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What's up with the angling?

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paigeoliver:
No, it doesn't work. The edge of the control panel does not serve as a good reference point. If it did then angled sticks would work, since 90 percent of the panels that make the mistake of having angled sticks line them up with the panel edge.

 :banghead:They don't work. They don't work. They don't work.  :banghead:

I bet I could make a lot of money selling the names of the people who read all about how angled sticks don't work and still want to try it anyway to multilevel marketing people!

Howard_Casto:
Someone who decided upon 18 admin buttons (yes 18, I counted them!) should probably reconsider rebuking the peanut gallery's opinion.  Just mho. 

DaveMMR:

--- Quote from: DogFish on March 04, 2012, 08:27:00 pm ---from my own personal experience, this is the kind of situation that led me to draw out my preliminary plan for my arcade controller with angled stick's. and in that situation, it works fine, which led me to assume that it would work fine on a 4 player arcade control panel. alas, i have been slapped upside the back of the head and informed just how much of a bone-headed idea it is. but to continue, me thinks is just a situtuation of console gamer's imparting a bit of casual-gamer non-wisdom when exploring avenues outside the comfort of thier console of choice (as a pc gamer, i firmly believe that console gamers have destroyed my beloved FPS games, but thats a story for another board...)

anyway anyway anyway...
with the help of some very helpful member's of this board, i have come to the conclusion that at the very least, the controls should be aligned with the edge of the controller closest the person playing, as top serve as a reference point to the angle of the sticks. while a lot of people might think it is less than ideal having sticks angled at all, i think its acceptable if done with a physical, feelable reference point.

i've included a photo of my cardboard mock-up arcade control panel, as you can see in the pic all four sticks are angled (all four drawings of sticks, whatever...) i've since rectified the middle two sticks to the standard north towards monitor config, but i am keeping the two outer sticks and buttons as they are in the photo of the mock up. i figure the physical reference point of the edge of the control panel will serve fine as a way of instinctively knowing which way is which. if it doesn't work out, then the joke is on me and i've just wasted a $20 sheet of MDF and a $120 sheet of polycarbonate (lexan to all you americans :P )


anyway, thats some food for thought. i've enjoyed this thread quite a bit, cheers  :lol

--- End quote ---

While I think angling in relation to the front of the panel is slightly better than random angles, it's also time spent needlessly. When you install them straight, you don't have to cut a bunch of edges, etc. And contrary to popular belief, you are not spacing out people optimally since players are REQUIRED to stand in a very specific spot. When sticks are straight they can stand pretty much anywhere.

If you still want the angles go for it, but I don't think the wheel needs to be reinvented in this particular case.

Le Chuck:
Dogfish, why is it better that I would need to look at the CP to know which way is up?  What makes the top edge of the panel less of a candidate for orientation than the bottom?  Do you play staring at your hands?  I am sure that in a few months your panel will be complete and you'll come back on and declare victory over all who told you to orient your sticks correctly and I wish you well but this isn't a case of opinion.  There is a correct way to do this and an incorrect way.  Preference over one way or another does not change the correctness.

I present the Q-Bert Theory

If sticks aren't designed to have a fixed orientation as related to the screen then why does Q-Bert have a purposefully angled stick and why is it so hard to get a decent score when playing on an incorrectly angled stick?  Ergo if Q-Bert is designed to play with the joystick angled to a certain degree then all other games are designed to play with the joystick angled to a certain degree.  Corollary:  If the game has an up direction that equals moving parallel to the edges of the screen from bottom to top then the controller is meant to be oriented to produce a physical manifestation of that onscreen movement, just as Q-Bert's joystick is oriented to mirror onscreen movement.    

paigeoliver:
You know in the past I have actually TRIED to stand at an angle to do better at Q*Bert on a normal stick and it doesn't help one bit.

Dogfish obviously knows more about this than two generations of experts at Atari, Sega, Midway and Konami. It is too bad the industry is dead, otherwise he could have really showed them a thing or two about the right way to set up their 4 player machines.

Why do you think this is something that you can somehow beat. What exactly is the situation that you are trying to fix with those angled sticks? The gamepad obsessed gremlin in the back of your head that thinks it is smarter than all the engineering teams that put together every 4 player game ever made.

I do actually recall seeing a very early (mid 70s) 4 player Snake type game at an auction that angled the joysticks, but for the life of me I can't remember which game it was. I was almost certain it was a Midway Checkmate but I owned one of those some years later and the sticks weren't angled. Perhaps it was an early run machine and they fixed the problem afterwards. Those 4 player snake games were pretty much the first 4 player joystick games out there and even then they quickly figured out they shouldn't angle the sticks.

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