I’m thinking that it is indeed true. The keyboard has been wily before, refusing ‘m’ or other keys at random. This is the first time I’ve had such an odd issue. The output is really weird.
Looking into a Bluetooth keyboard, with low profile keys so I won’t go mad from loud clicking. Since the computer did a blue screen yesterday, and I found no viruses or other issues, I’m assuming that I’ll be tablet only again at some point. Sigh.
The plastic membrane is indeed present. I’ll wash the key caps, dust the plastic again before replacing the tops and that’ll be all I can do. Guessing right now it won’t be ‘fixed’. Sigh.
I literally find it impossible to stay in one stable mental condition for more than a few weeks at a time in the past year. Whenever things seem to finally go my way some unaccounted for shit happens and i’m back to ‘meh’ state. Not a depression or something like that , just pure ‘meh’ .
And i dont know if it just my luck lately , or i simply became more susceptible to these things lately.
So that thing is rubber pad out of a controller. It was the pressy for ABC, XYZ, and 3 other buttons. Cool shape, no?
Any idea where I can get something like this or a good replacement? Just curious. The controller is an oldie: Logitech G-Za-Phi. Good for playing retro games or like RPG maker ones.
Oh the old Logitech wingman series? Some of my all time favourite controllers. I was very displeased when they were discontinued and everyone just aped the xbox design. Those 2 extra face buttons were really nice to have. Why they standardized to only 4 I’ll never understand.
Unfortunately the likelihood of finding spare parts is lower than finding a 2nd hand specimen on ebay or some old charity shop random electronic junk drawer. So try that out.
The layout is awesome isn’t it? I dunno why the 4 instead of 6 either. Must be some history there.
I did find 2 lovely looking ones in good condition on Ebay, however I really just want to find the rubber padding. It seems like most though, are for 4 button configurations these days.
I think the reason for the 4-button layout is it reduces the cognitive load of using buttons. You can use four face buttons by just rocking your thumb in a vague direction, you don’t have to think about where it currently is. That’s probably why PlayStation and Xbox went with 4 buttons, plus shoulder buttons/triggers, making use of the otherwise idle index (and possibly middle) fingers. Their dominance of the console market ensured that that’s what people, including developers, expect of controllers. This snowballed into very few developers making use of buttons that can’t be found on this style of controller, or providing layouts designed for anything else, and if there aren’t many games calling for extra buttons, then manufacturers aren’t going to add them.
While I like the 4-face-button controllers myself because they work very well for the kinds of games I most enjoy, I do hate how homogenous the space has gotten, and how it limits what developers can create and be successful in selling. If it all has to be the same, I’d rather it be that all controllers have some extra buttons that are only used by a handful of games, rather than game devs just being SOL if they want to make something that calls for extra buttons as they are now.
Standardization of the controllers wouldn’t be a necessity from a development standpoint if remapping of keys was a given option to have. As long as you had a common base different manufacturers and models could add a variety of interesting additionals, kind of like what we’ve always seen with mice. It’s just such a shame that all variety on the market was crushed by the big two.
Hm. Much food for thought from both @eishiya and Frags.
It’s been a while since I used the Logitech since A and C weren’t responding (I’m hoping it’s just dust issue. How does so much dust get into these things? O_o). I don’t remember what controls I used to map to C and Z - at the extreme right, or how comfortable it had been.
If you want to talk about awkward, how about the older Nintendo controllers. What in the heck was that about?
My guess is, like Eishiya said, they moved those two extra face buttons to be the second set of shoulder buttons so that it’s easier to push multiple buttons at once. If you think about it, the Saturn’s six-button controller (what that seems to be based on) has the same number of buttons as the PS1 Dualshock; they’re just in different places. I doubt you’re missing out on anything.
Already here. How many games use all four face buttons, all four shoulder buttons, L3, R3, AND have the D-pad do different actions than the left stick? Hard mode: how many games do that and don’t feel unnecessarily-complex or padded-out?
Playing Ni no kuni right now and while it doesn’t actually use all available buttons it sure could have used more of them. The fighting system in this game is horrible because they’ve opted to amalgamate old menu fighting with real time action. The characters only have a limited numbers of moves but you still have to cycle through a damn menu to select them. With 6 face buttons you could have just assigned each move to it’s own button.
While you might have the same number of buttons in the end the shoulder buttons being disassociated with the face buttons makes them often times ignored or relegated to special utility functions rather than being used in actual game play. How many games just uses them to flip pages in a menu screens and nothing else?
I used an older logitech wingman with those 6 buttons for a long time and there’d always be something useful you could bind to those two extra buttons.
But then again it isn’t really a bout losing something we had, but losing what could have been if innovation hadn’t been stifled.
True, but I think it’s a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison, because those are all very different styles of buttons, rather than more of the same basic type of button that would allow for more basic game inputs and thus enable more gameplay types.
L3/R3 are a hard button type to use, suitable mainly for seldom-used actions or as an accessibility alternative, not suitable for use in a game that wants to give you more basic inputs.
L-stick and d-pad are often used as alternates for the same thing in 2D games because 2D games often play best with d-pad, which leaves the L-stick with nothing to do because it’s too fiddly to use for shortcuts. In 3D games where L-stick movement usually works better, it’s common to use the d-pad for non-movement, such as weapon shortcuts in FPS games, because the d-pad is unambiguous.
This is giving me flashbacks to trying to play Borderlands 2 (incidentally, an example of that type of game that doesn’t feel complex or padded) on Vita Like many FPS games, on console/PC, BL2 uses RT/R2 to shoot, LT/L2 for scope/ironsights, LB/L1 for your ability, RB/R1 for grenades. Melee and sprint are on R3/L3, which made them awkward to use, but since they’re generally not needed in the heat of battle, it worked well enough. On Vita, however, there are no triggers or even R3/L3, it’s four buttons short. The missing buttons are assigned to the back touchpad, which works correctly for me maybe 10% of the time, so essentially, I have to play that game four buttons short. IIRC it doesn’t let you remap those actions to the d-pad, which would’ve been nice (I’d sooner live without weapon shortcuts then grenades). I never finished it on Vita xP To be honest, I didn’t care for it on PC either, I forced myself to finish it after a years-old break. That wasn’t due to the controls though - BL1 had the same control scheme and I loved it.
Yup, this drives me nuts like, what happened to button combinations? Did they consider users too dumb to use them?
I recently played a game that had a lot of keyboard shortcuts, but the gamepad couldn’t access any of the stuff because they limited everything to the basic buttons. Hence why I rarely resort to play with them anymore.
The OG X-box did have six face buttons, which den got moved to be shoulder buttons. Meaning it had the same amount of buttons as a PS2 controller anyway.
Those black and white buttons were smaller and not as good to use as the others, but i would agree extra remappable buttons would be better.
My x-box one controller is broken (drifting stick) and i don’t know if i will bother fixing it or swapping it out.
Nah, it’s just that a simple input is preferred to a complex one. Even in games with lots of abilities, players will use the simplest options they can, and resort to combinations only if there’s no other choice - and not playing the game is often a solid choice. Nobody wants to press two or three buttons, unless they’re playing a game like DDR or Beatmania where complex inputs are the gameplay (typically with specialised controllers that don’t need to be held in the hand).
In games that need a lot of different inputs, controller support is typically an afterthought (because chances are, if the devs designed a game like that, it’s because they’re playing with keyboard), or is intended as an accessibility option for people who need a simpler control method than keyboard - people who would probably not use button combinations even if they were available.
Lastly, it’s also just easier to code simple inputs than combination inputs, especially on controllers. Input libraries typically report keyboard modifiers along with each key stroke so shift+f can just be treated as a single input separate from f, but combinations of non-modifier keys or controller inputs have to be handled by the game code. Developers have to pick their battles, and making controllers on par with keyboard is usually not a worthwhile one. Perhaps if we had a gamepad standard where combinations had driver- or library-level support, we’d see that feature more often.
You can pry my Vita from my cold, dead hands D:< Borderlands 2 on Vita may have been a travesty, and one of my PS1 Classics games is annoying without real L2/R2 buttons, but I still I love that thing, and it’s my current most played platform after PC. I’d also still use my PSP were its disc drive properly functional ;_;
That sounds like a problem with the developers, not the controller or its lack of innovation.
Couldn’t those useful things just as easily be bound to the extra shoulder buttons instead? I’m honestly not seeing your issue, here.
What are you talking about? Controllers never stopped being innovated! Did you know the PS5 controllers have shoulder buttons that can change how much force you need to use to push them, or that they have a built-in mic like the DS or Famicom? How about that the Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons have HD rumble and an IR sensor? Not to mention the original Wii’s motion controls or the Wii-U’s touch-screen-controller hybrid. Or what about the touch screen on the DS/3DS/Switch, or the rear touch screen on the PS Vita? Did you know that PS4 controllers have a touchpad-thing on the front? or that PS3 controllers have motion sensors (look up “sixaxis”), or that PS2 controllers have pressure-sensitive face-buttons? That’s consistent innovation all the way back to the early 2000s (the console generation after six-button died). Oh, and let’s not forget the Playdate, a portable console released four months ago which has a crank for input. The only one arguably not innovating here is Xbox.
If your only definition of innovation is ‘more face buttons,’ did you know the Atari Jaguar controller has twelve FIFTEEN of them?? What ever happened to those pioneers, eh?
If the game needs more than eight basic inputs for all of its basic actions, I don’t see why having a basic button for each of them would be better than the basic Mega Man approach of just pausing the game to basically equip whichever one you want. It’s slower, sure, but at some point, that becomes preferable than having to remember which button does what.
Like many FPS games, on console/PC, BL2 uses RT/R2 to shoot, LT/L2 for scope/ironsights, LB/L1 for your ability, RB/R1 for grenades. Melee and sprint are on R3/L3, which made them awkward to use, but since they’re generally not needed in the heat of battle, it worked well enough. On Vita, however, there are no triggers or even R3/L3, it’s four buttons short. The missing buttons are assigned to the back touchpad, which works correctly for me maybe 10% of the time, so essentially, I have to play that game four buttons short. IIRC it doesn’t let you remap those actions to the d-pad, which would’ve been nice (I’d sooner live without weapon shortcuts then grenades). I never finished it on Vita xP To be honest, I didn’t care for it on PC either, I forced myself to finish it after a years-old break. That wasn’t due to the controls though - BL1 had the same control scheme and I loved it.
