DKC Atlas Forum

To bring a little colour and form to any discussions involving SNES buttons, I've crafted a set of formatted text that can be used by simply typing the name/letter of any button on the controller within round curly brackets: {button} — i.e. {A} becomes A... {Start} becomes start, etc.

Note: these will not show up if you've disabled the forum's word censoring feature. (view/change your settings here)

L (shoulder)R (shoulder)
▲X
◀▶ select start YA
▼B

An image of the {PAL} controller itself for comparison:


So, here's a guide to the buttons and how to use them:

A = {A}
B = {B}
X = {X}
Y = {Y}
▲ = {up}
▼ = {down}
◀ = {left}
▶ = {right}
start = {Start}
select = {Select}
L (shoulder) = {L}
R (shoulder) = {R}

These aren't case sensitive, so capitalisation is optional. I just like the way it looks for this example.

Since they are formatted text, rather than smilies/images...

• You can use as many as you want per post
• They show up as text in search results
• They will copy/paste as regular text
• They load super-fast without using up bandwidth
• They look just as good (better, even!) if you zoom in
• I taught myself a few new design tricks in the process of making them.

They're designed to be used inline with regular text, so feel free to use them mid-conversation.


I've also added a few other 'replace codes' for various symbols, such as the following:

--> becomes →
<-- becomes ←
--- becomes —
<3 becomes ♥

These four have been added over the past few weeks, so you may have seen them once or twice already. I will probably add more of them, now that I know how — feel free to make requests if you think of any symbols that would be useful.

Alright, well let me know what you think, and have a friendly grumble below if you experience any issues.
(There may well be some issues, as I kind of meddled with the forum's database to get all this happening...)

Let me try these out:

Donkey Kong Country

• ▼Y▼▼Y → Play Animal Token Bonuses
• ▼AR (shoulder)BY ▼AY → Music Test
• BAR (shoulder)R (shoulder)AL (shoulder) → Start with 50 Lives

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest

• BAR (shoulder)R (shoulder)AL (shoulder) AX → Hard Mode
• YA startA▼ L (shoulder)A▼ → Start with 50 Lives

Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble

• L (shoulder)R (shoulder)R (shoulder)L (shoulder)R (shoulder)R (shoulder)L (shoulder)R (shoulder)L (shoulder)R (shoulder) → Enable Code Entry

Before recent update... (codes no longer active)


They even work in code tags. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but the buttons are useful in cases like this:

Code: Select all

$0504: Button Flags, Controller Port 1

  Binary Value     Hex Value   Button
----------------   ---------   ------
0000000000010000 —   0010    → R (shoulder)
0000000000100000 —   0020    → L (shoulder)
0000000001000000 —   0040    → X
0000000010000000 —   0080    → A
0000000100000000 —   0100    → ▶
0000001000000000 —   0200    → ◀
0000010000000000 —   0400    → ▼
0000100000000000 —   0800    → ▲
0001000000000000 —   1000    → start
0010000000000000 —   2000    → select
0100000000000000 —   4000    → Y
1000000000000000 —   8000    → B

Before recent update... (codes no longer active)

Nice. ♥

What the heck? I don't see anything different (no images).

And what about lists? I've more than once used text like this on the forum without intent of the button macro:

We have the cases (a) text text text, (b) text text text, (c) text text text, etc...

You need to add something to those macros to make this explicit, like two underscores or something:

(_A_) or maybe {A} instead because parentheses are common with (a)'s, (b)'s and (c)'s. We might even end up having a few (x)'s and (y)'s somewhere in the DELTA discussion, and I don't want this resulting in macro-mixup confusion.

EDIT: Here's a good idea! can you make it only work if surrounded by a certain forum tag? Maybe a single tag [btn=(A)] ? You could add each of these buttons to the tags bar so they are clickable (maybe make it a second row of options, the first line is already quite crowded).

Edit: I've changed the button codes to use curly braces, as you suggested, Simion.

Good demos, Matt — shows how they can be put to good use.

Simion32 wrote:What the heck? I don't see anything different (no images).

It occurred to me earlier (but you've reminded me to mention) that these buttons will only show up to users who have not disabled the word censorship feature of the forum. Sounds like you've disabled it? It's an unnecessary aesthetic touch, so this shouldn't be an issue. Just a nice effect for those who haven't disabled the feature.

And what about lists? I've more than once used text like this on the forum without intent of the button macro

This is a possible concern, although if you want to do text-based lists, rather than the forum's in-built list formats, you can always do it like so:



Besides, why would you need a bracket on both sides of the letter when creating a list? ← this became obvious as soon as I thought about it!

You need to add something to those macros to make this explicit, like two underscores or something

...although that would start to get somewhat inconvenient, and complicate the markup. As you suggested, the curly brackets - { } - might be a suitable alternative. If it proves necessary, I'll switch to using those to trigger the replacement.

We might even end up having a few (X)'s and (Y)'s somewhere in the DELTA discussion [...]

An easy fix, I should think... but I hate to muddle things. I'll look into it.

EDIT: Here's a good idea! can you make it only work if surrounded by a certain forum tag? Maybe a single tag [btn=A] ? You could add each of these buttons to the tags bar so they are clickable (maybe make it a second row of options, the first line is already quite crowded).

Another reasonable suggestion, but the whole point was it's meant to be a natural, simple and seamless way to input the buttons. Clicking to insert them via the tags bar is a good idea... I may implement this yet.

We'll work something out. Any other ideas, guys?

Qyzbud wrote:Besides, why would you need a bracket on both sides of the letter when creating a list?

You completely missed it didn't you? The lack of formatting in the quote was intentional. I do this in my posts quite frequently (inline list of points meant to be read and formatted like a sentence):

One can assume that either (A) the cartridge has bitrot, (B) it was nuked by electricity, or (C) your SNES is faulty and needs to be replaced.

That's why.

EDIT: I think that brackets like {A} would be much less likely to interfere with post texts. And why can't you permanently enable this regardless of user options? Are you just piggybacking off the word filtering system by hacking image urls into it?

First off; apologies... my previous post was very rushed and not proof-read. I'd have read your post (and written my reply) differently if I'd had more time to do so.

You're quite right that parentheses are useful for inline lists; this is probably the most valid reason for me to revise the text trigger/replacement system... although I must say the buttons look really good when used as the dot-points in your inline lists, haha. Of course I'd have to create a bunch more (c), (d), (e)... in order for this to be complete and workable (and I've got a hunch you wouldn't like that solution, either... )

why can't you permanently enable this regardless of user options? Are you just piggybacking off the word filtering system by hacking image urls into it?

Well, yes and no —

they are formatted text, rather than smilies/images

I haven't the time to discuss/adjust these things right now, but we'll get things sorted out.

Alright guys, I've taken some user feedback into account, and have decided to change the button codes slightly. In order to avoid muddling up inline lists, we will use curly brackets instead of round brackets.

(N)

{Y} → Y

So, it's only a slight change, but one for the better. Take a look at the first post for the full list of updated codes.

Have fun!

Test:
Look's like i gotta start the game.

Any chance of this feature being revived?

Whatever do you mean? It's available for use, just not commonly utilised... Are you suggesting that I ought to promote it, or make it more accessible?

Suggestions are welcome.

what

I honestly forgot how to do these until I just re-read this topic here.

I think making them more accessible would be a good idea.

It'd also be neat if there were codes for the NTSC A B X and Y buttons.
You know, the purple ones?

Oh blast it... I was under the impression that these were not working at some point during one of the forum upgrades.

Some more accessibility to this (row of BBCode "image buttons" that add these to the text?) would be nice.

Also, they should definitely work despite a person's word filter settings. This is the second time it has confused me since you invented this feature.

If I recall correctly when I last looked at PHPBB's sources, implementing an "overridden replacements list" shouldn't be that hard to do. Hmm.....