the Hearth @Felthry@awoo.space

why is it that one of the most memorable lines ever seems to be "NOT RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLOM OF NIT
WILL STAY THESE MES ENGERS ABUT THEIR DUTY"

it's not a particularly poignant line, it's not even terribly important to the story it's from, it's just that glom of nit sounds funny

i am just extremely stressed right now and need affection but also i'm in the sort of mood where anything suggesting physical contact is Bad

okay apparently internet is back now

that was about three hours of what ffelt like some kind of psychological torture or something

aaaaagh having internet out is such a horrible experience when internet is your only way of interacting with people, especially when it's somehow out in a way that makes it so that I can _see_ things people say but I can't say things back and I get all that anxiety of "what if they get worried, what if they think we're in trouble or somethin gbecause we're not responding" and i can't even post this right now as i type it because of it and i have no idea when it's going to get fixed and aaaaaaaa

this is worsened by the fact that most of the things we do to help cope with stress require an internet connection... and when the stress itself is over not having an internet connection it kind of compounds on itself and just makes it way worse

i just want to at least know what the hell is going on

the ATmega microcontroller, or the AT controller

if you aren't aware, the original game had a system where spyro would accelerate from a stop when you pressed any directional button, so quickly tapping the button would allow you to move a very short distance, and pressing to either side while holding forward would allow you to get more angular precision based on how long you pressed the side button; it works really intuitively and we've only ever seen it in spyro and super mario 64 ds

spyro reignited apparently doesn't have the original's dynamic dpad controls

which is kind of a shame because it was the pioneering game of that system and it worked really well, gave you precision moving around a 3d world without needing an analog stick

maybe i had a point when i started but i forgot it somewhere along the way and that's okay

did I have a point in writiing out all this?

no

in case you can't tell, we've never used most sega controllers. just the dreamcast one

sega's master system had exactly the same controller layout as the NES it was competing against, minus start and select, and then their Genesis (Mega Drive to EU people) added a start button and a C button, making the only three-face-button controller we've ever seen

there was also a six button genesis controller but i don't know if anything ever used that (might have been used by sega cd and 32x games, which used the genesis hardware as well in one of the most confusing moves anyone in the video game market has made ever)

the game gear had no C button but was otherwise the same button-wise as a genesis

the sega saturn had six face buttons, a start button, and two (digital?) shoulder buttons in addition to a dpad, and also had an alternate controller that looks horribly uncomfortable and which had all the same stuff plus an analog stick, in addition to a +/◯ switch that I don't know what it does

then the dreamcast had a dpad, an analog stick, analog shoulder buttons, four face buttons, and a start button in a weird uncomfortable layout. it also had a slot for a VMU which was a sort of add-on and sort of handheld (with a dpad and two buttons, gameboy style)

then sega stopped making consoles

nintendo did whatever the hell it was they did with the wii but then went back to conventional with the wii u and switch, though oddly both of those had two digital shoulder buttons on each side, no more analog

also the original xbox had two extra face buttons i forgot to mention, white and black, though they did away with those for the 360

as handhelds go, the gameboy had the same buttons as the NES; dpad, start, select, A, B, and that's it. the gameboy color didn't change that

the gba added shoulder buttons, L and R, though still only had two face buttons

it wasn't until the DS that we got proper four face button controls in a handheld, the same buttons the SNES had. then the 3ds added an analog stick on the left in addition to the dpad, and the new 3ds added a right analog stick, which is really more of a trackpoint nub, as well as two more shoulder buttons that as far as we've seen nothing actually uses

sony's psp had the analog stick and four face buttons from day one, but it didn't do anywhere near as well commercially as the ds, and the vita added the second analog stick but it did even worse than the psp and i think sony gave up on handhelds after that. the psp and vita both had just the two digital shoulder buttons

microsoft never did handhelds at all

each system also did their own unique thing

the ps1 controller was a straight copy of the snes controller at first, except with two L and two R buttons. when analog controls became a thing, they just added two analog sticks on their own little nubs sticking out of the controller, which puts the left stick in a somewhat awkward position for use as the primary control method instead of the dpad

nintendo introduced analog controls along with a completely new console and new controller design so you ended up with the weird three-pronged thing that took the SNES controller's buttons and stripped out X, Y, and start, added an analog stick, and added a Z button and four C buttons, but you basically have to use either the analog stick and Z button OR the dpad and L button because of the way the controller is laid out. I guess you could use both if you sacrifice the A, B, Cx4, and R buttons though, wonder if any games did that

they fixed all that with the gamecube though, great controller that

microsoft had analog control in mind from the start, so they made basically the same overall layout that's used for most things today, with the left stick and face buttons in the places your thumbs most naturally rest and the dpad and right stick between those

Nintendo also used the microsoft layout on the gamecube and switch, though the wii pro controller used the sony-style layout and the wii u gamepad and pro controller used the... inverse-sony layout? with the sticks above and outside the dpad and face buttons, which was an interesting choice

nintendo was the first to have analog l/r buttons on the gamecube, though microsoft's xbox was in development at the same time and also had them

sony's playstation 2 only had the same digital l and r buttons as the ps1, though it had two of each in contrast to nintendo's analog l/r + digital z buttons and microsoft's analog l/r buttons

the x360 and ps3 both went the route of having one analog and one digital on each side, which I understand the xbone and ps4 have continued

Buttons, clockwise from top

Nintendo: XABY
Microsoft: YBAX
Sony: △◯╳⬜

why does no one agree on what buttons go where

also playstation games can't even agree on what button does what. the original intent was for ◯ to be accept and ╳ to be cancel but half the games don't use that because while x = bad is pretty international, circle = good is pretty japan-specific, and x = 'here, this one' is also a thing outside of japan

also ⬜ was originally intended to be menu but few games acutally use it that way, △ is more commonly a menu button when one of the face buttons (and not start/select) is menu (possibly inherited from a few SNES games that used X for menu?)

also, the non-primary buttons are another matter

nintendo did (left to right) select/start until the N64 and gamecube, which just had start and no select, and then after that it's been +/- instead

sony copied nintendo and has used select/start the entire time

Microsoft went off and did their own thing with back/start

the wii/ps3/360 generation also introduced the system button, located between the start and select-slash-back buttons, though nintendo moved their system button around a bunch on their various handhelds and consoles

also: what the hell activision, why are you putting an EULA in console games now, is this just how things are now???

I bet there are extracted image files of the icons used in games somewhere.

there should be playstation button emoji on here

actually why not button emoji for every major console, that sounds like a good idea

so we ended up getting the switch release of spyro reignited

it's good. though we're utterly useless at the flying levels in spyro 1

the dialog really reminds me that it was written for a 90s kids game though, lots of 4th wall bumping, if not breaking, talking about buttons and stuff

it's really weird to play spyro and see something other than △□⚪╳ for the button names

Thank you all for existing. You make the world a better place.

even if we can manage to figure out what the context is it still leaves us feeling all ?????????? and disoriented