GBA and shoulder buttons

Hi!

Awesome project, but I have some doubts about GBA games support. As I remember GBA games require shoulder buttons (left and right), but GameShell doesn’t have them. So will the GameShell have the full support of GBA?

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There is the “LightKey” add on that add more buttons, but at the same take as there are 4 face button, and the GBA only have 2, you can use the two more as L+R

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What about SNES emulation? The snes controller has 4 face buttons and 2 shoulder buttons

Well in that case you have the “LightKey” Add-on, not really sure how handy it will be as they showed it for now.

@yong I know you are busy right now especially with the Chinese new year, but could it be possible to have a bit more information about the Light Key add-on? The description on KS was a bit light about it

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@Godzil I will try to get some info for the Light Key add-on and post it here this week.

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I managed to get two pictures for the LightKey add-on. The team is still working on the documentations.
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I don’t fully understand this but this means the GameShell will support more buttons, like L1/L2 and R1/R2, is that it?

I think that the idea (plus a 5th button)

Well you could use these buttons for whatever you want

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That’s not too late to actually add light to it :wink:

Can someone confirm that the ABXY buttons can be placed in any order? All of the pictures I saw have the buttons in an “XBox” Layout. I’d personally prefer the “Nintendo” layout where the AB and XY buttons are swapped.

On the PS4 controller for example, the buttons can only be placed in a certain order. Otherwise they won’t fit.

Yes, you can.

I believe so too, but only judging by the assembly video, I’m not able to tell.

I can see that the buttons are individual pieces, but I can’t see if they come with these little nubs that prevent you from placing them in any other order than the intended one. I’ll try to find and upload a picture that might be able to explain what I mean.

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In the above picture you can see these little nubs in different layouts around the buttons.

image

The consoles use the nubs around the buttons to lock button placement and rotation. The Gameshell button rotation is kept in check with a cross piece under each button.

So, based on this image, you should be able to swap them at will.

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Not sure that would work well on the long term, that type of rubber is generally quite fragile.

And well, these are the prototype design, we are not sure they will be exactly like this on the production model. So I fear it is going to be a wait and see…

@Seppelmich swapping the cap is one thing, but you will also need to update the code running in the button adapter (should not be too hard though)

@yong & Clockwork as a future add on you could make colored button for ABXY that would probably work great!

I take that for granted because on their website and Kickstarter page they claim that the GameShell comes with a “Programmable Keypad board with fully arduino compatible.”

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Of course!
I just wanted to pinpoint that if you are not into programming it will not be just swapping the button caps

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I assumed that would be a feature on the OS side, much like how EmulationStation handles controllers. It won’t be too hard to change by hand, but that would be a bummer during the initial setup.

True, but I think rather than key-ing the buttons, they might nub them identically. The idea behind the project is customization. They very well could change it to be individually keyed, but that would be foolish. From an engineering perspective, that’s too much work for no foreseeable benefit.

Keying was likely done to prevent the controllers from being assembled wrong at the factory. Since we are building them, it seems unnecessary.

Yes it is. I kinda want them to change it so I don’t need to worry about the buttons when I get it. I mean don’t twist them obviously, but you never now.

Edit: I’m back from Reddit, I need time to readjust to normal forum responding -_-

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Good idea for colored button. Thanks!
I wonder what colors are most popular?

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I personally would like the SNES colors as options (if I were to pick one, I’d like the blue/purple, but I feel others would gravitate towards the red/yellow/green/blue).