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Want to build (or buy) a Tron stick...

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Xiaou2:


 while you might find a way to make a cheap knock-off... thats all that it will be.
 
 have you ever played an tron arcade standup for any lenght of time?  seems like you have little idea about the way it feels or is constructed.

 Im pretty sure that you have a hacked pc trackball on your cab.  that pretty much says it all about how much you really care about game control.   In no way can you play even half as good with a pc trackball than with a real arcade version.

 its not that the trackball is 'overbuilt'.  its that PC trackballs are made to make money by cutting corners on quality.  they use either no bearings at all.. or ones that are of the worst quality imaginable.  they are clunky and dont spin much after you let them go with a quick roll.   not suitable for good scores or lasting long on any classic that uses a trackball.   arcade trackballs are meant to glide like ice - smooth and reliable so as not to mess up a players true motion intention in a critical situation.

 Now... you could say it like this...  If you knew you were going into battle in a forign land and had to choose which weapons to carry ... would you choose the cheap knock off weapons and take your chances?  or would you take the ones that were PROOVEN, DURRABLE, DEPENDABLE, more ACCURATE???

 obviously, cost is a factor in some peoples desigions for control.  this is why i initially built my own.  however... after the excitement wore off and the realization that my controls were sub-par... i knew i had to start to get the REAL controls.  

 its not that im super anal... its more like this...

    if you had played tennis for many years with the top of the line racket... then were forced to play with a racket that was 20yrs old with strings that threatened to fall off, weighed too much, had less bounce, non-aero dynamic..ect...   How would you feel?

  sure you could play... but you wouldnt do nearly as good.  youd be fusterated at the things you couldnt pull off like you used to with your other racket.  youd get defeated much more often... again, so fusterating that youd be in a litteral hell and couldnt enjoy the game as much.

  however... if you never played with a top racket, youd never know what your missing.  youd be content with crappy performance.   in fact.. maybe you only have a small passing interest in tennis at all... and dont care if you get your butt whooped in a few minutes of play.

 i think that is more like what im seeing from your comments.

  a true fan of the game that needed the controller would spare no expense on the correct controls.  nor would they design a controller without the needed depth.. or..  theyed happily modify thier controller to allow for the depth.


Khenemet Heru:


--- Quote from: Xiaou2 on March 21, 2004, 07:06:46 am ---a true fan of the game that needed the controller would spare no expense on the correct controls.  nor would they design a controller without the needed depth.. or..  theyed happily modify thier controller to allow for the depth.

--- End quote ---

this is true - if we (I) were building a Tron machine - let's focus here people, we're building a MAME machine (the vast majority of us are, anyway) to play all the games (even in the figurative sense of having them to play in theory even if we only play a fraction of the games we have on our cabs HDs) - there is no accuracy issue here, no absolute requirement for original, "battle-tested" controls here - and to think there is is self-limiting in the least...  

personally, I used to play Tron and Discs of Tron the most of any game made - but I don't give a damn about accuracy to the original, esp. since I find I get much better response from microswitches than leaf switches - I don't like having to haul the stick around to get maximum travel so I can actuate the leaf switches consistently, which I remember always having to do with Tron. I agree with 1up, anything is a hell of a lot closer to the original than playing with cursor keys and a mouse, and that's my goal. It's overkill to go any further.

And btw, I am using an Ultimarc trackball for the moment, I can't speak for anyone else - but I have used both Happ's and the Ultimarc, and don't feel enough difference (comparing apples to apples, both 2 1/4" size) to justify spending so much on a Happ's. But I guess that means my panel wouldn't be "arcade accurate" anyway...

Now, can we please get back on topic? we were primarily discussing ways to make a stick in this style we all love, and that's what I for one want to hear about. Not pissing matches over who's more accurate than whom... we can start a new thread for that.


1UP:


--- Quote from: Xiaou2 on March 21, 2004, 07:06:46 am ---have you ever played an tron arcade standup for any lenght of time?  seems like you have little idea about the way it feels or is constructed.

 Im pretty sure that you have a hacked pc trackball on your cab.  that pretty much says it all about how much you really care about game control.   In no way can you play even half as good with a pc trackball than with a real arcade version.
--- End quote ---

WOW.  I knew things would eventually get nasty and personal.  It always does whenever someone challenges your "expert opinion" for more than 2 posts in a row.

FYI, the PC trackball I am using is one of the better ones I've tried.  The spin on it is exactly the same as that on my Imperial (with metal bearings and metal rollers).  The Crayola is a 3" trackball and actually has a very good throw and a very arcade-like feel, but of course I did mod the encoder wheels a bit to get it there.  But it just shows that a cheap $20 trackball, with a few small design changes, can be up to snuff with an arcade trackball.  Throw in some metal rollers and bearings, and you would add maybe $10 to the price and have a damn decent trackball.

Would I replace the Crayola with a good arcade trackball?  Sure.  That was the whole point of getting the Imperial.  Its steel rollers will have a much longer life than the plastic rollers on steel pins in the Crayola.  It also would take exactly the same real estate under the CP as my Crayola mount.  The only real reason I haven't installed the Imperial is that I've given up on making any further mods to my "first draft" cab, and I'm moving on wholeheartedly to the production version.

How this all relates to the Tron stick is this:  I would love to be able to use a genuine Tron stick (including base) on my cabs.  But there are 2 major problems:

1) they are not made any more (not exactly like the original anyway) and so inclusion of those controls would depend on whether I could find NOS ones on Ebay, which could hold up orders, and most surely would require some refurbishing.  I am not planning to use ANY used components on my cabs.  

2) There is no way in hell that the guts of an original Tron stick will fit inside one of my rotating CPs, without a major redesign of them, which would either mean throwing the panels off their quite comfortable 15oangle, or making the cab much deeper and the CP assembly much larger (and heavier).  This means some sort of compromise is needed.  My solution would be a reinforced Competition, with heavier springs and a custom-machined metal shaft for the handles to mount on.

Let me explain one more thing about the Tron sticks on my cab in particular:  They really weren't put there to exactly duplicate the experience of playing Tron, but actually they are there to play Battlezone.  I just like the look of the Tron sticks better, as they are more "classic arcade" than the Happs grip assemblies, the Virtua-On type grips, or other options I may have used.  I will be trying to acquire a genuine Tron stick to study, and whatever solution I come up with for my own design, I will attempt to at least approximate the feel of the original.


--- Quote ---Now... you could say it like this...  If you knew you were going into battle in a forign land and had to choose which weapons to carry ... would you choose the cheap knock off weapons and take your chances?  or would you take the ones that were PROOVEN, DURRABLE, DEPENDABLE, more ACCURATE???
--- End quote ---

It's interesting you chose this analogy.  Many people will tell you that the most reliable sidearm is a good old service revolver.  How can this be?  An automatic holds twice or thrice the number of bullets, is much more expensive, and has a lot more engineering put into it.  But its complexity is its own downfall.  It has many more moving parts to get gummed up, or lost during cleaning, and it is more prone to jamming.  The revolver is based on a much older, simpler design, but continues to out-perform many of the most state-of-the-art weapons.  Again, sometimes the simplest design is the best.


--- Quote ---however... if you never played with a top racket, youd never know what your missing.  youd be content with crappy performance.   in fact.. maybe you only have a small passing interest in tennis at all... and dont care if you get your butt whooped in a few minutes of play.
--- End quote ---

Another interesting analogy.  Any athlete or artist will tell you it's the talent, not the tools.  Venus Williams with a ratty old wooden racket strung with catgut would still beat the bejeezus out of the average schlub with the latest carbon-fiber super sleek model with synthetic strings.

You could say the same with arcade games.  Some will tell you that nothing beats original hardware, in an original cab, with an original leaf balltop.  But if you put your average player on an original Pac-Man cab with a leaf stick, against the top Pac-Man player in the world on a Mame-based machine with a microswtich 4-way, who's going to win?  The winner is the one who knows the game best.  It doesn't matter that the hardware is slightly different.  Otherwise, none of the guys at work who are playing my microswitch-based controls would be able to get anywhere in the games, because the sticks are SOOOO different from what they used to play.   ::)

Anyway, I'll put this to rest now before someone locks this thread down.  It's really not worth arguing about further--either my idea will work, or it won't.  I'm not here to say that my way is the only way, or that it will definitely work, but it's possible and I'm going to give it a try.  But then, I'm used to taking on your challenges Xiaou2.  I seem to remember being told a couple years ago that a smaller rotating setup couldn't be done, because you made yours with the minimum inside space for all the controls to fit.  Also, according to you it wouldn't be able to fit seamlessly inside a standard-sized cab, because there would be no room for some kind of complex latching system or home-made disc-braking setup that was absolutley necessary to lock it all down...but in the end a simpler solution WAS possible!  :P

/rant

MinerAl:

Everyone!  Play nice!  Mr. Mineral will keep you after if you don't behave!  :)

The point I was trying to make by suggesting re-molding for 3/8" or 1cm shaft was to make it so that it would be really solid and not feel like a hack, because it would be a designed thing, not a hack.

My hack with the F-108 is almost "designed that way" solid, because it had a 3/8" sleeve inside it to begin with.  It really feels like it was designed to be on the Super I have it in.

Perhaps that's the answer... authentic Tron stick handles for both the hobbyists and the restorationists, and an inner molded sleeve that perfectly and solidly mates to the handles and the shaft, for those of us willing to risk the inauthenticity of creating an accursed half-breed Super/Tron. :)

A few issues to move this discussion forward constructively:

1) How far forward were the original Tron sticks angled?  I think they were supposed to be tilted far enough forward so that they stuck straight up (perpendicular to the floor) even in a tilted CP.  So is that 15 degrees? 10?  If we re-mold the sticks to match 1cm or 3/8" shafts, should we make the mold match the forward tilt of the original?

2) Tron sticks were imperfect 4-ways, in that they could be coaxed into the corners to go up-left etc.  This was because in light cycles and tanks you didn't want diagonals, but in the other two you did (or something like that).  This suggests to me that it would be nice to make our proposed Super/Tron sticks behave similarly.  How can we accomplish this?

My suggestions would be to persuade/enlist OSCAR to make some of his restrictors that cause the desired pseudo-8 effect.  Or make these handle/shafts so that they are mountable in one of the switch-from-above-the-CP sticks that have recently become available.

3) Wood or metal, or use the current "2 sleeve/spacers and 2 e-ring slots in the shaft" arrangement of the Supers to have both?

I don't care who winds up making these, but lets make it easy for whoever decides to by clearing up this stuff beforehand.

MinerAl:

I had an idea for Cocktail Tron Sticks!

All we really need is the trigger part under the ball... On the real Tron Cocktail sticks there is that sleeve below the ball top.  

How hard would it be to make a sleeve with a button on the front/top of it that could slip around the shaft of any ball top stick?  

We could use 1UP's rotation inhibition hack just for the sleeve, the ball top could still spin, and it should be fairly easy to snake a couple of wires through to the bottom of the panel.

It's my idea, so I could be biased, but I think it'd work...

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