Oh, is that what you mean by “button mouse”. I’ve never heard it called that. I’ve heard “pointing stick”, “erasor head”, “pointing nipple”, and “clit”, and variants along those lines. I’ve never heard anyone call it any form of “mouse”.
Yeah, one of my first work laptops had that, and no touch pad. I developed serious ergonomic issues, and got a a USB touch pad as a replacement. And I’ve never looked back.
You certainly could control how fast it went, by how hard you pushed. In terms of raw precision, it was probably the best pointing device I’ve ever had. If only it hadn’t caused pain. But it was awesome. I could select a point very precisely, and also, never run out of space to keep moving it.
What I’ve learned from this discussion is that your arm coordination is much better than your finger coordination. I’m the reverse. It’s because i tend to attempt to move my mouse with my hand, not my arm (because my fine motor coordination is much better than my gross motor coordination) that i get cramps from using a mouse too long.
To an extent, yes. They were analog, and you could move it faster and slower, but it was very subtle. There was very little fine control. I shouldn’t say you can’t control the speed at all, but it was difficult. A full-size modern joystick, for example, has a reasonable amount of control. Those little nubs just couldn’t move that far (by design so that they used very little space), so there was almost no precision. I remember it always felt like the cursor was moving on ice.
That’s totally valid. As I said before, ergonomics are going to vary a lot from person to person.
I keep seeing this thread with 20 or 30 new posts and open it expecting to see some juicy board drama, only to keep finding everyone still talking about mice vs. touchpads.
I’ve got one of those jobbers on my school laptop. When I’m outside doing dismissal duty, kids regularly ask me what that little red button does. I explain that this is both my computer and my car, and pressing that button transforms it into my car so I can drive home.
Their looks of pensive suspicion are what I live for.
There are not a lot of things that could persuade me to be a full time teacher. But pranking the young ones for their reactions would probably be a biggee.
I can’t stand touchpads for writing, answering emails, etc - they drive me totally nuts.
Say what? A controller is only preferred to a mouse for racing and dogfighting games (and then a joystick is preferred as I understand it). The main reason that shooters don’t tend to be cross platform is that mice would out compete controllers to a ridiculous degree.
There are any number of games that are best on controller and quite a lot more that fall firmly into YMMV; mouse/keyboard is definitely not a universal preference for all games.
I consider it a flight simulator whether you are shooting folks or not. Most of the time I play a game like that, there is combat involved, because it’s more fun. But not always.
Something like “Microsoft Flight Simulator” or a game like “Wing Commander” or “X-Wing vs TIE Fighter” is a flight simulator to me.
My first job in the game industry, we had a “wall of shame” where we posted the more… interesting correspondences we got from our fans. The two that stood out were a resume from a gentleman who was very invested in his musical hobby, and also persistently misjudged how many “p’s” are in “rapping,” and an extremely detailed game design doc for a GTA/Pokemon mashup built around illegal dog-fighting rings.
Clearly the superior mashup would be a turn based tactical strategy game where you order squads of Pokemon in combat against one another. XCOM style combat with different pokemon having different special abilities.
Hmm. This reminds me of the time i watched a cock fight. It wasn’t something arranged by people, it was just two wild roosters in Hawaii fighting for dominance. It was spell binding, and i understood why people want to watch it. Also, because it was just two wild birds, with no bits of metal attached to them, neither was seriously injured. The loser admitted defeat and flew off in shame.
I move my mouse with my fingers. My arm and wrist are completely motionless when I’m using a mouse, and only my fingertips are touching it. It’s probably the least fatiguing thing you can do with your hand.
You need one of those gel cushions, though, and have to set your mouse sensitivity very high so you can cover the entire screen without shifting your hand. Precision takes some practice.
