mouse hack spinner sensitivity

[clhug]

I'm working on a mouse hack spinner.  It works great in Arkanoid where there's limited back and forth motion, but in games like Tempest or Discs of Tron where you can keep rotation around and around, it works okay if I spin it slowly, but if I spin too fast the spin on the screen in the game gets very erratic, like a "stutter" is the best way I can describe it.  I guess I thought I should be able to give the spinner knob a good spin and my character in Tempest should just rotate around and around the grid until the spinner stops.  But when I give it a good spin my character more like stutters back and forth.

Are there adjustments in MAME I can play with to fix this?  I did find the "analog controls" settings and have turned down the sensitivity quite a bit.  In Tempest I turned it all the way down to 1%, which was way too slow for normal play, but still didn't get rid of the stutter when I spinned it real fast.  At 10% it's playable but still stutters on a fast spin.  Are there some other adjustments I can try?  I didn't quite understand what the other adjustments besides sensitivity would do in the "analog controls" config.

I've also just hooked up a regular mouse and try playing with that by moving the mouse back and forth on the desktop.  Same basic idea.  Smooth movement at a slower speed but stuttering big time if I move the mouse too fast.  This is a PS2 mouse by the way.

Or is this just normal for a mouse hack spinner inside MAME on a PC?  If so, do the purchased spinners (like the Tornado or GGG's) exhibit this too?

Thanks!

[Kremmit]

What kind of mouse hack spinner?  Did you wire a real spinner's optic board to a mouse PCB, or have you attached the encoder wheel from the mouse to a spinner knob, or have you added a new, different encoder wheel to the existing mouse optics, or are you doing one of those new-fangled optical mouse spinners? 

[clhug]

Using entirely the guts of a mouse, encoder wheel from the mouse and the optics and encoder board from the same mouse.

I did also try an "optical" mouse (both using the optical mouse in my spinner and just plain in my testing with moving an optical mouse side to side on the desktop) and it was a little worse than the mouse with the encoder wheel so I went back to the encoder wheel type mouse.

[clhug]

Can anybody give me any ideas?

[Kremmit]

Mouse hacks can work better than what you describe, usually adjusting the analog sensetivity can get things working properly.  I've never done a hack like the one you did, I always use a real encoder wheel and optic board wired in to the electronics of the mouse, and never had the trouble you are having.  You may have lousy mouse electronics, encoder wheels that are too low-res, or maybe the trouble is with your PC, since you say you have similar trouble with just a regular mouse.  You ought to be able to get smooth play in Tempest without stutter or backspin.  First, I'd try to achieve that, possibly by tweaking the mouse settings in Windows (assuming that's what you're using).  Generally, it is considered best to lower the Windows sensetivity all the way, disable any acceleration or enhanced precision settings, and stick with generic Windows mouse drivers.

Once you've got things playing smoothly with other hardware, you can determine if your spinner hack is having any trouble of it's own.  But if you can't get things playing right without the spinner hack, then (at least part of) your trouble is elsewhere.