6 buttons AB/CD/XY and 4 shoulder buttons?

[WizardStan]

playing with 6 face buttons instead is much more comfortable.

In the arcade where you've got 3 fingers on the buttons, sure, but what about just a thumb moving left and right? You don't find you tend to just stick with medium and strong while weak punches are effectively ignored?

 

[PokeParadox]

playing with 6 face buttons instead is much more comfortable.

In the arcade where you've got 3 fingers on the buttons, sure, but what about just a thumb moving left and right? You don't find you tend to just stick with medium and strong while weak punches are effectively ignored?

Nope.

 

[Klumpen]

Nope

 

[bzar]

In the arcade where you've got 3 fingers on the buttons, sure, but what about just a thumb moving left and right? You don't find you tend to just stick with medium and strong while weak punches are effectively ignored?

Yep.
EDIT: I also always remap the keys on SNES so that weak punch/kick are in the shoulders and strong Y/B, medium being X/A (SNES mapping, not pandora).

 

[pmprog]

Actually, it's usually the medium ones I tend to ignore, and I actually find it quite cumbersome to play SF2 on a SNES controller.

When I play using my keyboard, I set ASD and ZXC as my attacks, and my fingers usually rest on ADC (LP, HP, HK).

I have two Street Fighter PSone pads (well, had, the Akuma one fell to pieces after a lot of usage ), and I tended to use my thumb for all. EX moves were still quite easy as your thumb could clip a couple of buttons at a time.

When I play Street Fighter on my Pandora (either SF2 through MAME/C4A, or SF3 in FBA), I have a custom config using O and P for LP and LK, and the 4 buttons for medium and hard

I don't mind if 2 of the 6 buttons are slightly smaller than the other 4, but I would like 6 front facing buttons.

With risking adding too much complexity, what about something like my Cyborg controller, where the joysticks are clipped in. So you could have a "right nub and 4 button" module, and a "6 button" module, so you could just pop one out.

http://www.cyborggaming.com/prod/cyborgpad.htm

One thing I will note with that controller, is that the connection is a bit iffy sometimes, and it thinks the controller is constantly pressing "down", and you have to repush the sticks in to fix the contact. It's a shame they made that bit not as solid as it should have been, otherwise a nice joypad

 

[comradekingu]

So lets say we have the classical ABXY in each direction to begin with, then work within restricted confinements of limited space. I end up with this
 


LU U  UR            AY  (Y)  YB
L     R    nub nub  (A)      (
LD D  DR            AX  (X)  XB
Extra buttons on the right could be the C-buttons for n64. (which one could argue will be a more important console to hit this time around) Pretty sure I could play with just the one right hand actually.
It seems to work, and in my head it also translated well to sega (megadrive/genesis) style controllers. Minus the one-handedness of course.
 
The difference between a palm grip and a claw grip being that you press with either the tip or the first joint of the finger, the tumb is very well adapted for this. You can do both at once, comfortably.  With one hand you can use thumbtip on the nub, then jointpress for the buttons.
 
With tip (on A-Y) and joint all on the abxy and the adjacents, you get 6 buttons very easily. The additional two diagonals a-x and y-b are a stretch.
Try it out.
 
I can type with first joint on both thumbs on the keyboard, and i have very big hands. The button alignment would have to be more narrow than that not to work. And one keeps in mind here that we are expanding on abxy, it doesnt really matter if you accidentally hit one of the extra keys adjacent to ABXY, which are A-X  A-Y Y-B or X-B
 
Im not going to say that playing classical d-pad sidescrollers with just the one hand on the left side works equally well, but its always nice to something for the impaired. It works for symmetry, but there is always someone who is going to find a use for it. Many consoles like the DS has purpously built native games that work well just because there are extra input methods, as opposed to the standard dpad (L-R) and 2-4 buttonmash

(Edit: how abbout a DDR game with 8 directions instead of 4, play with point and middlefinger)
Possibly having command grouping (for red alert type games) on those →-↓  and ←-↓ etc buttons work, or having it as "bring up the map" or similar function you may stop cruising the dpad to do.
 
Whatchama thinks, it uses very little space, and it seems to work very well, not so sure about the adaption to the top 6-button config where the two top buttons are A-Y and Y-B

 

[Klumpen]

Medium attacks are not very efficient most of the time. I try to make the first hit and then prepare a hard one,

but it depends on the character, because the reach of the middle ones seem to be a bit larger than of the weak attacks.

The two buttons on the far right at my old Saiteks are a bit smaller than the 4 main ones, so you can distinguish them by feeling, that's quite effective.

 

[Perusa]

I think he meant four face buttons and two triggers?

exactly!

Even if he did... yes it's both possible and also the "popular option" but 6 face buttons is the way to play Street Fighter games... it makes sense too, attacks range from low med high, punches on the top kicks on the bottom...

I played Street Fighter 2 on the SNES and got used to using the shoulder buttons, but even so playing with 6 face buttons instead is much more comfortable.

Hmm...i never played Street Fighter with 6 buttons.

 

[pmprog]

Hmm...i never played Street Fighter with 6 buttons.

I'd recommend it...

 

[WizardStan]

Nope.

Nope

Yep

Hmmm...

 

[dgame]

I would like 6 face buttons on a handheld console like the Pandora. Makes it more adaptable to emulators and SF2.

To play SF2 properly you need all 6 buttons.
1. The light punch cancels dash attacks (Ken vs Blanka)
2. The medium dragon punch goes through fireballs (Ken vs Ryu)

These are just two examples but the point is that light and medium attacks are not interchangeable and both are needed in different situations with various players.

BUT if I was limited to just four buttons it would be the lights and hards that stay.

 

[PokeParadox]

Nope.

Nope

Yep

Hmmm...

Source of confusion and debate it seems... I'll add more of my perspective.

I first played with 6 buttons using my N64 controller and adaptoid to play X-Men Vs Street Fighter using Final Burn.

I believe (from memory) you can activate a special attack by doing DN Diag F HP+HK.

For me this is so much easier to hit accurately by sliding my thumb over both buttons and pressing both buttons in one move. (As opposed to having to hit both shoulder buttons)

Also my thumb rocks easily over all 6 buttons as needed. I can easily press many combinations of the various strength attacks.

6 Buttons isn't too many for you to get lost either. You can feel which buttons you are pressing using the centre column of buttons as a point of reference.

(I still say that the N64 controller was awesome, only let down by the analogue sticks that wore down too easily... And these days only one analgue stick is limiting it could also use a few more buttons but I still find it useful for some games...)

 

[WizardStan]

Changing 4 buttons to 6 is not a zero cost operation. It requires changing the size and position of the buttons, not to mention that with more buttons available people will tend to use those buttons leading to the increased thumb travel I mentioned. That last point probably won't come into play much on something niche like the Pandora, most likely even with 6 buttons most stuff would stick to 4, but it is still something to keep in mind. Arguably that might make it worse: two extra buttons that don't serve any purpose outside of fighting games.

So, can having 6 face buttons as opposed to 4 face buttons and 2 extra triggers be argued to be worth the associated costs? I don't play Street Fighter and so far that seems to be the definitive argument, so to me it's not a very good trade. Are there other specific benefits to having 6 face buttons that I'm not seeing?

 

[pmprog]

Sure those extra two buttons could be used outside of fighting games, they're just two more buttons. Keyboard-wise they could be Insert and Delete (to match the 6 key block on your keyboard), and as I mentioned before, in other Emu's they can be set as extra shoulder buttons.

Of course, cost is to be considered, but that point might be moot depending on whether the successor's design is going to be based off the current Pandora's

I would still like 6 though

 

[WizardStan]

Sure those extra two buttons could be used outside of fighting games, they're just two more buttons

Of course, but that argument is unbounded: two extra buttons are good, they can be used for other things, therefore 4 extra buttons are better, therefore 8 buttons are even better, therefore... until the entire thing is just an entire panel of tiny buttons. The costs in terms of size and position (plus the loss of GPIO pins on the SoC) aren't just things "to be considered", they're the defining boundary. We've got 4 buttons, that's working well, adding two more will have added benefits but also added costs. Are the benefits outweighed by the costs? At how many face buttons does the cost become too high to balance out the benefit of having more buttons? You can't just say "8 buttons feels like too many" because I'll just respond "6 buttons feels like too many".

We need some solid scenarios that demonstrate why 6 buttons is actually (as opposed to theoretically) better and worth the rearranging that would be required. That 6 key block standard is another good one; still not worth it to me but maybe that becomes a selling point for someone else.

What other benefits does 6 face buttons have over 4 face and 2 shoulder that cannot also be used to argue in favour of 8 face buttons?

 

[PokeParadox]

6 instead of eight because of the centre column being a tactile reference as I mentioned already.

 

[WizardStan]

6 instead of eight because of the centre column being a tactile reference as I mentioned already.

9 then. A perfect 3x3 square of buttons. Or 10, a 5x2 so you've still got your center column.

Or add a slight ridge in the middle of your 2x4.

The point wasn't to argue that any more than 6 would be better, it was to get ideas about why 6 was better than 4 other than "more is better" and "Street Fighter".

 

[worzyl]

Being a streetfighter fan (arcade player!) 6 buttons on a pandora would be great, but obviously not just for that 1 game. So many PS1 games require 8 buttons to be used (Syphon Filter, RPG's, Fighting games etc) as well as N64 and lots of button hogging PC games.

However - I would not like to see the pandora's current keypad layout change as the current spacing for the keys, nubs and button layout works brilliantly. I would suggest putting 2 extra triggers at the back where the hinges are, but definitely not at the front as it would be too cramped aas well as an opportunity to accidently have your thumb interfere with other buttons.

 

[comradekingu]

Its not like more buttons dont have uses, just because they cant be clustered into just one game of starcraft.  Middleclick, start, play, pause, mute, there are as many scenarios as there are use-cases and different people

 

[pmprog]

You can't just say "8 buttons feels like too many" because I'll just respond "6 buttons feels like too many".

Yeah, I understand that, and I also understand that there are physical limits to what we can connect to the SoC as well as what you can put in the hardware without making the buttons too small.
So I get your point, but I think 6 buttons can be fit in without too much disruption to the size and position of the other pieces.

As for use cases, beyond fighters and N64, on a gaming side, probably not alot (unless you only stick to two shoulder buttons). From a keyboard aspect though, it gives you at least two more keys you can map - or 6 if you include Shifted and Fn'd modes.

I can't say if it really is a good trade off, all I know is I would like it.

Hell, if I knew how, I'd consider looking at making my own 6 buttoned handheld, primilary designed for fighters (maybe with a GBA, GCW0 or PSP shape unit). As it stands, I wouldn't actually know where to start