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What's up with the angling?

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Le Chuck:
That gauntlet CP is the perfect example of how to handle the issue.  If you want to crowd everybody together that's fine, if you want to put the buttons at various clock positions with respect to the joy and monitor that's fine too but UP should always translate in relation to the monitor because players are watching the screen and not their hands.  Rotating the joystick on axis does nothing to the ergonomics, it will work exactly the same and produce the same fatigues because that rotation doesn't alter the way it fits in your hand so anybody who claims ergonomics for rotating a joystick is barking up the wrong tree... in fact I don't even think it's a tree.

Button position is a whole other issue and I've seen a lot of builds on here start to angle the button layouts to "prevent jostling" which I've found to be malarky personally but doesn't affect gameplay significantly.  If it looks cool and plays fine then knock your socks off.  When the users start moving the relative position of UP away from direct screen orientation that is where the waters get murky for playability because the brain wants the way you move the joystick to correlate directly to the way the little man moves on screen whether or not that joystick movement is in line with the body or laterally like when you're playing as Thor or Questor.

So the trick is separating the discussion and advice of button position from UP orientation because I think that we can pretty much agree that while position is a matter or preference there is only one right answer for UP... unless you're Q-Bert... or marble madness... or nevermind.    

Green Giant:

--- Quote from: pinballjim on February 16, 2012, 11:18:51 am ---
--- Quote from: Green Giant on February 16, 2012, 10:40:13 am ---I guess the best example would be the common QWERTY keyboard.  It is a fact that there is a much more efficient keyboard design, but QWERTY is so ingrained that we don't want to change.  Just an FYI, QWERTY was designed to slow down typing and encourage alternating a letter from each hand to reduce the chance the mechanical typewriter would jam up when the keys hit the paper.

--- End quote ---

Don't repeat urban legends.

http://www.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/keys1.html

--- End quote ---
Ok, if I remove the statement about more efficient designs, then everything else is true.

Also, that article does nothing to say QWERTY is the best design, it just says DVORAK is not an obvious improvement.  Although I still believe there are more efficient keyboard designs, might not be Dvorak, but I didn't even realize that was the common comparison.  



I guess I should have used the Beta Max VHS analogy.  Once a standard becomes accepted it is difficult to change it.

But if you want to argue about standards and efficiency, there is no argument.  There are many many areas where standard activities are done inefficiently, but the effort to change the process is to much of a pain in the ass to deal with.

Hence why angled arcade controls are a bad plan unless every single person who plays on your machine has plenty of time to break all of their old habits.

Vigo:

--- Quote from: DaveMMR on February 16, 2012, 11:37:04 am ---
--- Quote from: Vigo on February 16, 2012, 11:17:44 am ---I have been down the angled controls route before for player's 3 and 4, when I was surprised how many times I was seeing them angled. I finally tried it on someone else's cab, and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Green eggs and Ham moment for me.

--- End quote ---

Unauthentic to arcade, yes - but it's not horrible when the front of the cab (like half an octagon shape) is parallel to the angle of the sticks (which is typically 45 degrees).  Just again to clarify, what I am seeing is the main (P1 and P2) sticks, angled not at all parallel to the front edge and not even at 0/360 or 45 degrees (like it's almost random). 

--- End quote ---

I hear what you are saying, and frankly i do agree. I don't know if I could wrap my mind around a slightly offset joystick. The P3/P4 I have come to terms with were 45 degree joysticks on a half octagon. I don't want to rail on this idea just yet because I used to think there was no way you could angle any controller on a cab and have it work.

Put me in the "skeptical, but not ready to to knock a method I have't tried yet" category.

Green Giant:

--- Quote from: pinballjim on February 16, 2012, 12:38:23 pm ---When QWERTY was created it was far from the industry standard.  The jamming problem was solved on type writers very early and it was many years before QWERTY took over, and it was done in the face of a lot of competitors.  Point being, it's the standard because people preferred it and not because some nefarious designer was attempting to slow typists down.


Anyway, now that you know, it's one of those things that'll drive you nuts like "NASA spent millions on a pen, the Soviets used a pencil" and "the creator of Fahrenheit made 100 degrees equal to the hottest day of the year" and other nonsense stories people like to repeat.

Angled control panels mean you don't have to touch the guy standing next to you.  Works for me.

--- End quote ---
Haha, the nasa one is pretty funny.  Never seen the email talking about Fahrenheit. 



My main complaint with angled though is that new users on your arcade will find it awkward.  They will just find something different without being able to pinpoint it probably.

But if you are putting a trackball in the middle of the CP, I really don't see a need to angle it to separate players.  That seems like overkill.

ark_ader:
Does it relieve hand cramp?

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