Text input on consoles is one of those things I always thought could be better: You're either faced with "slot machine" typing or "claw crane" typing... both of which are easily worse than typing with only two fingers on a keyboard.
Last saturday it occured to me that you could nicely distribute 26 letters over two analog sticks with probably just enough accuracy to be usable, and so started working on TypeFighter. Development went pretty quick over the past few days, and there's only a few things left to improve before I'll build it into Dry so it can be set to appear whenever a text field gets focus (like a virtual keyboard) while a controller is connected, in any project... because this is working at least as well as I was hoping. If you're someone who makes games to be used with controllers, I'd give it a try.
The first model - and accompanying test game - I called TypeFighter, because with the characters being organized in a hexagonal fashion, I was reminded of TIE-fighters. Today Scorpion2185/realroot came up with the name joyboard for this type of "virtual keyboard".
One of the advantages is that all local players can input text at the same time.
