Warlords Control Panel ??? Controller Inquiry

[General Zod]

Is anyone familiar with the 1980 Atari game titled Warlords? Going through some old items in the back of the shop, I discovered I had an original CP from the classic game.

Now what puzzles me is this , did the game use a spinner similar to the ones used in TRON and Tempest, or is it more like a steering wheel from say the driving games of that era?

The dial for the game only limits you to 270 degrees, sort of like the steering wheels did, only the knob is much much smaller than that of a wheel.  

What can I do, if anything ... with such a controller? Just out of curiosity I suppose. Would I be wise to just eBay it and make a few dollars from the find?

thanks...

mike

[jerryjanis]

It's a "paddle" controller.  I'm pretty sure that it's main component is a pot, just like a 270 degree steering wheel.  Most arcade controls that run using a pot use a 5k pot, so it's pretty likely that the pot in your paddles are also 5k pots.  If they are, then they can be interfaced to your computer using 1UP's MS Dual Strike hack.  They'd be great for a lot of old-school games.  I noticed when playing Warlords or Avalanche with a spinner vs. a paddle that the spinner is ok, but actually the paddle is a lot better.  With the paddle there's a direct correletion between the paddle's exact position and the position of the on-screen blocker which gives very quick and precise control.

Here's a Sortinfo list of games that use a paddle controller:

http://jstookey.com/arcade/sortinfo/index.php?num_switches=1&do_search=1&switch0=control&operator0=%3D&switchvalue0=paddle

[General Zod]

That's interesting !!

It might behoove me to hold on to this for a while and see what I can do with it.

How difficult might it be to interface this with the i-pac or j-pac?

[GGKoul]

http://www.akasa.bc.ca/tfm/warlords.html

Looks like a tempest spinner

[jerryjanis]

The I-Pac and J-Pac won't help you interface these controls.  What you need to do is either 1UP's MS Dual Strike (hack http://www.1uparcade.com/projects-dualstrike.html) which is a pretty simple hack to do, or wait a little bit for the device that Daveb is working on (it's probably as simple to use as an I-Pac, but it's build for wiring pot-based controls like yours!

Hi guys, sorry I havent kept you up to date on this.. I'm Dave, and I'm the one working on the 5-axis analog ->USB interface mentioned in this thread.  It's basically what Lilwolf described... If you'd like some more info, you can preview the manual at http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~dmb6/AKI.doc

I'll try to get a real website up in the next couple of days.  I'm on what I hope is the last firmware version, and hope to be able to start taking orders in 1 to 2 weeks.

I'd post more info now, but I'm afraid I'm a bit busy...
I know the manual needs more work, but feel free to give me feedback

Dave