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Sony won't offer option to disable PS4 DualShock 4 light bar

Qassim

Member
"Good system design" is not objective in that way though. You just believe it to be in this case because you don't like it. Not having user control over a light that is there for developers to use isn't necessarily a bad design. It's a design decision that makes sense in some ways. Could it have been implemented BETTER? Yes. Does that mean it's automatically shit? No.

No, no. It really is. Linking fundamental functionality of games (which the game doesn't actually require to function) to something so unimportant IS BAD DESIGN. This has nothing to do with preferences. There are pretty fundamental principles in software design that you abstract functionality from other functionality wherever possible - if you don't, you're losing a lot of flexibility in your system.

If the game can physically function without the LED, then there is absolutely no reason for there to be a software dependancy on it other than bad design. Don't try and discredit what I'm saying just because I also am personally affected by this - tell me why I'm wrong.
 

flkraven

Member
Now imagine that up until now, the volume for your television was controlled by the people who made the television show. Now imaging trying to code your television to override that and give you control over the volume. Now you have an analogy.

If it was really this complex it would still only take a weekend for Sony to figure out how to code this. Heck, just change the default to 'off' and patch in an update that turns your light on when you load a game that uses it. If Nintendo can port/update Wind Waker to Wii U in 6 months, a light on a controller should take less than a week.

Stop acting like this is some type of system breaking change that requires millions of man hours to accomplish.

I don't know why people are getting so upset about this light thing. Better this than 720p games.

I'm sorry, but this is such a stupid comment. 1080P gaming and annoying lights are not mutually exclusive things and have nothing to do with one another. Keep console wars crap out of here.
 
If it's a problem for a lot of users, Sony should seriously consider investing the resources required to patch in an option to disable or dim the light on the controller.

I agree. Now we just have to reach an agreement as to how high a priority this is. Personally, I'd rather have them working on things like DNLA and media playback first.
 
No, actually I've already discussed why it would be a "problem". It's a problem because as the sole area of notification on the controller, and the fact that it was opened up to the developers to use, there is already existing code in place, and a lot of future code coming that uses the lightbar. Disabling it with software would require that you feed the system conflicting code that attempts to override all the current code that utilizes it. Having a basic knowledge of software coding, superseding old code is not ever as simple as you'd like it to be. I'm not saying it's not entirely doable. I'm just saying that it's not like some five minute coding job that some people think it is.

Making a console is hard work. Sony should have predicted users wanted control over a bright LED and put in an option. It's not our fault Sony didn't predict the most basic of features. If Sony didn't make this an easy option to toggle, they made a bad choice and now they have to fix it.

As somebody with much more than a basic knowledge of software coding, either Sony fucked up on their OS design or it's a few-hours job for a handful of programmers on the OS team. If Sony wants to make the system automatically turn the LED back on for games that need it, that would require a bit of metadata for future games. Otherwise, just let people turn it off, who gives a damn. It was a dumb idea anyway.
 

rpmurphy

Member
No, actually I've already discussed why it would be a "problem". It's a problem because as the sole area of notification on the controller, and the fact that it was opened up to the developers to use, there is already existing code in place, and a lot of future code coming that uses the lightbar. Disabling it with software would require that you feed the system conflicting code that attempts to override all the current code that utilizes it. Having a basic knowledge of software coding, superseding old code is not ever as simple as you'd like it to be. I'm not saying it's not entirely doable. I'm just saying that it's not like some five minute coding job that some people think it is.
The required code change is trivial. It's not a complex function in the very first place. What you're implying is that it will break functionality in existing games that do use the light bar, which is, while true, will also be a trivial code change that will need game patches to go through and for Sony to update developer documentation and firmware, which is more admin and deployment work than coding. What exactly is the coding challenge that you are thinking of?
 
No, no. It really is. Linking fundamental functionality of games (which the game doesn't actually require to function) to something so unimportant IS BAD DESIGN. This has nothing to do with preferences. There are pretty fundamental principles in software design that you abstract functionality from other functionality wherever possible - if you don't, you're losing a lot of flexibility in your system.

If the game can physically function without the LED, then there is absolutely no reason for there to be a software dependancy on it other than bad design. Don't try and discredit what I'm saying just because I also am personally affected by this - tell me why I'm wrong.

Oh brother.

First off, the PS4 isn't designed for hardware or software flexibility. It's a closed system designed to deliver a uniform and predictable experience. I'm not trying to say that anything is entirely dependent on whether or not the light is on or off. I'm saying that coding things for a light that is always on, and then a year down the road giving a third party control to turn that light off is something that could cause stability problems, or unexpected glitches. Making sure that doesn't happen, or fixing it when it does is not simply five or six lines of code and then you're done. If it's going to be done, it will be prioritized and put on the board and worked on just like every other software fix or feature they add.

This entire conversation is in regards to people who are like "oh it's so easy, why don't we have this already?"
 
The required code change is trivial. It's not a complex function in the very first place. What you're implying is that it will break functionality in existing games that do use the light bar, which is, while true, will also be a trivial code change that will need game patches to go through and for Sony to update developer documentation and firmware, which is more admin and deployment work than coding. What exactly is the coding challenge that you are thinking of?

This is my point. It's not as simple as people are making it out to be. You just gave two good examples.
 
I agree. Now we just have to reach an agreement as to how high a priority this is. Personally, I'd rather have them working on things like DNLA and media playback first.

This exactly here. It is not important to them(sony) now. Dimming propably do not take as much qa time than outright disabling light so it is priority over disabling.
 

Qassim

Member
Oh brother.

First off, the PS4 isn't designed for hardware or software flexibility.

Sony don't plan to do software updates in the future? Sony were burned badly with the PS3 for designing a system that was difficult to make fundamental changes to, whilst Microsoft did huge OS revamps multiple times through the generation.

Sorry - you don't purposely make bad design decisions just because you're making a console.

I'm saying that coding things for a light that is always on, and then a year down the road giving a third party control to turn that light off is something that could cause stability problems, or unexpected glitches.

That's exactly why you make these abstractions. All of that could be avoided if you do things right.
 

Oppo

Member
This exactly here. It is not important to them(sony) now. Dimming propably do not take as much qa time than outright disabling light so it is priority over disabling.

Meh. They already have the hooks in place as we can see from the PC driver. There is no real QA issue here. Yes they have to test it but it's frankly pretty trivial.

They obviously need to leave it on to some degree for user feedback but I'm pretty sure there will be a 70%/30% brightness setting in a firmware update or something.

The lightbar really is the new Clock Bug. ;) FTFL Sony
 
I'm saying that coding things for a light that is always on, and then a year down the road giving a third party control to turn that light off is something that could cause stability problems, or unexpected glitches.

This is where you're blatantly wrong. This is ridiculous thinking to suggest that turning off an LED on a controller would cause stability issues or glitches. If Sony goofed up their OS to that point, then even the smallest bug fixes for the next five years are going to be painful, agonizing procedures.

At worst turning off the LED would stop a few game functions to stop working, which are trivial to fix. (Either use patches, or when in doubt turn the LED on. Done.)

This is my point. It's not as simple as people are making it out to be. You just gave two good examples.

The two examples he gave literally occur every single day under normal development cycles. If Sony does not have a streamlined procedure for things like that, once again, they're idiots. This is basic stuff that a large company would have done long, long ago, long before the hardware was even being finalized.
 

Kinyou

Member
This is my point. It's not as simple as people are making it out to be. You just gave two good examples.
But it also sounds like it's going to get harder the more games get released. Right now you have still a rather small number of PS4 games that would have to be patched, a year from now that figure will be much higher. So it would make the most sense to do this as soon as possible
 
Sony don't plan to do software updates in the future? Sony were burned badly with the PS3 for designing a system that was difficult to make fundamental changes to, whilst Microsoft did huge OS revamps multiple times through the generation.

Sorry - you don't purposely make bad design decisions just because you're making a console.



That's exactly why you make these abstractions. All of that could be avoided if you do things right.

A software update to disable hardware isn't something that's done very often. It would be like giving you the option to turn off your Blu Ray drive. Some people might really like that option, because it saves wear and tear on the drive from random spin-ups, and the drive can be noisy and distracting when it spins up mid game. But simply disabling the drive requires that you change the way the system handles physical disks. Do you classify this as a bad design as well?

If that's your definition of "doing it right" I've never seen a console company do it right then.
 
Meh. They already have the hooks in place as we can see from the PC driver. There is no real QA issue here. Yes they have to test it but it's frankly pretty trivial.

They obviously need to leave it on to some degree for user feedback but I'm pretty sure there will be a 70%/30% brightness setting in a firmware update or something.

The lightbar really is the new Clock Bug. ;) FTFL Sony

If qa says there has to be LIGHT then there is. We do not know why sony would be okey with dimming but not disabling out-right.
 
But it also sounds like it's going to get harder the more games get released. Right now you have still a rather small number of PS4 games that would have to be patched, a year from now that figure will be much higher. So it would make the most sense to do this as soon as possible

Probably most games releasing this upcoming year would already have to be patched as it stands. It's never going to get easier, but it's also not a very high priority. So there's that. :)
 

Qassim

Member
A software update to disable hardware isn't something that's done very often. It would be like giving you the option to turn off your Blu Ray drive. Some people might really like that option, because it saves wear and tear on the drive from random spin-ups, and the drive can be noisy and distracting when it spins up mid game. But simply disabling the drive requires that you change the way the system handles physical disks. Do you classify this as a bad design as well?

If that's your definition of "doing it right" I've never seen a console company do it right then.

That's an extremely bad comparison. I wouldn't classify that as bad design because the blu-ray drive is essential for basic functionality of a physical game, lol. Software can already pretty much disable the LEDs - games can control the brightness - they could put it all the way to 0.

If this is a software design issue, then the chances are Sony have done something along the lines of:

For a game to control the LEDs on the controller, it hooks into an API that Sony provide in their SDK to control them. The problem is that this API doesn't provide functionality to differentiate if the use of these LEDs is vital for the functionality of the game (e.g. it needs the camera).

So Sony overriding the LED at a software level could break those APIs and cause issues for the game. That is bad design, they didn't include all the necessary functionality in the API for this stuff to account for this. The fix (from the start) should have been to make sure the game informs the system of the importance of those LEDs. Are they required? Yes/No.

If this is the case, post-launch they have /sort of/ missed the chance to make that sort of change to the API and have it work on games that are using the older version of that API without a patch.

If they haven't made this mistake, then it's a trivial fix.
 
This is where you're blatantly wrong. This is ridiculous thinking to suggest that turning off an LED on a controller would cause stability issues or glitches. If Sony goofed up their OS to that point, then even the smallest bug fixes for the next five years are going to be painful, agonizing procedures.

At worst turning off the LED would stop a few game functions to stop working, which are trivial to fix. (Either use patches, or when in doubt turn the LED on. Done.)

You contradicted yourself. Either it's ridiculous to think that doing this would cause a few game functions to stop working, or it's the worst case scenario. Which is it?
 
That's an extremely bad comparison. I wouldn't classify that as bad design because the blu-ray drive is essential for basic functionality of a physical game, lol.

Not when the game data is already installed. :)
I think it's a decent if not perfect analogy.
 
A software update to disable hardware isn't something that's done very often.

"Unprecedented" does not necessarily mean "difficult."

It would be like giving you the option to turn off your Blu Ray drive. Some people might really like that option, because it saves wear and tear on the drive from random spin-ups, and the drive can be noisy and distracting when it spins up mid game. But simply disabling the drive requires that you change the way the system handles physical disks. Do you classify this as a bad design as well?

Each individual component of the software in the PS4, if designed well, should be reliably abstracted from everything else around it. The software that controls the disk drive is separate from the software that controls the fans or the hard drive, and so on.

A decent design would allow the OS developer to control how the disc is controlled, because it shouldn't affect any other part of the system. This would allow developers to control how often they're reading from the disc in the game, and in theory it would allow for the OS to turn off the disc drive when the disc is not being used.

If that's your definition of "doing it right" I've never seen a console company do it right then.

We wouldn't really know, because there's no way to know exactly how abstracted a console is without seeing a large chunk of the source code. But we can assume that Sony probably engineered the PS4's OS with industry standard development concepts, which are easy to understand and read about.

You contradicted yourself. Either it's ridiculous to think that doing this would cause a few game functions to stop working, or it's the worst case scenario. Which is it?

You confused yourself. Game functions are not the same as stability or glitches. If a game doesn't give LED color feedback, that's not the same as suggesting that there would be, in your words, "stability problems, or unexpected glitches."
 

Qassim

Member
Sounds like a bad design to me.

It does? Sony wanting people not to have a single disc that can be shared among an unlimited number of people with a single license sounds like bad design?

There's a real functional dependancy there. I'm almost getting the idea you're just saying all this as a joke now, since your Blu-ray comparison.
 
It does? Sony wanting people not to have a single disc that can be shared among an unlimited number of people with a single license sounds like bad design?

There's a real functional dependancy there.

But it's not about what Sony wants. Sony wants there to be a light on the front of your controller. :)
I'm just pointing out the obvious here.


I'm really trying not to troll here. I'm just trying to show you that there is not a cut-and-dried one opinion is right solution here.
 

Qassim

Member
But it's not about what Sony wants. Sony wants there to be a light on the front of your controller. :)

I'm just pointing out the obvious here.

Right - back to what I said. I said it's likely a matter of principle, not any technical limitations (because as we have explained, if there were such a technical limitation - Sony should check the credentials of their software engineers).
 

xn0

Member
A software update to disable hardware isn't something that's done very often. It would be like giving you the option to turn off your Blu Ray drive. Some people might really like that option, because it saves wear and tear on the drive from random spin-ups, and the drive can be noisy and distracting when it spins up mid game. But simply disabling the drive requires that you change the way the system handles physical disks. Do you classify this as a bad design as well?

If that's your definition of "doing it right" I've never seen a console company do it right then.

The code is truly trivial to implement as it is already exposed to every PS4 developer. LED controls are exposed to all developers through API calls. I believe SCE DevNet documents 3 API's that control the DS4 LED array. Any PS4 developer can easily turn off the LED with an API call exposed by the PS4 OS which has been there since release. The code would simply be to add a UI element to include a Toggle for LED on/off. It is truly that simple and any PS4 game developer could easily turn off the LED for their game, or include a toggle within their own game.

The PS4 was launched without the camera in order to reduce cost and hold a considerable advantage (price wise) to the XB1. Without the PS4 Camera the LED is practically useless beyond designating a players controller etc. and being a gimmicky and annoying life bar in KZ4, or strobe in Warframe. I think the real problem to allowing the toggle option in the OS is that if Sony allows a configurable option to turn off the DS4 LED they could see a negative impact on the sales of the PS4 Camera as no one would buy it and 3rd party developer support would be non existent as it is only in a fraction of PS4 owners hands. I could see Sony saying: "Why would we cut the legs out of our plans for the PS4 camera 2 months after the PS4 launched just because a few people find the LED annoying?"

The flip side of this coin is that PS4 didn't ship a camera with every console, and if the PS4 camera doesn't sell well it could destroy any advantage the XB1 might have with the Kinect. If the PS4 camera doesn't sell and Sony as well as 3rd parties abandoned it (like they did with Move) then support will decrease for the XB1. Even if PS4 and XB1 equally share the next gen market what 3rd party devs are going to invest in creating Kinect only content for their multi platform games when only half of their customers will have a camera connected to their console. XB1 Kinect will be destroyed from a 3rd party support perspective, and only be relevant to voice commands and Microsoft Studio waggle games.
 
When a game function stops working unexpectedly, I generally classify that as a glitch. Is there some other more technical term you'd like me to use?

I mean if we wanted to get entirely technical, I would classify an LED not working when the developer expects it to as "a minor, supplemental avenue of communication error." But each company or development team has their own classification of how to express these terms.

But I did not contradict myself.

I'm really trying not to troll here. I'm just trying to show you that there is not a cut-and-dried one opinion is right solution here.

And you're wrong, both in trying to paint your opposition in such simplistic terms and also in the technical terms you're attempting to follow up with.
 
Right - back to what I said. I said it's likely a matter of principle, not any technical limitations (because as we have explained, if there were such a technical limitation - Sony should check the credentials of their software engineers).

I guess.

It's been an interesting conversation. I should probably try to get some work done today though. :)
 

flkraven

Member
Not when the game data is already installed. :)
I think it's a decent if not perfect analogy.

No, because there are still technical dependancies on that disc. There's a reason why it has to be left in the slot.

It's an awful analogy.

Sounds like a bad design to me.

We are getting so far away from this discussion its not even funny. It's starting to feel like 1 giant troll. I get this feeling that Ashton Kutcher is just going to pop up and tell me it was all fake.

Boils down to this: Sony is not offering an option to disable the light. Many people think this is stupid because it has limited-to-no purpose for most, and it negatively impacts their experience. For some reason, people want to leap to Sony's defense and put the blame on people for 'owning glossy televsions'.

tokyo slim insists that Sony will have to move mountains to make such a massive change to the PS4 ecosystem, and that they shouldn't even bother cuz they've got other stuff going on. No one know how easy or difficult it is, but we can all agree that it is trivial, and something so trivial should be an easy fix. If it isn't easy, there are more problems than we thought.
 
I bought an LED TV instead of a plasma because of this lightbar issue. No reflection for me.
I have a giant plasma and I see no reflection. I do see ambient light but when I'm playing a game I don't notice anything so even though I don't understand why Sony just won't give people that option, it really doesn't bother me
 
And you're wrong, both in trying to paint your opposition in such simplistic terms and also in the technical terms you're attempting to follow up with.

That may be, I'm not a game developer. But if that's true, then it also applies to most of the people I'm talking to in this thread. I do know a little about coding, and a little about publishing. I'm trying to communicate that to people who seem to think that this is a five line code patch that Sony is withholding from them simply because they are arrogant. It's not impossible to do, and I never claimed it was. And it might even be relatively simple (comparatively speaking). But that doesn't mean it's priority, and it doesn't mean that it as easy as just writing a few lines of code and letting it fly out into the real world.
 
That may be, I'm not a game developer. But if that's true, then it also applies to most of the people I'm talking to in this thread. I do know a little about coding, and a little about publishing. I'm trying to communicate that to people who seem to think that this is a five line code patch that Sony is withholding from them simply because they are arrogant.

Point me to where anyone suggested the bold (not as a joke, I know I posted some silly psuedo-code earlier).

You also seem intent on arguing about software architecture design, at least within the past page. Which seems somewhat removed from your original goal
 
Point me to where anyone suggested the bold (not as a joke, I know I posted some silly psuedo-code earlier).
Tiny bit of hyperbole. But this thread is rife with people saying things in the vein of "This should be an easy fix, just turn the light off, Sony!". When it's actually not that easy and there are other factors at play.

You also seem intent on arguing about software architecture design, at least within the past page. Which seems somewhat removed from your original goal

I think you are misunderstanding what I'm saying or why I'm saying it.

I'm arguing that the decision to give the game devs the use of the light may have been a poor decision when it comes to the consumers who find the light annoying, but that decision doesn't make the software poorly designed. Just because you don't like the decision, doesn't mean the design is bad.
 

Qassim

Member
I'm arguing that the decision to give the game devs the use of the light may have been a poor decision when it comes to the consumers who find the light annoying, but that decision doesn't make the software poorly designed. Just because you don't like the decision, doesn't mean the design is bad.

That was NEVER the argument. Re-read everything. I nor anyone else in here never said Sony shouldn't have given game developers the use of the light.

What makes for poorly designed software is creating dependencies on something that doesn't need to be a dependency. The lightbar *is not required for you to play Killzone: Shadow Fall* - and having a software switch to turn that off *should not* affect that game.

If it does, then you've written poorly designed code. Arguing against that is arguing against some pretty well established conventions for good software design.
 
I'm arguing that the decision to give the game devs the use of the light may have been a poor decision when it comes to the consumers who find the light annoying, but that decision doesn't make the software poorly designed. Just because you don't like the decision, doesn't mean the design is bad.

If you honestly think this is what you have been arguing against, then you have misunderstood almost every post I have made in this thread and I have wasted my time.
 

Steel

Banned
That was NEVER the argument. Re-read everything. I nor anyone else in here never said Sony shouldn't have given game developers the use of the light.

What makes for poorly designed software is creating dependencies on something that doesn't need to be a dependency. The lightbar *is not required for you to play Killzone: Shadow Fall* - and having a software switch to turn that off *should not* affect that game.

If it does, then you've written poorly designed code. Arguing against that is arguing against some pretty well established conventions for good software design.

Rumble is arguably more essential to gaming, and you can turn it off.
 
What makes for poorly designed software is creating dependencies on something that doesn't need to be a dependency. The lightbar *is not required for you to play Killzone: Shadow Fall* - and having a software switch to turn that off *should not* affect that game.

Again, creating dependency on things that don't need to be isn't an isolated case with the light, nor is it isolated to the PS4, nor game consoles. In fact, it's how Apple Computers is still a thing.

So why are you so focused on this one specific instance?

Currently the lightbar is required for everything because you cannot turn it off. So you are mistaken. You mean to say that it SHOULDN'T be required, and that is an opinion. :)


If you honestly think this is what you have been arguing against, then you have misunderstood almost every post I have made in this thread and I have wasted my time.

I was talking about my conversation with Qassim. What are you talking about?
 
The code is truly trivial to implement as it is already exposed to every PS4 developer. LED controls are exposed to all developers through API calls. I believe SCE DevNet documents 3 API's that control the DS4 LED array. Any PS4 developer can easily turn off the LED with an API call exposed by the PS4 OS which has been there since release. The code would simply be to add a UI element to include a Toggle for LED on/off. It is truly that simple and any PS4 game developer could easily turn off the LED for their game, or include a toggle within their own game..

This is a good point and a good idea, but has little to do with the current situation. You know we are talking about retroactively installing the ability to turn off the lights on the console, right?
 

Qassim

Member
Again, creating dependency on things that don't need to be isn't an isolated case with the light, nor is it isolated to the PS4, nor game consoles. In fact, it's how Apple Computers is still a thing.

So why are you so focused on this one specific instance?

Currently the lightbar is required for everything because you cannot turn it off. So you are mistaken. You mean to say that it SHOULDN'T be required, and that is an

We're talking about software architecture, I don't know what you're taking about.


I'd love for you to name those instances because I suspect they'd be as ridiculous as your Blu-ray example, and if there are examples of bad software design, I'm still not sure what your point is. It doesn't make this any less dumb. I'm focused on this particular issue because this is what the topic is about, why would I be talking about anything else?

And no, I'm saying the light bar isn't required for Killzone. How do I know? Because the game functions just fine without it being used by the player (e.g. taped up, removed, broken). There is nothing in the design of the game that requires it.
 

flkraven

Member
Again, creating dependency on things that don't need to be isn't an isolated case with the light, nor is it isolated to the PS4, nor game consoles. In fact, it's how Apple Computers is still a thing.

So why are you so focused on this one specific instance?

Currently the lightbar is required for everything because you cannot turn it off. So you are mistaken. You mean to say that it SHOULDN'T be required, and that is an opinion. :)




I was talking about my conversation with Qassim. What are you talking about?

...

omgwtf.gif
 

sunnz

Member
sucks since I am not a fan of the light but nothing too bad.

If this is what SONY are gonna be stubborn on, then I guess it's ok ( especially when you look at the competition)
 

Qassim

Member
Oh, are we?



That doesn't sound like a software solution. I'm talking about software. You are going back and forth.

Are you serious?

I'm saying there is no dependancy from the game for this to work in the real world (the lights being physically on), and therefore good software design says there should be no software dependancy.

Are you actually reading the posts you're replying to, because you seem so disconnected from the conversation that I struggle to believe you are. For example, you wouldn't be able to find a source for this opinion from me:

I'm arguing that the decision to give the game devs the use of the light may have been a poor decision when it comes to the consumers who find the light annoying
 
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