Arcade Controls on PC games

[the3eyedblindman]

Is there anyway to use your control panel on Pc games such as Halo, Medal of Honor, and the grand theft autoS? I was wondering if there was, and if there is if someone could post how, and can you get the act labs light gun to work on shooting pc games such as the house of the dead and area 51?

[TalkingOctopus]

If you use a keyboard encoder, than your arcade controls are just key strokes.  To play the PC games, remap your controls in the game you want to play.  I don't think arcade controls are well suited for first person shooters but it can be done.

The Act labs gun does work with PC games.  You need to get a patch off of their website.  Area 51 is in MAME.

[the3eyedblindman]

Area 51 is a CHD game though, and I was told CHD games do not run well on computers.
Can all pc games be remapped to whatever keys you want them to be?

[TalkingOctopus]

I'm sure that you could find an exception somewhere, but nearly every PC game would allow you to remap to your arcade controls.  While it is true that some CHD games require a lot of CPU horse power, Area 51 runs well on a mid level PC.  It runs smoothly on my Athlon 1800+ (1.4 gHz).

[hooded_paladin]

you can ALSO configure your keyboard encoder to use the games that don't have configurable controls, but that's a pain.

Furthermore, I think the only way to play an FPS on arcade controls (and it would still suck) would be a trackball to aim, an 8-way joystick to move and strafe with a trigger to shoot, some sort of secondary fire button near the trackball, and a bank of function buttons for things like jump, crouch, change gun etc.  No one HAS this layout, that I know of, and it sucks, so just use a darn keyboard and mouse for your FPS'age.  Unless you locked the only computer you have inside your cab.

Since the question is answered, can I (sort of) hijack the thread to something useful and pertinent?  What PC games play WELL on arcade controls?  I'm not talking blatantly arcade-style games such as Mutant Storm and Space Tripper.

[NoOne=NBA=]

I know a couple people who play Unreal Tournament with a trackball, but they are both using the "pointing device" trackballs, not the arcade style.

I tried to find a way to play Unreal Tournament with arcade controls on my cabinet because my original concept art was for a dedicated UT cabinet.
After experimenting around with different ideas/controls/etc... the best compromise I was able to reach with my cab was to have a "desktop" CP that allowed me to use my mouse and keyboard on top of the CP area.

The arcade controls just didn't give me the control I needed to be competitive against ladder caliber players like I can be with the mouse/keyboard combo.

[CD_Vision]

Area 51 is a CHD game though, and I was told CHD games do not run well on computers.
Can all pc games be remapped to whatever keys you want them to be?

They run better on fast computers. I've got an xp2800 but even Are51 and Killer Instinct won't run at full speed. I'd be interested to see how these run when they get up around 4ghz.