Long time neglected keyboard user here. I’m really happy to see an alternative finally exists for us.
I’m excited about getting one of these but I had one major concern about the internals. I read in a review that the insides are a webby mess of wires and adhesive, and that the PCB is only “mounted” inside with a huge ball of glue. I also read that the buttons do not use quick disconnects, which might be a deal-breaker for me.
So my questions are:
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[]Can users confirm this is the case with current models?
[]Can the creators confirm whether future models will be built differently?
[*]Is there an ETA on when empty-case Hit Boxes would be available, and how much they are expected to cost?
[/LIST]
Hey, this is pretty interesting, and I totally see the reasoning that for a game that doesn’t take analog input then you can just use digital input devices like buttons instead of an analog stick. Personally, though, for something like movement, the fact that you’ll often be pressing downforward or upforward or the corner areas means that you’ll often have to be pressing two directional buttons at the same time, which is tricky. I realize that you’ll often be pressing multiple attack buttons at the same time as well but for attack buttons you won’t be holding one and letting go of another all the time so it’s a bit different. In any event, a stick allows you to expend the same effort to reach the corner as it does to hit the side, whereas for the current hit box you need to press two buttons for a corner as opposed to 1 button for a side.
What I’m getting at is, is it possible to have an 8-button layout for the left hand that includes single buttons that activate each of the corners (like a single button for upforward, one for downforward, one for upback, and one for downback)? Maybe this is too many buttons, but it’ll make it even easier to hit the corners, and I personally find having to manipulate different stick motions on the keyboard requiring you to hold and let go of multiple buttons to be more difficult than optimal. Perhaps you can even mirror the button layout for the right hand on most sticks to also work for the left hand.
First I would like to ask where you read this review, because I’m curious. Second, I can confirm that we do still hold the board in place with a bunch of glue, but only because our fabricator that makes our cases couldn’t figure out how to do a mounting bracket for a while. New cases coming up will have mounting brackets. As for the “mess of wires” comment, that has certainly changed already and it was only some of our early models when we were still figuring out how to get these things made. Also, we do use quick disconnects and solder-less boards and have for quite some time.
We have no plans to sell empty cases at this time or in the foreseeable future.
Adding more buttons to hit each individual direction including diagonals would not be a very intuitive idea. It would make doing a hadouken from rolling 2 buttons to pressing 3 buttons, which would ultimately take longer. Half circles and 360 motions would also become a lot more complicated for absolutely no reason. Rolling only seems tricky at first, but after a bit of practice it becomes second nature. Stick players have even been doing the same motions with their right hand for years with piano-ing and plinking. You’re just going to have to take my word for now that things are easier this way.
That’s strange the empty cases aren’t being made available, I could have sworn I heard that. I already have a TE stick with a Cthulu board and extra buttons so it seems like getting a case would be the natural choice above wasting all those extra parts, and I’d prefer to patronize you guys for pioneering this concept than go to a modder.
That’s great to hear about the improvements though. I believe I’ve been sold.
Just as I figured, he got one of the old woody’s and seems to review it as a final product. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but the wood boxes were more of a proof of concept instead of something that is going to last you for years and allow you to mod it easily. Our new metal cases are much more accessible and much nicer.
I don’t see why adding more buttons would change it at all; if you didn’t want more buttons, then you could focus on using the straight arrows (for lack of a better term); the diagonal arrows are just there for when they might be convenient (charge moves involving a diagonal charge come to mind). The setup I’m envisioning has the straight arrows in one row and the diagonal arrows in the row under them, so you’d still be able to have all the advantages of 4 buttons with the added benefit of the diagonals when convenient.
It’s just a really superfluous design addition that isn’t necessary at all. There’s absolutely no reason for it, especially since there’s no problems hitting diagonals as it is.
I don’t know about diagonals, but would it be possible to split the up direction and have a second up button in the standard wasd config? That way you could swap back and forth depending on what’s the most comfortable for certain moves, like Magneto’s Magnetic Blast motion where middle to pointer finger is more natural than thumb to pointer.
Which make of PCB you get depends on what we have in stock at the moment. Right now it’s the Cthulu. We’re trying to get PS360’s, but Akishop has halted all orders of them and most PCB carriers don’t have any more of them. We’re basically waiting for the PS360+ to come out. The Cthulu is not dual modded out of the box, but with a touch of pad hacking it can be in a hurry, the PS360 works on, as it’s name implies, the PS3 and 360 as well as your PC.
If you want to get on the waiting list, please send an e-mail to Hitboxes@gmail.com, it helps us organize everything so we know who to send out to first. As soon as Revelations is over any leftover boxes are getting mailed out to people who have been waiting and we jump right on production for everyone else.
It is possible, but not feasible at the moment. You’d be surprised how easy it is to roll backwards starting with your thumb, it’s just like a half circle motion.
I have no doubt it’s easy, it’s just an idea for extra comfort with all us old keyboard players that never used their left thumb for anything until now
So if I sent an email a couple months ago but never got a reply am I still on the list? I sent my email after you guys started doing dual mods but before you halted orders, if that helps.
I was going to go to revelations, but then I found out it was on 360. My madcatz 360 se is borked and I don’t want to invest in repairing it if I’m just going to swap to a hit box anyway. My PS3 stick is a hori so just swapping the parts isn’t easy.
Yeah, I could definitely see how diagonals are less useful, but I’d still like to see them; of course you could do fine without them but then again you could also do fine with a regular stick if you wanted. I feel like diagonals have the potential to optimize just a bit more while not detracting at all because if you don’t like them you can play the same as if you don’t have diagonals.
The thing is, with no diagonals, qcf and dp motions still require 3 distinct steps: press the down button, press both the down button and the right button, press the right button; or press the right button, the down button, and the down and right buttons. Diagonals let you replace the “chorded” presses with single presses which are generally more consistent, and especially with the quarter circle motions you’re not left thinking “uh oh did I let go of down too fast, so it only registered a down and a right press, and no diagonal press?” I realize that this sort of thing can be easily prevented with practice but again we’re optimizing here; you could just as easily say “hey you can just play on a stick and practice more”.
And again, I feel like it would make charge moves easier when you don’t have to worry about juggling different chorded button combos; Guile’s super combo comes to mind here.
Sure, is it necessary? Absolutely not. Will it be worth putting in? That probably depends on each individual user; I personally mapped the diagonals when I played on keyboard and felt it helped, but I’m sure some people won’t like having that many buttons. I’m not sure it’s fair to dismiss because “there’s no problems hitting diagonals as is” because I mean there’s no problems just using a regular stick as is either, right? We’re just talking about ways to further optimize here, and while I accept the reality that is this setup won’t be for everyone, and will likely only appeal to a small niche group of players, I don’t think simply dismissing diagonal inputs, or any other optimization suggestions for that matter, is consistent with the goal of this project. Just my opinion, though; not trying to ruffle any feathers here.
Except for the fact you’d have all these extra buttons causing physical/mental clutter and which you could hit by accident. It would also scare a lot of people away from the setup in the first place seeing so many buttons. It would also force people to “hover” with their left hand since they can’t naturally cover every button, and requiring no arm movement is what I see as one of the biggest advantages of going stickless.
Do they require 3 steps? It’s always felt like a single rolling motion to me. Splitting that into 3 buttons would just mean having to do the same rolling motion but with more buttons and more fingers. I genuinely don’t see that being any easier. I don’t think anyone is going to be lifting their first finger so fast that the diagonal doesn’t register (or else people wouldn’t be reporting issues getting down to come through on half circles).
Also I think you’re missing the point if you’re saying you can just play on a stick and practice more. You can perfectly master a stick, but the stick will still be less ergonomic, have longer throw times, etc. You’re trying to sacrifice ergonomics and speed for explicitness, so if anything I think your suggestion is more like a stick (with a square gate).
Guile’s super is just stupid and diagonal charging needs to die in a fire if fighting game mechanics are ever going to get taken seriously by anyone that hasn’t been playing the genre for 10 years. It’s also worth noting that on an anti-double input board you could just hold the down button through the entire motion and tap right left up after charging. This would require the same number of button presses as what you’re proposing, but with no hand movement.
You’ve got to keep in mind this is already being marketed to a niche audience of a niche audience. Trying to market a product to a niche audience of a niche audience of a niche audience is not too likely to succeed.
I guess I personally always see qcf as a 3 step roll, and while I don’t really mess it up, I definitely do find it more comfortable to have it compartmentalized into 3 different buttons. Again, I see how it’s not really that much of an improvement, but personally I like having the diagonals mapped. I find the qcf 2 button roll to feel mad awkward because I feel like it’s a 3 step motion and there are only 2 solid, tactile steps (it’s really the third step, which involves lifting off rather than pushing down, that gets me). I guess in retrospect when I do mess it up it’s because I press the attack button before I do the “let go” step.
I also don’t think that diagonal buttons are that similar to sticks because buttons inherently are quicker to access. In practice I can hit 3 buttons just as quickly as I can do the qcf with 2 buttons, whereas the stick’s weakness is that it is an analog, rather than digital input for a game that only reads digital inputs, so there is a lot of deadzone.
I agree that diagonal charging sucks, but we do have to deal with it, and diagonal buttons means I can expend only one finger to hold the charge and use my other 4 for a better range of motion.
I totally agree that from a marketing standpoint diagonals won’t make sense unless more than just one person is asking for it; if I do get one of these I’ll do so with the expectation that I’ll need to add in the diagonal buttons myself. I was simply disappointed that my comment that “hey diagonals have some benefits too” was dismissed by “nobody has problems without the diagonal buttons” rather than actual consideration of the idea that you’ve given it, especially considering there are probably tons of stick users dismissing this very idea because “nobody has problems just using stick”.
Fair enough. I sure got sick of hearing people say no one has problems on a stick, hah. I guess you could always just mod your case to add diagonals easily enough. Actually, have you tried asking the creators if they’d do a custom one for you, rather than suggesting they make it part of their product line?
I didn’t mean to suggest they make it part of their product line, and if that’s the misunderstanding I’m sorry. I’m just throwing ideas out there regarding what might possibly be another way to optimize things for certain players; diagonal inputs is definitely something I enjoyed when I played on keyboard, and I was interested in seeing what some other people might have thought. I’m not yet ready to purchase one, though I’ll definitely bring it up when I am.
If that’s how it sounded I apologize, I was merely trying to say that we’re not planning on adding diagonal inputs any time soon to our model and we’re not doing custom boxes yet and that no one has complained about not having diagonals before. You’re the first person to mention it in the 7 months we’ve been making them.
I asked on twitter but didn’t get a reply… how much will these be? It’s probably going to cost me an arm and a leg because of shipping, sadly because I really, really want one.
Sorry about that, we’re still working out the Twitter business. The Cthulu boards run $160 at the moment. Shipping is of course added to that, but we’ll ship anywhere. I should mention we’re not shipping anything until after Revelations since we’re trying to bring as much product there as possible.
