From: Aaron Crane Date: 17:10 on 02 Mar 2005 Subject: Alsaplayer So, Alsaplayer seems to be pretty much the only simple (non-jukebox) MP3 player I've tried that can spit sound out of my not-particularly-spiffy USB speakers (as opposed to the fully-working soundcard in this laptop; long story). It seems OK. It has a little GTK GUI (or it does when you install the right Debian package, sigh) that lets you skip in a track with a slider, and adjust the volume, and all that sort of thing. So. Why in the name of all that is holy does the volume slider make the sound quieter when you roll the middle mouse wheel _up_? Hate.
From: velut luna. immanis. Date: 18:27 on 02 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer On Wed, 2 Mar 2005 17:10:01 +0000, Aaron Crane <hateful@xxxxxxxxxx.xx.xx> wrote: > <snippage> > So. Why in the name of all that is holy does the volume slider make the > sound quieter when you roll the middle mouse wheel _up_? Check your Doom settings. Maybe you have the mouse inverter on. This Lame Jape Brought To You By, -immanis
From: Foofy Date: 18:28 on 02 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 12:10:01 -0500, Aaron Crane <hateful@xxxxxxxxxx.xx.xx> wrote: > So. Why in the name of all that is holy does the volume slider make the > sound quieter when you roll the middle mouse wheel _up_? Back when I was about 13 I read a book on programming interfaces. It had a whole section just explaining why the down button/arrow should move the text "up." I was surprised anyone would have a problem with that concept, but the length of the section made it seem like it's something more than a few people struggled with. Maybe they still do. :D
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 20:32 on 02 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer > Back when I was about 13 I read a book on programming interfaces. It had a > whole section just explaining why the down button/arrow should move the > text "up." There used to be a huge debate in the computer community over whether a down operation on a document should follow a model where you're moving the window (scroll the text up) or moving the document under the window (scroll the text down).
From: Dave Vandervies Date: 21:38 on 02 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer Somebody claiming to be Peter da Silva wrote: > > > Back when I was about 13 I read a book on programming interfaces. It had a > > whole section just explaining why the down button/arrow should move the > > text "up." > > There used to be a huge debate in the computer community over > whether a down operation on a document should follow a model where > you're moving the window (scroll the text up) or moving the document > under the window (scroll the text down). ...and now that that's settled on moving the window, some programs are starting to introduce the ability to move the document under the window as well, with a distinct operation (usually dragging inside the window instead of dragging something on the frame or a keyboard command). This is Good; both types of movement are at times useful, and operating inside the window to move what you're seeing and operating on the frame to move the window you're seeing it through is as intuitive as an interface can get (though that's not saying much for any workable definition of intuitive). Until whoever put gv together saw that dragging inside the window was a good way to move around, and implemented that feature. You can guess what you're moving when you do that, right? Yep, it's the frame. Drag the document up, and the frame moves up. Because, y'know, the little icon on the side with the frame outline drawn on something representing the shape of the document isn't a good enough way to do that. (Scroll bars? What scroll bars? Those are so last decade.) Dragging inside the window not moving anything and doing something else entirely is understandable; Dragging inside the window to move doesn't always make sense, and other operations sometimes do make sense. But dragging inside the window to move the frame *never* makes sense. If I wanted to move the frame, I'd use the widgets on the frame.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 01:45 on 03 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer > ...and now that that's settled on moving the window, some programs are > starting to introduce the ability to move the document under the window > as well, with a distinct operation (usually dragging inside the window > instead of dragging something on the frame or a keyboard command). MacPaint in 1984, I think you'll find. Logitech came up with a generalised way to use the middle mouse button for this, but their implementation was unusably ugly (it left obscure inexplicable surds all over the place if you didn't know what they meant). I'd much rather have seen that become generally used than the damn mouse wheel.
From: David Cantrell Date: 21:24 on 02 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer Foofy wrote: > Back when I was about 13 I read a book on programming interfaces. It had > a whole section just explaining why the down button/arrow should move > the text "up." I was surprised anyone would have a problem with that > concept, but the length of the section made it seem like it's something > more than a few people struggled with. Maybe they still do. :D Believe it or not, it occasionally confuses me.
From: Foofy Date: 21:50 on 02 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 16:24:34 -0500, David Cantrell <david@xxxxxxxx.xxx.xx> wrote: > Believe it or not, it occasionally confuses me. I can imagine how confusing it was back when these concepts were new (and when they were just that, concepts). But interfaces are built around affordance and commands. The user wants to read "down" the document. Down instantly correlates with the down key, and a backward motion on the mousewheel. While pressing up to move the text up is logical, the command is a polar opposite of the user's original intention. Same reason nobody calls it the "zero-eth" floor. Users don't see the floor as starting 0 feet above ground level. Instead they see it as the first floor they have encountered. I love talking about users and usability. :) P.S. I was told some very old buildings do it like programmers, with the floor after the ground floor being the first.
From: Darrell Fuhriman Date: 21:56 on 02 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer > P.S. I was told some very old buildings do it like programmers, with the > floor after the ground floor being the first. That's generally the European way, even today. But they don't call "0th floor", they call it "Ground Floor". Darrell
From: Abigail
Date: 22:34 on 02 Mar 2005
Subject: Re: Alsaplayer
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On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 01:56:31PM -0800, Darrell Fuhriman wrote:
> > P.S. I was told some very old buildings do it like programmers, with th=
e =20
> > floor after the ground floor being the first.
>=20
> That's generally the European way, even today.
Yes, and if you know the language, it certainly makes sense in .nl to do
it that way. The Dutch word we use "verdieping" (alternatively, we use a
word borrowed from French "etage") *means* "levels above ground floor".
> But they don't call "0th floor", they call it "Ground Floor".
Indeed. Although there are many elevators that use the digit 0 on the
button. Or (in .nl) "B" or "BG" ("Ground floor" translated to Dutch means
"Begane grond"). And on old elevators, the button whose text is worn away
brings you to ground floor.
Abigail
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From: Daniel Pittman
Date: 23:32 on 02 Mar 2005
Subject: Re: Alsaplayer
On 3 Mar 2005, foofy@xxxxxx.xxx wrote:
[...]
> Same reason nobody calls it the "zero-eth" floor. Users don't see the
> floor as starting 0 feet above ground level. Instead they see it as the
> first floor they have encountered.
Australia does, almost universally. Well, "Ground floor", which is the
same thing: the first floor is the floor *above* that.
Except when the people fitting out the building like the American model
better, or decide that the first floor should be at ground level.
Because ignoring the way the rest of the local culture does things is a
sure way to make people happy when they get there, wander to the right
floor, then discover they have to go back down because your tastes
differ, but you didn't sign it well.
Well, most often, if you didn't sign it at all on the ground floor, in
fact, and only have tiny little signs hiding the details of the floor
number on the upper levels because, you know, telling people how to
navigate your building looks makes it look like you can't do it entirely
intuitively, or gets lost behind the "art" of interior design...
Ahem. This is a list for /software/ rants, isn't it. Sorry.
Daniel
From: Foofy Date: 23:47 on 02 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 18:32:45 -0500, Daniel Pittman <daniel@xxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > Ahem. This is a list for /software/ rants, isn't it. Sorry. > Daniel Maybe we need another list for hateful architecture. I could rant for days about that cold concrete monster of a library they built in Elmira. Few windows, poor lighting (who wants to read at a library anyway?) Considered a gem of design until people realized staying for more than a few minutes brought tears.
From: Philip Newton Date: 08:42 on 03 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 18:47:21 -0500, Foofy <foofy@xxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 18:32:45 -0500, Daniel Pittman <daniel@xxxxxxxx.xxx> > wrote: > > > Ahem. This is a list for /software/ rants, isn't it. Sorry. > > Daniel > > Maybe we need another list for hateful architecture. I could rant for days > about that cold concrete monster of a library they built in Elmira. Few > windows, poor lighting (who wants to read at a library anyway?) Considered > a gem of design until people realized staying for more than a few minutes > brought tears. Yes, or the new building we'll be moving to in a couple of weeks, where things such as placement of doors or non-placement of walls seem to be governed more by "what will look good / make the corridor nice and light" than by "what will make computer programmers able to keep working productively with a minimum of interruptions and distractions". I remember reading that Microsoft advertised "our offices have doors". This was a good thing. Feh,
From: Daniel Pittman
Date: 13:40 on 03 Mar 2005
Subject: Hating Architecture (was Re: Alsaplayer)
On 3 Mar 2005, Philip Newton wrote:
> On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 18:47:21 -0500, Foofy <foofy@xxxxxx.xxx> wrote:
>> On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 18:32:45 -0500, Daniel Pittman <daniel@xxxxxxxx.xxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Ahem. This is a list for /software/ rants, isn't it. Sorry.
>>> Daniel
>>
>> Maybe we need another list for hateful architecture. I could rant for days
>> about that cold concrete monster of a library they built in Elmira. Few
>> windows, poor lighting (who wants to read at a library anyway?) Considered
>> a gem of design until people realized staying for more than a few minutes
>> brought tears.
>
> Yes, or the new building we'll be moving to in a couple of weeks,
> where things such as placement of doors or non-placement of walls seem
> to be governed more by "what will look good / make the corridor nice
> and light" than by "what will make computer programmers able to keep
> working productively with a minimum of interruptions and
> distractions".
Ah, lighting and computer users. I remember having a somewhat painful
disagreement with our CEO and MD, when they were doing the design and
kit-out of our new offices[1], about this.
They were terribly excited, you see, about two features of the new
office design:
It threw plenty of natural light into every workspace, all day, with
direct sun for a good part of each day.
It kept divisions between staff to a minimum, and ensured that there was
no workspace where you didn't have other staff and public areas both
behind and in front of you.
For staff who spend their day doing two things: working on computers,
and talking on the phone to clients. All day, every day.
Oddly enough, our very traditional MD, and our CEO, both of whom were
not really all that computer savvy, thought these features were great.
I couldn't sway them by pointing out that noise and glare would be
serious problems for everyone, all the time. I did end up buying over
sixty anti-glare screens, though, as each department head approved them
for all their staff...
I wish that the original ideas behind the office cubical design had
taken off, rather than the space and money saving rat-hole they are
always implemented as these days.
Daniel
Footnotes:
[1] Well, actually, both times they did it in the last year I was
there, but I didn't care so much the last time since I had quit
already.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 14:47 on 03 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Hating Architecture (was Re: Alsaplayer) > I wish that the original ideas behind the office cubical design had > taken off, rather than the space and money saving rat-hole they are > always implemented as these days. Oooh, can you elaborate?
From: Daniel Pittman
Date: 01:35 on 04 Mar 2005
Subject: Re: Hating Architecture
On 4 Mar 2005, Peter da Silva wrote:
>> I wish that the original ideas behind the office cubical design had
>> taken off, rather than the space and money saving rat-hole they are
>> always implemented as these days.
>
> Oooh, can you elaborate?
Yes, but not nearly as well as I want, and that brings me back to the
hate of software. In this case, Opera, which seems to have lost my
bookmark of the article about this.
Anyway, much of this comes from a fairly recent interview, published on
the web, with the chap who did the first cubical type layout.
I can't turn it up, either, which annoys me. My google foo is
overwhelmed by the flood of people wanting to sell me cubical walls.
It would probably help if I could recall the name of the architect, too.
Basically, he was hired by a furniture manufacturer (IIRC) who where
getting a new office done for their administrative staff, and they told
him "build something that makes our staff more efficient."
The result was a cubical layout, with several specific design goals: The
cubical should provide privacy and security to the occupant, and allow
them to express themselves.
The layout was also designed to encourage chance meetings and discussion
between the staff when they left their desks, but without disrupting
people working near them.
Also, the use of partitions rather than fixed walls allowed for a great
deal of flexibility in layout, so the office space could be restructured
to meet the needs of workers, when they varied from the simplest case.
This was, in my eyes, a reactionary stance, since the office environment
of the time discouraged individual expression and tended toward
open-plan layouts where supervisors were able to monitor staff.
The management of the place accepted this, although, apparently not
without some hesitation. One of the anecdotes he tells is from fairly
early in the actual use of the office:
Initially, the staff didn't do anything much with their cubical space.
A couple of photos of wives or children had turned up on desks, but
these were all very small and not at all prominent.
Then, on day, a member of staff brought in a stuffed monkey and sat it
on the desk. The management looked at this, then gave the architect a
call to ask about this, because this was unusual and worried them
somewhat.
The architect told them "that is precisely what I intended" and,
somehow, managed to convince the office management to give it a try.
Eventually, when that didn't cause problems for the member of staff,
various other expressions of actual personality turned up.
The overall assessment of the management, and the architect, was that
the whole thing was a success - they ended up with happier and more
productive staff, and considered it a good thing.
One of the questions, and the fairly obvious one, asked in the interview
was what the originator of the cubical idea thought of the modern
"Dilbert" style cubical farms.
His response was that people saw the cubical design as a chance to save
money by using cheap dividers, by reducing space available, and by
imposing rigid structure on the workspace.
They didn't see the key parts of the design, flexibility, privacy and
self-expression, as important, and discouraged them.
So, most of the uses of cubical architecture were very different from
what he intended. In my reading, the technology was adopted, but the
basic idea he was reacting against continued strong.
Today, cubical design is used to create an environment that discourages
personal expression, reduces privacy, and enabled close monitoring of
staff to ensure they don't avoid work.
An environment of mistrust and irritation, in fact, that probably does
more to encourage poor behavior than it can to prevent it.
None of these ideas are dead, though. They keep turning up in
management books all over the place, especially those targeting the IT
industry. Ways to redesign the cubical environment to make it more
efficient and effective for staff.
Part of the reason that I am upset at losing track of the interview is
that I hit these notions through the more modern books first, and had
simply assumed that they were revolutionary -- that cubical architecture
was originally aimed at repressing, not encouraging, individuality.
Having found out that it was conceived as the opposite of that makes
sense, but more tangible proof is always nice to have.
Sorry to have to retell it myself, rather than cite the original.
Daniel
From: Michael Leuchtenburg Date: 02:15 on 04 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Hating Architecture Spake Daniel Pittman: > Yes, but not nearly as well as I want, and that brings me back to the > hate of software. In this case, Opera, which seems to have lost my > bookmark of the article about this. I think this is the article you're looking for: http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_1198/no98man.htm
From: Simon Wilcox Date: 10:33 on 04 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Hating Architecture On Thu, 3 Mar 2005, Michael Leuchtenburg wrote: > I think this is the article you're looking for: > http://www.metropolismag.com/html/content_1198/no98man.htm I like this article about designing offices for programmers. When my company is successful enough, this is the kind of place I want to create for my team: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html Hmmm, neither hating nor software. Never mind :-) Simon.
From: Smylers Date: 15:08 on 06 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer Daniel Pittman writes: > On 3 Mar 2005, foofy@xxxxxx.xxx wrote: > > > Same reason nobody calls it the "zero-eth" floor. > > Australia does, almost universally. Well, "Ground floor", which is > the same thing: the first floor is the floor *above* that. <Snip> That reminds me of the user-interface on the lift control panel of offices I used to work in ... > Ahem. This is a list for /software/ rants, isn't it. Sorry. ... and a user-interface is _almost_ software, isn't it? For some reason the interface was designed to look like that of a calculator, where you entered your desired floor number. The top floor of the building was floor 2, which made the digits 3 to 9 completely redundant. That wouldn't've been so bad, except that the basement in this system was floor "-1", which involved pressing the "-" key followed by "1" -- there were far more buttons than floors, yet one of the floors still required two button presses! And we never did work out what the decimal point was for. For the purpose of naming the guilty party, this was a Schindler's lift. Smylers
From: Aaron Crane
Date: 15:30 on 06 Mar 2005
Subject: Re: Alsaplayer
Smylers writes:
<snip>
> And we never did work out what the decimal point was for.
My guess was mezzanines ("2.5" meaning "second-floor mezzanine), but,
naturally, there weren't any of those in the building.
Smylers has mentioned only a few of the UI problems with this particular
lift.
The buttons were some peculiar touch-sensitive thing that either (a)
wasn't particularly touch-sensitive, or (b) was too touch-sensitive, and
therefore needed a software-imposed delay before actually accepting your
input. I saw a lot of people have genuine difficulties actually getting
the buttons to do anything. Somehow this was considered better than
just having buttons with affordances that encourage, you know, actually
pushing.
At each floor, the outside-the-lift controls consisted of a single
'call' button. That's fine on the lowest and the highest floors --
there's only one thing you can do. But if you're on the ground floor,
and you want to take the lift to the second floor (either because you're
carrying something, or because you're a lazy git like me) then calling
the lift is interpreted as 'call to go down'. (Presumably the reason
for it being down rather than up was that the car park was in the
basement and couldn't be accessed by foot.)
And the effect of this? Suppose you call the lift from the ground floor
just as the lift itself is leaving the basement to carry people to the
top floor. Then the damn thing just sails straight past you, because it
'knows' that letting you in is useless. So you have to wait for it to
get all the way to the top and back again for you to get in -- whereupon
it might well go down to the basement again if someone's called the lift
=66rom there in the meantime.
This particular brand of insanity was only slightly alleviated by the
fact that you could get in the lift at the ground floor, while it was on
its way to collect someone who'd called it from the basement, and
override the control software's decision to go the basement next merely
by repeatedly pressing the button for a higher floor. I felt rather
guilty doing that, so I avoided it as much as possible.
(And I claim this is still on-topic, because I managed to shoehorn the
lift's control software into that last paragraph.)
--=20
Aaron Crane
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 16:28 on 06 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer On Sun, Mar 06, 2005 at 03:30:12PM +0000, Aaron Crane wrote: > At each floor, the outside-the-lift controls consisted of a single > 'call' button. I encountered this just last week outside an elevator in a brand new hotel in Portugal. Fortunately the building was only 5 floors (-2, -1, 0, 1 and 2 of course) and the lift seemed to be of the HHGTG variety and liked to sulk in the basement when it wasn't doing anything. So it didn't matter too much but they went one worse. The call button looked like this: ------- | | | /\ | | | ------- ------- | | | o | | | ------- ------- | | | \/ | | | ------- Notice I said "button". The other two were just lights yet they were bevelled and recessed and looked remarkably similar to the button. I got into the hotel after 20 hours of travel and stood there pushing the up "button" wondering what in the hell was wrong. That it didn't depress didn't bother me as I figured it was just touch sensitive. > (And I claim this is still on-topic, because I managed to shoehorn the > lift's control software into that last paragraph.) Given that I just gave a talk relating normal world user interface design to an audience of programmers, I tend to agree, software or not. Anyhow, software plays the "maybe I'm a button, maybe I'm an indicator, maybe I'm both, you'll just have to press me and find out" game all the time.
From: Foofy Date: 21:58 on 02 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 16:24:34 -0500, David Cantrell <david@xxxxxxxx.xxx.xx> wrote: > Believe it or not, it occasionally confuses me. I can imagine how confusing it was back when these concepts were new (and when they were just that, concepts). But interfaces are built around affordance and commands. The user wants to read "down" the document. Down instantly correlates with the down key, and a backward motion on the mousewheel. While pressing up to move the text up is logical, the command is a polar opposite of the user's original intention. Same reason nobody calls it the "zero-eth" floor. Users don't see the floor as starting 0 feet above ground level. Instead they see it as the first floor they have encountered. I love talking about users and usability. P.S. I was told some very old buildings do it like programmers, with the floor after the ground floor being the first.
From: Jonathan Stowe Date: 10:25 on 03 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer On Wed, 2005-03-02 at 21:58, Foofy wrote: > P.S. I was told some very old buildings do it like programmers, with the > floor after the ground floor being the first. Er, and Europeans .... /J\
From: Darrell Fuhriman Date: 21:31 on 02 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer > Back when I was about 13 I read a book on programming interfaces. It had a > whole section just explaining why the down button/arrow should move the > text "up." I was surprised anyone would have a problem with that concept, Someone needs to explain the makers of Idrisi (GIS Software), that when you are showing a list of layers in a tool bar on the side, that maybe, just maybe, the top layer should be the at the top of the list, not at the bottom. Idiots. Darrell
From: Patrick Carr Date: 22:10 on 03 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer Foofy wrote on 3/2/2005 1:28 PM: > On Wed, 02 Mar 2005 12:10:01 -0500, Aaron Crane > <hateful@xxxxxxxxxx.xx.xx> wrote: > >> So. Why in the name of all that is holy does the volume slider make the >> sound quieter when you roll the middle mouse wheel _up_? > > > Back when I was about 13 I read a book on programming interfaces. It had > a whole section just explaining why the down button/arrow should move > the text "up." I was surprised anyone would have a problem with that > concept, but the length of the section made it seem like it's something > more than a few people struggled with. Maybe they still do. :D I struggled with it playing my boss's son's xbox. I think it was Halo 2. Now, I'm not that good with these new-fangled fancy video games. Wolfenstein 3-D and NBA Jam were about as complicated as I could manage; for every subsequent game, I just push all the buttons as fast as possible. However the natural moving technique in Halo 2 (and a million other games, I'm sure) with the two joysticks is brilliant. I have no problem running around and facing forward. It's the up-down that ass-backwards. The up-down should be like the joystick in a plane, where pushing forward tilts the gun down and pulling back tilts the gun up, as if you're pivoting the gun on the point of your body. Because you ARE pivoting the gun on the point of your body. And also because I spent too many hours playing Wing Commander to re-wire my brain. And yes, I am bitter because I ran around with my gun pointing straight up being killed every 3.7 seconds by the 14-year-olds cackling in my ear. Pat
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 22:30 on 03 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 05:10:55PM -0500, Patrick Carr wrote: > However the natural moving technique in Halo 2 (and a million other > games, I'm sure) with the two joysticks is brilliant. I have no problem > running around and facing forward. It's the up-down that ass-backwards. > The up-down should be like the joystick in a plane, where pushing > forward tilts the gun down and pulling back tilts the gun up, as if > you're pivoting the gun on the point of your body. Because you ARE > pivoting the gun on the point of your body. And also because I spent too > many hours playing Wing Commander to re-wire my brain. That's too much thinking. Users are goal oriented. The target is above me. I need to point the gun up. I move the stick up. Requires no logic, just instinct which is how it should be. Furthmore, IRL only if you're using some sort of mounted weapon would you ever push down to point up. Even then the goal is still the same: move the end of the weapon up. Up. Everything about the action screams UP. The only reason you might think to push down in order to go up is because you've been trained by flight simulators which parrot airplane controls for reasons I don't really know but were probably originally purely mechanical in nature and just stuck. Fortunately nearly every game in the universe allows you to reverse this.
From: Patrick Carr Date: 01:33 on 04 Mar 2005 Subject: Re: Alsaplayer On Mar 3, 2005, at 5:30 PM, Michael G Schwern wrote: > On Thu, Mar 03, 2005 at 05:10:55PM -0500, Patrick Carr wrote: >> However the natural moving technique in Halo 2 (and a million other >> games, I'm sure) with the two joysticks is brilliant. I have no >> problem >> running around and facing forward. It's the up-down that >> ass-backwards. >> The up-down should be like the joystick in a plane, where pushing >> forward tilts the gun down and pulling back tilts the gun up, as if >> you're pivoting the gun on the point of your body. Because you ARE >> pivoting the gun on the point of your body. And also because I spent >> too >> many hours playing Wing Commander to re-wire my brain. > > That's too much thinking. Users are goal oriented. The target is > above me. > I need to point the gun up. I move the stick up. Requires no logic, > just > instinct which is how it should be. > > Furthmore, IRL only if you're using some sort of mounted weapon would > you > ever push down to point up. Even then the goal is still the same: > move the > end of the weapon up. Up. Everything about the action screams UP. > But it's not UP; it's forward, unless you hold the controller vertically. Imagine you're a wee person standing rigidly on top of the joystick, and the joystick is pushed forward. Where are you looking? Same logic, presumably, in planes. You push the stick forward, your body leans forward, you look down, the nose points down. And I figured it was configurable, I just (a) couldn't find it and (b) it wasn't mine. Pat
From: Michael Leuchtenburg Date: 22:34 on 03 Mar 2005 Subject: Halo 2 controls (was: Re: Alsaplayer) Spake Patrick Carr: > However the natural moving technique in Halo 2 (and a million other > games, I'm sure) with the two joysticks is brilliant. I have no problem > running around and facing forward. It's the up-down that ass-backwards. > The up-down should be like the joystick in a plane, where pushing > forward tilts the gun down and pulling back tilts the gun up, as if > you're pivoting the gun on the point of your body. Because you ARE > pivoting the gun on the point of your body. And also because I spent too > many hours playing Wing Commander to re-wire my brain. Pleasantly, Halo does allow you to configure this, on a per-user basis. It even comes with a default user with the flight-style control. I assume that Halo 2 continued this, though I could be wrong - you know those crazy programmers.
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