Never forget the pris dork factor of waving those things around. Having your parents buy this is a great way to ensure your virginity if you're a teen boy.
Ah the bane of far too many teenage boys... thinking they have a clue what teenage girls think is cool or not cool.
Provided all other cars were robotical, how could this happen?
The leprechauns riding bicycles and fairies riding unicorns would still get in the way.
Seriously, getting 'all the other cars robotical' is a fairy tale.
1) The roads are literally full of cars 2 - 10 years old, with cars up to 100 years old still rolling around. There is absolutely no way you can mandate a 'switch-over' date from human to robotic... any plan would -have- to be gradual which would give you at least a decade or more of robotic cars alongside human drivers.
2) There would be serious resistance to giving up human control in our car centric culture. (at least in North America) Political resistance would be immense. We have a society that still loves to drive, that values classic cars. There isn't enough political capital in the world to push something like that through.
3) The comment about unicorns and leprachauns was more than just sarcastic... pedestrians and cyclists aren't going away.
Provided all other cars were robotical, how could this happen? A traffic jam creates when vehicles reaching a point are faster than vehicles at that point. Provided our car is respecting security distance from a car that was at top legal speed, it would go at top legal speed as well as those after it. No traffic jam is possible. And with regards to speed change and wave effect since robots would have faster and finer-grained reactions, those would be minimized too.
Traffic jams still occur even in idealized situations. Just look at the internet for an example of how congestion and wave effects can still easily accumulate and propogate despite being completely computer controlled. And the internet has the luxury of being able to drop packets to cope... something that isn't going to work out on the highway system.
1) bicyclists and pedestrians are an actual concern
You know, a funny thing I've noticed is that there are a lot of people in the US who think that *everyone* should have a gun. But when you pressure them a little, it turns out that they don't think that *really* everyone should have a gun.
Agreed. But its much more fundamental a problem than that. There are a lot of people in the US that think that:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
At 60, you can see the curvature of the earth out the window so it would be really cool to actually get to take a flight that could handle it.
I'm sure at 60 you can see the curvature much more dramatically, but you can see the curvature just fine at 40k too. The view from the cockpit (back when children and such were -gasp- invited to see the cockpit) it was particularly apparent. These days you'd probably need to be on a private jet to get more than a port-hole view though.
All of these vary somewhat on what they report incomes to be but they all solidly put the vast majority of programmers short of 6 figure incomes. I'm more than confident that there are a LOT of competent programmers out there making making less than 100,000/year.
If you are getting paid less, it is either because of the industry you are in is surfeit with programmers or you are not specialized enough.
The vast majority of programmers make less. I'm sure some of them are incompetent. And some of them are inexperienced. But there are a lot of experienced competent programmers making less than 6 figures.
What you describe is exactly the scenario of iPod vs. Zune. Zune wasn't markedly inferior. In fact, some in this thread have called it superior. But Zune failed.
I disagree. The Zune got a lot of simple stuff wrong, from DRM issues, to being able to use it as USB mass storage, to video format support. They made a lot of really big mistakes, and the ipod was already well entrenched as the market leader.
Even so, Zune got a lot right, and could have improved on many of its short comings with a bit more time and attention. And even as a 'failure' it was doing quite well against non-Apple mp3 players, and could have easily I think taken the #2 spot, and gradually eaten at the ipod marketshare.
But it wasn't an ipod killer.
WinMo7 is a different situation. The smartphone market is still expanding; iphone is popular but not entrenched. Android is just now becoming mainstream, and there is lots of interest in non-Apple products. When you walk into a cellular store buying an iphone is not the 'default' the way buying an ipod is for music.
The $50,000 question: What can Windows Phone 7 come up with that nobody else has, and make people willing to be locked via contract to two years with the device?
Same thing as android?
Market differentiation is nice and all, and important. But the bottom line is that Microsoft is already a recognized brand; all they have to do is show up with a competent product that isn't markedly inferior and there's no reason it won't succeed in the market.
And plenty of opportunity for distinctiveness exists... they can can deliver proper outlook and office support. They can provide xbox-live integration for those that might want it. That's just 2 big ones off the top of my head...
It isn't a trojan until it gets in someone else's machine. If you know it's a trojan and you install it anyway, it's no longer a trojan.
1) Just because he compiled it, doesn't mean he knew it was a trojan. One could download source from the web and compile it, and get a trojan as a result.
2) Even if he wrote it, it could be the result of a multiple-personality disorder coding against him...:D
3) I disagree that intent matters. Even if he wrote it himself, knowing full well what it was... I'm not sure I buy the idea that deliberately installing a trojan on purpose makes it any less a trojan.
Had the king of Troy divined that the greeks's had stashed some soldiers in the 'trojan horse' and he brought it into the city anyway... and then promptly burnt it to the ground. Well... it was still a "trojan horse". Similarly when a security researcher deliberately obtains a trojan to dissect, it is still a trojan.
A firearm isn't a weapon until it's aimed at a human
A crossbow aimed at a rabbit is a weapon. A machine gun in a crate is a weapon. A nuclear missile waiting in its silo is a weapon.
Indeed it would be impossible to build weapons, test weapons, find weapons, or sell weapons if they didn't exist until humans were in the cross hairs -- yet there isn't a person on the face of the earth who would be confused by any of those terms.
It's one thing to call out a large developer who can have people familiar with the issues of these groups float between development teams, but it's not reasonable to expect small/indie developers (like the one in the article) to have the same resources.
Yes and no. I think even small/indie developers should be open to criticism. And yes, I think even small indie developers should take a moment to consider accessibility. I don't think they deserve to be raked over the coals or held liable for missing something.
Many of the design adjustments you will make to make the game more accessible benefits everyone.
A game that communicates critical information via sound can't be played muted. Ensuring that the game is playable muted makes it better for everyone.
A game that displays text in a clear font on a solid high contrast background serves to make the game more accessible to the dyslexic... but also makes it a hell of a lot easier on the vision impaired, people using small screens, etc.
A game with a customizable control scheme is better for everyone; not just left handed people.
All developers should have a checklist of accessibility considerations that they think about. And its ok if they decide that supporting some group or other is too costly, or doesn't make sense... (e.g. making "name that tune" accessible to the deaf is silly and its fine to decide not to. But instead of having the gun 'click' when its out of ammo...add some sort of visual indicator of its status too.
Or a game where critical information is conveyed by whether a circle is solid red, green, or blue... simply add an icon to the circle as well, so that the colour blind can play as well. Or make it a green circle, blue hexagon, red octogon so they can be differentiated by shape.
All developers have the resources to at least spend a bit of minimal effort thinking about these things, even small indies.
"Lefties" that force themselves to do everything the opposite of a "righty" are no more wrong than people not "taking lefties into consideration".
Where do you get an idea like this? 'force'? Seriously?
I didn't 'force' myself to use a mouse with the left hand any more than I forced myself to write with my left hand.
When I used a computer the mouse is on the right
I set up the first mouse I ever used, a Genius 3 button mouse, in the mid 1980s. It went on the left because I put it there after plugging it into my 80286 based IBM PC AT clone with VGA (320x200 256 color!!) It came with a green xacto-pad cutting board for a mouse pad and looked like this...
The only only program I had that actually used the mouse at first was a paint program called "Dr. Halo". It came on a floppy disk in the box with the mouse. Now because it was a drawing/painting program, I was naturally inclined to use my drawing/painting/writing hand. Go figure.
I'm curious how you are going to rationalize this as 'forced' or 'wrong'...??
Meh. For you maybe. But what if it explodes? Probably destroy the whole planet from that close. No way I'm going to support this environmental disaster waiting to happen. I'm lobbying to have it shut down or at least moved so that it orbits the earth from further out.;)
When the cost to identify and resolve those not so trivial issues exceeds the revenue expected from whatever subset of the ~7% of the population that is left handed that can not or will not adapt to right handed controls it just won't be done.
Yes I know that.
Nor should it.
Yes I agree with that. (Bet you didn't see that coming)
However as a corollary. when the cost to identify and resolve those issues does not exceed the revenue expected it should be done. In most cases resolving the issues is trivial. Many games need no adjustment. Many more games need only to allow users to customize the controls (which benefits everyone).
Games with motion mapping, need a little bit more. When I punch with my left fist, my avatar should punch with his left fist too. But a mirror geometry transform on the model -or- a mirror mapping on the control input is usually all that's needed. (and this is trivial -- no more complicated than the invert-mouse setting in FPS that satisfies the flight-sim people who want mouse-up to be look down, and mouse-down to be look-up.
If the developer is cognizant of the issues during design and implementation its TRIVIAL to support.
Should they double the size of the QA department to deal with lefties?
If this were realistic no. In the event that this is realistic than no. However its not realistic in almost any title you could name.
The reason they don't get resolved is that people forgot to even ask the question of whether or not it was an issue, or what it would take to resolve it along the way. Its not because its a hard problem in the vast majority of situations.
Should they have cut out half of Samus' animations so they could have both left and right handed version?
a) Samus is first person. The only change would be a mirror transform on the center axis. They don't need a new model. The transform is inexpensive, and can be done in realtime trivially with all the other geometry rendering. Seriously, this is trivial.
b) The only samus "animations" are in cutscenes. While it would be slick to have a left or right handed samus in the cut-scenes, that may not be easy or worth it. But it would be a perfectly reasonable solution to have her be right handed in the cut scenes. Gameplay is unaffected.
I don't mean to pick on you, but I think you lack perspective.
Not at all. Your assuming I expect a lot more than I really am.
Cognitive and sensory minorities should absolutely be considered in game development (and everything else), but keep in mind that it's not always possible or practical. If we insist that it must, it won't bring those games to the minorities, it will just keep them from being produced at all.
Except that if they do *consider it* in development it won't be a problem. The problem arises in the vast majority of cases not because its too costly to do, but because it wasn't thought of in the first place.
That's because less than 10% of the population is left handed.
2% of the world is blonde. So there are 5x as many left handed people as blonde people. That's staggeringly large number of people. Trying to somehow 'marginalize' 10% of the population is just ignorant.
Hell, hopefully without seeming rascist, only slightly more than 10% of the world is caucasion. There are very nearly as many left handed people as their are white people.
You live in a right handed world. Deal with it.
I do. Advocating customizable control schemes and reminding developers to consider left-handedness when developing motion-mapped control systems is part of how I deal with it.
I'm not going to cater to you.
Your loss. With 132 million DS's out there, that's 13 million left handed ones. That's the same number as the total number of people who bought a sega master system. There's a good reason left handed support is generally at least acceptable. You don't shut out a market that big, especially when its generally trivial to support it.
They'd be correct about the controls being lousy, because it would in effect be broken for 90% of the population.
Fascinating that you consider them 'broken'. If you tried them, you'd get used to them and cope just fine, right? So how does that make them broken?
Remember, they only -seem- awkward because you aren't "used to them", once you've put in some time, it'll be completely natural. So they aren't inherently bad or defective at all.
That was the argument you made for lefties... why exactly doesn't apply to right handed people?
My point is, despite being left handed I don't find any disadvantage in switching to my right hand for any of these things, even though I can't for the life of me write with my right hand for example.
I can mouse around with my right hand just fine, and frequently do when I'm at someone else's desk. But I can't possibly play an FPS or RTS with my right hand on the mouse competitively where I need fast precise movement.
I'm sure with practice I could improve further but:
a) I'd be at a considerable disadvantage for some time. b) I might never reach the same level of competency. c) Why exactly should I?
I think if people actually tried to get used to using their right hand rather than simply complain they can't, they'd soon find it's not really a problem.
So if the IT guys at work are left handed, and unconsciously set up all the work stations with the mouse/mousepad on the left -- should all the righties just 'get used to it'?
What if they do something perverse like swap the buttons in windows, or order left-handed ergo mice? Just get used to it?
The mouse, a Razor Lachesis turned out to be only slightly more useful as a mouse than a very expensive brick. Damn I wish I could find my receipt for that plastic lump of garbage.
I've never used a lachesis, so can't comment on it specifically, but I had a razor copperhead, which I absolutely loved. When it died after a couple years I ordered another one, but one of its buttons was.. 'wonky' (it was possible to press the button without triggering it if you did so near the edge -- my original never had that issue. I returned it as defective. But couldn't get it exchanged as they didn't have another. And it appears to be discontinued now(?)
I see they've got an ergo left deathadder though, so I might give that a try... or one of their other ambi-dextrous models. I was happy enough with my original copperhead to give them the benefit of the doubt when the 2nd one was wonky. But I won't tolerate junk... so if it doesn't work well I'd return it. And I plan to order locally, even if it costs a bit more to make a possible return more convenient.
I have searched a few times and never seen a left handed gaming keyboard, though some gimmicks claim to be left handed friendly by allowing detachment of the gaming controls, although the layout of the buttons means you would need surgery to remove your thumb and reattach it on the other side of your hand.
I use an ideazon fang, but its evidently been recently discontinued. Its a stand alone pad, but its symmetrical for left/right use -- it doesn't matter where your thumb is:)
Its trivial in most games. I can't speak to ALL games.
The Wii version of Twilight Princess has the entire MAP, including dungeon interiors, reversed to accommodate right-handed players for the (usually left-handed but now right-handed) Link. As in, Death Mountain is now in the west.
I can't imagine they would have gone to all that trouble if it had been a simple matter of reversing the Link model, especially since Miyamoto is left-handed.
Given its 3rd person and how much link interacts with his environment (which is unusual by the way) simply reversing all the geometry in the game *is* the easy fix. Its one trivial transform.
Fixing it without changing the world would have required custom left and right hand animations, as in some cases mirroring the model would have resulted in strange/unrealistic world interaction animation. Reversing the entire world on the other hand is a trivial fix. The only adjustment required would be to in game text refering to east/west, and any text on textures would need to be handled. (not that i actually specifically recall there being any...)
You hold the DSi on its side, and the gameplay have the numbers faling "tetris"-like moving from the left to the stacks on the right. You play the game by manipulate the stacks on the right side of the screen with the stylus. For a right handed person this is completely natural, their hand is off to the right side of the screen, and the stylus extends in from the right edge.
For a left handed person your hand is either obscuring the playfield while you play, or you have to hold your stylus in awkward positions to try and come up from below, or down from above. (Its essentially the same issue lefies have when writing with slow drying ink -- their hand passes over what they just wrote smudging it. In this case, the natural position for their hand is completely obscuring the playfield.)
Slashdot Mirror
Never forget the pris dork factor of waving those things around.
Having your parents buy this is a great way to ensure your virginity if you're a teen boy.
Ah the bane of far too many teenage boys... thinking they have a clue what teenage girls think is cool or not cool.
Yep, because discharging a firearm at night in an urban setting to kill rodents and small mamalls is an intelligent thing to do.
If someone enters my house using a copy of my (master) key, I can't legally call it breaking and entering, because nothing is broken.
Yes, actually you can. Look it up.
For example, pretending to be the gas man to gain entry to a home is still 'breaking and entering'.
Provided all other cars were robotical, how could this happen?
The leprechauns riding bicycles and fairies riding unicorns would still get in the way.
Seriously, getting 'all the other cars robotical' is a fairy tale.
1) The roads are literally full of cars 2 - 10 years old, with cars up to 100 years old still rolling around. There is absolutely no way you can mandate a 'switch-over' date from human to robotic... any plan would -have- to be gradual which would give you at least a decade or more of robotic cars alongside human drivers.
2) There would be serious resistance to giving up human control in our car centric culture. (at least in North America) Political resistance would be immense. We have a society that still loves to drive, that values classic cars. There isn't enough political capital in the world to push something like that through.
3) The comment about unicorns and leprachauns was more than just sarcastic... pedestrians and cyclists aren't going away.
Provided all other cars were robotical, how could this happen? A traffic jam creates when vehicles reaching a point are faster than vehicles at that point. Provided our car is respecting security distance from a car that was at top legal speed, it would go at top legal speed as well as those after it. No traffic jam is possible. And with regards to speed change and wave effect since robots would have faster and finer-grained reactions, those would be minimized too.
Traffic jams still occur even in idealized situations. Just look at the internet for an example of how congestion and wave effects can still easily accumulate and propogate despite being completely computer controlled. And the internet has the luxury of being able to drop packets to cope... something that isn't going to work out on the highway system.
1) bicyclists and pedestrians are an actual concern
You know, a funny thing I've noticed is that there are a lot of people in the US who think that *everyone* should have a gun. But when you pressure them a little, it turns out that they don't think that *really* everyone should have a gun.
Agreed. But its much more fundamental a problem than that. There are a lot of people in the US that think that:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
only applies to Americans.
At 60, you can see the curvature of the earth out the window so it would be really cool to actually get to take a flight that could handle it.
I'm sure at 60 you can see the curvature much more dramatically, but you can see the curvature just fine at 40k too. The view from the cockpit (back when children and such were -gasp- invited to see the cockpit) it was particularly apparent. These days you'd probably need to be on a private jet to get more than a port-hole view though.
Cite: http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?uri=ao-47-34-H39
I sincerely doubt that, as no decent programmer should be doing work for less than 50 bucks an hour. Which is around 100k a year before taxes.
Wow. I hate replying to AC's but this is just idiotic and arrogant...
http://www.worldsalaries.org/computerprogrammer.shtml
http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Programmer&l1=United+States
http://www.suite101.com/content/computer-programming-career-information-and-wage-expectations-a247160
All of these vary somewhat on what they report incomes to be but they all solidly put the vast majority of programmers short of 6 figure incomes. I'm more than confident that there are a LOT of competent programmers out there making making less than 100,000/year.
If you are getting paid less, it is either because of the industry you are in is surfeit with programmers or you are not specialized enough.
The vast majority of programmers make less. I'm sure some of them are incompetent. And some of them are inexperienced. But there are a lot of experienced competent programmers making less than 6 figures.
What you describe is exactly the scenario of iPod vs. Zune. Zune wasn't markedly inferior. In fact, some in this thread have called it superior. But Zune failed.
I disagree. The Zune got a lot of simple stuff wrong, from DRM issues, to being able to use it as USB mass storage, to video format support. They made a lot of really big mistakes, and the ipod was already well entrenched as the market leader.
Even so, Zune got a lot right, and could have improved on many of its short comings with a bit more time and attention. And even as a 'failure' it was doing quite well against non-Apple mp3 players, and could have easily I think taken the #2 spot, and gradually eaten at the ipod marketshare.
But it wasn't an ipod killer.
WinMo7 is a different situation. The smartphone market is still expanding; iphone is popular but not entrenched. Android is just now becoming mainstream, and there is lots of interest in non-Apple products. When you walk into a cellular store buying an iphone is not the 'default' the way buying an ipod is for music.
I highly doubt that you could hire 2 competent programmers for 200k, let alone release a prototype in less than 6 months.
I'm betting you just insulted a lot of very competent programmers out there.
The $50,000 question: What can Windows Phone 7 come up with that nobody else has, and make people willing to be locked via contract to two years with the device?
Same thing as android?
Market differentiation is nice and all, and important. But the bottom line is that Microsoft is already a recognized brand; all they have to do is show up with a competent product that isn't markedly inferior and there's no reason it won't succeed in the market.
And plenty of opportunity for distinctiveness exists... they can can deliver proper outlook and office support. They can provide xbox-live integration for those that might want it. That's just 2 big ones off the top of my head...
Next you'll tell me that Soulfire was just another Rusty Sword...
The merchants paid more for the rusty sword. ;)
It isn't a trojan until it gets in someone else's machine. If you know it's a trojan and you install it anyway, it's no longer a trojan.
1) Just because he compiled it, doesn't mean he knew it was a trojan. One could download source from the web and compile it, and get a trojan as a result.
2) Even if he wrote it, it could be the result of a multiple-personality disorder coding against him... :D
3) I disagree that intent matters. Even if he wrote it himself, knowing full well what it was... I'm not sure I buy the idea that deliberately installing a trojan on purpose makes it any less a trojan.
Had the king of Troy divined that the greeks's had stashed some soldiers in the 'trojan horse' and he brought it into the city anyway... and then promptly burnt it to the ground. Well... it was still a "trojan horse". Similarly when a security researcher deliberately obtains a trojan to dissect, it is still a trojan.
A firearm isn't a weapon until it's aimed at a human
A crossbow aimed at a rabbit is a weapon. A machine gun in a crate is a weapon. A nuclear missile waiting in its silo is a weapon.
Indeed it would be impossible to build weapons, test weapons, find weapons, or sell weapons if they didn't exist until humans were in the cross hairs -- yet there isn't a person on the face of the earth who would be confused by any of those terms.
It's one thing to call out a large developer who can have people familiar with the issues of these groups float between development teams, but it's not reasonable to expect small/indie developers (like the one in the article) to have the same resources.
Yes and no. I think even small/indie developers should be open to criticism. And yes, I think even small indie developers should take a moment to consider accessibility. I don't think they deserve to be raked over the coals or held liable for missing something.
Many of the design adjustments you will make to make the game more accessible benefits everyone.
A game that communicates critical information via sound can't be played muted. Ensuring that the game is playable muted makes it better for everyone.
A game that displays text in a clear font on a solid high contrast background serves to make the game more accessible to the dyslexic... but also makes it a hell of a lot easier on the vision impaired, people using small screens, etc.
A game with a customizable control scheme is better for everyone; not just left handed people.
All developers should have a checklist of accessibility considerations that they think about. And its ok if they decide that supporting some group or other is too costly, or doesn't make sense... (e.g. making "name that tune" accessible to the deaf is silly and its fine to decide not to. But instead of having the gun 'click' when its out of ammo...add some sort of visual indicator of its status too.
Or a game where critical information is conveyed by whether a circle is solid red, green, or blue... simply add an icon to the circle as well, so that the colour blind can play as well. Or make it a green circle, blue hexagon, red octogon so they can be differentiated by shape.
All developers have the resources to at least spend a bit of minimal effort thinking about these things, even small indies.
Well, if it had been Linux that told him it was a trojan Linux would have been wrong, because it was his own program.
Actually the fact that he compiled or even wrote it himself doesn't at all remove the possibility that it is a trojan.
Windows 7 decided that an executable that I had on my computer(that I myself had just compiled) was a trojan...
I'm curious why you think Windows 7 was wrong? ;)
"Lefties" that force themselves to do everything the opposite of a "righty" are no more wrong than people not "taking lefties into consideration".
Where do you get an idea like this? 'force'? Seriously?
I didn't 'force' myself to use a mouse with the left hand any more than I forced myself to write with my left hand.
When I used a computer the mouse is on the right
I set up the first mouse I ever used, a Genius 3 button mouse, in the mid 1980s. It went on the left because I put it there after plugging it into my 80286 based IBM PC AT clone with VGA (320x200 256 color!!) It came with a green xacto-pad cutting board for a mouse pad and looked like this...
http://content.techrepublic.com.com/2346-10877_11-32288-10.html (the one on the left)
The only only program I had that actually used the mouse at first was a paint program called "Dr. Halo". It came on a floppy disk in the box with the mouse. Now because it was a drawing/painting program, I was naturally inclined to use my drawing/painting/writing hand. Go figure.
I'm curious how you are going to rationalize this as 'forced' or 'wrong'...??
3. 150 million km away: perfect
Meh. For you maybe. But what if it explodes? Probably destroy the whole planet from that close. No way I'm going to support this environmental disaster waiting to happen. I'm lobbying to have it shut down or at least moved so that it orbits the earth from further out. ;)
Man, I remember when programming topics actually used to make it to the front page. You know, news for nerds.
Meh, the daily astroturf about Ruby On Rails a year or so back weren't any better. ;)
When the cost to identify and resolve those not so trivial issues exceeds the revenue expected from whatever subset of the ~7% of the population that is left handed that can not or will not adapt to right handed controls it just won't be done.
Yes I know that.
Nor should it.
Yes I agree with that. (Bet you didn't see that coming)
However as a corollary. when the cost to identify and resolve those issues does not exceed the revenue expected it should be done. In most cases resolving the issues is trivial. Many games need no adjustment. Many more games need only to allow users to customize the controls (which benefits everyone).
Games with motion mapping, need a little bit more. When I punch with my left fist, my avatar should punch with his left fist too. But a mirror geometry transform on the model -or- a mirror mapping on the control input is usually all that's needed. (and this is trivial -- no more complicated than the invert-mouse setting in FPS that satisfies the flight-sim people who want mouse-up to be look down, and mouse-down to be look-up.
If the developer is cognizant of the issues during design and implementation its TRIVIAL to support.
Should they double the size of the QA department to deal with lefties?
If this were realistic no. In the event that this is realistic than no. However its not realistic in almost any title you could name.
The reason they don't get resolved is that people forgot to even ask the question of whether or not it was an issue, or what it would take to resolve it along the way. Its not because its a hard problem in the vast majority of situations.
Should they have cut out half of Samus' animations so they could have both left and right handed version?
a) Samus is first person. The only change would be a mirror transform on the center axis. They don't need a new model. The transform is inexpensive, and can be done in realtime trivially with all the other geometry rendering. Seriously, this is trivial.
b) The only samus "animations" are in cutscenes. While it would be slick to have a left or right handed samus in the cut-scenes, that may not be easy or worth it. But it would be a perfectly reasonable solution to have her be right handed in the cut scenes. Gameplay is unaffected.
I don't mean to pick on you, but I think you lack perspective.
Not at all. Your assuming I expect a lot more than I really am.
Cognitive and sensory minorities should absolutely be considered in game development (and everything else), but keep in mind that it's not always possible or practical. If we insist that it must, it won't bring those games to the minorities, it will just keep them from being produced at all.
Except that if they do *consider it* in development it won't be a problem. The problem arises in the vast majority of cases not because its too costly to do, but because it wasn't thought of in the first place.
That's because less than 10% of the population is left handed.
2% of the world is blonde. So there are 5x as many left handed people as blonde people. That's staggeringly large number of people. Trying to somehow 'marginalize' 10% of the population is just ignorant.
Hell, hopefully without seeming rascist, only slightly more than 10% of the world is caucasion. There are very nearly as many left handed people as their are white people.
You live in a right handed world. Deal with it.
I do. Advocating customizable control schemes and reminding developers to consider left-handedness when developing motion-mapped control systems is part of how I deal with it.
I'm not going to cater to you.
Your loss. With 132 million DS's out there, that's 13 million left handed ones. That's the same number as the total number of people who bought a sega master system. There's a good reason left handed support is generally at least acceptable. You don't shut out a market that big, especially when its generally trivial to support it.
They'd be correct about the controls being lousy, because it would in effect be broken for 90% of the population.
Fascinating that you consider them 'broken'. If you tried them, you'd get used to them and cope just fine, right? So how does that make them broken?
Remember, they only -seem- awkward because you aren't "used to them", once you've put in some time, it'll be completely natural. So they aren't inherently bad or defective at all.
That was the argument you made for lefties... why exactly doesn't apply to right handed people?
My point is, despite being left handed I don't find any disadvantage in switching to my right hand for any of these things, even though I can't for the life of me write with my right hand for example.
I can mouse around with my right hand just fine, and frequently do when I'm at someone else's desk. But I can't possibly play an FPS or RTS with my right hand on the mouse competitively where I need fast precise movement.
I'm sure with practice I could improve further but:
a) I'd be at a considerable disadvantage for some time.
b) I might never reach the same level of competency.
c) Why exactly should I?
I think if people actually tried to get used to using their right hand rather than simply complain they can't, they'd soon find it's not really a problem.
So if the IT guys at work are left handed, and unconsciously set up all the work stations with the mouse/mousepad on the left -- should all the righties just 'get used to it'?
What if they do something perverse like swap the buttons in windows, or order left-handed ergo mice? Just get used to it?
The mouse, a Razor Lachesis turned out to be only slightly more useful as a mouse than a very expensive brick. Damn I wish I could find my receipt for that plastic lump of garbage.
I've never used a lachesis, so can't comment on it specifically, but I had a razor copperhead, which I absolutely loved. When it died after a couple years I ordered another one, but one of its buttons was.. 'wonky' (it was possible to press the button without triggering it if you did so near the edge -- my original never had that issue. I returned it as defective. But couldn't get it exchanged as they didn't have another. And it appears to be discontinued now(?)
I see they've got an ergo left deathadder though, so I might give that a try... or one of their other ambi-dextrous models. I was happy enough with my original copperhead to give them the benefit of the doubt when the 2nd one was wonky. But I won't tolerate junk... so if it doesn't work well I'd return it. And I plan to order locally, even if it costs a bit more to make a possible return more convenient.
I have searched a few times and never seen a left handed gaming keyboard, though some gimmicks claim to be left handed friendly by allowing detachment of the gaming controls, although the layout of the buttons means you would need surgery to remove your thumb and reattach it on the other side of your hand.
I use an ideazon fang, but its evidently been recently discontinued. Its a stand alone pad, but its symmetrical for left/right use -- it doesn't matter where your thumb is :)
Both the "thermaltake flareboard" and "cyber snipa game pad v2" look like possible alternatives.
http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/Product.aspx?C=1158&ID=1684
http://www.cybersnipa.com/us/gaming-keyboards/gamepad.php
The ergodex dx1 is pretty neat looking too, but I haven't tried one.
http://www.ergodex.com/mainpage.htm
Apparently it's not all that trivial.
Its trivial in most games. I can't speak to ALL games.
The Wii version of Twilight Princess has the entire MAP, including dungeon interiors, reversed to accommodate right-handed players for the (usually left-handed but now right-handed) Link. As in, Death Mountain is now in the west.
I can't imagine they would have gone to all that trouble if it had been a simple matter of reversing the Link model, especially since Miyamoto is left-handed.
Given its 3rd person and how much link interacts with his environment (which is unusual by the way) simply reversing all the geometry in the game *is* the easy fix. Its one trivial transform.
Fixing it without changing the world would have required custom left and right hand animations, as in some cases mirroring the model would have resulted in strange/unrealistic world interaction animation. Reversing the entire world on the other hand is a trivial fix. The only adjustment required would be to in game text refering to east/west, and any text on textures would need to be handled. (not that i actually specifically recall there being any...)
You hold the DSi on its side, and the gameplay have the numbers faling "tetris"-like moving from the left to the stacks on the right. You play the game by manipulate the stacks on the right side of the screen with the stylus. For a right handed person this is completely natural, their hand is off to the right side of the screen, and the stylus extends in from the right edge.
For a left handed person your hand is either obscuring the playfield while you play, or you have to hold your stylus in awkward positions to try and come up from below, or down from above. (Its essentially the same issue lefies have when writing with slow drying ink -- their hand passes over what they just wrote smudging it. In this case, the natural position for their hand is completely obscuring the playfield.)