MIPI woes, good design ideas and headaches

[NoeleyC]

Not sure exactly when this thread turned into a face buttons discussion, but I'll throw my hat into the ring as well. I think keeping it like the Xbox controller would be the easiest solution, ABCD, eash with a different colour and the 5th and 6th buttons being black and white. Maybe label these keys with forward and back arrows, as I think they would be good for use in things like internet browsers etc?. I thought that the Pyra game buttons might be smaller than the Pandora ones, so I don't think it practical to go too wild with elaborate designs on each if they're not going to be overly legible at that size?

 

[Annales]

I think we're onto something with greek.


Of course there is inherent conflict with existing pad layouts (xbox, snes, ps etc) and whatever the solution one or more emulators will have to adapt.


That's why a whole new naming of the buttons isn't such a big deal. Greek letters are original since they are unused sofar and yet respect the "historical" alphabetical buttons. we shouldn't be afraid of people not knowing Greek letters, it's only six and this product addresses mostly a mature customer (if you're buying this for your 8y old son then you either have high hopes in him our have a wrong of the product).


When the first PS came out the press went wild with the 14 buttons (the d-pad was counted in) claiming people would end up fumbling. Seeing as it is now the number 1 console on the market with symbols on their buttons I really think that the customers were underestimated.

 

[Natsu]

OK. I get the point about not leaving it blank, but why the weird symbols? :lol:

 

[elvissteinjr]

Am I the only one who would be fine just to keep it how it is?

Actually, latin letters all way, every controller of mine except the gamepad(which has numbers, good enough) for my PC has them. Wouldn't care if ABXYCD or ABCDEF or whatever, but I want letters I can recognize at all times. 
Do we really need to force the be-different thing? This just started because of a joke about the face buttons with faces on them.

 

[Neelix]

Am I the only one who would be fine just to keep it how it is?


Actually, latin letters all way, every controller of mine except the gamepad(which has numbers, good enough) for my PC has them. Wouldn't care if ABXYCD or ABCDEF or whatever, but I want letters I can recognize at all times. 


Do we really need to force the be-different thing? This just started because of a joke about the face buttons with faces on them.

Yes, it started as a joke,  but part of what inspired that joke was my firm belief that the use of A,B, X, and Y for the gaming button labels on the Pandora was a design flaw.

Exactly how many of those controllers also include a full qwerty keyboard?

Using Latin letters for the gaming buttons on the Pandora is inherently confusing:

• If I tell you Press A  do I mean Keyboard A or Gaming button A?
• While using an emulator If I tell you to press A do I mean Pandora A or Emulator A?  This problem is compounded by the fact that the mapping is different for every system being emulated

It's really not about being different,  it's about implementing a system that makes a clear distinction between every button on the device, and doesn't conflict with any other controller layout. 

- Neelix

 

[Exophase]

A lot of people argued against Pandora's letters, but I rarely hear about people confusing them with the keys. Often it's clear in context; at the very least, it makes more sense to prioritize functionality of a button before a key, or key letters may have another obvious function in the context (like if entering text is possible). If it's still ambiguous extra language helps, ie "X button" vs "X key" is a lot less likely to cause confusion. Or the user can just try both, usually they won't both do something if it isn't obvious.

I've never actually seen an emulator refer to pressing the emulated buttons, nor have I ever seen one that ties configuration of emulated buttons to functions outside the emulated machine, that seems very non-intuitive.

Now that Pyra is looking to be backwards compatible with PND there's more reason to keep the naming compatible. If you think "press A" is confusing imagine how much worse it'll be once if A is something else entirely.. I actually supported Pandora using the lowercase Greek letters alpha, beta, chi, and gamma since they resemble a, b, x, and y. If we had to do something with non-Latin letters now I'd definitely prefer this, those Greek letters are visually close enough to the Latin letters in appearance that it's clear what software (either Pandora software or new stuff that doesn't want to go through the trouble of using exotic characters) is talking about if they use Latin descriptions. But they can also pretty easily opt to use the correct Greek forms if they really need the extra unambiguity. Not sure about the other two face buttons, maybe epsilon and omega.

But when I promoted this for Pandora no one seemed to like it, so uh yeah, good luck with that. From the perspective of someone who may include button descriptions in software I'm definitely opposed to anything you need an unusual font for, or have to use descriptions that rely on knowledge not everyone has.

 

[_wb_]

I see the point of having plain ASCII text descriptions for the buttons, but it cannot be just one character because those are already on the keyboard. I don't really mind though to have to talk about e.g. the ALPHA button if the font doesn't have Greek -- we do that for SELECT and START too.

α β γ χ ψ ω  would be the Greek equivalent of A B C X Y Z (first 3 and last 3 letters)

If you go by sound instead of alphabet position, A B C X Y Z would be α β γ ξ υ ζ  (well, there is no Greek equivalent of C, so maybe κ or σ are closer)

α β γ δ ε ζ are the first 6 letters.

We could also stick to more "well known" Greek letters like π, λ and µ.

 

[FBnil]

Can we have P, Y, R, A  E, D keys?

edit: @_wb_: I like those greek letters you are suggesting:  α β γ  (alpha, beta, gamma) and π ι ρ (pi, iota, rho). So to spell pyrrha.

Oh wait.. its written with upsilon? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrha)  Πύρρα hmm...

(although π λ α ι pi, lamda, alpha iota spell play)

So uh:

α β γ  (alpha, beta, gamma) and ε δ π (epsilon, delta, pi) (Evil Dragon pie)

α β γ  (alpha, beta, gamma) and π λ µ (pi delta mu, recognizable letters)

α β γ  (alpha, beta, gamma) and φ ψ ω (chi psi omega, the actual three last letters of the greek alphabet)

α β γ  (alpha, beta, gamma) and Π υ ρ (pi upsilon rho, so to somwhat spell phyrra, πυρρα, and also sound like "abc, up")

of course, there are more combinations. And things from wingdings (happy, sad, thumb up/down, etc)

some would suggest: κ ρ α ι γ ξ, βοξ

 

[levi]

The gaming buttons are *buttons* while the on the keyboard there are *keys*. As long as we're precise with our nomenclature, there should be no confusion.


Biggest problem I have with ABXY like on the Pandora is when, like on the Pandora the A button is not in a primary position. Greek letters would have the same problem is the Alpha button wasn't somewhere comfortable, and I guess other alphabetic symbols would too. Using colours or abstract symbols avoids having the first button in the wrong position, but I suppose it doesn't help when there's no obvious prime button - see early Playstation software for an example, where most Japanese software used O as the positive prime button, and X as negative or back, but western developed games use X as the prime button because it's slightly more comfortable I guess, and because X and O aren't identified as symbolically representative in the same way as in Japan because we use cross and tick for the same.

 

[EvilDragon]

I'm also selling GameGadgets, and they have the ABXY keys in a different order.

They included a port of Puzzletube to the GameGadget (which uses ABXY buttons to play), and they are completely messed up.

The game is pretty much unplayable (at least that one mode) because of that.

This would happen to all quick ports of Pandora games or games that will run via the compatibility mode...

That's definitely not what we want.

 

[matzesu]

By the way: whill there be a compability Mode on Pyra?? So i just have to pull the SD Cards from my Pandy out and put they in the Pyra??

I think the first few wheeks, when there arent any Pyra Ports of our necesarry Apps (GBA, PSX) there is use for Pandora Programms, but on the cool new Hardware from the Pyra....

(First, i wants to play Tetris on my Shiny New Pyra)...

 

[Null]

I'm also selling GameGadgets

You mean to say that people are actually buying GameGadgets?

 

[EvilDragon]

I'm also selling GameGadgets

 You mean to say that people are actually buying GameGadgets?

Well, 40 EUR for 20 licensed Sega Games and the possibility to run Dingux, it's not that bad.

 

[Fzero]

dice style

 

[Null]

Well, 40 EUR for 20 licensed Sega Games and the possibility to run Dingux, it's not that bad.

It says 45 on DragonBox.de. + i'd still rather spend a bit more for a GCW Zero.

 

[Neelix]

I've never actually seen an emulator refer to pressing the emulated buttons, nor have I ever seen one that ties configuration of emulated buttons to functions outside the emulated machine, that seems very non-intuitive.

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.

I'm also selling GameGadgets, and they have the ABXY keys in a different order.
They included a port of Puzzletube to the GameGadget (which uses ABXY buttons to play), and they are completely messed up.
The game is pretty much unplayable (at least that one mode) because of that.

This would happen to all quick ports of Pandora games or games that will run via the compatibility mode...

That's definitely not what we want.

*nods*  I certainly wouldn't recommend switching to a different ABXY layout for exactly that reason,  but switching to a non latin letter layout should allow people to mentally map the Pandora's layout to the right positional buttons with a minimum of confusion.

Here's a thought...   how about labelling them with their keyboard functions?  Home, End, PgUp, PgDn  (the last 2 could be left and right click for the nub-mouse)

- Neelix

 

[Natsu]

Like I said in another thread, it really irks me to see anything but the standard letters.

 

[EvilDragon]

Well, 40 EUR for 20 licensed Sega Games and the possibility to run Dingux, it's not that bad.

It says 45 on DragonBox.de. + i'd still rather spend a bit more for a GCW Zero.

That's including 19% VAT, which you only have to pay when living inside the EU.

 

[Null]

which you only have to pay when living inside the EU.

Forgot about that, That's what living in England and seeing/hearing the word VAT does to you.

 

[mcobit]

dice style

That layout reminds me that I wanted to build some arcade controls where the Pandora snaps in on top.


Never got time or motivation to do it though. Maybe this will be a nice Project for the Pyra