2w ago

Put it to the right next time, I dare you

145 comments

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

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
  
  Now that's the kind of innovation we need!
- In my middleware, it's like that, with the optional Btn_V and Btn_VI for 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.
  
  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

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.

To be fair to the copyright troll, the Switch buttons are still in the same relative positions as they were in the SNES.
- Every non-Nintendo controller since has just been iteration after iteration of "lemme copy your homework, don't worry I'll change it up a bit."
  
  In fairness, the PS1 Dualshock was damn near perfection. There's a reason everyone has copied it ever since.
  Before that, you should have seen the bullshit we had to go through to move the camera around.

Valve has a chance to do something really funny.
- They wouldn't, they use the Xbox layout as that is definitely the most prevalent layout for PCs

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".

Here's a layout I just came up with:
undefined

☆ ◇ ❌️ ✔️
- OMFG BANNED
  ^j/k

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.
- As someone who grew up with N64, then GameCube, then XBOX 360, thankfully I've never had this issue with XBOX controllers. (The N64 had six face buttons and the GameCube put the A button directly in the center.) So when I switched to PC after the 360, the transition was natural.
  Which is why the Switch controller always fucks me up, and is one of the reasons why I prefer to play Switch games in an emulator, even though I have the actual console: because I can fix the button layout. (The other reasons being 4K, 120FPS, and mod support. Basically what the OLED Switch should have been from the get go—but isn't—so I have to resort to emulaton.)
  
  Yeah, Nintendo used that control scheme for the SNES and didn't come back to it until over 10 years later with the DS. I can at least switch between the bottom button being select and the right button being cancel without too much trouble - the bottom being cancel is not only Nintendo, but Sony Japanese games.

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).

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.
- Tell that to my brain's pattern recognition reflexes...

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.

There must be a stupid patent about an X button for every position on a game controller.

PlayStation was originally X = B O = A Because in Japan they use a circle to mean the same thing as in English a check mark is used. That is: "yes", or "correct". The cross means "no", or "wrong" in the same context in English and Japanese.
At some point the English language PlayStation games started flipping the meaning of X and O. Not sure why. Maybe to align with Xbox? So eventually Sony changed it in Japan too in order to standardise globally.
- American-made PlayStation games were using X for confirm and O for cancel long before the Xbox came out. It's probably partially because X is blue and O is red; we don't have cultural context for the symbols, but we do have cultural context for the colors.
  
  Also fascinating is that there was this window of games that tried using various "ok" buttons. Like, I think it was originally the Start button, then some games tried even Triangle or even Square. Conventions are weird.
  I just appreciate that Sony put a lot of effort into trying to make their buttons memorable and intuitive. The green Triangle points up, the cancel blue Square is down, the pink Square is left (like where you'd hold a shield), and the red ok/yes Circle is on the right. They made the convention, and haven't fucked with it at all.
  I also appreciate their buttons being labeled and numbered. Like L1 and L2, vs msft's.... Shoulder? Bumper? R1? Trigger? I alternate between shoulder and bumper, but they could have called it Frank and it would have been better. Imagine if they had weirdly given each button proper names.
  
  I see the symbols as like checkboxes or matrices. The 'X' has been filled in as yes, the O has been left empty
- Nah. Xbox came out years after the PlayStation. The reason the usage of the ps controller got switched in NA is because they did some studies and people just tried to use ps X-button as the accept button.
  Xbox is an abomination amalgamation of everything that came before it: Nintendo, PlayStation, and Sega. Look at those controllers, keeping in mind they came first, and it's painfully obvious what Microsoft was up to. They can't even come up with creative names. Hell, they even bought halo. And in an era of free online services, only Microsoft pushed everything into being paid and micro transactions. A LOT of the enshittification is Microsoft's fault.
  Compare to N64, which came before xbox, and know that Microsoft could have made any design they wanted, but didn't.

If controller manufacturers stuck to their original color scheme it would be way less confusing for most, with the color button prompts on games it used to be much easier to use a different console, but all of the newer controllers are turning colorless which makes switching to another one and getting the hang of it much harder.

Meanwhile, I'm annoyed by the shift from Y/triangle to B/circle for navigating back in menus. Nintendo, as far as I know (console ownership gap between SNES and Switch), kept their button assignments for those consistent.
- lol not at all. Your gap of skipping N64 and GameCube misses the inconsistencies perfectly. Have a look at images of the N64 and GameCube controllers. 😄
  The Switch is the console that went back to the roots of the SNES.
  
  I vaguely remember playing on GameCubes at the dentist's office back then, could never figure out button mappings for the games 😂
- I remember the PlayStation doing that since the PS2. I had like 30 or so games which had X for accept and O for back. But then I played a remastered Uncharted on my PS4 and was utterly confused to see triangle for back.

Honestly, I don't even really know where they are unless I'm looking at them. The games that show all four face buttons and just highlight the one I need to push are the ones that really work for me.

The only layout I hate is Nintendos. At least with Xbox and PlayStation it’s:
A = X.
B = O.
Y = Triangle
X = Square
With 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.
  
  What you wrote doesn't match any of the controllers. Did you mistype?

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!
  
  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.
  
  This.
- The Playstation started as an SNES add-on.

this lack of a standard layout is annoying
the xbox style layout, which a lot of pc games such as Hollow Knight expect, is not something im used to, especially with yes and no buttons (a/b) being reversed compared to nintendo switch
and a lot of games dont have good remapping
- especially with yes and no buttons (a/b) being reversed compared to nintendo switch
  It's also reversed on Playstation. Games use "X" for "yes" and "O" for "cancel". But only in the west, it's reversed in Japan.
  
  “it's reversed in Japan.”

In all seriousness I wouldn't be surprised if this is purely a legal precaution.
- Yeah, I was pretty sure it's a patent, copyright, or trademark thing.
  
  Yep. And even if it wasn't, different brands are under no obligation to do the same thing - I'd argue that this is different from a keyboard for example where you'd want everyone to stick to QWERTY. The only thing I'd realistically expect to stay consistent is the controller across different generations of the same console - and most brands have done that.

Purple 'Q' button, Orange 'R' button, Magenta 'S' button, and the Black 'Horseshoe' button.

Swap them all to:
---- N
W------E
-----S

How about a controller with only "X" buttons, but each in a different font?

Well clearly the answer is an X to the right

I've got a (non-brand) playstation controller, but for some reason, Steam thinks it's an XBox controller and puts the XBox button prompts in games instead. I had a (non-brand) XBox controller before, so my muscle memory thankfully knows the buttons and I don't actually have to look.

Big gaming companies. They could made a standard layout, but they are not so clever for this. Every time i play with my Nintendo Pro controller a new game in the PC i get frustrated until i find the proper workaround.
- I mean the layout in terms of functions is generally standardised between PS and XBox style controllers (i.e. "back" is the right hand button, "confirm" is the lower one...) it's just that the buttons have different symbols for those functions across PS and XBox style controllers.
  
  XBox controller and Nintendo are completely inverted. A&B, X&Y.
  The funny thing is that when you press Y with Nintendo it reads the top button (it is on the left) and the UI of the game shows wrong position. Its not you press the top button and whatever symbol it has whatever, reads that you pressed the top button, NO. You press the top button it reads the left and vice versa. Same with A&B.
  Imagine one company puts another controller on the market with same symbols with PS but inverted and the system reads the symbols, not the positions.
  Edit: I don't know if this happens only with Steam or outside Steam. I only know it is frustrating until i find a way to fix it in every game a start.

My first PlayStation was the PS3, I had Nintendo consoles and was used to Xbox by that time. First game I played on PS3 was heavy rain. A game heavily littered with QTE's. Big mistake. I was looking at the controller half the time figuring out which button to press, missed half of them. I'm sure it came natural to some, but my muscle memory learned on ABXY.. So its generally me preferred way to play.

I want a controller with A-south, B-west, X-east, and Y-north.

---1
-2---4
---3
I got it!

It really fucks with me when I plug in my steam deck to the TV and use my PS5 controller to play.

Honestly if they flipped and mirrored it it would be a pretty funny bold move.

When we talk about the controller bindings, we always refer to the playstation setup. Like if you tell "you have to push triangle, or R2", everybody seems to know which one it is, without looking or even thinking
- I don’t think this is true at all
  
  It isn't, no. Windows PC games almost universally have the Xbox button names by default (because Microsoft), and I'm not sure, but I think that Nintendo systems have the same ones but placed differently?
  Either way, the PlayStation ones are not the universal default by any stretch of the imagination.
  
  Maybe it is for console players, but my sole real exposure to controllers was the deck, and the button naming scheme is extremely confusing to me. Especially compared to the name of keyboard buttons (where press G is much more clear even if you're not familiar with keyboards)
  
  I think you havent been anround when I was playing with my friends ?
- Fair, but in Japanese games circle is the confirm / ok button and X is the back / cancel button.. (I backed out of so many menus to trying to get used to this and then had to go through it again when I completed monster hunter and went back to playing regular PAL releases 😂)
  
  Switched buttons are really annoying, I feel you :|
- No I don't. I don't have a PS controller and have never had a PlayStation, so this knowledge is much less universal than you seem to think.
  
  It is universial among our friends ...
- Which button is triangle on a normal controller?

145 comments