Sidewinder hack help

[Hawkeye71]

 I have built my own Star Wars Yoke using the familiar Sidewinder hack method.

Following the soldering up instructions on line, the 4 yoke trigger buttons seemed to be directed to the hat controls of the once Sidewinder rather than its true fire buttons. This did mean I could not use the fire buttons to confirm joystick calibration on the PC. However using Virtual Joystick and Universal Joystick Mapper (UJR) I have been able to reassign the yokes trigger buttons to be fire buttons and it seems I have a smooth enough X and Y movement by the looks of the PCs joystick calibration window and indeed the joystick plays fine in the Star Wars Trilogy game outside of MAME.

I just cant understand how I get MAME to embrace the same smooth movement. I've got extreme up, down, left, right, and centre but no smooth journey between the 5 points. Seems its something obvious but I just cant see it.

Can anyone offer any guidance/suggestions?

Many thanks.

[Post split from original thread in Reviews and moved to Main -- Scott]

[PL1]

Welcome aboard, Hawkeye71.   

Here are several things that may help.

In the MAME "Input (this Game)" menu, set the "inc" and "dec" inputs to "none".

In the "Analog Controls" menu, set autocenter to 0 and adjust sensitivity.


Scott

EDIT: Screenshot updated -- forgot to plug in the analog stick.   

[Hawkeye71]

Thank you but, no, hasn't changed anything.

I suppose lending the mouse controls to the yoke through JTK is the preferred option but is there a knack to getting MAME to accept that? Mouse cursor moves on the desktop OK but once MAME opens its strictly mouse only for mouse movements

[PL1]

Highlight "AD Stick X Analog", press enter, and move the X-axis of your yoke to re-map the input.

Does it show up as "Mouse X" (like the screenshot above) or something else?


Scott

[Hawkeye71]

Ah, no it doesn't.

Joy1 x Axis
Joy1 y Axis

[PL1]

Joy1 x Axis
Joy1 y Axis

OK.  That means that MAME is seeing your Sidewinder hack as an analog joystick. (fixed the screenshot above)

You may want to look into saturation and deadzone.

BadMouth recently posted some good info on saturation here.

Another great source of info on analog control settngs is the driving sub-foum, especially the stickied post here under "!!!IMPORTANT MAME CONFIGURATION INFORMATION!!!".


Scott

[Hawkeye71]

Aha, thank you. Certainly moving closer to a more fluid cursor now but still yet to be good enough.

Tricky balancing act across 5 platforms seemingly. Mame settings. Star wars IN Mame settings, Universal joystick Mapper settings, Virtual joystick settings and the PCs own joystick calibration settings.

Anyone got any recommended numbers?

[BadMouth]

No recommended numbers, but ditch the virtual joystick and mapper programs.
You can map the controls however you want in MAME, so there is no reason to use the other programs (once your axis are working ok in windows).
They are just two more layers of complication.

If one axis is less smooth than the other, you could also have a worn out potentiometer.

I haven't done the sidewinder hack.  Does it use the original pots or new ones?

I have a dual analog triggerstick Cyber-Sled control panel with standard radioshack 10k pots swapped in and wired to a Logitech gamepad.
It's never worked as smoothly as I want it to.  It's like the movement is taking steps rather than being fluid.
My theory is because I'm only using a tiny section of the range of motion the pot was designed for, there isn't enough variation in resistance/voltage from one extreme to the other to resolve very many detailed positions in between.  (the original pots were made to cover their whole range over say 45 degrees whereas off the shelf pots are more like 280 degrees)  Just a theory.

If you still have the original pots in there, using an A-PAC or U-HID for the interface may work better.

The only other thing I can think of is that the way the input is handled in MAME for that game could have changed over the years.
It might be worthwhile to try an old version of MAME from when the sidewinder hack was popular.

[Hawkeye71]

Cheers Bad. I'll have a think about this. X and Y is probably fine without mappers but the 4 fire buttons are hat buttons. Not sure how I can make MAME understand a hat button was being pressed to begin to allocate it to a fire action in MAME settings. I would have no fire button to confirm PC controller configuration even before I got to Mame

Not sure why whoever created the  soldering instructions to the Sidewinder board wanted it like that as the sidewinder had normal fire buttons but im sure there's a reason.

No, brand new pots used in the build this year. Started from scratch. One pot in the Sidewinder joystick frame could have been used i guess but the other was directly soldered to the board with no wires. Too much hassle to alter.

[BadMouth]

Not sure how I can make MAME understand a hat button was being pressed to begin to allocate it to a fire action in MAME settings.

Just map the hat button in MAME like it's any other button.
MAME is flexible.  MAME don't care.  You can map anything to anything.

[Hawkeye71]

MAME cannot see the sidewinder without mappers but I think ive tweaked everything to playable success now anyway.  Or at least close enough to what was once in the arcade. Don't think it's good enough to reach Wave 9 as I used to as a teen. Then again maybe my aged reactions are slower.

Oh my word. It plays Paperboy and Outrun beautifuly too. Spy hunters a bit clumsy but I'll work on that.

Thanks for your help all. I'll probably be back later In the new year as I build my second project. A control panel with all other arcade controls.

Happy new year all.

[Hawkeye71]

Young fool. Only now, at the end, do I understand.

Sorry Bad and thanks. I was talking​ gibberish in my novice state last year. Of course that works.

Only took me 3 months of vjoy/UJR star wars play to figure that out. Rubbish.