8th September 2006, 4:12 AM
the Intellivision had a disk used to control the game, the disk had multiple inputs, such as a specific diagonal input. A D-pad was more cost effective and easier to mass produce with it having only 4 inputs that could be used in multiple instances, such as holding left and down to move diagonally. This cost effective design also made controlling games much easier as the directions were clearly laid out, making it more accessible for the player. The Intellivision disk was not marked in any way, had no clear orientation and was a bad design that was essentially an atari control stick without the stick.
The d-pad is vastly superior and an innovation over Intellivisions failed design. There's a reason why no one went back to the Intellivision design.
Smoke/ You beat me to it. :D
Oh, on the subject of controllers. I can confirm that the GC pad does indeed have seperate inputs for the shoulder buttons. When you open it you'll see that the shoulder buttons are connected to a sliding mechanism that offers no degree of seperation or resistance. The springy feeling of the shoulders are created by an actual spring under the buttons. At the bottom most point of the shoulder push you'll find a standard internal digital button mechanism, a small rubber nub that offers a tactile click when the shoulder button goes beyond the limit of the analog sliders. It's a completely seperate set of buttons, making the GC have a total of 16 inputs plus the analog increments of the control stick, camera stick and shoulders.
This is how the GC controller allowed you to play games like Metroid Prime where you could hold the shoulder button slightly pushed in to aim your gun independently and allow for a full lock-on when the digital button is depressed. In programing terms you cant add a seperate function to a analog button, you can only subtract. Ie; Mario's full tilt run is 0 (and tip-toe is minus 10), you cant go above that, so as you push less and less, it goes from 0 to to minus 1, to minus 2, etc. If a controller with shoulder buttons that has no seperate digital input on full depression, say the PS2 controller is used, if you made 0 (full) the lock-on, then as you minus away as you depress the button less it cant remove the lock-on, as this would be a constant and cannot be removed from 0 to minus 10. It can only do the function 'less', not change its function.
With the GC controller, you could in theory be playing a FPS that has guns with multiple functions - Let's say a machine gun with a grenade launcher - You press L lightly to fire the machine gun, or fully depress to the click to fire a grenade. To even response time out so that you can effectively fire a grenade without firing bullets, you would create a small delay so that by quickly depressing the shoulder and releasing it the grenade is fired without wasting bullets. Then use the Z switch to enter or exit a sniping mode, with the camera stick allowing for analog zoom. Alternatively, if the gun's secondary function was a mode switch, ie; first mode is rapid fire with second mode being homing functionality, you could fire the rapid fire, depress fully to homing, depress lighter back to rapid fire. Or, quickly depress and release the shoulder to activate the secondary mode without spending bullets.
Why the shoulder buttons weren't used to their potentiol is dumbfounding. If third parties would have spent some time with it, we would have seen some amazing stuff with those shoulders.
The d-pad is vastly superior and an innovation over Intellivisions failed design. There's a reason why no one went back to the Intellivision design.
Smoke/ You beat me to it. :D
Oh, on the subject of controllers. I can confirm that the GC pad does indeed have seperate inputs for the shoulder buttons. When you open it you'll see that the shoulder buttons are connected to a sliding mechanism that offers no degree of seperation or resistance. The springy feeling of the shoulders are created by an actual spring under the buttons. At the bottom most point of the shoulder push you'll find a standard internal digital button mechanism, a small rubber nub that offers a tactile click when the shoulder button goes beyond the limit of the analog sliders. It's a completely seperate set of buttons, making the GC have a total of 16 inputs plus the analog increments of the control stick, camera stick and shoulders.
This is how the GC controller allowed you to play games like Metroid Prime where you could hold the shoulder button slightly pushed in to aim your gun independently and allow for a full lock-on when the digital button is depressed. In programing terms you cant add a seperate function to a analog button, you can only subtract. Ie; Mario's full tilt run is 0 (and tip-toe is minus 10), you cant go above that, so as you push less and less, it goes from 0 to to minus 1, to minus 2, etc. If a controller with shoulder buttons that has no seperate digital input on full depression, say the PS2 controller is used, if you made 0 (full) the lock-on, then as you minus away as you depress the button less it cant remove the lock-on, as this would be a constant and cannot be removed from 0 to minus 10. It can only do the function 'less', not change its function.
With the GC controller, you could in theory be playing a FPS that has guns with multiple functions - Let's say a machine gun with a grenade launcher - You press L lightly to fire the machine gun, or fully depress to the click to fire a grenade. To even response time out so that you can effectively fire a grenade without firing bullets, you would create a small delay so that by quickly depressing the shoulder and releasing it the grenade is fired without wasting bullets. Then use the Z switch to enter or exit a sniping mode, with the camera stick allowing for analog zoom. Alternatively, if the gun's secondary function was a mode switch, ie; first mode is rapid fire with second mode being homing functionality, you could fire the rapid fire, depress fully to homing, depress lighter back to rapid fire. Or, quickly depress and release the shoulder to activate the secondary mode without spending bullets.
Why the shoulder buttons weren't used to their potentiol is dumbfounding. If third parties would have spent some time with it, we would have seen some amazing stuff with those shoulders.