Trackball problem with just Centipede and Millipede

[TylerSDurden]

Hi Everyone. This is my first post.  I appreciate any help you can give me.  I'm a complete noob and just built my first cabinet.  I’ve got almost everything running, but I’m having problems with my trackball on just two games, Centipede and Millipede.  If I play Missile Command or some other trackball game, everything works just fine.

The problem I’m having is the player “fighter” moves along the x-axis just fine, but it wants to float to the top of the y-axis as the trackball slows down.  So, if I roll the trackball fast down, it will go down to the bottom.  As the trackball slows, the fighter will move to the top even though the trackball is still moving down.  The fighter won't stay at the bottom of the playing field.

I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find a solution.  I’ve tried to change the settings for that specific machine, but nothing I do fixes the issue.  Has anyone run into this?  Anyone have any recommendations on what I should try?

My set up is:

Attract mode with RocketLauncher
Centipede revision 4 & Millipede 1982
Mame64 – Mame .185
Ultimarc Trackball running through an Ipac Ultimate board
Mame.ini has mouse enabled multi-mouse enabled
I have set configured the trackball and it works on other games.

It is so frustrating to be so close.  Thanks in advance for you help.

[MartyKong]

TylerSDurd
It sounds like the optical reader/board is not keeping up with heavy spins. I have a similar problem (though not as bad as  you describe) with a Happ trackball. What's unusual is this behavior tends to happen with Golden Tee on big slams but never on slower trackball games like your describing. It's probably unrelated. Other than that I don't know.

[Mr. Peabody]

Is the trackball itself doing the same movement? If it's a Happ, that's why.

[RandyT]

The problem I’m having is the player “fighter” moves along the x-axis just fine, but it wants to float to the top of the y-axis as the trackball slows down.  So, if I roll the trackball fast down, it will go down to the bottom.  As the trackball slows, the fighter will move to the top even though the trackball is still moving down.  The fighter won't stay at the bottom of the playing field.

If you have an analog joystick on this machine, make sure it is centering properly.  If you also have the joystick mapped for movement in those games, and any direction is registering, you would see "crawl" in that direction.

[bperkins01]

I remember something like that - the default Mame config has the joystick setup for Centipede  ..You have to go into the machine settings to take those out.

You need to also set trackball sensitivity too..  Mine was too high - I got to a real machine and found that the range was 3 mushrooms (outside to outside) on the x axis if you move the ball from your finger at the left intersection of ball/mounting plate to right intersection ball/mounting place. (hopefully that makes sense)

I had been playing mine with near 7 mushroom range - which made it ultra sensitive..  now that mine is like an original... my timing is all messed up..

Finally - make sure your real mouse is turned off and not bumping around