8/12Pos Rotary Game List?

[mc-escher]

I have SNK joys and interface and was using in mame when I noticed that all the rotary games are ANALOG input and not digital... This causes problems when using a straight digital interface because then dig->ana->dig conversions sometimes lose or overcorrect changes...

Anyway, I have been patching mame to allow digital input for Rotary Games (I.E. one click == one notch in the game without fiddling with analog sensitivity, etc)

Below is a list of the games I have patched so far...

QUESTION: Are there any games besides these I am  forgetting??

What I'm looking for is a list of all games that used 8 or 12 position rotary controls.

I plan on releasing the patch at some point in the future (when I get them all done) I don't think it'll be worthy of MAME inclusion  tho unless I somehow integrate it with the larger system (ability to choose between Analog and digital input scheme), but I thought it might spark some interest in this forum, as I know several of you have (or are planning)
an SNK setup using DRUIN's wonderful PCB kit

snk.c
**********
TNK III
Ikari Warriors
Victory Road
Guerilla War
Bermuda Triangle

dec0.c
**********
Heavy Barell
Midnight Resistance

dec8.c
**********
Gondomania

alpha68k.c
**********
Time Soldiers


Escher
escher@muppetclan.com
http://cryptnet1.net/mame

[Lilwolf]

All these games are worth it.

thing to remember.   You can use all Dial games with them (but it will click over).  The settings can be hard since they are used to moving based on holding down the keys, not clicking them.  

btw, I figured out the controls on them and have been trying to drag out of Howard the code he has for capturing keys and sending keys to the keyboard buffer.  So that I could hook mine up to my keyboard encoder and then convert it to L's aren R's in software.

HOWARD... PLEASE.... LET ME MODIFY YOUR CODE... that sounds like such a bad pickup line  

[Lilwolf]

Crap... forgot to mention my question for you.

Any chance that you could modify your build to also allow the switch based on a key?

ie, I can convert each position into a single keystroke.  Is the digital stuff then converted them back to the original keystrokes?

If so, could you leave hooks for those keystrokes?

[mc-escher]

lilwolf: I'm not exactly sure what you mean

Let me explain what I have done.

I have modified those C files to change

PORT_ANALOGX   values from 00-FF
entry to
PORT_BIT_IMPULSE values from  0-1

Basically, In the previous implementation the time the key was held down was stored in an accumulator and incremented based on analog speed and sensitivity settings.. This value was then quantized into digital steps to determine if the rotation occurred or not.

This led to problems of the following sort:

click <rot>
click <rot>
click <rot>
click
click <rot><rot>

etc..

I changed the input port to be  Button4 and 5 for left and right
in each of those games, and then added code to keep track
of the current position.. When button[4,5] is pressed the rotation
is updated.  This change makes it equal to one MAME update regardless of whether hte button is held for 2 seconds or 200.


I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "modify your build to also allow the switch based on a key?", and I don't know who
this howard you speak of is, but I hope I've answered your question =P

[Lilwolf]

The 12 way rotaries really have 12 connections on them (or 12 buttons).  One for each direction.

The original hardware didn't receive values with left or right clicks.  But instead the 12 buttons.

I'm just curious if in the emulation, they had the 12 buttons, then wrote a little 'wrapper' around the 12 buttons to have an analog value rotate the 12 buttons.

If so, then the best solution will be to remove the analog code from the driver, and keep track of what one is connected.  (ie, button 3 is pressed... got a left... now simulate release 3 and press 4)

[mc-escher]

nope, no wrapper... In fact different drivers had the analog -> digital
conversion implemented in different ways.

The most *correct* way to do it would be to set it up where 8 or 12
button bit inputs were monitored

Then the SNK joys could be connected directly to mame without the
use of a conversion circuit at all...

The drawbacks of this method are:

1) It would eat up inputs like crazy on the encoder: 24 for 2 players
rotation only add movements and the MAX 3 buttons that are needed
for any rotary (non-dial) game and you have 38.. that would make it
unfeasible to use IPAC or any of low end KE-24 style encoders.

2) 8 way games couldn't  be played with a 12 way joy as the
joy position would now exactly correspond to a specific angle

3) unplayable via keyboard, mouse, other  in this mode

4) I already constructed Druin's circuit from scratch =P

So this is a good compromise.. Since MAME originally interpreted
those inputs wrong (as analog) and then converted them to the
appropriate angle based on analog input... it wasn't such a stretch to
change it a bit so that digital input triggers a cycle through the 8 or 12
positions that  the game expects in that memory location.

One note: In the game Guerilla War there is a protection scheme
that somehow gets invoked if the joy input goes from position 5
to position 6 like 8 times or something... This was fixed in the driver
by adding a bogus direction into the cycle... this caused a slight
hesitation  in all  the games in the snk.c driver (including ikari)
but kept guerilla war from breaking.

This can be seen by firing up ikari and holding the ROTATE button
down you'll see a skip every 12 iterations or so.  In my patch,
I took this out for all games except guerilla war, because quite
frankly it was annoying for the games I liked =P.   It would be
interesting to know  exactly how they implemented the
hardware encoding/check in guerilla war though, so this skip
could be avoided there as well.

I'm almost finished. Working on Cal.50 and DownTown now.
I will need to port them to mame 0.60 as soon as the Linux
version arrives,  at which point I'll at least post it to my webpage
for all to use.

Escher

[Tiger-Heli]

To Mc-Escher:

Thanks for developing this.  I am looking forward to testing it out.

To LilWolf:

There is also another advantage in MC-escher implementation of this over using 12 button inputs as you suggest.  The original hardware did use 12 button inputs, but the LS-30 joysticks restricted your movement.  For example, let's say that Button 1 corresponded to Player 1 pointing at 1 o'clock and Button 9 corresponded to Player 1 pointing at 9 o'clock.  Using your set-up, it would be possible for the character to move from 1 o'clock to 9 o'clock without rotating through the intermediate positions.  The current MAME and MC-Escher's implementation prevent this.

To All:

This is a summary of how things stand:

Official MAME build:  supports mice, optical rotary joysticks, spinners, and keyboard keys/arcade buttons very well for rotation.  Will support SNK LS-30's using Druin's interface, but requires tweaking of the analog settings and speed settings, and provides imperfect results (some missed clicks and double clicks).  Does NOT directly support LS-30 joysticks.

Mc-Escher's build:  Does NOT support opto-rotary devices, Provides much better support for LS-30's using Druin's interface, Provides limited keyboard/button support but requires multiple keypresses for rotation.  Should support a custom joystick design that I may be reviving  .  Does not directly support LS-30 joysticks.

LilWolf's proposed build:  Does NOT support opto-rotary devices.  Does NOT support LS-30's using Druin's interface.  Does not easily support keyboard/buttons (if you had twelve buttons arranged in a circle, maybe . . .), Does directly support LS-30 joysticks.  No one has done this yet, AFAIK, however, I would like to see it available for 3 reasons:  1)  It would be possible to support this using LS-30's on a removable control panel using an IPAC-4, MK64, or KE-72 encoder.  2)  It would allow owners of original rotary game cabinets to play the game with original hardware, (if say the original board was fried), without having to use Druin's interface.  3) Most importantly, this is how the original hardware was set up, thus, in keeping with MAME's stated purpose of preserving the original arcade games, it should be emulated this way at least somewhere.

Questions to All:

Once Mc-Escher's build is availble, I would like to see about submitting it to the dev team and getting it added to the official build, but I have the following questions:

Ideally, it would be great if MAME were set up to handle opto-rotary devices using the current code, Druin's interface using MC-Escher's build, and straight LS-30's using LilWolf's proposed build, all in the same driver.  I have no idea how to do this! Anyone???

Another idea would be to set up MC-Escher's build and Lil-Wolf's proposed build as new drivers.  Thus for IKARI, you would have games named "Ikari Warriors (US) (opto-rotary)", "Ikari Warriors (US) (mechanical rotary with interface)", and "Ikari Warriors (US) (orignal hardware).  The problems with this is you are adding two new games per version and clone, and it would be confusing to the casual user.  This is similar to what MAME has done on Combat School, for example.

Any other ideas on how to implement this???

[Lilwolf]

quick notes.  I though MC-Escher was planning on a mame build for SNK users. (right??).  

It also seemed like you where trying to get rid of the analog controls to the drivers that use the SNK drivers and change them to use L and R directly.

What I was saying is the original hardware doesn't use L and R, but 12 different directions.  So you will probably find the analog -> 12 directions in the driver.  What you want to do is change it to L->12directions and R->12 directions instead.    But remember when looking at the driver, the original hardware had 12 inputs, so you will probably find it in the driver.

and what I was hoping, is if you get that far, that you open up the original connections.  This way you can hack the SNKs without any new hardware.

As for the 24 connections for 2 player... I'm the prowd owner of MK64   .  I believe in excess!

[Tiger-Heli]

quick notes.

[u_rebelscum]

I've been following this subject.  Great ideas, and I want in on the source changes people are proposing.  But let me throw my view on the subject into the fire, even though I don't have an LS-30. (yet )

There is also another advantage in MC-escher implementation of this over using 12 button inputs as you suggest.  The original hardware did use 12 button inputs, but the LS-30 joysticks restricted your movement.  For example, let's say that Button 1 corresponded to Player 1 pointing at 1 o'clock and Button 9 corresponded to Player 1 pointing at 9 o'clock.  Using your set-up, it would be possible for the character to move from 1 o'clock to 9 o'clock without rotating through the intermediate positions.  The current MAME and MC-Escher's implementation prevent this.

And, like you said, the hardware prevents this, too.  

Because of the hardware limit, IMO, the LS-30 rotory should be seen as one input with 12 possible values.  In other words, a 12 value analog input device.  (Not 12 digital input devices.)  I was looking at the drivers trying to see if the original arcade software treats it this way, but haven't found (figured out) much yet.

I think this was why mame treats it (semi-correctly) as an analog input.  The problems then would lie in: mame's (not very good) analog input handling, PC's (non-arcade) input devices, and mame's incorrect use of relative analog (mouse-like) instead of absolute analog input (LS-30 like). This is all nice and good in theory, but what about in practice?  I don't know (besides needing to improve mame's analog input ;P ).

But one way of merging two or more of the ideas mentioned here is to have a "psuedo-input port":  mame sometimes has had two ways to input to the same thing, a semi-working "true" emulation way and a working hack way.  (a few pedals come to mind )  You could leave the official mame way in, but add a second (and third) way to input to the same game memory location.  This way more than one way can be used (as long as they don't use the same keys) without disabling another.

Anyways, as soon as I get Mame:Analog+ v.60 and mamePedal out, I'll get more into the nitty-gritty of everyone's proposals and see if I can help.

[Howard_Casto]

............. and I don't know who
this howard you speak of is, but I hope I've answered your question =P

I'm hurt... wounded even...  :'( :'(

I thought I was at almost infamous status by now, guess I'll have to break more stuff.


Lilwolf, drop me a line and I'll zip up one of my wrappers sources and send it to you... it has keypress emulation but no comments, that's why I haven't release it yet.  

[mc-escher]

Ohhhhhhh, the mad dragon guy!

I should have guessed! don't be hurt... it's not you I hate, it's
Windows! =P

PS: It seems like I'm suddenly signed up for a LOT of work!! What
I'll probably end up doing is just zipping what I've done and putting
them on my website =P.

[Tiger-Heli]

Ohhhhhhh, the mad dragon guy!

Raging Dragon, FWIW!!!  (A rose by any other name . . .  )  Actually, Mad Dragon has a nice ring to it too!  Even fits from some of the previous posts!!!!  Just kidding, no offense, Howard, but you do get a little upset from time to time. . .   Not that I don't appreciate your posts and your contributions to this community.

PS: It seems like I'm suddenly signed up for a LOT of work!! What
I'll probably end up doing is just zipping what I've done and putting
them on my website =P.

Sorry, that was probably my fault also.  What happened is that this change is something that I requested both on this board and the main mame board a few months back.  Therefore, I really would like to see this implemented in MAME and ultimately in the official MAME build.  

BTW, the semi-official MAME response from the MAME net board was basically "What's wrong with how it is now?  Nobody is going to want to press a key 8 times to do one rotation!"  So I wouldn't expect this in official MAME unless something like URebelScum's idea of keeping both inputs can be made to work.

Actually, YOU personally are not signed up for any more work than originally.  I am glad that you found a way to make discrete keypresses work in the IKARI games and it's great that you will make the source files available on your site.

I would like to see a Windows binary of your MAME version, but I can work around that.  More useful, would be a write-up of line by line changes to the source files, but there are compare programs if that is difficult for you to provide.

I would very much like to see this added into official MAME, without breaking the official MAME code.  How much you want to be involved in that is up to you.  You can either develop the code to help integrate this change into the official MAME drivers, or you can just make the code available for your change and hopefully somebody will eventually integrate it into the main MAME build.  (with credit to you, of course, I would hope.)

Anyway, however, this ends up, thanks for developing the code changes that you have and for your assistance with this project!

[jerryjanis]

No way!  That's totally awesome that you're doing this.  I was thinking that this had to be done - I would have started doing it myself if I had a lot of extra time.

I searched around for a while looking for every rotary game I could find (It's a bummer that KLOV isn't keyword-searchable).

Here are some more games to add to the list:

-Ikari III
-SAR - Search And Rescue: http://www.klov.com/S/SAR_-_Search_And_Rescue.html
-Down Town: http://www.klov.com/D/Down_Town.html
-Exterminator: http://www.klov.com/E/Exterminator.html
-XYBots (seems to work perfectly in mame right now): http://www.klov.com/X/Xybots.html

-Front Line: http://www.klov.com/F/Front_Line.html
-Wild Western: http://www.klov.com/W/Wild_Western.html
-Tin Star: http://www.klov.com/T/Tin_Star,_The.html

-Touchdown Fever (optical rotary): http://www.klov.com/T/Touchdown_Fever.html
-Caliber 50 (optical, kick butt game though): http://www.klov.com/C/Cal_.50_-_Caliber_Fifty.html
-Forgotten Worlds (optical rotary): http://www.klov.com/F/Forgotten_Worlds.html
-Mad Planets (I don't know what the controls are): http://www.klov.com/M/Mad_Planets.html

Thank you thank you thank you!  I look forward to playing the games right proper with the LS-30's!  (Now I just gotta figure out how to make the 8-way joystick part of the LS-30 work better - it struggles a little bit sometimes, trying to get the direction I want - I'm thinking about buying the Happs version, but it's SO EXPENSIVE ($40.00+ apiece)!  Your modifications may make that decision a lot easier.)

[Tiger-Heli]

Thanks Jerry Janis for the compliments and game list.

Mad Planets uses a TRON control layout - Trigger fire joystick and a spinner.

XYBOTS used a rotary joystick with two microswitches and a spring return to center.  The LS-30's should work with this game if you just partially move the joystick instead of moving it a full click.  We don't need to change the driver for this game as you want the player to keep spinning until the button is released.

[ErikRuud]

KLOV is searchable by keyword.

[jerryjanis]

Whoa...  That's fantastic.  I've got a nasty habit of not reading anything - I just do a keyword search on the page for, "search", and I didn't find it...  Foolish...  That makes my life a little easier (that site is incredible - I couldn't believe they didn't have a search feature - Thanks.)

There's one more game, at least:
------------------------------------------
Battle Field - http://www.klov.com/B/Battle_Field.html

Plus a couple of clones (If that's any help):
------------------------------------------------------
Dogosken - (victory road clone) - http://www.klov.com/D/Dogosoken.html

Guevara (Guerilla War clone) - http://www.klov.com/G/Guevara.html

Makyou Senshi (GondoMania clone) - http://www.klov.com/M/Makyou_Senshi.html

(Totally unrelated) And for my own enjoyment, I found a game that uses the same controls as Discs of Tron!  Fantastic!  Zwackery - http://www.klov.com/Z/Zwackery.html

[Frobozz]

Just to throw in my 2 cents, the official build of MAME needs a way to configure different control systems for different people with different hardware.

I like all three ideas proposed, but the ideal solution would be hitting "tab" in Ikari Warriors, and selecting between the three.  

When it comes to these types of controls, there are multiple ways these can be configured depending on whether I'm using an arcade spinner, the keyboard, a roto joystick, a PC steering wheel or an arcade wheel.   MAME should support all of them, perhaps not all at once, but at least on a switch somewhere; and without having to make ANOTHER "custom build".

[u_rebelscum]

Just to throw in my 2 cents, the official build of MAME needs a way to configure different control systems for different people with different hardware.

I like all three ideas proposed, but the ideal solution would be hitting "tab" in Ikari Warriors, and selecting between the three.  

When it comes to these types of controls, there are multiple ways these can be configured depending on whether I'm using an arcade spinner, the keyboard, a roto joystick, a PC steering wheel or an arcade wheel.   MAME should support all of them, perhaps not all at once, but at least on a switch somewhere; and without having to make ANOTHER "custom build".

EMU+ used have something close to this feature.  Not the "true rotor" input part, but the ability to switch between spinner and pots steering wheel, for example.  All it did was change the input type.  I've been thinking of trying to add this to Analog+ since I started Analog+.  Currently a little lower on the priority list to some other features I want to add.

And it sorta goes against mame's documenting the original hadware/software goal, and toward the playability side.  Not for me to deside if it's added or not to the official mame, though.

[Tiger-Heli]

Anyone know what's going on with this?

Last I saw mc-escher was going to post the changed source files on his site, but that was over a week ago?

[mc-escher]

In the middle of strider!

ok, I have been slacking bad... at the very least here's the files
that I have so far (hack n slash) so anyone that can compile mame
can make use of them.

They are for MAME 59... and there was some changes to these
files in MAME 60, so minor porting of this fix will be necessary to use
it in that source tree.

http://cryptnet1.net/files/rotfix59v1.zip

have fun!

Escher

[Tiger-Heli]

Thanks!!!

[u_rebelscum]

here's the files
that I have so far (hack n slash)

Thanks!  I'm looking at them now, and later tonight.  See if I can learn what's going on.

[jerryjanis]

Awesome!  Thanks...  I'll try it out when I get some time.