As far as legality goes, the makers of Hitbox can copyright or trade mark Hitbox.
They can also go apply for the patten the hitbox layout.
I asked have they done ether yet? If the answer is no, than the people who makes Hitbox have no right to request anyone to not make and sell a hit box clone.
Regardless, this do not stop any customer builder on making their own stickless arcade controller (for profit) or even Mad Catz and Hori from “borrowing” the design concept and making there own controllers without paying the makers of Hitbox a penny in Royalties.
Look at all the other existing Arcade stick layouts. Even if they are Patterned under US, other countries or even internationally it does not stop someone else from fudging the design by millimeters and calling it their own. Hell Mad Catz clearly “borrowed” the UMK layout for there optional top Panel.
You think Williams (Now owned by Happ), Wanner Bros, or Nether realm Studios have a case against them. Not at all.
Bad Form went out of the window when EVERY ONE practically on SRK makes products for the PS3 and Xbox 360 with out licensing rights form Sony and Microsoft.
How many people here pay royalties for the systems they build for or the characters they used on their controllers?
Lets not play the, It’s “my design/ My idea / my product so you can’t use it” game. Because if the Big leaguers (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo) step in and told us to stop followed by legal threads. There will be little fighting it.
It isn’t illegal to build compatible controllers without license from Sony or Microsoft. Microsoft kind of forces manufacturers to play along due to their security chip requirement for 360.
Exactly my point (do we have any certified lawyers or Law majors in the house?) Unless congress passes another asinine “intellectual property law that protects corporations and take rights away from the people”, but that is a different debate. What stopped Mad Catz from making a MK panel, nothing. What stops any of us from making our own Stickless arcade controller, even for proffit. Nothing. If I went and make stickless arcade sticks almost identical to the Hit box, every detail except their name and logo what can Hussler_brian (No Offense) can do to me. Rant and flame me on SRK, but that is the limit of it.
Only thing that would stop anyone is their own ethics, but ethics over copying panel layouts, using someone else’s copyright characters, or even stealing customers form each other (I know it happens). Ethics don’t equal law, so there no legal reason some one not to do it.
If someone come to me tomorrow and wants me to turn there Hrap EX into a hitbox layout, honestly my response will be “Yes I can” and I give them a quote for the work. If I want to slap onto a stick lets say art that Montina or d3v drew them selves, posted it on SRK, and I went ahead and edit out their signature from the art, print it out and put it on a stick and sell it. I know if I stole there art they will be mad with me, but what can they really do.
You think its silly until someone at Hori or Mad Catz (or who ever) say, hey lets go make this panel layout. It does not even have to be a whole stick, They just need to make a optional metal panel with a hitbox layout and maybe a wire-harness for the conversion from a joystick to 4 buttons.
Decent Template to start building your own template, also you can check some examples of another Sticks Templates, like those http://www.slagcoin.com/joystick/layout.html, if u want to get inspired.
BTW, I believe, I got a NoSC solution with a pic 16f18 and a simple Truth Table, only arround 20 ASM lines, I’ll test it as soon as I get a Pic emulator like Proteus+MPLAB.
You could try doing this mod for your keyboard and limit your button travel. Cherry switches actuate at 2mm but bottom out at 4mm, compared to Seimitsu which have ‘short’ actuation and bottom out at 2.5-3mm according to slagcoin.
I have a CRT monitor and come out at basically 0ms input lag using ‘InputLagTestor.exe’. While I’m pretty new and bad at fighting games, I can detect cursor input lag easily enough and GFWL overlay isn’t lagging that at all.
I’m thinking about trying to modify my stick so that it has a jump button but still retains the actual stick part and can still use up on the stick to jump. That way I could get the benefits of having a jump button while still using the stick for things I’m more comfortable with there. I’m not exactly sure how the wiring would work, though, but I’ll see how much I can figure out.
I have a Qanba Q4RAF, which has 8 face buttons, and I was thinking about making the inner bottom face button the jump button and the inner top button as a dash button (this is in relation to MvC3; dash would be L+M+H). Then I could move the traditional 6 buttons over to the right 6 face buttons, as opposed to the default layout of the 6 buttons as the left 6 face buttons and Dash/Team Super on the far right.
I would say that it would be overkill to have a stick and button for jump…might cause unwanted inputs…and in a tourney sense I think it wouldn’t pass for a legal stick to use…but not sure…such a nice stick…you really want to do that?
Eh, I’m still playing around with ideas in my head, although I’ve been toying with this idea for a while. Always looking for ways to improve the control scheme for myself, instead of putting that time to improving my skillz haha. If I don’t like it I can always just change it back anyway, but a button for jump has been something that I’ve wanted since I started playing fighting games.
Why do you think the stick wouldn’t be legal, if a hitbox style stick would be?
It has nothing to do with the hit box but modding the actual stick to preform moves not intended with the eight buttons… Just a thought…i have no hard evidence…
I know there are a few out there on the boards here that have put out custom stickless sticks. I’m curious, as at this point its been nearly a month waiting, not on just the wait list, but for two responses from the hitbox guys.
They ask me for some information after a significant delay (usually a week or so) and it seems as if they’re going to respond back, and then they absolutely fall off contact and do not respond after that. I can understand being busy working on the boxes, but there really is no customer connection/response time here at all and its something I’m concerned about. If I have a problem, it looks like I’d be left out in the cold completely (but of course I’d do some research here and ask people)
So anyway, are there any custom stick makers around here that do stickless sticks? I checked the custom stick maker thread and the link for one guy towards the top of the list was broken.
When talking to the builder just ask for that button style…just make sure you are clear if you want them to do a full custom or if you just want that style and you will put the components yourself…im sure the hit box crew is pretty swamped with pm’s. It would be a feat to keep up with all the questions…
you dont even have to wait for manufacturers to do that, Blklighting already does it. Last i saw he had hitbox styles available for the TE, The HRAP, The V3 SA,
and even the fighting stick 3s. I already have one for my TE and can not wait to get one for my V3, and if blk was going to stop doing this because the hit box people werent happy with it, that would just be mad ignorant and if that were the case he should just stop doing all of his panel replacements. People are just on those dudes nuts like they invented the best thing in the world. All they did was make another layout that is available to the community
Fuck if you can patent a button layout. Maybe you could get away with a copyright, you can after all copyright circuit layouts as a form of art. You could probably trademark it, but these are three different things.
Anyway it’s an interesting layout, and I’ll probably cut a custom panel to try it out.
Being swamped is obvious…but dropping contact cold with customers is an entirely different issue.
I guess I may have to find a stick to have someone mod…though I don’t like the actual size of the TE stick, so I guess I’ll look for something else like the q4 or something with a slightly smaller/more rectangular profile like that special edition hori rectangle stick.
I’d like to go with the ‘original’ hitbox, but with this kind of customer contact, I don’t entirely feel like I should encourage it - or, if I do pay for it, how will I know if they’ll actually send it out in a reasonable amount of time?