Player 3 and 4 joysticks: common orientation?

[angryred]

I'm finishing up my custom control panel, and I'm boggled on how to position the player 3 and 4 joysticks.  It's a standard width cab-- an old Phoenix-- and the 4 player panel wraps partially around the sides.

What's getting me is that I can't figure out whether to orient the joysticks so that up is relative to the screen (pointing straight at it) or to the player (which would put it at a steep diagonal, almost horizontal).  Is there anybody out there with a 4-player panel who's had to deal with this issue, and how did you resolve it?

[mrserv0n]

UP should be facing the screen. not UP as in your pressing up at button 1

So whatever position player 3 and 4 stand in stand like your playing and thats up , so its on an angle not 90 degrees


heres underneath how its mounted at an angle

[web.geek]

Here comes another holy war

I have mine angled (not "up points to monitor"), and I am starting to understand those who don't recommend this approach. I don't play the 3 or 4 player games much, so I didn't really notice until recently. Now I know why my kids were never good at Gauntlet.

There have been many debates on this topic, so I would recommend searching.

EDIT: Here's an example

[ahofle]

Yes, this is a common 'holy war', but the fact is that in most 4 player arcade games the joysticks all point the same way (toward and perpendicular to the monitor).  Look at the mounting bolts on a Gauntlet CP for instance.

EDIT: here are the 1st four 4p simultaneous games I looked up on MAWS.  Every single one has the joysticks all pointing the same way.

[DaveMMR]

Holy War?  Charge! 

Angling the outer joysticks, it seems, was a practice born of home-arcade building for whatever reason.   

Up towards the monitor avoids any and all confusion.  You don't have to be standing against the controls to know it either (see Gauntlet CP in ahofle's post).   Angling joysticks, on the other hand, DEMANDS a specific standing position. 

Here's another point I always bring up: most (if not all) 4-player simultaneous games were simple to control.  "Comfort" for outer players should be way on the back burner (which is why people sometimes angle).  If they can reach the stick and buttons, they can play a decent game of Gauntlet. 

This thread is repeat information as pointed out.  Do a search and you'll have a night's worth of reading on this topic. 

[CheffoJeffo]

As has been pointed out, mrserv0n's opinion is certainly not the only one. I have only ever come across one cab with angled sticks -- Xenophobe.

For those who choose to angle their sticks, I have one thing to say ... SmashTV.

[DaveMMR]

For those who choose to angle their sticks, I have one thing to say ... SmashTV.

May I humbly add "Total Carnage".   

[nailsn]

You can still play smash tv or the any other two-joystick game in 2 Player Mode if you have your 3rd and 4th joysticks in a 45° angled position. In this case you just have to remap the diagonal directions to the normal ones for this particular game in mame. (Of course this only works with a mame cab)

Personally I prefer the angled way, because I played on an original 4Player Gauntlet Cab and its was a pain in the ***, standing as the Warrior on the left with my 3 friends on the right. The Space was limited so that I was forced to stand angled to the monitor struggling with controls aimed at the screen.

[u_rebelscum]

[war=on] 

I didn't like the non-angled sticks for 95% of the games in the arcades that had angled sides.  Too often I'd end up going diagonal to the direction I wanted to go.     (My solution: keep BMO4PCP bottom edge straight or almost straight across.)

   To each there own.

[Hoopz]

I'd say make a mock up on cardboard or something and try it out.  See which way you prefer playing or what feels right.  Maybe have the people who would be playing P3 and P4 try it out also since they are the ones who will be affected by this.  Easier to change it before you get your CP all done and find out you don't like it.

That being said, I tried angled at first and quickly changed.  It just wasn't good....  But, I always play as P1 so it doesn't affect me as much.   

[u_rebelscum]

 When you are playing a game... you are thinking about the game... and not the
joystick.   When you are supposed to react immediately to a situation,  for example...
pressing Up to escape a bullet...  Your brain will think up is upwards... towards the
monitor.   Does not matter that you are standing at an angle... your brain still will think
in relation to the on-screen direction needed.

Not me. 

In order to consistently use the outside player sticks without messups, I would have to physically orient my body so away from me was up on the screen, crowding the middle players.  I knew a few friends who were the same of needing to orient the body back in the day (the ones I still have contact with don't play anymore AFAIK).  I found that top view games had a less problems for me, but side view and 3/4 view games sucked pretty bad, and left or right messed up more than up or down.  Left & right is and always will be sideways relative to my body, the easiest movement possible with elbow acting as pivot point.  And the time-critical moments are when I messed up the most often.  But that's me, others differ.

Of course, when I tried building my own with angled joysticks, I couldn't consistently use them without messups, either.  (My up & down seem to be more screen oriented, as xiaou2 describes)  

Thus my current solution of non-angled CPs, or play only the middle players.  (My prior solution was to half rotate the sticks, but that's doesn't work very well.)

[brandon]

 FTW

[angryred]

Here comes another holy war

Yes, this is a common 'holy war', but the fact is...

Holy War?  Charge!

...Oops. ...Heh.

For those who choose to angle their sticks, I have one thing to say ... SmashTV.

Yes, that's convincing. And Karate Champ.  And others I'm sure I won't think of 'til I try to play them with angled sticks. It's a fairly simple matter in MAME to reconfigure diagonals if that feels better for someone in particular; and even though my panel is designed for players 3 and 4 to approach at 45 degree angles, it's probably better for me to keep them straight for the 2 player dual joystick games, as those will most likely get more play.

Anyway, didn't mean to start a fire.   Thanks for the advice and information.  I was going to go with angled, but I see now a lot more reasons to keep them straight, at the very least as far as what-games-will-get-played-most is concerned. Thanks.

[NoOne=NBA=]

You can still play smash tv or the any other two-joystick game in 2 Player Mode if you have your 3rd and 4th joysticks in a 45° angled position. In this case you just have to remap the diagonal directions to the normal ones for this particular game in mame. (Of course this only works with a mame cab)

That doesn't work.
You won't be able to shoot at the diagonals that way.

You can map UP=Up&Right and RIGHT=Right&Down, but that won't let you shoot to the upper right by hitting Right only.
When you hit between your diagonals you won't get ANY input to the game.

[nailsn]

You can still play smash tv or the any other two-joystick game in 2 Player Mode if you have your 3rd and 4th joysticks in a 45° angled position. In this case you just have to remap the diagonal directions to the normal ones for this particular game in mame. (Of course this only works with a mame cab)

That doesn't work.
You won't be able to shoot at the diagonals that way.

You can map UP=Up&Right and RIGHT=Right&Down, but that won't let you shoot to the upper right by hitting Right only.
When you hit between your diagonals you won't get ANY input to the game.

Yup, You're right! Miscalculation by me. thx

[arzoo]

It's still possible to play SmashTV when P3 and P4 are angled - you just need a couple of extra joysticks. 

To be honest, I never play with the P3 and P4 controls - and my friends and family have never complained. But... you've all convinced me. My cp has the room to change the orientation and it's just four screws per stick - so I'm going to make the change.

[severdhed]

we have a 4 player panel right here at work, where player 3 and 4 are at 45degree angles, and just played some sunset riders, TMNT, gauntlet, and crime fighters, taking turns between player 3 and 4, and i cannot imagine trying to play them if the sticks were not rotated 45 degrees.    in my mind, up is away from me, not up on the screen, right it towards the buttons.. no matter what angle i am playing at, the joystick needs to be relative to my body, not the screen.  it does limit your ability to play dual joystick games, but for 4 player games, i can't imagine it any other way.  if i were playing with other people and the joysticks weren't rotated, i'd have to be standing along the front edge of the panel, and not at an angle like the buttons are

just because people tell you it needs to be one way, doesnt make that true...your best bet is to make a mock panel and test it.

[DaveMMR]

we have a 4 player panel right here at work, where player 3 and 4 are at 45degree angles, and just played some sunset riders, TMNT, gauntlet, and crime fighters, taking turns between player 3 and 4, and i cannot imagine trying to play them if the sticks were not rotated 45 degrees.    in my mind, up is away from me, not up on the screen, right it towards the buttons.. no matter what angle i am playing at, the joystick needs to be relative to my body, not the screen.  it does limit your ability to play dual joystick games, but for 4 player games, i can't imagine it any other way.  if i were playing with other people and the joysticks weren't rotated, i'd have to be standing along the front edge of the panel, and not at an angle like the buttons are

If angle sticks works for you and the friends, that's great.  I think the main issue, though, is that many new builders think that angling is the defacto rule.  There are people who like (or, at worst, live with) the angled sticks and those who regret it.  Yes, a preliminary mock-up for testing is always recommended, but absolutely required for 4-player panels. 

just because people tell you it needs to be one way, doesnt make that true...

I don't think anyone's telling anyone else what anything needs to be (at least not intentionally).  Angle away!   

But people do come here with questions, and others give advice based on a combination of personal experience and those fussy arcade standards.  It's all just guidelines; do with it as you will.   

[u_rebelscum]

You can still play smash tv or the any other two-joystick game in 2 Player Mode if you have your 3rd and 4th joysticks in a 45° angled position. In this case you just have to remap the diagonal directions to the normal ones for this particular game in mame. (Of course this only works with a mame cab)

That doesn't work.
You won't be able to shoot at the diagonals that way.

You can map UP=Up&Right and RIGHT=Right&Down, but that won't let you shoot to the upper right by hitting Right only.
When you hit between your diagonals you won't get ANY input to the game.

Actually, it's technically possible to map the diagonals in mame.  More steps to set up, and in the past (haven't tried recently) there sometimes was a one frame hiccup going to diagonals.   Anyway...

Example: player far left has stick angled 45 degrees clockwise.  To "unrotate", there are three cases when mame should send the game "Up": jUp + jLeft (as straight up), jLeft (as up+left), and JUp (as up+right).  So in mame's up, map:
jUp jLeft OR jLeft NOT jUp NOT jDown OR jUp NOT jLeft NOT jRight.

To physically do this, enter mame's Input menu, enter, move stick straight up, wait until mame registers, enter, diagonal up left, quickly center, quickly double tap diagonal up right, quickly double tap diagonal down left, wait, enter, diagonal up right, double up left, double down right.  (Or you could hand edit the cfg file, if you know how)  The other directions need to mapped similarly, of course:

mame down: jDown jRight OR jRight NOT jUp NOT jDown OR jDown NOT jLeft NOT jRight
mame left: jDown jLeft OR jDown NOT jLeft NOT jRight OR jLeft NOT jUp NOT jDown
mame right: jUp jRight OR jUp NOT jLeft NOT jRight OR jRight NOT jUp NOT jDown


Sorry for going techie again.

[jcoleman]

Captain America and The Avengers used angled sticks for p3 and p4.  My MAME cab is a gutted Cap Am, I can prove it with the original CP and bolt hole patterns.

[MTPPC]

Actually, it's technically possible to map the diagonals in mame.  More steps to set up, and in the past (haven't tried recently) there sometimes was a one frame hiccup going to diagonals.   Anyway...

Example: player far left has stick angled 45 degrees clockwise.  To "unrotate", there are three cases when mame should send the game "Up": jUp + jLeft (as straight up), jLeft (as up+left), and JUp (as up+right).  So in mame's up, map:
jUp jLeft OR jLeft NOT jUp NOT jDown OR jUp NOT jLeft NOT jRight.

To physically do this, enter mame's Input menu, enter, move stick straight up, wait until mame registers, enter, diagonal up left, quickly center, quickly double tap diagonal up right, quickly double tap diagonal down left, wait, enter, diagonal up right, double up left, double down right.  (Or you could hand edit the cfg file, if you know how)  The other directions need to mapped similarly, of course:

mame down: jDown jRight OR jRight NOT jUp NOT jDown OR jDown NOT jLeft NOT jRight
mame left: jDown jLeft OR jDown NOT jLeft NOT jRight OR jLeft NOT jUp NOT jDown
mame right: jUp jRight OR jUp NOT jLeft NOT jRight OR jRight NOT jUp NOT jDown


Sorry for going techie again.

I am sorry to dig this up from a 4 year burial, but I need to ask if anyone knows if this technique can be used to remap 8-way joysticks for use in q-bert. I'd love to be able to play q-bert and when I mapped the diagonals, it worked like crap. Does anyone do this to get q-bert playable? Where can you manually set this in the game specific ini in mame? Sorry for being a noob.

[paigeoliver]

Q*Bert is only going to work right with a 4-way stick installed at a 45 degree angle.

And this webpage right here is single handed responsible for people angling player 3 and 4.

http://www.wickedretarded.com/~crapmame/30.html

The guy who wrote the website mistakenly thought side sticks were supposed to get angled, wrote that, and now hundreds of people have built cabinets that are hard to control. I don't really care if you are some exception ninja who can play with your angled stick, most people can't and that is why only a tiny handful of real arcade games angled the sticks (and almost all of those bombed hard)

[yotsuya]

Q*Bert is only going to work right with a 4-way stick installed at a 45 degree angle.

And this webpage right here is single handed responsible for people angling player 3 and 4.

http://www.wickedretarded.com/~crapmame/30.html

The guy who wrote the website mistakenly thought side sticks were supposed to get angled, wrote that, and now hundreds of people have built cabinets that are hard to control. I don't really care if you are some exception ninja who can play with your angled stick, most people can't and that is why only a tiny handful of real arcade games angled the sticks (and almost all of those bombed hard)

Looking at that photo, Paige, I see that the problem is that the BUTTONS should be angled. If they were (like Gauntlet is), all would have been fine.

[Unstupid]

Unstupids rule regarding 4 player panels:  "Don't build a 4 player panel!"
This rule is not for anyone specific, rather it is for anyone reading these boards:

Here is why you don't build a 4 player panel:
1. We all know you don't have 3 friends!
2. You will probably not find 4 people that all want to play Simpsons, X-Men, Gauntlet or NBA Jam at the same time.
3. If you do find 4 people that all want to play Simpsons at the same time they probably won't be at your house, Why not?  See #1!

 

[Dawgz Rule]

My wife asked me why I was going to build a 4-player cab and I said it was for when "people come over".  She promptly replied "What people?" and I built a 2-player instead. 

[Le Chuck]

We have housefuls of people all the time.

Wife: you should make one four player
Me: so two people can watch two other people play street fighter but have sticks to lean on?
Wife: I don't understand anything about your toys
Me:    I'll be in the garage

[Trip]

I am starting to figure out this don't angle your joysticks thing.  Got saddled with a outside joystick this weekend and something didn't feel right, mine are angled.  So I temp did it no angle and it still didn't feel right.   I can't decide to angle or not to angle, need to invite friends with beer over and figure it out.   

[Vigo]

I know what you mean, Trip. Bottom line, Being player 3 or 4 sucks no matter how it is orientated. 

I've played on angles and straight and 90 degrees, and found them all to work equally as crappy. I believe any choice that is play tested on the cabinet first is the best choice. But, go with straight if possible simply for Smash TV, just as Cheffo commented (4 years ago).

[Trip]

I know what you mean, Trip. Bottom line, Being player 3 or 4 sucks no matter how it is orientated. 

I've played on angles and straight and 90 degrees, and found them all to work equally as crappy. I believe any choice that is play tested on the cabinet first is the best choice. But, go with straight if possible simply for Smash TV, just as Cheffo commented (4 years ago).

I need to try Smash TV to see what ya'll mean.  It's not one of my favorites, so I haven't played it in years.

[ahofle]

I need to try Smash TV to see what ya'll mean.  It's not one of my favorites, so I haven't played it in years.

It's basically coop 2-player Robotron...each player uses two sticks.  If the outer two sticks are angled differently than the inner two, that makes it...challenging.

[Le Chuck]

It's basically coop 2-player Robotron...each player uses two sticks.  If the outer two sticks are angled differently than the inner two, that makes it...challenging embarrassing.

FTFY 

[Trip]

It's basically coop 2-player Robotron...each player uses two sticks.  If the outer two sticks are angled differently than the inner two, that makes it...challenging.

Oh ok, yeah I don't think that would be good with my current control panel even if the joysticks weren't angled.  Seems like it would get really confusing sitting at the 3rd and 4th player spots using the 1 and 2 joysticks.

Not going to set up my control panel for a game I don't play a lot.  My plan is to get me and a few friends drunk and see if we can use angled or not angled.  Which one ever has the most success in that state will be the state my CP stays in.  LOL

[DarthMarino]

Since this topic seems to come up often around here, I've been paying attention to stick angling on original machines.  Sometimes it's hard to tell if the layouts are truly originals or someone recreating a machine or doing a conversion.  I've seen pictures of Open Ice and Rampage: World Tour machines with angled sticks yet it seems the actual originals were not angled. As far as I can tell, these machines did indeed use angled sticks for the outside players:

WWF Wrestlefest
King of the Dragons
Desert Assault
Violent Storm
Captain America & the Avengers
NBA Jam Extreme
Hard Yardage
Pit Fighter
Combatribes
Xenophobe

Since there are so many 3 and 4 player cabs that I can't even find pictures of, I'm sure this list should be much larger.  The Smash TV argument is a pretty good reason not to angle your sticks but I honestly think the whole myth about no commercial cabinets angling the outer sticks is pretty silly.

[Vigo]

Here is an angled cab I found a while back:

[Nephasth]

Bottom line, Being player 3 or 4 sucks no matter how it is orientated. 

Not on the Beast.

[Trip]

Bottom line, Being player 3 or 4 sucks no matter how it is orientated. 

Not on the Beast.

You cheated, LOL

[Vigo]

Bottom line, Being player 3 or 4 sucks no matter how it is orientated. 

Not on the Beast.

Can't argue that one. 

[Nephasth]

You cheated, LOL

 

Bottom line, Being player 3 or 4 sucks no matter how it is orientated. 

Not on the Beast.

Can't argue that one. 

Sucks though... I can't get the true Virtua Fighter experience on the Beast...
 

[DarthMarino]

While the cabinet may have angles sides... it does not mean that the actual sticks are angled.

 To know that for sure, you would have to see the underside of the control panel (unless the bolts are showing)
... and also to double check it against the games manual.

 As said, there were many conversion games, in which someone changed the stick orientation, or left it that
way from a previous game.

 And also, its about the kind of game you are playing.  Certain games are not as 'direction critical' as others.. and
many of them tend to play slow as well.   Some of these may have also had 4 ways in there too... which eliminates the
diagonals issues.

 Furthermore, if you list all the games that had the sticks oriented square to the monitor... that list will be like 50 to 1  over the 'true' angled sticked cabs.

All games on the list I made have the bolts showing.  I checked multiple sources for all of them. If I couldn't tell, I didn't list it.  There were dozens of games that I couldn't find a clear picture at all. I can certainly assure you that the radio would be nowhere near 50 to 1.  It's probably around 10:1. Although not the most definitive or complete list, KLOV shows 250 3-4 player games and this includes a bunch of racing games, split monitor games and gun games, none of which would quality for this argument. There is no doubt that non-angled sticks for the side players outnumber the angled but there seems to be a consensus around here that Virtua Fighter (which I didn't even put on my list) and Captain America are literally the only commercially produced games with angling. This is simply not true.

[paigeoliver]

Ok, lets look at this list of supposed hard evidence for the correctness and awesomeness of angling player 3 and 4. Fully 50 percent of the examples are 3 player titles that had angled joysticks for the sole purpose of getting 3 sets of arms onto a control panel only big enough for 2 people. 1 wasn't angled in the first place. The other 4 all bombed. Great examples.

WWF Wrestlefest - Not angled.
King of the Dragons - Not a 4 player game.
Desert Assault - Yep, slight angle on a Data East title that bombed.
Violent Storm - Not 4 players, not available as a dedicated game as far as I can tell.
Captain America & the Avengers - Yep, another slight angle on another Data East bomb.
NBA Jam Extreme - Yep, slight angle on the game that killed the series.
Hard Yardage - Yep, another bomb with a slight angle.
Pit Fighter - Not a 4 player game.
Combatribes - Not a 4 player game. Picture on klov is a bad 3 player conversion stuffed into a 2 player machine.
Xenophobe - Not a 4 player game.

Since this topic seems to come up often around here, I've been paying attention to stick angling on original machines.  Sometimes it's hard to tell if the layouts are truly originals or someone recreating a machine or doing a conversion.  I've seen pictures of Open Ice and Rampage: World Tour machines with angled sticks yet it seems the actual originals were not angled. As far as I can tell, these machines did indeed use angled sticks for the outside players:

WWF Wrestlefest
King of the Dragons
Desert Assault
Violent Storm
Captain America & the Avengers
NBA Jam Extreme
Hard Yardage
Pit Fighter
Combatribes
Xenophobe

Since there are so many 3 and 4 player cabs that I can't even find pictures of, I'm sure this list should be much larger.  The Smash TV argument is a pretty good reason not to angle your sticks but I honestly think the whole myth about no commercial cabinets angling the outer sticks is pretty silly.