Better analog settings in MAME/Centipede?

[Shoegazer]

Yesterday I had a chance to play on a real Centipede cabinet, which I haven't done in quite some time.  I played for quite a while, and when I returned home I fired it up on my MAME cabinet to see how accurate the emulation is while it was fresh on my mind.

The emulation itself is excellent; however I noticed the trackball setting was far too sluggish.  Upon going into the MAME analog settings I noticed that the "X" and "Y" sensitivity was at "50" for each.  I increased both of those to "100" and found that it was MUCH closer to reality.

This brings up a question - is this just due to my own (Happ) trackball, or would this affect everyone?  In case of the latter, shouldn't this call for a closer look at the analog settings for ALL games in MAME?  We could get a lot more enjoyment out of some of these games if they were tweaked the right way.

Thoughts are welcome.

Shoegazer

[Ginsu Victim]

It depends on the resolution of your encoder, the settings in mame, and how your ball spins.

Pretty much, there's no one setting for everyone.

[Shoegazer]

I figured as much.  Similar to the case with a spinner I imagine (i.e. it's all about the resolution).  In my case, I have a Happ trackball that came with the Slikstik classic panel I bought about three years ago.  I'm curious why there has been a lot of discussion over high-res spinners lately; however trackballs haven't been talked of much (at least as far as I've seen).  Is there a need for a high-res trackball, perhaps?

It would be nice if you could somehow input your trackball's resolution to a variable in MAME and have it auto-adjust the analog settings based on your input!  Hmmmm.

Shoegazer

[ahofle]

I don't think there is need for a high res trackball for the simple reason that there are no arcade games (to my knowledge) which used one.  The reason there are high res spinners is because certain games like Arkanoid used a spinner which through gearing upped the effective resolution way beyond a standard arcade spinner.

It would be nice if you could somehow input your trackball's resolution to a variable in MAME and have it auto-adjust the analog settings based on your input!  Hmmmm.

Totally agree!
See this thread for some help in determining a roughly accurate analog mapping for various games:
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=23967.msg201068#msg201068