Controls that haven't been properly interfaced yet.

[paigeoliver]

I am trying to think of different assorted arcade controls that do not have a proper interface or hack available to use with Mame.

So far I can only think of a couple.

49-Way joysticks (although there appears to be an analog hack, just not a way to make them operate "correctly").

The "Grand Technologies" IR sensor. This is used in Slik Shot, Super Strike and a dinosaur based video redemption game. All three games are on the same hardware, but the dinosaur game is not in Mame. With this you roll a ball into the machine and a pair of IR sensors reads the speed and position and translates it into onscreen action. I have access to one of these machines, it seems like it would be easy to build an interface, since they are only a 3 wire item (5 volt, ground, and ?).

Is there anything I am missing? Besides obviously newer IR based games which aren't in Mame yet.

And then there is the other issue of PCB operated cabinet hardware. Someone should come up with ways to operate most of that stuff via mame. Things like the led scoreboards for many games, all the stuff in the "Golly! Ghost!" house, the Irritating Maze air blower, etc.

[Tailgunner]

Real arcade lightguns should be pretty high on that list.

[spidermonkey]

Hall effect sticks found in Road Runner and a few other Atari games.

[CitznFish]

not sure if a star wars yoke falls under this category. Sounds like you're think of some business plans. A Repo yoke should be on that list.

There I go again, making assumptions

[Sasquatch!]

not sure if a star wars yoke falls under this category. Sounds like you're think of some business plans. A Repo yoke should be on that list.

There I go again, making assumptions

The person who makes a good repo yoke would be selling those things like hotcakes and/or nobody's business!

[Xiaou2]

some more missing controls and features:

- Force Feedback wheels, sticks,
- Motor Drives for Moving cockpits
- Selenoid Drives for Gun games recoil
- Motor Driver for ticket dispenser games
- Light Driver for specialized cabinet lighting
 (like multiple flashing lights in disc of tron cabinet)
- quadraphonic sound output
- subwoofer specific output (for games like Turbo)

 Also remember that the 49 way sticks made today are Not the same as the classic sinistar/bubbles..ect.  They feel and control completely different due to mechanical differences. (mostly the type of resistence/return to center device)

 Would be nice to have repo sinisticks with true support...

 I also think it would be awesome for someone to make a selenoid/motor/lighting controller board for us.  Could make some really cool stuff with such a controller...
(mini-pinball machines that use pinmame as the brains... mame cabs with specialized lighting, moving cockpit cab designs, and so much more...)

[The cranky hermit]

Punching buttons (Sonic Blast Man, Street Fighter)

[jerryjanis]

Nice question!

The Discs of Tron spinner optic board - it has a whole bunch of outputs instead of the usual  4 (+5v, G, X1, X2).  Other games use the same system, I believe, like Tron.

The mechanical rotary joysticks work pretty well with the keyboard interfaces (Druin's, MK64), but Windows doesn't read the port fast enough so that when you rotate it really fast, it doesn't pick up on the keypresses.  I played the arcade game recently, and IIRC it worked fine with fast spins.  It would be really cool to have a fix for that - either fix the OS reading problem, or interface through something that gets read faster than the keyboard (maybe the mouse or something, I don't know - At one  point I was thinking that the mouse wheel might be a good interface).  I dunno, maybe it's Mame that doesn't check the keyboard fast enough.

The 10k pots in the Dreamcast analog controller.

I think I've been reading some stuff lately about some 9-position joystick that I don't think has been interfaced (I think the extra position is centered?) .

[paigeoliver]

I think I've been reading some stuff lately about some 9-position joystick that I don't think has been interfaced (I think the extra position is centered?) .

Someone mentioned Star Wars yokes. Anything that just uses pots can be interfaced easily and several people here have Star Wars yokes on their cabinet.

The 9 position stick you are talking about is the Berzerk optical stick. There really isn't a reason to interface one, it is functionally identical to an 8-way leaf joystick.

[Frostillicus]

720 stick

[jerryjanis]

720 stick

I'm guessing that you haven't seen this: http://jstookey.com/arcade/720/

 

[Frostillicus]

I'm guessing that you haven't seen this: http://jstookey.com/arcade/720/

 

I didn't know that actually happened.  Last I saw of it was an older thread on these boards.  Pretty cool.  

[soslo]

LS-30s? or does the Druin interface count...

[SirPoonga]

Hall effect sticks found in Road Runner and a few other Atari games.

Yeah they are.  there's a hall effect to gameport conversion.  a hall effect is interchangable with a pot based joystick for the most part.

Paige, IR sensors, how are they handled in mame?  Is their purpose listed as a button?  If so did the actual machine hook the IR sensor to a button circuit?  IR stuff is just a fancy switch triggered by light.

[paigeoliver]

Well, in Mame the IR games appear to use trackballs.

In the actual machine it is a similar analog style input. The pair of sensors reads position and speed and (I think) the angle as well. So it isn't just a fancy switch.

[SirPoonga]

paige, do you have a good picture of one of these machines and the ir sensors?

[paigeoliver]

Well, I could take pictures, but you really can't see much. Imagine a pair of metal bars each 6" long with 4 holes in them. That is what they look like.

[u_rebelscum]

49-way joysticks and 12-way rotaries (LS-30) "not properly interface" is just on the software interface side.


Except mameAnalog+ just added support with 0.77.1.  
Can people with these controllers test them and report any problems?  I suggest downloading and using the ctrlr ini files from my site (the one in the "original" folders) for easier setup.  Wiring you have to yourself.


BTW, 49-way need one 5 V+ power source, one ground, and 8 buttons per stick; this is like wiring perfect360 sticks, except you need to wire to buttons and there are 8 instead of 4.

12-way rotary need one ground and 12 buttons per rotary.  The original rotary is made so only one switch can be closed at a time, so Analog+ does not do any checking of this.

Also remember that the 49 way sticks made today are Not the same as the classic sinistar/bubbles..ect.  They feel and control completely different due to mechanical differences. (mostly the type of resistence/return to center device)

Just to clear something, both the older sinistar 49-way and the newer 49-way sticks are the same electronically (ie interface-wise); all differences are in the feel.  Much like super vs wico leafswitch joysticks, the two stick's hook up to the computer the same ways, but some people like one stick over the other anyway.

Hall effect sticks found in Road Runner and a few other Atari games.

As already said, Hall Effect joysticks are equivalent to analog joysticks; except I don't know what the POT rating equivalent is for Atari's hall effect sensors.  I'll post a thread about hall effect vs pot later today.

The 10k pots in the Dreamcast analog controller.

Speak of the devil, looks like the hall effect sensors on my dreamcast sega controllers probably are equiv to a 10k pot (at whatever current it runs at).  Hmm, come to think about it, there's no real correlation, since my controller could have different chips to translate to "Dreamcast-controller-ese" than yours.
(In cast I'm not clear in above pp, my sega-brand controllers use hall effect for both the analog joystick and the analog  triggers.)

[paigeoliver]

Oh, you rock SO MUCH. I was just about to offer my 49-ways up for sale! I have a pair of nice orange Arch Rivals ones that were looking pretty silly in their defender cabinet home!

[paigeoliver]

Also, does the 49-way support cover ALL analog games, or does it only work in the 49-way games? Like could I use the 49-ways in Star Wars or Crossbow?

And FINALLY, does the 49-way support also work for normal 8-way and 4-way games? Like could you play Final Fight with a 49-way?

[u_rebelscum]

Also, does the 49-way support cover ALL analog games, or does it only work in the 49-way games? Like could I use the 49-ways in Star Wars or Crossbow?

And FINALLY, does the 49-way support also work for normal 8-way and 4-way games? Like could you play Final Fight with a 49-way?

I did game specific hacks, so it will work on only four (+ clones) 49-way games emulated in mame.  Some more games might be added at some later point.


If you want to use the 49-way joy for analog games, I suggest either use the 49-to-analog hack (direct link), or write a windows driver.    Me adding support directly to Analog+ would be a pain, I think, and umm, a long wait seeing how slow I'm currently adding stuff.



Hmm, I guess you could map it to act like an 8-way stick fairly easily.  Depending on how you do the mapping, you could have 3 different size dead zones.

Since each axis of the 49-way joystick is mapped like this (newer 49-way as source):

0111  (4 5 6 7)  = full left/up
0011  (2 3)      = middle left/up
0001  (1)        = slightly left/up

x000  (0 8 )     = neutral

1100  (C)        = slightly right/down
1110  (A E)      = middle right/down
1111  (9 B D F)  = full right/down

4321 <--- "button" number wired to for left/right

Assuming you hook the 49-way as buttons numbered above, the biggest dead zone would be with
JOYSTICK_LEFT         b3 & not --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type--
JOYSTICK_RIGHT      b1 & --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type--

middle-sized deadzone
JOYSTICK_LEFT         (b2 & not --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type--) or (b3 & not --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type--)
JOYSTICK_RIGHT      (b2 & --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type--) or (b1 & --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type--)

& smallest deadzone
JOYSTICK_LEFT         (b1 & not --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type--) or (b2 & not --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type--) or (b3 & not --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type--)
JOYSTICK_RIGHT      (b3 & --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type--) or (b2 & --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type--) or (b1 & --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type--)

Stuff in italics is not needed for the newer 49-way stick and probably not needed for the sinistar ones, but included just in case.  I'll need someone with sinistar 49-way joysticks to confirm it's not needed.  (BTW, I have a 49-way stick [newer type] sitting on the work table begging to be used, but I've only attatched it to a multimeter for testing so far.)

Same with up/down, except you wire it to different buttons, of course.

I like your idea; I guess I'll add a ctrlr ini file for doing this.  Maybe up Wednesday or Friday.

[paigeoliver]

Yes, it would be great if they worked for the regular 8-way games too. Right now it would be silly for me to make a 49-way cabinet for the scant few titles that use it, but they could be slapped on in place of regular 8-ways to get some good action going.

[paigeoliver]

Oh, and thanks a ton for doing this. I have an empty Invaders mini taking up basement space, and I am seriously thinking Blaster or Sinistar mini right now.

[jerryjanis]

Oh, you rock SO MUCH. I was just about to offer my 49-ways up for sale! I have a pair of nice orange Arch Rivals ones that were looking pretty silly in their defender cabinet home!

Me too, only with the LS-30's - I was very close to trading them away this week.  I've smoked half of my Druin interface so that only one joystick works.  In fact, I started messing with it again and I set the Druin card on top of a metal screwdriver and it started smoking again!  Ahk, I haven't had any problems with keyboard hacks or mouse hacks, but I've managed to wreck an IPac, an Opti-pac AND a Druin interface.

The LS-30 rotary should be THE PERFECT excuse to use a keyboard hack!  2 sets of rotaries will use 24 inputs, but only 2 keys will every need to be pressed at the same time, so there are no ghosting worries or any of that stuff!

Thanks, U_rebel!  This is really awesome news!  (I hope it works as well as I'm hoping).  I'll give it a try when I can.

[u_rebelscum]

Both are welcome

(And it's about time I added them.  Both have been on my TODO list forever; finally got around to finishing 'em.)

[paigeoliver]

Oh man. I totally forgot about my Wico mechanical rotary. I now have a way to use that darn thing. Too bad I only have one, since I think every rotaty game is two player.

Either way, Blaster mini has now been added to my "todo" list. My god, if I actually finish everything on my todo list I am going to have 8 Mame cabinets. 2 player 8-way horizontal, 8-way vertical, 4-way vertical, trackball, Battlezone, spinner, Stargate/Defender, and now Blaster.

What is the record for Mame cabinets owned by one person?  

The scary thing is that I actually have enough cabs and controls on hand to complete all these, I am just short a few PCs and monitors.

[screaming]

The scary thing is that I actually have enough cabs and controls on hand to complete all these, I am just short a few PCs and monitors.

   ...and I thought I was a geek.

(jk )

/S

[DAmnb]

Man I was just comming here to ask how to interface my Tron spinner, do a search and wham bam no luck for me  
Guess I could just replace the optics board though.

[Xiaou2]

 Hmm, more recently got a beat up turbo outrun... and am going to try to change it back to an Outrun.  

 The cab is pretty beat, and Ive always wanted a Simulator Outrun... however... they go for a lot of money as well as are too wide to fit thru most doors.

 I was thinking of building a new sitdown cab for it... but would REALLY love to make it move.

 If anyone has any info on how the moving assembly works... and any idea on how to get this to work... Id be a happy guy : )  

  Simularly... if anyone can make a mame output code, and a pcb board that can drive a powerfull motor.. that would be pretty awesome as well.  (as Im not sure how long outrun boards last.  Ive just found out they have suicide
batteries  ):
   
  I do know that the cab does use a motor and not hydralics... but thats about it...

[paigeoliver]

Not all Outruns have suicide batteries, only some do. Early model originals will, later ones won't (mine doesn't).

Just check your boards to see if the CPU is encased in a big black epoxy brick or not.