would the two other buttons be?

If this weren't following the Pandora I'd prefer a non-GP2X layout too (I wanted a Nintendo-like layout when I was arguing it for Pandora), but I think right now Pandora-compatibility takes precedent since it'll be running PNDs that have legacy button descriptions built in.

I don't know about the other two really, if there will even be six anyway, I did recommend something like delta and pi but maybe it'd be better to pick (lowercase, for consistency) letters that are also commonly substituted with Latin variants. On more reflection, I think I like μ (mu) and ν (nu) - they have a nice name symmetry and they look like u and v which are common variable name pairs (for example, often used as 2D texture coordinates).

I like it. Alpha and Beta as choices are recognizable enough to do the idea justice on the real thing for the layman consumer.

Thanks. I think it's a good compromise. Unfortunately compromises and moderate positions will often just make everyone unhappy.

One totally subjective quality is that lowercase alpha, beta, and gamma makes me think of the Mother series, I always liked how they named spell power levels

 

[WizardStan]

U and V! Much better than my N and O suggestion.

 

[Neelix]

I think Exophase's suggestion could work well, as long as all the letters are stylised.

- Neelix

 

[God Ginrai]

Inward on the top row? Do you mean the X button? If you do, it should by estimates be as error-free to use as the right nub on the Pandora.

No, I meant the rows on the keyboard. The top row is centered above the second row of the keyboard, making a trapezoid shape.

-God Ginrai

 

[Kiga]

I like that font: http://howmanyarethere.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/greek-alphabet-image-v5-resize1.jpg

That is a pretty font indeed!

That Pi and Omega look real good. Maybe the Chi looks too much like an X though.

If we need two more labels for the 4 extra keys, which ones should we take?

I half-jokingly proposed Gamma and Nu (so the words "Pyra" and "DragonBox" can be "spelled"), but Sigma and Psi are maybe better choices.

Sigma and Psi or Phi seems to be the more appropriate because they are the only ones which don't looks like Latin letters, don't look like the 4 firsts and are made by 1 piece like the 4 firsts. Phi instead of Sigma because Sigma are the only one which is not symmetric verticaly.

Yes, Phi and Psi to me.

        Φ

    Δ      ψ

Π     Ω

    X

 

[Saber]

Inward on the top row? Do you mean the X button? If you do, it should by estimates be as error-free to use as the right nub on the Pandora.

No, I meant the rows on the keyboard. The top row is centered above the second row of the keyboard, making a trapezoid shape.

-God Ginrai

Sorry to misunderstand. Didn't sleep well last night.

Continuing the discussion of Exophase's button suggestions, for X and Y, I'm partial to lowercase chi and psi, which share similar shaping to said counterparts.

 

[TrashyMG]

More partial to these lettering:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kli_piqad.GIF

 

[Tenka]

More partial to these lettering:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kli_piqad.GIF

Woah me too now.  These look like dead magic, which is a great compliment in case I'm hard to understand.

I was feeling too tired to argue against the idea of labeling the game buttons as Page Up, Page Down, and various media controls, but that would be a sad enough outcome that I want to make extra certain that that idea died without my help.  Those are assignable shortcut keys, with singular functions each, and they're some of the least likely functions to come up in games.

I'm also of the opinion that the Pyra's game buttons should have different labels than the Pandora, because the names of these buttons should be considered as a whole, and the names of the Pandora's buttons weren't chosen with these new buttons in mind.  I feel a little dumb talking about that because I wasn't around when the Pandora's button labels were chosen.

Although the Playstation-looking arrangement of Greek letters does look cool, I feel that X is too similar to X, both in the Pandora's button label and on the keyboard.  For this reason I also don't agree with using γ such as in Exophase's layout.

I will agree with characters that look completely exclusive, and I'll double enjoy cool-looking ones, I love Φ and ψ.

 

[Exophase]

You can make a lowercase chi that looks pretty distinct from X, normally one side is curved. Going with the right font is important. I'm willing to accept that psi could sort of work as a Y-like character, although gamma can be made fairly distinct as well.

If there's just one character that doesn't really look like the original Pandora ones that's also sort of okay with me since it'd be obvious by process of elimination, although less so if there are two added buttons that aren't too physically distinct from the other four. Alpha/beta/gamma/delta would at least be consecutive in the Greek alphabet.

 

[Tenka]

There are different opinions concerning how easy it is to tell psi apart from Y, and how easy it is to tell chi apart from X.  Those who are suggesting labels that include such symbols are likely to be of the opinion that they're pretty easy to tell apart, or that even if they do look pretty similar to the characters we've already used in loads of other places, they are different enough to cause only an acceptable amount of confusion.  Hell, I'm sure some would even like certain symbols like these precisely because they are familiar with them.  However, they are similar to already present or previously used and no longer applicable characters.  They're a little different sometimes but none of the opinions I've just claimed to be aware of are in denial that they are similar, and so there is a degree of confusion possible with the choice to use characters like these.

Besides personal familiarity and personal visual preference, are there any reasons to use the Greek letters that happen to be super comparable to our Latin ones rather than any of the Greek letters that are not?  There are plenty enough that are not.

 

[God Ginrai]

This makes no sense. The whole reason that Exophase was suggesting Chi and Gamma was because they did look similar to X and Y, and therefore would be easily understood as the Pandora layout. While I don't support the Greek layout, trying to change it to characters that don't look like the Pandora layout makes it into an even worse option, because now you can't even refer to them by the letters that they looked like.

-God Ginrai