It’s been done.
I like this button layout. If one of the face buttons is gonna be used more than all the others, why shouldn’t it be bigger?
It also has the advantage that nearly every button is a completely different size or shape. Making it easier to use if you have trouble knowing where your fingers are without looking.
The gamecube controller is how I memorized the x- and y-axis of the coordinate system.
oooooh
Man, when this shit hit the streets I thought there was no way this controller wouldn’t suck, but turned out to be a great layout.
In my experience, you almost never used the D-pad and C-stick.
That made it functionally in line with PS, and not terribly difficult to adapt into.
I do think the central A with surrounding B, X, and Y buttons was worse than the balanced design of PS/XBox. Just not enough to lose sleep over
It fit my hands really well. C stick was entirely game dependent, some used it heavily and others ignored it - sort of similar to D pad, but that’s been pretty common since games started supporting 3D environments - D pad was only the primary movement control in a 2D game or menus, and occasionally used for ancillary stuff. That is the same to this day so it’s kind of a moot point with this controller specifically.
Personally I loved the asymmetric letter button controls. Was goofy looking but way less awkward thumb movements to reach stuff.
Nobody’s been brave enough to name the buttons N(orth), S(outh), E(ast), and W(est).
It would be weird to have buttons changing position to face north all the time
How about 12, 3, 6 and 9?
The Duke has entered the chat
You mean 11, 2, 5, and 8? ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ
Thanks for waking memories! I had one of these. Highly modded, with a modchip, other OS and a large HDD for my game backups. I could also watch videos etc. Most fun I had with a console. This was the pinnacle IMHO. The next gen started with the enshittification process.
Looks like a fat batarang
Absolute Batarang
How about a regular boomerang?
This one makes me horny
This is what happens when you let the guys at Area 51 into the design team
Wouldn’t mind if they hired those guys for the next playstation tbh lol
I’m old enough to remember this and I approve of your suggestion. But tbh i’d also be fine with 10, 1, 4 and 7.
I actually started with 10 initially. But it was bugging me so I went and overlaid a clock onto the face buttons. 11 and 5 are bang-on, the other two are closer to 2:30 and 7:30 lol.
Yas Queen.
The only correct controller.
Now that’s the kind of innovation we need!
In my middleware, it’s like that, with the optional
Btn_VandBtn_VIfor reasons.
Retvrn 2 Tradition
I loved that controller as a kid.
It was too good for this world.
This is yet another one of the many reasons Steam is amazing. Not only do they have an abstracted layer that allows devs to insert control mappings that adapt to show your controller preference… but even BETTER, they have an option for “Universal” controller button iconography where they just show the relative position of the face buttons in a diamond layout ❖ where the button indicated is a filled circle ● and the others are outlined ○ - rather than letters like ABXY.
So like this :
…instead of “× or A or B” from PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo (respectively).
Another option, if you want to be able to describe them with words instead of pictures, it naming them after the cardinal directions.
Me already teaching my 6 year old: “press the L button” “Not left on the dpad” “That’s the left stick button” “No not left on the left stick” “Not the left on the right stick” “that’s ZL!”
And now with this suggestion: “No not the left face button either!”
No, let’s not use cardinal directions anymore.
The cardinal directions are north, east, south, and west, as on a map. They are not left, right, up, and down because the cardinal directions are not relative to the observer. The problem of differentiating D-Pad, Stick, shoulder, trigger, etc. can be frustrating too (especially when they are shown on screen as icons with confusingly minor differences instead of text), but that is another matter entirely.
The existence of cardinal directions implies the existence of ordinal directions. But, like, in the sense like numbers have those two forms, not like apparently actually exists where “ordinal directions” are just the in-betweens like northwest.
Our brains process simple symbols objectively faster than words - it’s why when you see a stop sign they all are 🛑s.
Your 🧠 maps the shape 🛑 more rapidly than the word “STOP” which is made up of several letters that you have to first understand, combine, and then remap in your mind internally.
If they made some stop signs purple triangles, there would be more accidents and traffic violations in relation to stop signs. “STOP” is secondary and takes relatively more time to process than “🛑.”
Symbols that represent objects or entire words are a more direct mapping than words composed of multiple letters.
If you’ll permit me to dust off my old game design hat… similar to the principle as to why it was easier to move Mario in any of his 3D games than it was to move your character in the original PS1 versions of Resident Evil…
…Less layers of “mapping.”
In Super Mario 64, you just angle the stick relative to YOUR view to make Mario go “that” way.
Meanwhile in the original Resident Evil games (and other earlier “3D” perspective games pre-Super Mario 64), tilting “up” on the Dual-Shock L-stick made your character go “forward” from THEIR perspective, not yours.
Part of the challenge was being able to quickly “translate” that layer of mapping in your mind.
TL;DR - 🛑 > ”STOP”
This is how those buttons are described in the Linux Kernel gamepad abi
I still need to physically move my a to b and x to y on my steam deck, it triggers me
Hold up, how do I do this? I literally just mentioned in another comment that my PS controller shows up with XBox buttons and I’d really like to use the neutral one anyways.
On the Deck / Big Picture - it’s under the Controller settings on Steam as seen here :
Billionaire Gabe’s corporate cult is so deep on Lemmy. You can’t talk about anything game related before someone busts in sucking Gabe’s dick and shilling steam
This is good UI design, and the fact that Steam hardware is making Linux more common and usable is also very cool.
But Idk, people were rightfully dragging Gabe Newell over his insane fucking yacht.
Appreciating some neat tech stuff, and hating capitalism aren’t mutually exclusive
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Thanks!
Emulating Switch I realized how much I love the button prompts. Since the controller could be rotated they just filled in the button to press.
Until you go to your inventory in TOTK and it says “press Y to sort items” and I always press X instead cuz 2 decades of Xbox Controllers.
I have, and always will, maintain that the Xbox controller button layout is the only one that makes any sense to me.
The PlayStation one makes sense to me too but that’s probably cause I grew up with a PS2. Now the switch on the other hand, that scheme is a fucking abomination. I actually use a remapped Xbox controller when I play mine.
PlayStation is the correct one. L1/L2 vs LB/LT.
which parts of Xbox/PlayStation controller layouts don’t match? aren’t functions the same, just symbols different?
I have, and always will, maintain that the Xbox controller is trash and PlayStation is clearly superior. never have I used an Xbox controller and thought “yeah this sensitivity curve of nothingnothingnothingEVERYTHING” makes sense
I keep having to say “Big X” and “Little X”.
Valve has a chance to do something really funny.
I don’t even read button prompts.
Most games have the same functions on the same positions. It’s only weird when they do shit like make R2 the sprint button. Like, what the absolute fuck is that shit?
when they do shit like make R2 the sprint button
Except accept/cancel is sometimes switched.
As a PC gamer that doesn’t often use a controller. I often have to enter menus twice. Once to just exit it, and another to accept whatever is the first entry.
Specially when emulating old Nintendo games, which don’t say which button is which.
On nintendo and older PS games, or Japanese releases of PS games, the accept button is the one to the right.
Take Gameboy for example. The A button is to the right of B.
Here’s a layout I just came up with:
☆ ◇ ❌️ ✔️OMFG BANNED
j/k
The PlayStation one is the symbol, not the letter, so that one is a bit different.
Yup, functionally the cross is more like an A, and the PlayStation layout is effectively the same as the Xbox one in actual practice.
Which is incorrect in the first place. Circle was supposed to be the accept/enter button originally.
I never understood why Sony felt the need to flip confirm/cancel in markets outside Japan.
Yeah, the original system had logic to it. The square also symbolized menus, and triangle was tertiary.
Tell that to my brain’s pattern recognition reflexes…
I don’t have any problem with the PS controller, since the X is a shape, not a letter, but the Xbox layout always fucks me up so bad since it’s become standard for PC games. The Nintendo layout was hardcoded into my brain in 1991 when I played Super Mario World. I don’t think I’ll ever really get used to the Xbox one even though I probably won’t be playing on Nintendo consoles any more.
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Could be worse, it could be Japan where the purpose of X vs Circle is swapped.
No it’s swapped in the rest of the world PlayStation was released first in Japan. So O for confirm is the OG layout. It makes sense in Japan since in Japanese writing you write down a Circle for Yes, OK or Good or an X for No or Bad.
As someone who learned on that, it is worse (having to switch one way or the other).
I’m pretty sure that Nintendo created this problem.
They used a/b/x/y on the SNES. The Genesis, it’s direct competitor, had a/b/c.
Then Xbox copied them and Sony copied them… But each had to have a slight variation because Nintendo being Nintendo, they’d get sued into next week…
I definitely blame Nintendo for this one.
First, sony didnt copy them. The symbols on the PS controller had special meanings in Japanese. X = incorrect/cancel O = correct/accept. English localized games reversed them for whatever reason. Also, xbox actually derived its layout from the Dreamcast. MS was partnered with Sega, thus the xbox carries on the Sega legacy.
I remember reading somewhere that the Triangle was meant to represent “viewpoint” and the Square was meant to represent “menu”. Neat, if true!
This.
I mean… I was more talking about the four button standard diamond pattern… With different labels on each button; but okay.
The basic layout of the PS1 controller was a SNES controller with wings.
The only layout I hate is Nintendos. At least with Xbox and PlayStation it’s:
A = X.
B = O.
Y = Triangle
X = SquareWith Nintendo, they turn it all slightly and I absolutely hate it. It’s the only one that I have to retrain my brain/coordination for. When I play a Nintendo game through emulation (fuck Nintendo), I notice immediately when the controls didn’t properly migrate from my other games because now all of the sudden A is going back a menu. -.-
To be fair, they used that setup first. And PS originally copied it, but for some reason switched the functions of X and O in the West. In Japan, those symbols O often used for agree/correct/confirm and vice versa for X. It is weird that X became confirm here .
I don’t see it that way. I see south button means confirm, East means No. I get people grew up with the old Nintendo way, but for most people, where they are on the Xbox/PS layout is just better ergonomically.
No they didn’t - it’s the same sequence.
A = circle (1 line )
B = cross (2 lines)
X = triangle (3 lines)
Y = square (4 lines)
Xbox broke with convention.
That’s your preference. A vast majority of people prefer the Xbox/PS layout. Both are fine. I hate the Nintendo one either way.
No it’s not, it’s literally what the PlayStation symbols are. Xbox is the odd one out. And I never started a preference…
What you wrote doesn’t match any of the controllers. Did you mistype?
