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Driving Controls Questions...
Cryofax:
Howdy... I'm working on a driving control set-up. I've decided on the Happs European 360 wheel with the two buttons. My questions are :
1.) As far as pedals, is there a way to interface the analog pedals (w/ pots) into Mame, or should I stick with 2 microswitch pedals (Gas, Brake = ON/OFF)
2.) I think I want to add a shifter. The 2-way shifter is the cheapest, and used by many driving games. Are there enough Mame driving games with 4-gear shifting to warrant purchansing the 4-position shifter instead?
Thanks in advance!
- Cryo
jerryjanis:
Ok... I don't know too much about the shifter... But I think that I do know a little bit about the pedals.
I recently purchased a USB Hot Wheels Blue steering wheel for $10 (the thing is SWEET! Let me tell you). They appear to be sold out where I got mine, but I think that they may have some here: http://www.partshelf.com/bluusbracste.html
It includes pedals and a shifter. The way the pedals and steering wheel work is like an analog joystick (NOT LIKE A SPINNER).
Mame sees the brake_pedal/accelerator_pedal/steer_left/steer_right as up/down/left/right joystick movements. The joystick also has 4 buttons (buttons map to the 2 shifter positions).
This steering wheel style, by the way, doesn't appear to work with very many racing games in Mame because games like Pole Position, APB, and Super Sprint use the spinner style of steering wheel that you are thinking about purchasing. Games like Paperboy, Outrun, and Super Hang-On work GREAT with it though.
MAME and the Outrun controls really seem to be at odds with each other, because among 20 different versions of MAME, Outrun's controls are handled very differently. I just happen to have a fairly old version of MAME (MAME32k from the Kaillera website version 37B15 I believe) that handles the analog pedals and the high and low gear.
So I've tried Outrun many different ways, and as petty as it sounds, I wouldn't want to play Outrun without analog pedals. I think it's really important. The game definetly makes good use them. For example, the car will skid out if you put the pedal to the metal when you're stopped. You gotsta ease into it, see?
You may want to look into the $10 USB steering wheel, even if it's just for the cheap analog pedals. You wouldn't have to do any hacking to make them work in MAME (unless you wanted to really fancy them up).
u_rebelscum:
--- Quote ---1.) As far as pedals, is there a way to interface the analog pedals (w/ pots) into Mame, or should I stick with 2 microswitch pedals (Gas, Brake = ON/OFF)
--- End quote ---
Currently mame can only see the Y axis of a joystick as analog input for pedals (well the Y axis of mice too, but that doesn't matter in your question). So you hack a joystick, and using two pots in serial, hook the pedals to the Y axis. Or most PC pedal or wheel/pedal set should work fine if they output the pedals to the Y axis, which is standard.
Or, if you use my version mame:Analog+, you can use other axis besides just the Y axis. It also fixes ~20 games (SuperSprint, PolePosition, & SpyHunter are the big ones) analog pedal input. Most games with two pedals don't have this problem in mame, but you really need an analog pedal for SpyHunter.
In either case, mame currently only reads analog pedal data off one axis, so for 2 pedal games, the brake and gas must share the axis. Currently I am working on adding support for more analog pedals to Mame:Analog+.
IMO, analog pedals are a must, if you couldn't tell.
--- Quote ---2.) I think I want to add a shifter. The 2-way shifter is the cheapest, and used by many driving games. Are there enough Mame driving games with 4-gear shifting to warrant purchansing the 4-position shifter instead?
--- End quote ---
Mame's support for shifters is not standardized, so a 4 way shifter may work in some games, but not in others. A 2way shift, however, should work on all games that have 2way shifters (but don't quote me on that; I could be wrong).urll]
Tiger-Heli:
These sites have excellent information on building wheels and hooking them up to the PC (also on wiring pedals using pots). BTW, for MAME, I highly recommend a mouse-hacked arcade wheel (360-degree rotation) over the 270 degree pot based wheels favored on these sites. Reason: A 360 degree wheel will still work on a 270 degree based game, but a 270 degree wheel will never work on a 360 degree based game!
http://www.gunpowder.freeserve.co.uk/wheels/
http://www.theuspits.com/hardware/lew/index.html
Regarding shifters, I am building a desktop controller. My plan was to use my main (HotRod style panel) joystick with OSCAR's vertical restrictors for a 2-way shifter and OSCAR's diagonal Restrictors for a 4-way shifter. AFAIK, this should work (and be really inexpensive) but I haven't tried it yet.
Comments and questions for Urebel:
I was planning to switch the pedals to dual axis (actually one of the sites above has a link for doing this with a switch so you can use the pedals either way). I highly recommend using Analog Plus and dual axis so you get working brake lights in OutRun, for example. Comments on this approach?
BTW, the OutRun driver has been in various stages of brokenness since about R37B15, which accounts for the different performance among different builds. Sixtoe has a writeup on the current WIP state of the driver at http://www.system16.com/wip.html and it seems to be working now, but the revised driver still hasn't made it into the "official" MAME.
Question 2: Most of the sites above tend to show the pedals hooked up to the gameport, however, it would be possible to interface to USB via 1-Up's Dual Strike Hack. I was planning to leave them as a gameport connection, but I was wondering, (other than HotSwappabilty and forward compatibility), is there any advantage to going USB. (I.e. Do USB controls maintain calibration better than the gameport, etc??)
mamemia:
Oh, look at my page ;)
http://oliver.hasler.bei.t-online.de
Gru