Touch Typing on a Gamepad
darkshadow.io
darkshadow.io
The keyboard, though, was great:
http://localhost.geek.nz/afkim/docs/usingafkim.html
It's a 3x3 matrix. You use the analog stick to pick a square, then hit one of the face buttons to enter a character. Left and right shoulder buttons shifted the keyboard to uppercase, numbers, specials, etc.
IIRC it was a Lua module that any PSP homebrewer could drop into their application for a pretty decent OSK.
You hold the analog in the appropriate direction and press the button. At first its strange, but I got used to it kind of fast.
There were groups of four characters in screen's corners and centered on the edges, eight groups in all, with the characters of each group color coded to match the A, B, X, and Y buttons on the controller[1]. You picked a group with the analog stick, and pressed the color-matched button to type. It was great!
Sadly, I can't find any screenshots that feature the linksboks onscreen keyboard.
[1]: https://www1-lw.xda-cdn.com/files/2013/01/Xbox_controller_s_...
Anecdotally, most people hated the Steam Controller's touchpads, and I'll admit I wasn't a fan at first either. But the ability to remap them to be: sticks, trackballs, d-pads, bring up (multi-level) radial menus, etc. is an absolutely killer feature.
I think one of the reasons they "failed" is because they absolutely were not plug-and-play, because to truly utilize their full capabilities, you had to configure them per game.
Steam Controllers are not plug-and-play. They're really a niche thing.
I was able to set up a reasonable competetive setup for Metal Gear Online. I had the left pad for walking. Then set up the right one with extremely sensitive camera control, so I could turn around really quickly. But configured it in such a way that it slowed down a bit when I pressed down the aim button. After which I also enabled gyro controls for fine-aiming.
For Fallout 4 it was a more casual layout. But here I made the right trigger hipfire if you fully pressed it immediately. But a half-press would go into iron-sights first, while also enabling gyro aiming. This felt really intuitive for me.
I gotta say, for old games I had already played it was a great experience since I knew what I wanted to configure and how. However, new games were a pain since I was still trying to figure everything out
[0]: http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17ynanc1qocy1jpg/original.jp...
[1]: https://images.techhive.com/images/article/2015/10/my-great-...
Phone typing was easy to learn because the letters were both predictable (alphabetical) and because you could look at the letters when you forgot, especially while learning.
Since looking at the keys isn't possible here, I think it's even more important that being able to predict the locations of letters is possible and easy.
Only recently have Google's and Apple's TTS come close to matching it. Occasionally I still miss T9 like when in a movie theater where I can't speak to type and don't want to look at my screen.
I like being able to type while walking and without looking, and by far the best phone keyboard for that is 8pen [0]. A masterclass in innovative UX imo, and clearly a ton of work went into it. Unfortunately, they pulled it from the play store (and deleted all the tweets on their twitter) some years ago for reasons unknown to me.
Related is MessageEase [1], which is not as good but still passable. But it's incredibly ugly and takes up a ton of space on my screen, so I don't like to use it.
[0]: http://www.8pen.com/
Even if you aren't looking at the phone. You're still distracted as you're thinking about typing. As well has having your hand occupied.
Also, why would you want to be texting in a movie theater anyway?
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/ACAiL9UXh-hN-rMMc5J5...
[1]: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/CharlieDeck/20170721/301392/...
https://i.stack.imgur.com/XDNKX.png
Having experience with precise angles on a gamecube controller in Super Smash Bros Melee, I can't help but feel like I would prefer the penultimate solution in the article you linked, with appropriate zones that can be targeted directly. Locking you to a quadrant and forcing most letters to be a compound input doesn't seem worth it to me. You could also definitely improve the quadrant system by allowing you to break into a new quadrant without returning to the center, maybe by passing the vertical or horizontal center line, depending on the quadrant. But, I obviously haven't tried it myself.
But if you want others to use it, remember that they are different than you and even learning such a system is a big investment for many people.
Qwerty keyboards work because people can see the keys and they're everywhere. When you come across a keyboard of another layout, even just alphabetical, it's a big pain.
If people are going back and forth from your layout to any other kind, it's going to be a huge headache. And if they put down your layout for more than a couple weeks, they're going to have to re-learn it. Having it be predictable is a lot more desirable if there's ever a time you have to re-learn it.
Feh. Everybody knows Real Programmers type by manipulating the locations of specific koopa troopas so that when the glitch is triggered, exactly what they intended to type will be written into memory.
It's not the best but it is both easy and fun to use so if you want to avoid frustrating your players it may be the safest choice.
I wonder if it was easier in practice to move both sticks simultaneously, or one after the other and then release them simultaneously. Because the currently most commonly accepted psychological model two-handedness[0] would suggest the latter, and that you start with your off-hand and finish with your main hand.
[0] http://cogprints.org/625/ Asymmetric Division of Labor in Human Skilled Bimanual Action: The Kinematic Chain as a Model
If you don't use that letter for Vim it drops from the top 8 all the way to the bottom of the frequency chart (assuming you only type English). If you than map whatever J does in Vim to a more frequently used letter your typing speed should go up.
Alternatively since J seems to be used mostly for navigation (not sure, I don't use Vim) use the d-pad to do that instead.
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> After I upgraded my gamepad to the DualShock4, I realized I could make diagonal inputs relatively accurately. Integrating diagonal inputs would reduce the number of more complex inputs required thus increasing speed.
Any plans to do that?
As for diagonal inputs, I've actually done it and I'm still experimenting with it. I can accurately target 8 sectors when there is no dialing involved but with dialing I would stick to 4. I think a hybrid system that allows for 8 sectors but switches to 4 when I start rotating the stick would be the best of both.
The idea of simultaneously using a mouse with the right hand and keyboard with the left is intriguing.
It's called AlphaGrip http://www.alphagrips.com/
Never used one, though.
Do not hesitate to contact me via contact form if you share this passion and or wants to take it further.
tbf-rnd.life/
Personally, I'm kind of enamored with the idea of a phone or tablet for media selection & control.
On touchscreen based devices, I'm a big fan of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MessagEase.
When I started looking into alternative text entry for a phone, the big thing I was looking for was the ability to completely disable predictive text entry. Messagease allows for that - I'm able to input text quickly, accurately, and without the use of predictive input.
I've used it while holding my phone in either hand and using the thumb of that same hand (though it works better in my dominant hand). I've also used while holding the phone in my non-dominant hand and using the index finger of my dominant hand.
I can almost, but not quite, use it without looking.
So, if you're thinking of a custom remote project to scratch that itch, that layout may provide inspiration.