Not bad at all, at this point I am finishing up the wood to seal that wenge up. Once that’s done I’ll drop a ps360 in and get it re-posted.
Image removed: faulty layout
Fixing to get some plexi drilled for a TE mod, current iteration of the layout.
Labels are there just to explain wtf to people not in this thread.
EDIT: OH, I should mention.
I know this dude. I had a Skype conversation with him at least 2 years ago where he said he was going to use Spacebar for jump, and I called him fucking crazy at the time, but he uses it, and does so to this day.
Look up videos on SSF4 of “i208khonsu” playing. It’ll give you a nice bit of info of what’s possible with this layout (since thumb for jump is the biggest unorthodox decision for the Hitbox). Granted, I give no guarantees about how good khonsu actually is, but the simple fact that he uses hitbox for jump and at least competes at all is proof-of-concept that the Hitbox layout is workable.
EDIT 2: Funny story, I facebooked him my TE plexi layout and apologized for calling him crazy years ago, and he started critiquing that layout. Though I don’t know if he would want me to post the critiques on a board where the Hit Box developers might be able to make money off his ideas.
How do you guys feel about others using this button layout? I bought 2 sticks from one of the major custom stick makers around, and I love them. I would buy a 3rd to try the hit box, but I’d like it to match my existing sticks. Before I go off asking them if they would make an all button stick, I thought I’d ask you guys how you feel about other stick makers using your button layout.
I know you are selling these, but I could see you going either way. One extreme is, sure use the button layout, and you might even provide the exact measurements. The other extreme is, no, we’d rather other people don’t make use of our button layout, and you can’t have the measurements we worked so hard to come up with. I can respect either stance you take.
good question, NateS. i was just about to ask something similar. how “open” is all of this? i designed a hitbox in under an hour yesterday morning. i changed the button layout because i was designing it for me and i play Counter-Strike more than i play SF so i’m used to spacebar for jump. i’m not going to hijack your thread with my stuff, but if you’d like to see the design i came up with, shoot me a PM.* i’d love to do a run of cases if you find my design adequate.
*creator(s) of the Hit Box only, plz 
Hey,
I really like the hitbox style controllers, so I setup a faceplate plexi for the TE
It has 5mm thickness, really sturdy, countersunk screws and rounded edges
[media=youtube]obq_VhKGXmg[/media]
I’m really curious about this too.
I actually might give this switch a try if there’s an open source to replace my TE’s plexi, but as it stands I can’t see buying a whole stick just to try it out. I like the feel of an arcade stick’s buttons, but the joystick just doesn’t flow with me so I’ve always stuck with a pad. This might be a neat compromise and I definitely want to give it a shot.
Looks like jochen has done what souji and a few others have and adopted it really easily so this is definitely something to find out from you guys before we see a lot of this.
I think it’s odd that you’re using all 24s for the attack buttons – why don’t 30s work in this case? I mean, if the 24mm form factor and spacing was better here it should be better in the general case, no?
I would assume that the 24mm buttons main point is that your right thumb can stay close to the jump button because of the smaller travel distance between the attack buttons. 30mm is do-able, but your thumb would need repositioning after hitting HP or something.
The reason for the 24mm buttons is so that you can comfortable have a finger on every button to be in full control and have immediate reaction. With the 30mm standard size buttons you usually have to stretch and reach to hop from say, LP to HP, and this is not ideal for a genre that requires you to have lightning reflexes to deal with situations. By using the 24mm buttons you can have access to any attack in a split second whenever you need it.
This is the major advantage of the keyboard. Keyboard keys are small and very close together allowing you to type things in a very fast manner. For instance:
[media=youtube]bhA3_9CRmeg[/media]
Imagine if your keyboard keys were 30mm. This video would not be possible because you would have to reach way too far to hit the keys that fast. Having everything smaller and closer together allows for a much faster execution. For people who want the traditional feel I can understand not liking smaller buttons, since 30mm IS the standard, however I feel the whole idea behind Hit Box is to do away with what was standard and delve into what is possible, what can be expanded or improved on, and what is optimal. There are a lot of people in this thread who are making their own “Hit Box” type controllers, and that’s cool, but a lot of you are going with your own designs and your own button sizes, and while nothing is inherently wrong with that, most of the designs you guys are making were tried, tested, and scrapped by the Huffer brothers. In one instance I’m glad that so many people are showing interest in these controllers, but in the back of my mind there are people who are willingly using inferior designs and I don’t think that for the advancement for this technology that is a very wise thing.
I’m not going to say too much right now, but coming up very soon there’s going to be something that will maybe turn you away from trying to wing it with your own designs. By all means, feel free to explore what you think you would like, but I’m telling you as someone who has played on a keyboard for years, after playing on a real Hit Box for an hour I will never go back to a keyboard or a controller or anything ever again.
Full disclosure, I’m using 30mm for attack buttons largely because I already have 6 30mm Seimitsu’s sitting around unused and I needed ONE way to penny-pinch on my project.
If I feel like the 30mm attack buttons are a significant problem somewhere down the like, I’ll go ahead and convert to the all-24 layout.
As far as ideas like…does anyone hold copyright on the layout itself? That is a very interesting subject. I can understand a good bit of concern on the part of the guys who developed this layout, and whether or not they deserve recognition, or more likely, money, for use of the layout.
It’s really hard to say. On the one hand, these guys are going out of their way and are starting to make FightBoards (YAY, ANOTHER USELESS NAMING SCHEME…but it makes sense to me, so I’m running with it) popular in its own right, and are putting serious effort to making a standardized layout for FightBoards, and that’s great and really commendable of them.
However, if you could claim copyright or trademark or some sort of IP ownership on the layout of buttons and a joystick, people like the Art dude at Tek-Innovations would be out of business because of all the legal action from Taito, MadCatz, and whoever would technically own the Blast City layout we’re aware of, and by all rights anyone who owns a custom stick with any sort of standardized layout whatsoever would be committing a heinous crime.
So then the question becomes: If the Hit Box layout does become the standard for fightboards, how will it come about that Husser_Brian and whoever is working with him get the credit that they rightfully deserve for designing the layout without leaving ourselves open, as consumers, to being fucked over by corporate greed?
@ Amp- I like that layout that you got there in post #142.
In reality tho it does not matter if they do or do not have a problem with other builders using this layout because they have no legal rights to it. just like with all customs we all choose our layouts that we have seen and i am sure no one has any legal right to those as we all have continued to be able to order customs with specific layouts. it would be too hard and too costly to get something like that copywritten, trademarked whatever, because like you see with their original design they have 30s for attack buttons. if i am not mistaken even if they did get that copywritten you could still get around that with what bencao has done with 24s for attack buttons. you could do something as simple as changing where a button is and that would negate the copywritten/trademark factor. So if i am correct in what i am saying it would be too much of a hassle and waste to go through that line. they may not be ok with other builders using the layout but that is the way of business. Its gonna happen as we have already seen. All we can do is thank them for coming up with the layout
If Button Layout X is “copyrighted”, I move my buttons 5mm to the right.
Now it’s “custom”.
No offense to the Hit Box guys. You’ve got the ball rolling, but it’s out of your hands now.
Anyway, as soon as it stops being -5 Celsius in my unheated shed at midday, I’m gonna work on layouts with 28mm buttons.
Any critiques are welcome. We didn’t even consider selling these until one day my e-mail was full of people asking to purchase one after we found out the SCR interview was featured. This thread was posted for those same people, and we ended up getting more interest.
Any tips or concerns from veteran keyboard users are welcome, and props to this guy for using a space bar jump and repping the keyboard.
The Hit Box design is patent pending. We seeked out protection immediately at the chance these would take off based off of the volume of inquiries we had. There is no corporate greed running out of our garage.
Images removed: Faulty Layouts
The all-24 version could definitely use some more tweaking, buttons are still a little too far apart to take advantage of being all-24, but the big warning about HEY DON’T PUT BUTTONS TOO CLOSE TOGETHER, PLEXI CAN CRACK YOU KNOW is kinda off-putting.
So quick lesson on copyright, patents and trademarks. First, I am not a lawyer so don’t necessarily take this as legal advice.
Copyrights don’t cost anything to establish (though you can pay to register them), only to enforce (since you have to sue). That is, as soon as you create a creative work you own all copyrights. I don’t think a button layout could be copyrighted since it lacks any artistic merit. Though there’s an opening there for it.
Patent-wise, however, there’s a fair chance it could be patented as it is an improvement to a human interface. However, the cost of obtaining a patent is ludicrously high and unless a commercial entity (including a stick builder, however) were to want to create hit-box-style controllers it’s not a very profitable patent. (Private individuals actually have some leeway with implementing patented inventions though the purpose is supposed to be research rather than actual use.)
A trademark could apply to the name “Hit-Box” if the creators wanted. A trademark is just a registered name for something to give a legal defense against counterfeiting.
So copyright no, patent maybe, trademark most definitely. All of it unlikely to be tried though as the profit margin is probably too slim.
@ Amp and Bencao.
I think I’d personally prefer the 30mm version. I love the Bencao layout too! I was thinking about potential difficulties with getting used to a “hitbox” style stick and found that it would take me alot of time to get used to playing from the player two side of the screen. I was experimenting and realized that if the left-hand buttons were positioned correctly, I could just “piano-roll” my fingers to get my fireballs out correctly. You know, like instead of using just my pointer finger for “down” and then my middle finger for “left”, I could just roll or slide my pointer finger from one button to the next. The possibilities for speed and execution improvements are crazy!
Yeah, I’d definitely copywright the name “hitbox.”
It’s faster to use your fingers as a team rather than to wipe the buttons. Also, you need to press down, down forward, forward to get a fireball to come out; DF is tough to do with just one finger. 
One of our prototypes was all 30mm. It was too big and you cannot cover the jump button while covering the other buttons easily. Your hand has to constantly move away from your Up button. Also, on the left hand your fingers are constantly stretched with your ring, middle, and index across the 30mm buttons. It’s all about the ergonomics. With 24mm nothing is strained, and your fingers are already where they need to be.
Here’s the one I posted in Art’s plexi thread.
[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/platinum_boards/hitboxtemplate.jpg
The buttons are just as far apart as the 30mm from the regular template so it shouldn’t crack.
EDIT: I didn’t originally post this here cause I didn’t want to take away from their business.
@Husser_Brian: Can’t wait till you guys get caught up and get the website up and running. I’m really looking forward to ordering one of these. Seems like they are really catching on and hope you guys can get the patent soon. This is innovation and you guys deserve the credit.
@Lefty: If you try to just slide from down to left you are going to get get a down and a left because 30mm are too far apart to hit two at once with one finger, you will have let go of the down when you hit the left, so you wont consistently be able to hit a down left while going from one button to the next.
Also, Piano-rolling is using a finger for each key ala middle finger-down, ring finger-left and rolling from one to the next which gives you the the the d, dl, l quarter circle left input.
[media=youtube]7KQJonJ6XoQ#t=4m48s[/media]
Thanks for the info Zen and Husser. I love the layouts and I’d definitely try the 24mm buttons instead of the 30’s. We’ll see at some point in the near future.
Does Arthong or Bencao have these templates for their TE plexi’s?