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Mame's 4-way Joystick emulation??
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wweumina:

--- Quote from: Mario on January 03, 2012, 11:55:01 pm ---
--- Quote from: Cynicaster on January 03, 2012, 12:56:07 pm ---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. 

--- End quote ---

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

--- End quote ---

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:

--- Quote from: BobA on January 05, 2012, 01:16:31 pm ---Did anyone ever try one of these?

--- End quote ---

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.
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