SNK rotary Mame and flightstick

[deano728]

I have an Ikari Warriors machine that I'd like to Mame so that it plays heavy barrel and the other rotary joystick games. 

Also, I think I want to add a tron type joystick and spinner to play gorf, tron, etc. 

1. How can I hookup my rotary joysticks?  Is there some sort of adapter? 

2. What is the best flight stick to add that can play tron and some of the other flightstick games?

Thanks!

[isucamper]

1.  Not quite sure what you are hooking up to.  Do you mean how do you hook up your SNK rotary sticks to a PC running MAME?  You need a special interface like Ultimarc's dedicated rotary interface  (http://www.ultimarc.com/rotary.html) or Groovy Game Gear's GPWiz40 (http://groovygamegear.com/webstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=76_81&products_id=235) which has rotary support.  I've messed with both of these, and they both work perfectly as advertised.  GGG's is a little more robust, able to support directional rotary games like Front Line and Tin Star.  However, MAME's digital rotary support is really weak.  Only SNK's games offer 1-click, 1-turn support, and even that's been striped out in recent versions (go back to .123 if you need it). 

2.  I used this 10 dollar PC flight stick. 

http://www.megamacs.com/item/MacSense-iFunstick-USB/view,1105661/criteria,ifunstick/

Certainly not the most posh solution, but it's only 10 bucks, looks like a TRON stick, gives you full analog support for flight stick games.  And, using MAME's -joystick_map option, you can get near perfect TRON support (as in simulating the funky restrictor plate the arcade had).  I choose this stick cause my cab is TRON themed, and I wanted good compatibility for both TRON and Discs of TRON.  I am completely happy with how it turned out.  Both games play wonderfully. 

[deano728]

Yes, you were correct, I am hooking up to MAME.  Bummer that the rotary sticks don't work that well.  Thanks for the info, it is much appreciated.

As far as the flightstick.  Is there a way to mount it in a CP or do you just use the suction cups?  I was looking for a solution that I can make permanent.  If I don't, my 2 and 4 year olds will smash it.  Plus, I need something a little more rugged. 

If I went the Happ route, how do I connect those to a PC for MAME?  Is it easy to do and are there any recommendations on where to buy it for a better price than the HAPP site and which joystick works best?

[isucamper]

Yes, you were correct, I am hooking up to MAME.  Bummer that the rotary sticks don't work that well.  Thanks for the info, it is much appreciated.

As far as the flightstick.  Is there a way to mount it in a CP or do you just use the suction cups?  I was looking for a solution that I can make permanent.  If I don't, my 2 and 4 year olds will smash it.  Plus, I need something a little more rugged. 

If I went the Happ route, how do I connect those to a PC for MAME?  Is it easy to do and are there any recommendations on where to buy it for a better price than the HAPP site and which joystick works best?

I made a little plank for the stick to sit on. 

http://www.1up.com/do/my1Up?publicUserId=5723357

It is quite rugged and has stood up (so far) to some fairly major drunken yanking (heh) during Afterburner at some parties. 

Happ sells analog flights stick which, now that I think about it, I'm not sure how they hook  to a PC.  However, most people on here recommend the Happ Heavy Duty 8-way stick which is not analog and uses the usual microswitchs that standard joysticks use.  However, these don't work well for the light cycle levels on TRON unless you add Encryptor's restrictor plate:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=86520.0

Note that adding this restrictor makes other flight stick games control a little hard.  Unmodified, this stick is great for Discs of Tron.  Again, you are seeing why I went the analog stick route for my TRON cab.

About the rotaries.  As long as you use a version of MAME that supports the 1-click, 1-turn functionality for SNK games, it works great.  Even the games that don't support it are pretty playable.  I don't want to discourage you too much.  Just tonight I enjoyed some Ikari Warriors with my brother and he was quite impressed with the setup. 

See this thread for more on MAME and rotary games:

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=76828.0

[GaijinPunch]

How do the Mame settings work?  Since the original rotaries are a simple switch, what do analogue settings have to do with it?  Am I missing something?

I don't have a lot of space, so I wound up ripping the ass out of a Sigma Raijin and putting an LS-30 in.  Not the "smoothest" of sticks, but it works good enough.  I was able to 1CC Ikari in a weekend.

[deano7]

ISU, thanks for sharing!  I really enjoyed your blog and will bookmark it so that I can follow your lead to setup the flightstick.  For $10, it just seems like I have to try and make that one work. 

Good news on the mechanical rotary joysticks.  I am glad I can keep my old SNK ikari sticks and still get things to work.  woohoo.

Thanks again!

[u_rebelscum]

How do the Mame settings work?  Since the original rotaries are a simple switch, what do analogue settings have to do with it?  Am I missing something?

Well, technically, every input that mame sees is digital, as in ones and zeros.  Even ignoring that, trackballs and spinners are just two optical sensor switches; mame, and all OSes, OTOH treat the input as analog inputs.  So "digital" and "analog" have slightly different meanings than normally thought.  In mame, digital inputs have two states, analog has a range of possible values.

The LS-30 rotary stick has a 12 switch rotary, with one and only one, and always one, closed at a time.  This could have been emulated with 12 separate switches, or one analog device with a range of exactly 12 values.  Well, the 49-way sticks, with 7 values per axis, is treated as analog axes; and 12 is more than 7, so there shouldn't be any surprise that mame treats the 12-direction rotaries as analog inputs.

Currently, mame has a special input type called "positional" that covers these "rough analog" / "many digital" inputs.  Not all rotary games have been converted to positional, yet, though, and still use the old dial type.  Also, it looks like some positional features are recently broken and others never completed.

[isucamper]

ISU, thanks for sharing!  I really enjoyed your blog and will bookmark it so that I can follow your lead to setup the flightstick.  For $10, it just seems like I have to try and make that one work. 

Thanks.   I used wood glue and L-brackets to secure the sides of the plank to the panel top, screws to secure the bottom of the plank to the sides of the plank, and bolts through the joystick's suction cup holes to secure the joystick to the plank.  It feels real solid and I can remove the stick pretty easily by unscrewing the bottom of the plank from the sides.  It was a bit tricky getting it positioned just right, but it is possible.  You've got to be sure that it's got enough room for it's full range of movement and also enough room for your pinky finger when your moving all the way to one side or the other.  You can see in my blog where I had to try twice to get it positioned correctly.  Also, I wanted the stick to sit as low as possible so I didn't route out any wood from the bottom of the panel.  This makes it a little awkward to use when standing up (it feels like it's at sort of a funny angle if you have to have your thumb on one of the thumb buttons), but it's perfectly comfortable when you're sitting on a stool or something.   

Note that you probably wouldn't need as big of a hole if you routed out some of the wood underneath and set the stick higher than how I have it. 

Another annoying thing about those sticks is how big they are at the base.  You've got to allow for a lot of room for it in your panel box and I actually had to slice off the front of the plastic to get it to fit.  A jigsaw worked pretty good to do this (don't forget eye protection) but it vibrates the stick a lot during the cutting.  The first stick I tried this on didn't work correctly after the process (input was very jumpy as if there was a short or something) and something might have gotten damaged during the vibrating or maybe the stick didn't work right from the start (they are only 10 dolla sticks after all). 

All in all, it takes a bit of creativity and ingenuity, but if I can figure it out, anyone can. 

Oh, one last thing to know about these sticks.  They have these little adjuster wheels, one for the X axis and one for the Y axis.  Turning the wheels causes the center of the stick to move.  I've had them move a hair here and there during use which is annoying.  It's nothing that will screw you up during play, but after a few weeks worth of use, they move maybe a centimeter or two.  Enough to move the center of the stick to where it is noticably not supposed to be.  The hole in my panel is big enough that I can get my finger in there to turn them back, but I've been considering putting a drop of glue or something on them to keep them from moving.   Not a huge issue, but a little annoying.  For the functionality these sticks provide, these are all tiny nits.