Mame's 4-way Joystick emulation??

[dave197878]

I Read that the lastest versions of mame have 4-way emulation on for such games as pac man.

Can this be turned on/off ?  And if so whats the advantage of useing a real 4-way Joy vs 8-way with emulation?
I play both 8-way and 4-way games.

thanks. 

[mgb]

I'm not really sure what the 4-way emulation in Mame is that you are talking about but I'm sure someone here can chime in on that. But as far as the question of whats the difference between a 4-way and 8-way joystick; Its really because trying to use an 8-way joystick to play certain 4-way games just makes control really hard.

A good example is Donkey Kong, If you're using an 8-way (especially an 8-way like a Happ Comp, which easily hits the diagonals), it can be a bit tough coming off the ladders. If you try to quickly go left or right and you accidentally hit the diagonal, the guy will get hung up and not move.

A proper 4-way will restrict you from hitting the diagonals so you don't get hung up.

Of course most guys wanna play both 4 and 8 way games so you have to deal with that issue and many people deal with it different.
The basic options (as I know them) are:

1) Have a dedicated 4-way joystick along with an 8-way or two.
    A lot of guys will use a typical dual 8-way fighter setup and have a dedicated 4-way joystick (maybe wired in parrallel with player 1) elsewhere on the control panel.

2) Use Ultimarc U360s and handle the blocking of diagonals through software mapping for needed games.
    Many people now prefer this method. I can't say much about it becuase I never tried it. it seems to me that a lot of people like this setup using octagon restrictors in order to feel all directions.

3) Use a 4-way, 8-way switching stick such as the Mag Stick Plus, Sanwa JLW, Omni2 (GGG), Seimitsu or Zippy.
      These sticks allow you to change the restrictor setting by repositioning it depending on what you need. They're not all exactly on the fly though.

I guess there are other ways as well. maybe even using octagon restrictor gates so you can at least feel the directions well.

For my control panel, I went with two sticks, Controller one being a Sanwa Jlw sett to allows be 8-way (round restrictor) and controller 2 has the option of being set to 4-way or 8-way. I will be replacing the current Sanwa with an Omni2 so I can just reach up through the coin door and change it accordeing to the game I wanna play. And I just assign my 4-way game controls to that joystick.

I hope that helps you somewhat. I'd advise that you do some searching here on the forums, for the 4-way, 8-way thing, Theres a lot of info here on that.

[Cynicaster]

I went with the 2 x 8-way + dedicated 4-way on my panel.  It clutters things up a bit but I don’t regret a thing because all sticks see heavy use.  My brother, who has the same setup minus the 4-way, always raves about how much better certain games are with the 4-way when he’s playing on my cabinet.

If there is a new 4-way “simulation” capability in MAME, I’d be really curious to know how it works.  If you take a Happ Competition as an example, the problem arises because, as mentioned, it’s relatively easy for the player to accidentally hit a diagonal when they are actually trying to hit a cardinal direction.  What this means is that two switches on the joystick are closed simultaneously, when the player is really only intending to close one switch.  So, unless MAME can read the player’s mind to find out on a case-by-case basis which of the two inputs corresponds to the player’s true intent, I’m not sure how it would be possible to simulate 4-way operation via software. 

[dave197878]

Thanks for your responses. Was just wondering if any one herd of this 4-way emulation on mame.
and it if exists or is just a bunch of bs..

Thanks again.

[Mario]

So, unless MAME can read the player’s mind to find out on a case-by-case basis which of the two inputs corresponds to the player’s true intent, I’m not sure how it would be possible to simulate 4-way operation via software. 

Maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't Mame just need to ignore the joystick inputs if the diagonals are hit, making a diagonal act as if the joystick was recentered? This could prevent accidental moves, and force the player to move the joystick to the non-diagonal positions.

Or maybe the diagonals will use the last non-diagonal joystick values. For example, moving from UP to UP-LEFT will continue to act like UP, but moving from LEFT to UP-LEFT will continue to act like LEFT.

Mario

[wweumina]

So, unless MAME can read the player’s mind to find out on a case-by-case basis which of the two inputs corresponds to the player’s true intent, I’m not sure how it would be possible to simulate 4-way operation via software. 

Maybe I'm missing something, but wouldn't Mame just need to ignore the joystick inputs if the diagonals are hit, making a diagonal act as if the joystick was recentered? This could prevent accidental moves, and force the player to move the joystick to the non-diagonal positions.

Or maybe the diagonals will use the last non-diagonal joystick values. For example, moving from UP to UP-LEFT will continue to act like UP, but moving from LEFT to UP-LEFT will continue to act like LEFT.

Mario

That's the problem, if you are moving up a ladder and want to turn quickly to the right, but you hit up+right, if it does nothing so you sit there and die, if it stays at up you do nothing and die. If it were to assume you want to go right you have a problem when all you did was move slightly off center when you wanted to keep going up.  It's possible to play with the existing setup but not at a high level. With Donkey Kong as the example, all of this becomes very common and problematic when you start using barrel control as you are going up a ladder. You really need physical restriction on the joystick.

[Gray_Area]

Yeah, to sum up, there are two elements:

- 8-way means diagonals can register both ways in a 4-way game: you're going by a ladder in DK, and you're not pushing quite straight or your hand shifts a little, suddenly you're going up that. And a barrel's right there greeting you. Etc.

- 'negating' the diagonals in MAME means the diagonals of the stick are huge dead spaces: so same scenario, suddenly you're not moving anymore, and a barrel comes down on ya.


Now, for a while, MAME has featured it's own analog stick mapping. These things are best asked at MAMEWorld, though.

[Afterburner]

I was thinking any 4-way 'emulation' in MAME would be similar (but not the same) to what the U360s do.

For true 4-way games, if MAME took the first keypress and ignored any subsequent keypress as long as the first one was still closed, that would prevent *some* of the diagonal input problems.  But you still have the issue if both switches in the joystick close at *exactly* the same time.  And I'm not certain how often that actually occurs...maybe rarely....maybe often.

Seems like something like this would be best implemented in an I-PAC rather than the emulation software.  Perhaps MAME or the front end could allow the user to set a flag that would enable or disable the mode on the I-PAC.

[BobA]

Did anyone ever try one of these?

2/4/8 Hardware

Hey Bender did you ever do a full review?

[RandyT]

Did anyone ever try one of these?

This guy did.

Seems to describe my expectations of the item, for the reasons I outlined in the thread you linked to.  A stick with 4 switches and 8-way restriction cannot be appreciably improved in 4-way function.  The only thing something like this can do is introduce another problem in place of one it is trying to alleviate.

[BobA]

Hi Randy thanks for the Link. Too bad he panned the 4 way completely.  Another reason why both GGG and Ultimarc sell a physically switchable 4/8. 

[Vigo]

That guy who left the bad review also posted here.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=105565.0

It sounds like after getting help he was happy with the product. Seems like it hits an "almost there" level.

[RandyT]

That guy who left the bad review also posted here.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=105565.0

It sounds like after getting help he was happy with the product. Seems like it hits an "almost there" level.

Sounds like the support he received amounted to being taught to play a certain way to conform to the way the device works.  One could also teach themselves to be very aware of the direction they are moving the stick in, as to not have the issue in the first place.  But that doesn't really help the player who is experiencing difficulty, based on their playing style/abilities.

Believe me when I state that were such a thing possible to do well, it would not only be implemented in MAME already, but also on the more common arcade interfaces.  This has been discussed / examined / reviewed for almost a decade   Also note that from the posted transcript, the device appears to function by simply making any change from the current valid direction, to the nearest cardinal.  This is one of the methods I outlined, and has the effect of making the stick "hypersensitive" to change, exacerbating the user "drift" issue.

[Afterburner]

Yeah, I wondered if the 2/4/8 algorithm would even be implementable in MAME.  Since MAME uses keyboard inputs as the input to the game, the speed at which it samples the keyboard input might not be high enough for it to work.  It may even be a hardware limitation.  There has to be some latency in the IPAC already, coupled with the sample rate for the keyboard input.

So it makes sense that such a function would need to be implemented at the IPAC or before the IPAC, where it can respond much faster.

I actually had no idea such a device already existed.  I'll have to give it a look before I install my dedicated 4-way.

[RandyT]

Speed of the encoder is not a factor in this application.  MAME, or any encoder with the same algorithm, no matter how slow, could do what this device does with no trouble whatsoever.