MIPI woes, good design ideas and headaches

[Saber]

The only logical progression is

    C

  Y   Z

A   B

  X

Indeed

It's illogical Mr. Spock to think space will fold to fit six buttons on the Pyra in that way given where the speakers now sit(even if the six buttons are shrunk down in size like the DS). 

On Vulcan though they'd do something like this. Just grab a gamepad and try it out(or don't).

 

[klapse]

My vote would be for geometric symbols.

 

[Natsu]

Now tell me again about "the standard"...

Yes, most of them use ABXY.

Show me one.

Spoiler

 

[Blimp]

          I

     H      F

G       E

     D

just press al the buttons to see what they do... the only problem is when the button shows up inside your 'emulated' game (like those timed events in god of war, had to look at the buttons for a while), to solve that I would go with the "little displays in the buttons"!!!.

 

[Null]

The perfect layout for today's Internet generation.

 

    L


  O   T

L   U

  W

Don't worry about there being two Ls, one is L and the other one is L Gr.

 

[WizardStan]

But then you'd also confuse the L shoulder button, no? And there's actually two of them. Four Ls is too many!

 

[Null]

Four Ls is too many!

 

[Hồng Thất Công]

Buttons for Pyra should be Pyrates or Dragon

      Y         

P          A               

      R           E

             T

-----------------------

          A

     R        N

D        O

     G 

 

[_wb_]

How about: up down top bottom charm strange?

 

[Letalis Sonus]

Plus, the characters ♠, ♥, ♣, and ♦ are in ISO 8859-1

Nope. The whole 8859 family is purely single byte, not a single one wastes its limited space for such characters.

 

[WizardStan]

Hearts, stars, and horshoes, clovers and blue moons.

 

[Null]

Hearts, stars, and horshoes, clovers and blue moons.

That layout sounds magically delicious.

 

[Neelix]

Nor have I, but many emulated games will tell you which buttons to press and that will (naturally) refer to the emulated layout.

I've also once had someone (I think it may have been Askarus) tell me to press B to do something in a DS game in DraStic, meaning DS B which is Pandora X.

Yeah but those two things will be the case no matter what the buttons are called. Unless we want to put little displays in the buttons and have the labels change with the program, and please no one seriously suggest that.

Yes, but you're missing my point. Borrowing Klumpen's suggestion, (purely for being a positional representation) it's a lot easier to remember that East=A, South=B, North=X, West=Y than it is to remember B=A, X=B, Y=X, A=Y.

Basically, using the same symbols you are mapping for the buttons they are being mapped onto is inherently confusing, unless the symbol mapping already matches the button mapping.

Personally, of what's been suggested so far I like _wb_'s greek letter layouts best, though I would avoid the use of Chi, as it is visually indistinguishable from the latin X.

- Neelix

 

[TrashyMG]

The only logical progression is

    C

  Y   Z

A   B

  X

Indeed

It's illogical Mr. Spock to think space will fold to fit six buttons on the Pyra in that way given where the speakers now sit(even if the six buttons are shrunk down in size like the DS). 

On Vulcan though they'd do something like this. Just grab a gamepad and try it out(or don't).

I liked the choices of button letters vs odd greek letters and symbols, not necessarily the layout. which I found logical.. plus who doesn't like posting and re-posting Mr. Spock.

 

[God Ginrai]

Plus, the characters ♠, ♥, ♣, and ♦ are in ISO 8859-1

Nope. The whole 8859 family is purely single byte, not a single one wastes its limited space for such characters.

Oh, you're right. I apparently missed the split in the HTML4 whitesheet I was reading that separated the ISO 8859-1 from ISO 10646 when I was scrolling. Sorry about that. :\

EDIT:

@Neelix: That situation only seems confusing when you are not actually doing it. However, once your mind makes a connection, there's no difference. The buttons could all be "A", but as soon as someone told you to press the bottom A to punch, you would equate that button with "punch" and there would be no confusion. The only reason to name buttons different things is to give people a way to explain what button does what through text.

-God Ginrai

 

[Exophase]

Yes, but you're missing my point. Borrowing Klumpen's suggestion, (purely for being a positional representation) it's a lot easier to remember that East=A, South=B, North=X, West=Y than it is to remember B=A, X=B, Y=X, A=Y.

Basically, using the same symbols you are mapping for the buttons they are being mapped onto is inherently confusing, unless the symbol mapping already matches the button mapping.

I don't agree. Well, maybe you feel that way, but I can't see it being like that for me. But once I memorize a platform's buttons by position it doesn't matter to me what the Pandora's buttons are named, and I'd never try to memorize a correspondence that way.

Personally, of what's been suggested so far I like _wb_'s greek letter layouts best, though I would avoid the use of Chi, as it is visually indistinguishable from the latin X.

You can do a more stylized chi. As I said in my post, I'd prefer to have letters that you can use similar latin forms for, because it's rather snobbish to expect the whole userbase to know the names of the all the Greek letters he's using. You will definitely get some confused people.

 

[Neelix]

Yes, but you're missing my point. Borrowing Klumpen's suggestion, (purely for being a positional representation) it's a lot easier to remember that East=A, South=B, North=X, West=Y than it is to remember B=A, X=B, Y=X, A=Y.

Basically, using the same symbols you are mapping for the buttons they are being mapped onto is inherently confusing, unless the symbol mapping already matches the button mapping.

I don't agree. Well, maybe you feel that way, but I can't see it being like that for me. But once I memorize a platform's buttons by position it doesn't matter to me what the Pandora's buttons are named, and I'd never try to memorize a correspondence that way.

Fair enough, but I think another context would illustrate my point better, let me rephrase.

If you have buttons labelled A,B,X and Y which were mapped to Y, A, B and X respectively, and tell you "Press Y", do I mean the button mapped Y or the button labelled Y? On the other hand, if you have buttons Labelled I, J, K and L (for the sake of this argument) mapped to A, B, X, and Y, (respectively) and I tell you to press A it's clear which button is intended.

Personally, of what's been suggested so far I like _wb_'s greek letter layouts best, though I would avoid the use of Chi, as it is visually indistinguishable from the latin X.

You can do a more stylized chi. As I said in my post, I'd prefer to have letters that you can use similar latin forms for, because it's rather snobbish to expect the whole userbase to know the names of the all the Greek letters he's using. You will definitely get some confused people.

*shrugs* I don't expect them to know them. I don't know them that well myself. It would only take a short while to learn them if they were in practical use though.

- Neelix

 

[slaeshjag]

Plus, the characters ♠, ♥, ♣, and ♦ are in ISO 8859-1

Nope. The whole 8859 family is purely single byte, not a single one wastes its limited space for such characters.

They are however in codepage 437, in the space normally wasted by control sequences

 

[kasp]

I dunno it seems to me the one thing people praise about the pandora is is dpad and gaming buttons(minus the L and R).  Putting 6 buttons in seems to me be messing with a winning formula for a couple of games?   The L and R need improvement but the others seem great.

If you are serious enough about fighting games wouldn't you be using an arcade stick anyway?  A handheld console really isn't the place to play serious fighting games.

 

[God Ginrai]

I dunno it seems to me the one thing people praise about the pandora is is dpad and gaming buttons(minus the L and R).  Putting 6 buttons in seems to me be messing with a winning formula for a couple of games?   The L and R need improvement but the others seem great.

If you are serious enough about fighting games wouldn't you be using an arcade stick anyway?  A handheld console really isn't the place to play serious fighting games.

Fighting games are not the only games that use 6 buttons. (see N64 games) 6 buttons was a winning formula as well. (see Sega Saturn controller.) Also, there is nothing wrong with playing fighting games on a handheld console. If it was a bad idea, then why is Nintendo finally making a SSB game for the 3DS handheld?

People will always argue about the labeling of the buttons. (see Klumpen's posts complaining about the Pandora button labels) That is no reason to deny a feature.

-God Ginrai