Main > Main Forum

2-4-8-way switcher for 8-way-joysticks

Pages: << < (8/9) > >>

Bender:

Just wanted to give a small update
I received the E-liminators a couple of day ago
They were very easy to assemble, if you are comfortable soldering plus there are great directions on the website
I took about 15 min to assemble and put together
I'll give a full review in the review section in a week or so after some more testing
My initial responce is very positive. It makes a standard 8-way feel almost as good as the maps for the U360 (but limited to only standard 2-4-8 way of course)
The issue with both those solutions is still the lack of physical restriction
But considering that, they work great I was able to get over 100,000 on Donkey Kong on my first run through, so I was very pleased, Played Tron and was able to seamlessly switch between 4-way and 8-way in mid game (now that is cool!) no jaggies for me on the light cycles!
Also some other good news for me is that the joystick I'm using for this is a hacked wireless XBOX360 controller which only out puts 3.3v and the board asks for 5v but everything works fine off 3.3v (I did not install the resistors on the LED because off the lower voltage)

Necro:


--- Quote from: RandyT on January 19, 2010, 03:02:18 pm ---So what this gives you is a stick that is hard to go from Up or Down to Left or Right, and very easy to go from Left or Right to Up or Down.  This would give it a heavy "preference" or weight it toward the verticals.  Changing the order of the switches isn't going to help.  It will just weight the stick toward some other direction, which is really not what you want to be doing.

--- End quote ---

Just thinking this through initially, I had the exact same thought as you but then I was thinking a bit more on it - there's a chance that something doing with timing of switch presses is being used to determine 'primary' button.  Since a computer is doing the polling, even milliseconds should be discernible and it should be possible to clearly determine what switch was pressed first and make that one only activate or switch to another switch if it's clearly activated,

Basically, there seems to be - based on how it's done - the potential for this to be much more than what you said and have a decent algorithm in it to determine what direction to prioritize under a variety of situations/combinations of presses. 



boomstick:

Look forward to reading your review bender.  It will be interesting to her your experiences.  I myself ordered a unit which arrived a couple of days ago. haven't yet had chance to play with it yet  :(.  Hopefully the weekend will allow me a little time. 

RandyT:


--- Quote from: Necro on January 28, 2010, 09:22:23 am ---
--- Quote from: RandyT on January 19, 2010, 03:02:18 pm ---So what this gives you is a stick that is hard to go from Up or Down to Left or Right, and very easy to go from Left or Right to Up or Down.  This would give it a heavy "preference" or weight it toward the verticals.  Changing the order of the switches isn't going to help.  It will just weight the stick toward some other direction, which is really not what you want to be doing.

--- End quote ---

Just thinking this through initially, I had the exact same thought as you but then I was thinking a bit more on it - there's a chance that something doing with timing of switch presses is being used to determine 'primary' button.  Since a computer is doing the polling, even milliseconds should be discernible and it should be possible to clearly determine what switch was pressed first and make that one only activate or switch to another switch if it's clearly activated,

Basically, there seems to be - based on how it's done - the potential for this to be much more than what you said and have a decent algorithm in it to determine what direction to prioritize under a variety of situations/combinations of presses.  

--- End quote ---

Sorry, but I honestly believe you are mistaken.  I was referring to the switch wiring method in my post, not a "computer" (microcontroller), which I am all too familiar with capabilities-wise.  Regardless, there is not much difference in the microcontroller method, other than that one can selectively maximize or minimize the weight given to the cardinal directions.

The plain and simple fact is that a controller can never "know" the intentions of a player, without having a substantial amount of input to base a decision on.  With a switch based stick, there are 8,  and only 8, pieces of information from which to decide.  From those eight pieces of information, only 2, other than the information already in hand (current direction), will ever be important for considering the intent of  the player in 4-way mode.  Cardinal Direction A + Cardinal Direction B, and Cardinal Direction B.  

If you know of some method, other than the ones I provided above, to accurately discern a player's intentions from a paltry two pieces of information, then perhaps sharing your idea would be more beneficial than inferring the possibility of some magic computer stuff that logic can't support.

We also want to make sure that results are quantifiable and not attributed to a "honeymoon" period associated with a personal expenditure.  We all know what MAME does to the controls in "sticky" mode.  If this piece of hardware can do more than that, we should probably get it working on stock market tips ;).

RandyT



bencao74:


--- Quote ---They were very easy to assemble, if you are comfortable soldering plus there are great directions on the website
I took about 15 min to assemble and put together

--- End quote ---


Thanks for the kind words about the documentation and assembly instruction :)


--- Quote ---But considering that, they work great I was able to get over 100,000 on Donkey Kong on my first run through, so I was very pleased, Played Tron and was able to seamlessly switch between 4-way and 8-way in mid game (now that is cool!) no jaggies for me on the light cycles!

--- End quote ---

sounds like a improvement in gameplay. For my work this qualitative comments are very motivating :)
But we`re currently working on statistical analysis to measure the quantitative improvement in different games, too.  For this statistical analysis we're always open for extending our population. 100,000 points is a very good score for me. I would categorize you in the pro players. This category of players is hard to find for a representative population . So if you don't mind, you could send me or jan a mail or pm, if you want to attend this investigation. If anyone else want to attend, don`t hesitate to send a pm.

Hopefully we can release some descriptive statistic, soon. Depending on the factual basis we could think about some inference methods, too.


--- Quote ---Also some other good news for me is that the joystick I'm using for this is a hacked wireless XBOX360 controller which only out puts 3.3v and the board asks for 5v but everything works fine off 3.3v (I did not install the resistors on the LED because off the lower voltage)

--- End quote ---

very nice :)

bencao74

Pages: << < (8/9) > >>

Go to full version