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PlayStation Employee Designs Custom Controller For Gamer With Cerebral Palsy (9news.com.au)
An anonymous reader writes: A Sony employee created a custom PlayStation controller for a 21-year-old gamer with cerebral palsy. "I honestly got choked up reading the letter..." gamer Peter Byrne told 9News. "Mr Nawabi really cared about my situation and did this on his own time to make my experience better." On his old PlayStation 4 controller, Byrne kept inadvertently pausing the game whenever his left hand hit the touchpad. "It killed me to hear how something you used to enjoy thoroughly was being ruined because of our new controller design," Sony's Alex Nawabi wrote back in a letter, including a new controller with the original touchpad re-rerouted to the back. Nawabi spent 10 hours assembling parts from three different controllers, adding "Since I've torn the controller apart to modify it, the warranty is no longer valid... I'm not sure how long this will last." But Nawabi promised that he's already planning to also build one more replacement controller.
There's another guy who does something similar and has a site where he posts about custom controllers that he's built. It's honestly just interesting from an engineering/design perspective and seeing some of the different solutions that people have come up with to enable all kinds of people to play games.
While it was a nice thing to do, this is hardly worthy of the praise it's getting across the internet.
Meanwhile if you're a developer of open source software you spend hundreds of hours and the only thing you ever get back is abuse. Doing something for somebody disabled really is the easy ticket if you want some appreciation.
sjw with this PC bullshit.
If it were PC (personal computer), there would be no such "bullshit". Anybody can build a generic USB Human Interface Device and count on the computer to recognize it. The "bullshit" arises from the lockout produced by the requirement of a cryptographic handshake between the console and the controller.
The real problem is how the console manufacturers have to keep making new controllers with new protocols every damn time, just so that they can make money from selling new controllers because people can't use their old ones anymore. If I recall correctly, the XBox 360 wireless had protection on it such that you couldn't sell one without Microsoft's approval, and then Microsoft set up things so that they made it exclusive to a small number of companies.
If it was easier to use unapproved 3rd-party controllers, it would be easier to have custom controllers available for the few people who can't use regular controllers.
or GTFO
^^^^^^
Where you plug in your controller backwards just to make it work. Can't you hear the thunder?
I have Cerebral Palsy. Have my entire life. I play Playstation. I sometimes have issues manipulating the controllers in certain ways. So, I'm happy to see this, I have always done better with Genesis style controls, and try and use a Mad Catz Fight Pad whenever possible.
Trump 2016
You are welcome on my lawn.
Have you looked at the comments?
By never deleting any posts, its is not possible to hide the comments away by farming modpoints on 10k accounts, for example. Brigade tactics are reduced to mere spam. By deleting posts, you effectively remove the parts of the discourse. For those, who are interested in the breadth of opinion, deleting posts to please some idiotic PC groupthink ideal of a lunatic majority in some freak country, would be less the ideal.
May i suggest not reading posts marked lower then 0?
And would love to be able to disable the button in the touchpad- I have spasms in my left hand and long fingers so the end rests against the top left corner of the thing and occasionally the fucker clicks when I play. That being said, I have enough EE knowledge to wire a switch to disable the button myself (assuming it doesn't share a trace aside from ground with the touch sensor itself); not everyone does.
Seriously, what's the point of custom PC gaming devices when +99% of your software strictly expects a 360 controller?
True, games in the Windows Store tend to require specifically an XInput controller because Microsoft has deliberately locked down which joystick APIs are available to UWP apps. But for games distributed as Windows desktop apps, such as those distributed through GOG or Steam, where do you get this 99 percent figure?
I was hoping they guy just dumped one of the old double dong ("Dual Shocker") prototypes on the guy with a "Here, made just for you!"
Burma shave!
World definitely needs more people like Mr. Nawabi...you know, people that actually add something positive to other people's lives! Great Job!
You are forgetting when it was possible for anyone to make controllers, the number of fake controllers was quite high, causing people to get ripped off and/or having a poor gaming experience.
By "fake" do you mean counterfeit, with falsely applied official logos? Or do you just mean unlicensed controllers with their own brand? I remember the days when unlicensed controllers for the NES, Super NES, Nintendo 64, and Nintendo GameCube were sold. Some sucked; others had build quality very close to that of official controllers. But even the maligned Turbo Touch 360 by Triax is better for gamepad-style games than a virtual gamepad on a phone.
Unfortunately the employee told him he was doing it on his own time, and then the guy getting the controller posted it on FB.
Now it's drawing national attention. This means Sony will have to officially look into it.
If this guy used company resources for any of this (and heck even if he didn't) he will likely get disciplined for not toeing the company line and releasing unauthorized modified controllers.
I'm expecting the guy to get fired by Sony over this. No good deed goes unpunished.
If a game uses only XInput, not the classic joystick API, it won't work at all with non-Xbox controllers.
BS. I have a Logitech F310 gamepad that has a switch which lets me change between XInput and DirectInput.
If you slide your Logitech F310's mode switch to X and plug it into an Xbox 360 game console, does it work? If not, then the F310 is the only non-Xbox controller I've heard of that works with XInput.