720 degrees

[bigleechild]

Will a joystick from the 720 degrees arcade game work with a mame system?

[kspiff]

Not without a special compile being made.  The 720 joystick has 2 optical discs.. 1 is used for movement and 1 is used for calibration.. the calibration disc wouldn't be recognized by MAME and the skater would quickly become out of sync with the joystick.

Too bad, I'd really like to see a solution to this someday.

[Lilwolf]

Has anyone modified the source to make it work with a joystick better?  

What exactly is the other encoder for?  does it just click when it's north or something (ie, something that we might be able to fake?)

I would love to hear it.   But even then, I haven't seen a single analog controller that would really work.  I wrote a program that would convert a rotating mouse motion into a joystick directional motion that worked very well.. (it kept track of the angles you are moving and what quad you where in to see where you are going.... it really ended up working pretty good).  Anyway, I wanted to add it to mame at some point... just never finished it (like all my other projects)

[u_rebelscum]

Has anyone modified the source to make it work with a joystick better?

SmitDogg had a build somewhere in the 0.5x's that did a digital joystick hack (eight directions to skate).  It is possible to do an analog hack.  Need to convert an (x,y) pair into an angle (well, delta angle), and it seems you got something like that a while ago.

What exactly is the other encoder for?  does it just click when it's north or something (ie, something that we might be able to fake?)

The other encoder has two holes next to each other.  It looks like it is an error correction wheel to fix if one or two holes were missed on the normal wheel.  AFAIK, it isn't needed in the real game, as long as you don't mind having to recalibrate often.

I would love to hear it.   But even then, I haven't seen a single analog controller that would really work.  I wrote a program that would convert a rotating mouse motion into a joystick directional motion that worked very well.. (it kept track of the angles you are moving and what quad you where in to see where you are going.... it really ended up working pretty good).  Anyway, I wanted to add it to mame at some point... just never finished it (like all my other projects)

Do you still have the code?  Maybe I could tool with it and add it to analog+.

Here's the data I have:
The normal encoder wheel has 72 wholes, meaning each hole = 5 degrees.  
The other encoder wheel has two holes off sync'd with the normal encoder's holes and spaced 10 degrees apart.

If you ever ran into a 720 machine in the arcades that would get off sync sometimes, this usually meant the non-standard encoder wheel sensor was dead.  If it was really bad at keeping sync, that usually meant the normal sensor was on the blink.

Also, directX directInput does not seem to use the mouse accelleration setting in windows.  At least on my winMe & mouse drivers.  So it may be possible to get a real 720 controller to work on mame.

Which reminds me.  Anyone know where I can a replacement pivot ball for a 720 controller?

[jerryjanis]

I love 720 and spent some time trying to modify Mame to have better controls.  I hacked some changes to enable me to use a joystick and control it so that the skateboarder's direction will match the direction you are pointing the 8-way joystick.  If you point north, the skateboarder will immediately point north and if you point southwest, the skateboarder will immediately jump to the southwest.  This is how it worked on the commodore 64 and nintendo versions (maybe that's why I'm so comfortable playing it that way).  I find that it works a lot better than the way Mame controls it now with a joystick.

Just now I quickly updated the changes I made to Mame version 6.4.  I think it's kind of a sloppy job that I did - I'm guessing that it probably breaks a lot of other games, but it works pretty nicely (in my opinion) for 720.

You can download my mame64 source files here:
http://www26.brinkster.com/jstookey/joystick/720mame.html

I also own an original 720 joystick, but I haven't gotten so far as to make it work properly.

I remember playing the regular build of mame with it at one point, and it seemed to work properly for the most part using only the primary analog spinner disc on the joystick, but I didn't play it for long (I get so easily distracted - Mame's a little too awesome).

If only I had the time, it couldn't possibly be terribly difficult to get Mame to work perfectly with the 720' joystick.

No joke, there WILL be a solution SOMEDAY, but I have so many Mame projects that most of them lose priority really easily.

[btoddkelley]

I would love to help with this. I have a real 720 arcade game and an extra conroller. once this works in mame I can sell the game!!! I also have schematics and know how to read them. What i do not have is programming skills!
Any programmers want to give this a try?
Thanks
Todd

[Jakobud]

Wait wait wait..  Isn't the controller in 720 just a spinner with a joystick offset from the center?

[Wade]

I'm so glad this is being discussed.  I'm going to try Jake's hack.  I always loved 720 and it is just one of those games where mame doesn't cut it because of the controls.  I thought a good joystick hack might be the solution.  I'll try the changes.

Wade

[Tiger-Heli]

Wait wait wait..  Isn't the controller in 720 just a spinner with a joystick offset from the center?

As stated above, spinner with a joystick (handle) offset from center and a second encoder wheel for calibration so that when the handle is pointing NW, the skater is travelling NW.

[jerryjanis]

I had my 720 joystick hooked up to an Optipac for a little while (I don't have the Optipac anymore) and I remember that it seemed to work suprisingly well even without using the calibration wheel.  I didn't play it for long enough to fully test it because the joystick is a little awkward when it's not mounted to a control panel.  I just had to make sure that the joystick was in the correct position when I started the game.

I suspect that Mame handles the joystick just like the arcade only without the calibration spinner hooked up.  According to u_rebelscum, it worked ok with occasional recalibration, so maybe it would work pretty much Ok as it is.

u_rebelscum - could you play a full game without having to recalibrate?  Also, is there a way to recalibrate in the middle of a game?

[u_rebelscum]

I suspect that Mame handles the joystick just like the arcade only without the calibration spinner hooked up.  According to u_rebelscum, it worked ok with occasional recalibration, so maybe it would work pretty much Ok as it is.

I was talking about in arcade preformance, not mame.  But you are right about mame only hooks up the one action wheel and not the calibration wheel.  Since mame just feeds the mouse data straight to the game in 720, I think any spinner with a 72 hole encoder wheel will work as well as a 720 controller, ATM.  The hard thing needed to get the calibration wheel working is mostly adding support for it without screwing up using a mouse/trackball-as-a-spinner input.  If we didn't have to worry about trackballs, I think it would be pretty easy.  

u_rebelscum - could you play a full game without having to recalibrate?  Also, is there a way to recalibrate in the middle of a game?

Like I said above, I was talking arcade playing.  My 720 controller is in need of some fixin' before I can play with it.  

For a in-game hack calibration in mame, you can pause the game, possition the controller the same as the paused skater, and unpause the game, I think.  You have ~ 4.5 holes per direction, so calibration will be hard to get perfect.

Wait wait wait..  Isn't the controller in 720 just a spinner with a joystick offset from the center?

That's how mame is treating it, but it was a little more complicated than that.

The real controller had two encoder wheels on the one axis.  The "action" wheel has 72 holes evenly spaced and is for small movements, like a normal spinner.  The "calibration" wheel has 2 holes next to each other so the game knows when one full rotation occurs; this is to designed to makeup for any "missed" holes on the action wheel, which happens sometimes on all optical hardware.  Mame ignores the calibration wheel, and acts like a real machine with broken optics for just the calibration wheel, except more so; ie: it works but is hard to stay calibrated.

[Lilwolf]

Has anyone modified the source to make it work with a joystick better?

Do you still have the code?  Maybe I could tool with it and add it to analog+.

Somewhere...  But if not I can rewrite it... The trouble is that it was for java..  I never converted it to C to then add to mame.  But it was cool.  It would watch your motions and I could tell what part of the circle you where on no matter how big/small your circles where... even if they changed or moved.  But I never figured out how to hack it into mame at the end.

So I could easily convert the mouse motion into an angle that you are pointing in.    (ie mousemotion -> 35degrees)

Any know how hard that will be to add to mame?  It seemed like that should be ultra easy.

[Lilwolf]

quick question about hacking a real 720 joystick.

Whats the chance that we can capture the single recalibration trigger into a mouse press?  If so, then the driver could probably be hacked to have a recalibration in it.  Then running a real 720 stick (I want one bad... no cash though) it would work and auto update every turn.

[jerryjanis]

Hey, I think I got it!!!

Aaron Giles' code always passes a 0 for the value of the calibration spinner disc.  In order to find out if the code for the spinner disc COULD register, I added a looping integer variable that pretended to spin the second spinner disc really really fast.  Each time my fake calibration spinner registered a change, the skateboarder would turn a minute (my-noot) notch towards 12 o'clock.  (requiring 128 'notches' to actually turn the skateboarder from south all the way to north).

What this tells me is that the calibration spinner with it's two notches will only account for up to two missed notches per complete turn of the main spinner disc assuming that the track x and track y sensitivities are the same.

When I first start 720 in Mame with these changes, the FIRST time that I register movement on the calibration spinner, the skateboarder immediately jumps to 12 o'clock, thus initially calibrating it when you spin it the first time.

I set the default sensitivity for the calibration stick to 1% (darnitall, a value of 0 caused a divide by 0) and the key/joy speed to 0.  This is so that it's affect on spinner/mouse users is minimal - it will do the initial calibration and jump the skateboarder to the 12 o'clock position, but besides that I don't think it has much of a noticeable affect (avid 720' mouse users may beg to differ with me on that statement).

If you use it with the 720 joystick, then you will have to boost up the track_y sensitivity for the calibration spinner.  Also, it's likely that the track_x sensitivity will need to be adjusted (I am unable to try it with the 720 arcade joystick right now).

I changed the dial control to IPT_TRACKBALL_X and added another input port for IPT_TRACKBALL_Y and processed it as the calibration spinner, and I think it would work like the arcade machine with the 720 joystick.  You'd just have to make sure that the sensors for the spinner discs were in the 12 o'clock position and the main spinner disc was mapped to the x mouse axis and the calibration spinner disc was mapped to the y mouse axis.

The only code that I changed was 720 specific code for atarisy2.c, so it shouldn't affect any other games.  (That makes me very happy!)

Somebody with an optipac (or some kind of hack that involves both spinner discs) and a 720 controller, please try it out!  I can't wait to play it myself!

I also modified my source code for using an 8 way joystick.  It's a little bit more complicated to set up, but it will not affect any other games anymore.

Get both modified files at:
http://www26.brinkster.com/jstookey/joystick/720mame.html

Please try them out and let me know what you think!

[btoddkelley]

If you will compile one for me in mame 32 i will give it a try. i have a 720 controller and a working game. the controller is is mounted on an ad on panel and i can have it hooked up in five minutes. What you describe on start up is correct though.
Later
Todd

[jerryjanis]

Ok, I uploaded it to http://host.mywwwserver.com/~bethand/temp/mame.zip

However, I'll have to remove it soon because I shouldn't be using up the bandwidth on my mom's web site.  I'll get myself a real web server soon, I think so I don't have to worry about it anymore.

I tried compiling Mame32, but I've never compiled it before and it didn't work.  It compiled fine, but wouldn't run any games(?).  This file is the standard build of Mame for Windows.  You would run something like this from the command line:

mame 720 -mouse

I can't wait to hear how it works...  That's awesome that you've got the control panel ready to go.  You can email me at:

jstookey

at

yahoo.com

if there's anything you need changed, or just post messages here.

[btoddkelley]

I know this may sound hard to believe but i have never used regular mame!! I downloaded it and will give it a try. I built the add on panel last summer thinking that someday 720 would work with the regular controller. I havn't finished the panel (formica) but it mounts to my cab and works. It also has 2 steering wheels on the front! had to have them!I will let you know what i find out. When i get it running i will set it up side by side to my 720 cab and see how it plays!
Thanks
Todd

[Lilwolf]

Time to start looking at ebay again....

have to come up with excuses for my wife on why my paypal bill is so high....  

[jerryjanis]

I got a USB mouse hack to work with the 720 joystick's optic sensor!  I more or less followed the instructions from

http://www.members.shaw.ca/bakaye/tballhack.htm

It's preliminary - I didn't get the calibration disc to work (I don't know what the problem is yet).  I had to pull the 5v & ground separately from a keyboard hack to the 720' joystick.  I removed the IR receivers from my mouse.  Then I soldered the other wires (x1/x2, y1/y2) from the 720' optic card directly to the holes from where I pulled the IR receivers, and it worked perfectly, with no backspin or anything.

I'll post a complete writeup eventually.

However, I played 720 with it for a bit, and with a sensitivity setting of 50%, it seemed to work fine without the calibration disc, so I think that the current standard build of Mame (without my changes) would work at least acceptably.  I really need to have the joystick mounted and with buttons, also, to really play on the thing.

[jerryjanis]

I got both discs working with my mouse hack, and played with my version of Mame for 720

[Lilwolf]

Now I REALLY need to get one (anyone have one for sale??)

I was able to play the arcade with full gold in one quarter (by the time I was that good, it was only one quarter)....

my hands would get soars from the joysticks (really... from playing 720... not that joystick... you sick minds!)

[Tiger-Heli]

Just thought I'd mention that www.oscarcontrols.com is selling a pre-hacked USB mouse interface for $9.00 that would probably work for this.  (Shameless plug for the soldering challenged).

Crawling back under my rock

[btoddkelley]

Play as it should on my cab. I compared it to my 720 and it works like a charm. The brilliant author needs to send it to one of the mame devs (I think Aron Giles wrote that driver) So that it can be in the official release so all can enjo 720 the way it was intended! This was the fix I was waiting for since i discovered mame!!! Anyone want to buy an original 720 game?
Thanks
Todd

[Lilwolf]

I dont' think you will see it in the main mame distribution..

but it's a perfect add to analog mame!

[btoddkelley]

Thats fine. Thats the one i use!!!!
I am curious, why don't you think it would be in the main distribution? It makes the emulation more accurate.
Todd

[jerryjanis]

I dont' think you will see it in the main mame distribution..

but it's a perfect add to analog mame!

Analog Mame is perfect because you have the option to disable the calibration spinner if you're trying to use a trackball or a mouse.  Am I on the right track?

I would love to hear it.   But even then, I haven't seen a single analog controller that would really work.  I wrote a program that would convert a rotating mouse motion into a joystick directional motion that worked very well.. (it kept track of the angles you are moving and what quad you where in to see where you are going.... it really ended up working pretty good).  Anyway, I wanted to add it to mame at some point... just never finished it (like all my other projects)

Yeah, if you could dig up the code, I'd like to check it out.  Porting it to C would be easy enough.

Ideally, we'd have all of these options for control methods for the game (thinking out loud):

1) Arcade Controller
2) 8-Way Joystick
3) Trackball (with calibration axis disabled)
4) Spinner (with calibration axis disabled)
5) Analog Joystick (joystick position->angle)
6) Lilwolf's wacky mouse->angle hack

At least in the way that Mame currently works, most of these rule out the other ones...  For example, if Lilwolf's hack was put into the code, then that build wouldn't play with the arcade controller, trackball, or spinner properly.  I guess I could try adding separate drivers for different control types (don't know if that would be the way to go or not):

1) 720arcjoy
2) 7208way
3, 4) 720 (tracball/spinner - uses original settings)
5) 720anjoy  (analog joy)
6) 720anglm (angle mouse)

Possibly, some of these could be combined, but that might make it confusing to work with.

Which reminds me.  Anyone know where I can a replacement pivot ball for a 720 controller?

Me too...  The 2 white balls and the black rubbery slider that goes between them are in rough shape...  I think my pivot ball is Ok, though.  I'm thinking I'm gonna have to go to Home Depot and examine every item looking for something that is shaped like the parts I need.

[Lilwolf]

I haven't seen a 720 controller on ebay in about 6 months.  And before then they were always really expensive

could someone with a real one post the real dimensions (how tall the stick is... What angles it comes out at... The radius of the circle it makes.  Ect.

I'm wondering if there would be any possible hacks to get it working (yes... now I'm getting a real jonze for some 720... and nowhere to fix it)

and I will take a look for the code.

[bigleechild]

I haven't seen a 720 controller on ebay in about 6 months.  And before then they were always really expensive

could someone with a real one post the real dimensions (how tall the stick is... What angles it comes out at... The radius of the circle it makes.  Ect.

I'm wondering if there would be any possible hacks to get it working (yes... now I'm getting a real jonze for some 720... and nowhere to fix it)

and I will take a look for the code.

 

I have one that I would sell.  

[SirPoonga]

I haven't seen a 720 controller on ebay in about 6 months.  And before then they were always really expensive

could someone with a real one post the real dimensions (how tall the stick is... What angles it comes out at... The radius of the circle it makes.  Ect.

I'm wondering if there would be any possible hacks to get it working (yes... now I'm getting a real jonze for some 720... and nowhere to fix it)

and I will take a look for the code.

 

I have one that I would sell.  

Do you all with 720 controls have picture I could see?  How hard would it be for Kelsey to modify one of his spinners into a 720 controller?  It;d still be useful in other games?

Also, reading through this thread, I'm suprised it doesn't sound like the calibration wheel just triggers an optical swith to automatically make the skateboarder in the direction it needs.

[jerryjanis]

Here are some pictures, let me know if you want more specific ones.

http://66.78.4.185/~jstookey/arcade/720/720-pictures.php

The actual joystick is rather complicated.  It has a lot of doohickies that allow it to handle abuse and still work nicely.

I would be really easy to add the calibration spinner disc to an existing spinner.  The hard part would be to figure out how to make a joystick out of it.  For starters, it would probably require the same caution that a steering wheel/spinner needs to prevent damage caused by the extra force applied to it.

I can't seem to envision a simple way to make an acceptable joystick handle for a spinner, but I would LOVE to hear ideas on it.  It would be awesome to have an option for a homemade/Kelsey-bought 720

[SirPoonga]

Ok, I might have got lost on this but is there a hack to use an analog joystick?  Which would have been the best way!

could you explain something, maybe a little differently. How does 720 use the calibration wheel?  Where in mame is that wheel handled or should have been handled?  (I know some drivers have code commented out like afterburner where special hardware should be handled)

[jerryjanis]

Sorry for the delay --  Too busy playing 720

[SirPoonga]

So there would be no way to have a switch automatically point the skater north?
Or a switch to act like the calibration wheel?  metal contact brushed place correctly on the encoder wheel could complete the circuit for a switch that acts like a button.


So the calibration disc is extremely over complicated.  I suppose if calibration got too far off it would be weird to have the skater just pop to north though.

[jerryjanis]

So there would be no way to have a switch automatically point the skater north?
Or a switch to act like the calibration wheel?  metal contact brushed place correctly on the encoder wheel could complete the circuit for a switch that acts like a button.

Use a switch and configure my 720 Mame build to use that switch as the both Track_Y (up and/or down)...  That would probably work just fine.

So the calibration disc is extremely over complicated.

I don't think the calibration disc is very complicated since the 720 rom software does all of the work.

I suppose if calibration got too far off it would be weird to have the skater just pop to north though.

Calibration shouldn't get too far off in the first place, so hopefully that would't be such a problem.

[SirPoonga]

So there would be no way to have a switch automatically point the skater north?
Or a switch to act like the calibration wheel?  metal contact brushed place correctly on the encoder wheel could complete the circuit for a switch that acts like a button.

Use a switch and configure my 720 Mame build to use that switch as the both Track_Y (up and/or down)...  That would probably work just fine.

Ok, I haven't run your mame yet, but is that done in the menus?

[jerryjanis]

Config menu(tab key)->Controls(this game):

1) set Track_y to the button/switch you want to use for calibrating



Config menu->Analog controls:

1) Play with the track_x sensitivity (for my joystick I set it to 50%) for your spinner (assuming you have one) - try to set it up so that when you spin the spinner once, the skateboarder spins exactly once.

2) Set the track_y sensitivity for the calibration spinner (I don't think it can hurt to put it to the maximum) and set the key/joy speed (I don't know what values would work best).

[SirPoonga]

Config menu(tab key)->Controls(this game):

1) set Track_y to the button/switch you want to use for calibrating



Config menu->Analog controls:

1) Play with the track_x sensitivity (for my joystick I set it to 50%) for your spinner (assuming you have one) - try to set it up so that when you spin the spinner once, the skateboarder spins exactly once.

2) Set the track_y sensitivity for the calibration spinner (I don't think it can hurt to put it to the maximum) and set the key/joy speed (I don't know what values would work best).

Ok, downloaded your exe.  Let me get this straight, if my character isn;t pointing straight north, and I assaign a key to track_y, when I press track_y he should slowly calibrate north?   Hmmm, not working for me.

[u_rebelscum]

BTW, I included jerryjanis code in Mame:Analog+ 0.65.2.  Thanks jerryjanis!

[jerryjanis]

Ok, downloaded your exe.  Let me get this straight, if my character isn;t pointing straight north, and I assaign a key to track_y, when I press track_y he should slowly calibrate north?   Hmmm, not working for me.

You need to go into the analog settings (by pressing tab and selecting 'analog controls') and juice up the track y sensitivity (I set mine to the max: 255%) and the track y key/joy speed (I set mine to 10).  I made the default setting for track y to the minimum in order to minimize the effect it has on somebody who is using a regular mouse.  If you are the rare person who actually has a working joystick of some kind then you need to increase the values manually.

[jerryjanis]

BTW, I included jerryjanis code in Mame:Analog+ 0.65.2.  Thanks jerryjanis!

Hey, that's great (1 less special version of Mame to worry about!).  Thanks!