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Idea for a Multi Williams Plus panel.

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Xiaou2:

A lot of people do not realize... theres many more factors in why Leafs are superior.

  1)  Distance to activation

 This is the common one that most people can actually see and understand.  You can adjust the leafs to be close enough that a receipt could just squeeze in between them.

 A microswich cant be adjusted to anywhere near that level... because the Micros use a snap switch.  The snap switches need a certain distance to maintain the ability to actually snap at all.  That minimum distance, is far greater than the leafs minimum distance.

 2)  Distance to DE-Activation

   After you make contact (fire), you now need to release contact to be able to fire again.  With a leaf, theres a trick in which you can use a light touch and sort of vibrate the contacts on and off, called floating.

 With a Micro, even if you have managed to reduced some distance to the activation point... you still have distance on return to travel.   In a typical micro, when the snap switch snaps, it travels like 2 or 3mm.  Even if you reduced that to 1.5mm... its still not going to be as close as a leaf...

 But heres the other BIG factor:

3)  Bottoming Out & Spring Tension

 A traditional Leaf button is much taller than a standard microswitch button.  It has a longer travel.  You start to press in, and near the high end of the middle, is the contact point. The distance might be similar to a traditional micro... however, with a leaf, you can easily stay in this zone with the feather touch float, easily.

  With a micro, you cant feather it.  The contact have to snap.  And right before they snap.. theres very large resistance force you Must overcome.  It may not seem that bad for a single press... but every time you have to fight that large resistance spike... you start to get fatigued.  After less than 20sec of rapidfire, you start to wear down quickly. But not only is fatigue a factor.. but also time.  Every time you run into that monster bump in the road, you lose speed... and thus reaction time goes down.

 Now Bottoming out:

 With a leaf being much taller, and the contacts being somewhere near the middle.. you dont ever have to bottom the thing out.  Meaning, you dont have to push the button to the full bottom.  In fact, you dont even come close to it.   Even with slower games where you single fire, its rare that you might bottom it out, because of the extra distance you have.   Theres 2 big reasons why they did this...

 A)  Collision Fatigue 

    In recent findings, they have come to realize that when you run... its not good to land on your heel.  The reason, is that on collision, it effects your entire body.  Most especially the heel and knee... but also the spine too.  The force is very powerful, with a lot of mass behind it.

  Every time you press a micoswitch button to its end... your fingers take that energy.  Its made worse with micros, because the spring tension make you have to press harder... and so you accelerate your fingers that much faster into the collision point.  While it doesnt seem like that big of a deal... for at least some minutes into play... eventually it takes its toll.  Most noticeably, on rapidfire games where you dont get any chance to stop and take a break.

  What they recommend, with running, is the have the ball of the foot land first.  What happens is that as your ball makes contact, and more of your mass starts to transfer to that point.. your heel starts to pivot downwards, but you can keep it from hitting. The pivot from ball to heel... acts as a spring.  And so theres no heavy full body mass collision.   This lack of collision will greatly reduce any change of body part wear, stress damage, and stress fatigue.

 Recap: A Leaf button, doesnt have to ever be fully depressed, so theres no collision fatigue.  A Microswich button will Always bottom out.  Theres pretty much no way to keep it from happening... due to the acceleration and heavy pressure you must exert.

 B) Speed

 Every time you bottom out a switch, you lose speed.  Yes, theres some rebound energy, which helps.. but, theres still losses.  You come to a very abrupt stop, and then you loosen your finger tension, and allow the button to rise.  For the most part, you may even lose much or all of any rebound forces if you didnt time your release exactly.

 With the Leafs, you dont lose much, if any, speed or momentum.  You bounce with a feather touch... like you were on a trampoline. The spring of the leaf gets stronger as you press further, and even helps you return to the start position, with good rebound energy.   This, along with no collision fatigue, equates to much faster responses, and since you dont fatigue easily.. you can maintain high repeat speed for a very long time.

 Not so, for microswitch style buttons.  Which is why most microswitch games are less intense, and or have autofire built into the game.


jimmer:

Thanks Xiaou2, but I already posted a link to the thread where you say all the same things  ;D

I agree with most of what you say. The damage thing is worth thinking/worrying about if you are bashing your buttons all day, but your running analogy is poor (and what do you mean recent findings? surely anyone who has ever run knows landing on your heel is bad?). Your efficiency arguments are irrelevant, no-one runs out of energy pressing fire.

In any case, you and Randy are arguing against Strawmen in this thread, I've got 3 buttons on trial, none of which use snap-action switches.

The snap switch that just appeared upthread is for joystick use. I'm pretty sure I can modify my snap-switches to make them fully adequate for defender, robotron, joust and any of the maze games. The one reservation I have is accurate left/right games like Galaxian, which I may have to stick with buttons for.

I look forward to an essay on floating wico sticks.


1500points:

I can attest personally to the evil nature of microswitch buttons when playing Defender and Joust.

I am a master level jouster from way back. and for an extra challenge i spent some time playing with a microswitch on purpose. it is brutally hard with no fine movement where you can fly the bird with delicate precision.  about impossible to finesse a pterodactyl fight.
finally got tired of the futile challenge and put the rolley back in that machine  (actually the rolley's are super duper nice, they aren't stiff like they look. you can get em in that sweet spot and flutter.)

on defender, i know all the right stuff but have no execution so i'm one of those novices who understands what to do, just can't do it.
but i spent some time with micros and it is physically exhausting to the point of painful on the tendons. no one should probably do that just for health reasons alone (i bet we are all over 40 here, aren't we?)

here is an oddity. I mastered robotron over the past couple years, and for awhile i was playing with those IL? bat sticks from arcadeshop, I think that's where I got em. they had a really light micro in them.  i got to where i could flutter those things so fast in that sweet spot that i could cause the 19-1 board to lockup/dead frozen (not the shot in the corner bug).  therefore, it says to me that indeed a micro might not be as fast as a leaf but you can still blaze them. Ken House is one of the best robotron players around and he likes micros, as many others do.

In reality, another thread maybe, robotron once you really learn it and how to defeat the enemy dynamics through proper player movement and screen placement is not a game of fast firing. a lot of the time you are straight firing.  but that's a master class unto itself. (see the guidebook for more if you fit this category)

RandyT:


--- Quote from: jimmer on February 07, 2013, 09:45:11 pm ---I look forward to an essay on floating wico sticks.

--- End quote ---

I guess next you'll be saying that a leaf joystick has no benefit over a standard stick with modified microswitches :)  I think that once you get your panel finished, and then go out and find some of the real machines that those games came from, you'll start to understand things a bit better.  I have the actual vertically restricted, very short leaf-switch based Defender stick in a box around here somewhere.  That thing is built to be very sensitive, and can be made so there is nothing, nada, and zilch for a deadzone.  The stubby length makes it so that the smallest of motions at the ball, will set the ship in this fast paced game, into motion.  It's a very specialized control, and is about as similar to a standard joystick as a proper leaf switch button is to a button with a keyboard switch inside.  Yes, both will work, to some extent, but they are in very different leagues.

I also have an actual Galaxian here.  If you had a leaf switch joystick, as it does, you wouldn't need to resort to buttons for moving the ship, in order to get the gameplay you seem to be after.

So no. No essays on "floating" WICO's here.   Just leaf switch joysticks being used in the original machines to make use of the specific advantages that they, and only they, offer.

Just to be clear, I'm not faulting you or anyone else for the choices they make in controls, as there are many factors involved, including budget, availability, application and expectations.  But when well established facts regarding the benefits of different controls start to get muddled, it's likely to spawn some discussion ;).


RandyT:


--- Quote from: 1500points on February 08, 2013, 01:27:24 am ---In reality, another thread maybe, robotron once you really learn it and how to defeat the enemy dynamics through proper player movement and screen placement is not a game of fast firing. a lot of the time you are straight firing.  but that's a master class unto itself. (see the guidebook for more if you fit this category)

--- End quote ---

I agree.  I'm not a "master player" but it's one of my favorites.  One thing to consider with Robotron is that the original sticks had longer handles than 99% of other games.  Coupling a long handle with a microswitch is going to be a problem.  I'm not sure whether Ken is using a long handled WICO with the microswitches, and has become accustomed to it, or whether they are paired with a shorter one, but it does make a difference.  Leaf switches can be tuned to make the long handled variety more sensitive.

Also, while the adapted leafs may work for you, the originals didn't have the resistance that those obviously have, based on the construction.  If I get around to it, I'll post a photo of the originals.  But in a nutshell, the top blade is very thin, and long, with no plastic to press along with it.  To make pressing them even easier, the button plunger rests on a section of the leaf which is about 1/2" past the actual contacts.  So what you are saying about fatigue with Defender, is absolutely correct.  It's also very obvious that they understood this clearly, and selected switches which would help to mitigate the issue.  Tired players don't keep dropping quarters in the slots ;)

*edit*

Here's a chunk out of a photo from an amazingly authentic reproduction, showing the actual Defender leaf switches.

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