RoadBlasters not as unique as thought...

[Minwah]

From the look of the manual at KLOV, Chase HQ is also an optics-based restricted wheel:

http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7318

See pages 11/12 - there is a bumper and also optics.

Also found this old thread, and the wheel is still optics based but different to the one in the manual - not sure if this has bumpers:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=57611.0


Mame handles the input as if were a pot based wheel which seems to be incorrect. I would be interested to know if a pot wheel version of the cabinet/controls existed.

[ahofle]

Hmmm are you sure?  It's been a while, but I was never able to get Roadblasters to work right in MAME with a 270 degree pot based wheel.  Works great with an optical spinner though.

[u_rebelscum]

Mame handles the input as if were a pot based wheel which seems to be incorrect. I would be interested to know if a pot wheel version of the cabinet/controls existed.

I think I discussed something like this (road blaster only) over at the old mame.net forum.  IIRC, the short answer was, if the input doesn't exactly match the types mame has, the writer of the driver decides which of the close types to use.

Mame's paddle type implies limited turns (270 degrees) & POT based analog input.
Mame's dial type implies unlimited turn & optical based analog input.
Since there is no mame type that covers limited turn & optical, the original driver writer decided which of the two to use, and should only be changed if completely wrong (IOW, if half right, shouldn't be changed by someone like me).  So...

... just because chaseHQ uses paddle* & road blasters uses dial doesn't mean one is right and the other is wrong.  It would be nice if mame was totally consistent, but this controller appears to be on only two games out of ~3800 original games, so ... [shrug].


*OTOH, chaseHQ currently is using the (analog) stick type, which is more wronger (<-- intentional bad english) than either paddle or dial.

And included in the source comments for chaseHQ:

Code: [Select]

Question: What hardware is used for steering and where is it connected? It doesn't seem to use
          a regular potentiometer for the steering??So the original coder seems to not have known that the input type wasn't a normal 270 degree wheel, so he didn't decide to use paddle over dial.

Maybe something to discuss at mametesters?



(Minwah, isn't it funny you posted on the thread you dug up? )

[Minwah]

Hmmm are you sure?  It's been a while, but I was never able to get Roadblasters to work right in MAME with a 270 degree pot based wheel.  Works great with an optical spinner though.

Yes that is my point...technically Chase HQ seems to be the same as RoadBlasters.

[Minwah]

Mame's paddle type implies limited turns (270 degrees) & POT based analog input.
Mame's dial type implies unlimited turn & optical based analog input.

I have to agree with the way RoadBlasters is handled, since although the wheel is limited, it uses optics which I think is the main point, technically.  Likewise a game which uses a pot-based wheel should be a 'paddle'.

Based on this it would be nice if Chase HQ were handled the same...as you say probably a bit of guess work was involved by the driver author. I just thought this was interesting as most people remember RoadBlasters uses optics but the usual assumption is that this is the only limited optics based wheel.

(Minwah, isn't it funny you posted on the thread you dug up? )

Yes, that's what I thought! 

[2600]

IIRC, isn't Chase HQ able to use a restricted 270 optical based wheel or a pot based wheel.  I believe that's what I've read in the manual and I think quite a few games can be configured either or.

[u_rebelscum]

Further looking at the manual, I noticed there's a second optical sensor for the "center flag" (you can see the second sensor board in the photo, too, but no centering flag AFICS).  So it's sort of like 720's controller (that has the indexing sensor).  I don't think road blasters had the centering thing.  So it's not as much the same as I was thinking.

FWIW:
720 controller could be represented with two axes of dial type, but current simulated with an analog stick.
RB controller could be represented with dial, paddle, or positional types (none exactly matching); current done as a dial.
CHQ controller could be represented with dial (w/o centering part), paddle (simulated), dual axes dial (to include centering part), or positional (simulated like paddle, but more documented info in source) types, again none exactly matching; current done as a stick (analog).

No answers on what mame should use for CHQ, but interesting that it had the centering sensor.

[Minwah]

No answers on what mame should use for CHQ, but interesting that it had the centering sensor.

Also, interesting that RoadBlasters does not - given that the controller is restricted I mean.

[Popcorrin]

Driver's Edge's wheel looks very similar to chasehq's.  An encoder wheel with an additional optic sensor for centering.  Listed in mame as a paddle. 

The momo wheel from logitech seems to use pretty much the same setup.  It has an encoder wheel instead of a pot but it is seen as a paddle/joystick by windows.

Then there is gtmr2.  Have you looked at the wheel dipswitch settings for that game.  It allows you to select joystick, wheel(360), wheel(270A), and wheel(270D).

All the different configs can complicate things.

[Minwah]

Driver's Edge's wheel looks very similar to chasehq's.  An encoder wheel with an additional optic sensor for centering.  Listed in mame as a paddle

That's interesting to know. I bet there are probably quite a few games like this.

Another similar example is Konami GT - treated in Mame as a paddle, but I believe this used an unrestricted optics based wheel, so should really be a 'dial'.

Then there is gtmr2.  Have you looked at the wheel dipswitch settings for that game.  It allows you to select joystick, wheel(360), wheel(270A), and wheel(270D).

Yes I have...and GTMR is pretty much the same (I recently hooked up the 360 deg wheel part, see Mame v0.126+).