It's the end of the nubs as we know them

[rygD]

But why so many want nubs that can click?


What do you think are the advantage of that? It's so difficult to click without moving that I cannot imagine a conveniant way of using that feature.


What good is a feature if you cannot use it?

Clicks could be mouse buttons, and they would be perfectly usable. Left click on right nub, right click on left nub. This isn't much of a stretch from the default on Pandora (that I don't use) of having mouse buttons on the right nub, and for those who dislike right nub directions as mouse buttons there isn't a loss of the other buttons, and their potential additional functions.

This kind of setup is much less usable. Don't forget the click will certainly makes you move a bit.
And how is pushing a nub down be better than pushing a nub left?

I don't see how it is any less usable.  It is nearly no different than either of the current options, since your primary mouse button will be on the nub that doesn't move the cursor.  I suppose if someone lacks the motor skills to push the nub down it will be less usable, but how will they do anything else with the Pyra nubs/keyboard/buttons.  If movement is a problem when right clicking, which it shouldn't be, you can always modify setting to make the mouse cursor move less.  Maybe others have major problems pushing things straight down with their thumbs, I don't know. 

I never said one was better than the other, however there may be a reason the typical mouse has buttons instead of a nub or joystick on it. If you are asking my why I don't like using the right nub as mouse buttons, I don't know, it just doesn't feel right or make sense to me.  I am obviously not alone.  Just because you or I dislike something doesn't mean everyone else does, but by taking away the nub click function we don't get that as an option for input.  If we do have it, and you dislike it, you can choose not to use it and go for the right nub as mouse buttons.  It isn't like (most of) those who would prefer the nub click were asking for the right nub to be removed (because without it we have only one mouse button), but by asking for clicking nubs to be skipped without looking at all the options is like that, in a way, since it is asking for functionality that was originally planned to be removed.

I can't speak for everyone, but I prefer all the options be seriously considered, and I think that is what ED is doing.  If the company that makes the part of the nub that is in question will make them for ED I hope he goes for it.  If he says that the shorter movement range nub is not good, I trust him on it, since he probably doesn't want to lose money, and he will pick the next best nub after his first choice.

 

[Glyph Reader]

I may not have a Pandora, but what about emulators for systems that use Joysticks?  What about mouse based games (Battle for Wesnoth, etc.)?  It would seem to me that I would not use the touch screen as much, since I wouldn't want to potentially ruin the screen (unless I'm playing with the Drastic Emulator.) 

-Glyph Reader

Indeed the systems with analog joysticks can benefit (ps1 and n64), personally never tried one. Will probably be useful for fps as well. To be honest I don't think nubs emulate mouse behavior very well. Touch screen can be great for that purpose. Unfortunately emulators (e.g. hatari - atari st emulator) don't work with touch screen - at least not the ones I tried. I have understood from a post from Skeezix that adapting mouse movement to touch screen is not easy to do.

So lots of games that play best with a mouse still need a mouse. 

In the end, I think different people prefer different control schemes -- isn't that one of the chief reasons for the Pandora/Pyra's existence?  With the inclusion of nubs, a d-pad, action buttons, shoulder buttons and an almost complete qwerty keyboard, it appeals to a specific niche, which opposes the touch-focused mobile market. 


-Glyph Reader

 

[b_o_b]

Sure, great to have all these options and because of the keyboard the Pandora is still a very unique device. Would be nice to have a good - on board - solution for a mouse though. RTS games or some shooters (e.g. Operation Wolf) are basically unplayable without a mouse. 

 

[comradekingu]

But why so many want nubs that can click?

What do you think are the advantage of that? It's so difficult to click without moving that I cannot imagine a conveniant way of using that feature.

What good is a feature if you cannot use it?

Personally its to have middleclick on the right nub. Leftclick ← on rightnub and Rightclick → on rightnub is a concept that at least works.

Dont know if the new hall effect can click everywhere, but having a click on the nub that doesnt move (the right one) is very beneficial. Any laptop that doesnt have rightclick is very cumbersome to use for me since there is no sleek way of opening new links. Additionally having spent a large amount of time looking into the keyboard situation, there are no other buttons that can be taken to implement middleclick without the balance in everything else crumpling and falling over.

If you use up or down on rightnub for middleclick there is no obvious way to do scrolling, implement it elsewhere, and so on and so on.

Having the ability to do something without any drawbacks could make for some (new and old) functionality in games too.

This is the patent that nintendo holds on "ornamental design operating knob"  https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/pdfs/USD659765.pdf

Noclick is a disqualifying factor, but no must. Its rather that nobody seems to have had an unproblematic 3ds nub.

Hall effect is the best technology available.

 

[FBnil]

Bye bye nubs
Bye bye happiness
Hello loneliness
I think I'm-a gonna cry-y
Bye bye nubs
Bye bye sweet caress
Hello emptiness
I feel like I could die
Bye bye my nubs goodbye

There go my nubbies, we need something new
I was so happy, now I sure am blue
They were my nubs nubs till discontinuing
Goodbye to performance that might have been
 

 

[WizardStan]

Don't forget the click will certainly makes you move a bit.

I think you're taking the "clicks while stationary" entirely too literally. It's a button underneath the sensor with a narrow push range, not some hack on physics like the proposal for the Pandora's nubs. Looking at the diagram, it almost looks like you could go almost 50% away from centre (and up to 75% with the alternate nubs with less travel) and still be able to click the button. And even if it isn't as large as the diagram makes it appear it's still a button that necessarily has some width to it and whatever that width is will be a minimum safe travel in order for it to trigger.

 

[comradekingu]

I wonder how clicking with the cursor nub works out. Because you dont move in the opposite direction as the nub resets to centre. If the cursor doesn't move as you click down it should be the same accuracy as we are used to.

The left nub is right click paradigm is wonky in the non chip way. Then i would prefer to cursor with the right nub.  This way you get leftclick on left nub (which is the free one) and you get rightclick on the right nub.  Leftclicking doesnt need the accuracy, so if it is a problem to click with the moving one that is a good solution.

Edit: Tried using right nub on the pandora for cursor, took a minute to get used to, but its fine for me as a right-handed person.

Edit2: I can have my thumb not overshadowing any of the keyboard then, i dont have the same level of control with my left if i do that.

 

[Majin Wamu]

Yay! I absolutely love the 3DS numbs! It is actually my favorite analog nub/joystick/control! Excitement for me if this goes through hehe.

 

[Puppetmaster]

Please,try to find some clickable Nubs with hall sensors. In my opinion it is a bad and unintuitive solution to move the second Nub to "mouseclick" like it is on the Pandora right now.
Sure i can bind the ckick function to two other keys, but they loose their original function and i have to change something else.
AB-Mouse on the Pandora is a great tool to use A and B as mousebuttons, but at the same time it breakes the original function of the buttons. Some Programms work fine with it some don't.
It would be great if this situation could be avoided on the Pyra

 

[Nintendo]

I'd love them to be clickable, but if not then it's also all good with me.

 

[rygD]

The left nub is right click paradigm is wonky in the non chip way. Then i would prefer to cursor with the right nub.  This way you get leftclick on left nub (which is the free one) and you get rightclick on the right nub.

I think this is one of those things that would/should be user configurable.  The only reason I mentioned the idea of the swapped button placement is that it makes sense if there is concern about mouse/nub sensitivity.  If we did manage to get clicking nubs I don't think I would have a problem moving mouse and left clicking with the left nub, but I don't know until I try it.  I don't recall ever having issues clicking with analog sticks with that feature in the past.  That doesn't really matter, though, since we are going to get nubs, and they will be different than the sticks in the controllers I use.

Please,try to find some clickable Nubs with hall sensors. In my opinion it is a bad and unintuitive solution to move the second Nub to "mouseclick" like it is on the Pandora right now. Sure i can bind the ckick function to two other keys, but they loose their original function and i have to change something else. AB-Mouse on the Pandora is a great tool to use A and B as mousebuttons, but at the same time it breakes the original function of the buttons. Some Programms work fine with it some don't. It would be great if this situation could be avoided on the Pyra

This is my concern as well.  Since we are already limited on keys and buttons I don't want to resort moving mouse buttons to other buttons, since it will have an impact on both desktop use and gaming.  It is still bothersome to remember to turn on and off AB Mouse for certain things.

I'd love them to be clickable, but if not then it's also all good with me.

Really, I think this is probably where I stand.  I prefer them, but if it isn't the best option I will understand and deal with it.  Hopefully the keyboard layout designers have some ideas on how to maintain most functionality while still allowing us to have buttons for mouse clicks.

 

[Jumpman]

I'd love them to be clickable, but if not then it's also all good with me.

Same here^ 

This is like the second set of shoulder button and extra two face button issues, as how many games really use the clickable analog sticks? Very few games from the era's the Pyra will emulate will need this feature, and it's probably not worth the time, effort, and funds to make it happen, and happen well.

I personally find the 3DS nubs to be the best choice, as they work well, and would fit the form factor of the Pyra very well. I find the PSP nub to be complete and utter garbage, and as much as I love my PSP(I still use it almost daily), that analog stick is beyond terrible. 

Chris

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Well it is not for games but for everything else.

 

[_wb_]

I'd love them to be clickable, but if not then it's also all good with me.

Really, I think this is probably where I stand.  I prefer them, but if it isn't the best option I will understand and deal with it.  Hopefully the keyboard layout designers have some ideas on how to maintain most functionality while still allowing us to have buttons for mouse clicks.

This is probably the main reason why I would like the nubs to be clickable. I don't like the Pandora default (right nub for clicking), I don't want to sacrifice shoulder buttons to it, and I want to have Home/End/PgUp/PgDn/Ins/Del too.

One potential solution would be to give two shoulder buttons a dual use: when you tap them (not in combination with another key), they are mouse clicks, but in combination with other keys, they are modifiers.

E.g. say L1 and R1 are still Shift and Ctrl like on the Pandora, and L2 and R2 are Meta/LeftClick and Alt/RightClick.

How would it work?

- press L2 down, immediately release it: the software generates a left click (mouse button press followed by release)

- press L2 down, press another key: as soon as another key is pressed, the software generates a Meta keydown event just before the other key event is sent, locking the L2 trigger into "modifier mode"

- press L2 down, move the mouse: as soon as the mouse (left nub) is moved, the software generates a left mouse button down event and locks the L2 trigger into "mouse button" mode.

So basically the context determines how it behaves. Just pressing L2 down does nothing until you do something else or release it. So e.g. if you have software that highlights Alt-shortcuts when you hold Alt (like Ubuntu does with menu bars), that won't work, because the actual Alt keydown event only gets sent just before you hit a letter key. You can still use the keyboard Meta and Alt keys for that though.

It probably requires some software hacking to make it behave like that, so there's some software effort to be done. But in this way, we could have both the modifiers keys and the mouse buttons on the same key without really losing anything. You can still do mouse dragging (both left and right), you can still do Meta+Alt combos and a Left+Right click. You can do Shift+click/drag and Ctrl+click/drag (both left and right), but for Alt+click/drag you can't use the shoulder Alt, you have to use the keyboard Alt (i.e. START).

For games that use four shoulder buttons, you would have to disable the click functionality so they immediately send the keydown event instead of waiting for context. But that's no big deal: for games input mechanisms are different anyway. I don't think there are many games that expect four shoulder buttons and a mouse -- either it's a PC game which expects a mouse and a keyboard but no shoulder buttons, or it's a game console game which expects shoulder buttons and analog nubs/joysticks but no mouse. It's also backwards compatible with the Pandora since the Pandora doesn't have L2, R2 anyway.

Actually, with or without clickable nubs, I'm starting to think that this is how I want to have it.

 

[elw3]

Nice idea, but click on release disables a lot of the mouse functionally, draging painting etc.. 

oh i overread the last part about the plus nub moving. 

 

[Neelix]

What if you want to use the modifier to modify the mouse click itself?

- Neelix

 

[_wb_]

What if you want to use the modifier to modify the mouse click itself?

- Neelix

Like I said, Alt+click is not possible with shoulder Alt (R2, which would overload to Right click), but you can still use keyboard Alt (START) to modify mouse clicks/drags. Shift (L1) and Ctrl (R1) are no problem since they wouldn't map to mouse clicks. Meta+Click is probably not something you need to do anyway, since Meta (or Fn or Sym or Pyra or however it will be called) is not a standard modifier.

In principle you could map L1 and R1 to extra mouse buttons (middle click, double click, whatever), but I wouldn't do that. We can use the old Left+Right = Middle convention for middle clicks, double clicks can be done by actual double clicks (should be easy enough to perform those). Keeping L1 and R1 modifiers only is good for backwards compatibility and it means Shift+click/drag and Ctrl+click/drag can be done nicely without too much acrobatics.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, with clickable nubs, the right nub would need to be left click and the left nub right-click - otherwise Drag and Drop or selecting stuff with a marquee frame would be impossible.

The two new buttons could work as Mousebuttons, I guess.

 

[me]

Well, with clickable nubs, the right nub would need to be left click and the left nub right-click - otherwise Drag and Drop or selecting stuff with a marquee frame would be impossible.

What if you want to drag with the right mouse button?

 

[_wb_]

The two new buttons could work as Mousebuttons, I guess.

But then we lose two keyboard keys (e.g. Insert and Delete), and they would have non-intuitive positions (top left for left click, bottom left for right click?).

I prefer my shoulder button modifier/click overloading solution. You can overload all modifier keys in this way by the way: my keyboard layout suggestion already overloaded a tap of START (Left Alt) to double click, SELECT (Left Ctrl) to middle click, keyboard Meta to Context Menu and keyboard Super to Main Menu. I only considered tapping overloading back then, but dragging overloading is also possible.

Here's a new keyboard layout proposal in case the nubs don't click:

http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/#/layouts/a786b51899a86ba9d815d05b22fb77b1

It also features a dedicated compose key overloaded to keyboard Meta tap, SELECT tap overloaded as Context Menu (which makes sense in my mind), and no more overloading on START to allow a Ubuntu-style Alt HUD.

I'm still not sure about the action button labels. Either like in my proposal (that would be the "serious" way, with an emphasis on desktop use), or like this:

which is Pandora-compatible and at the same time somewhat PlayStation-compatible.