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Any games that use two 4-ways ?
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paigeoliver:
Those tricks are common knowledge Rod, and do work "OK" with some sticks, but not with all (depending on how large the diagonal areas are). You see doing that creates a rather large "dead zone" on your controls.

While a real 4-way stick has no real dead zone and moves directly to up from right, and etc.

One trick that a programmer friend showed me (that I have never seen mentioned here) that can be done to get pretty decent 4-way action out of an 8-way Wico is this (works with any stick that has a perfectly circular 360 degree range of motion)

Mount the 8-way stick at angle so that UP isn't centered on any of the directions and instead is smack in the middle of UP and LEFT-UP. Then you can go through the rather complicated software control setup of setting up as UP or LEFT UP (and then NOT left, not up right) for each direction. This creates a controller that does do 4-ways with no dead zones. Although it is a whole lot of trouble and the results still aren't as good as a true 4-way stick, which will have a diamond shaped restrictor to guide you to the primary directions.

StLouisRod:

--- Quote from: paigeoliver on January 30, 2004, 01:52:22 am ---Those tricks are common knowledge Rod, and do work "OK" with some sticks, but not with all (depending on how large the diagonal areas are). You see doing that creates a rather large "dead zone" on your controls.

While a real 4-way stick has no real dead zone and moves directly to up from right, and etc.

One trick that a programmer friend showed me (that I have never seen mentioned here) that can be done to get pretty decent 4-way action out of an 8-way Wico is this (works with any stick that has a perfectly circular 360 degree range of motion)

Mount the 8-way stick at angle so that UP isn't centered on any of the directions and instead is smack in the middle of UP and LEFT-UP. Then you can go through the rather complicated software control setup of setting up as UP or LEFT UP (and then NOT left, not up right) for each direction. This creates a controller that does do 4-ways with no dead zones. Although it is a whole lot of trouble and the results still aren't as good as a true 4-way stick, which will have a diamond shaped restrictor to guide you to the primary directions.



--- End quote ---

Hmmm... interesting concept, Paige.  In fact, I have my player 3 and 4 sticks mounted at 45 degree angles that would be a perfect test of your theory.  I'll try it tonight and report back soon.

But I must reiterate that I played the heck out of MsPacman, Donkey Kong, Kong Jr., etc. last night using the 4-way setup I described, and I NEVER detected a dead spot, missed move, or anything.  In fact, I was kicking major butt on the super-speed hack of MsPacman which requires even more precise movements than the standard slow version!

But you make a good point... results will vary with your brand of 8-way stick  ;).
NoOne=NBA=:
I tried Rod's trick awhile back with my competitions.
I didn't notice ANY difference between the factory UP=UP setting, and UP=UP(not UP-RIGHT not UP-Left).
Once the stick left the TRUE UP position it went dead in both instances until it was returned to TRUE UP.
When the stick gets an UP-RIGHT signal, it sends NOTHING to the program because UP-RIGHT does not equal UP, and also does not equal RIGHT.

Paige,
If you are going to turn the stick anyway, why wouldn't you just turn the stick to a true 45, and use UP=UP-RIGHT, LEFT=UP-LEFT, DOWN=DOWN-LEFT and RIGHT=DOWN-RIGHT like a turned QBert controller?
That would give you a controller that would guide to the corners, creating a 4-way restricted controller.

I actually tried that with a competition, but didn't like the throw on it.
It does do a perfect guided 4-way though.
I think I may try it with the modified super I've got because I restricted the throw so that it stops as soon as the buttons depress.
StLouisRod:
Well, Paige, you were right.  It turns out my results were so good because I recently installed and have been using a Happs TopFire 8-way joystick.  It has slightly different contact locations than my traditional Happ Competition joysticks, and just plain works better for 4-way games.  So assigning the directions as I detailed above didn't really improve it all that much.  The joystick does very well in pure 8-way assignment.  And when my input assignment is applied to my competition.... well, it's lipstick on a pig.  It didn't improve things much.  Sooooo.... I'll be buying a T-stick+ soon and trying out it's 4-way/8-way switching and see how that does.  
NoOne=NBA=:

--- Quote from: StLouisRod on February 09, 2004, 10:46:46 pm ---I'll be buying a T-stick+ soon and trying out it's 4-way/8-way switching and see how that does.  

--- End quote ---

I'm getting TWO--one for each hand.
Player 2 can deal with the Competitions.
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