Controls for Robotron and 2 players?

[Cynicaster]

I like me some Robotron every now and then, and I play fairly often on my cabinet, but the one thing I don't like about my setup when playing that game (and, indeed, all twin stick shooters) is that the joysticks are set up more with comfortable 2-player use in mind rather than twin stick games (i.e., spaced too far apart).  The games are still playable and fun, but I think I'd feel a lot more "in tune" with the game if the sticks were closer together. 

I did a quick Google search and best I can tell the sticks on a Robotron cabinet are ~11" apart (can anybody confirm?). 

I think that spacing would make it pretty uncomfortable for two full grown men to stand side by side and play a game. 

Obviously general purpose cabinets are riddled with compromises, so something in between what I have now and the actual Robotron dimensions would probably be optimal. 

I was just wondering--has anybody attempted to address this conundrum, and if so, what did you come up with for spacing? 

Thanks


 

[harveybirdman]

I've seen people throw on another 8 way to both player 1 and Player 2 just to the right of their button battery.


J bbb J                    J bbb  J
  bbb                         bbb

If only we all had enormus game rooms... cause the best thing is to just have a dedicated twinstick cab.

[PL1]

Another good reason for using a modular CP.


Scott

[Dcpmark]

I like me some Robotron every now and then, and I play fairly often on my cabinet, but the one thing I don't like about my setup when playing that game (and, indeed, all twin stick shooters) is that the joysticks are set up more with comfortable 2-player use in mind rather than twin stick games (i.e., spaced too far apart).  The games are still playable and fun, but I think I'd feel a lot more "in tune" with the game if the sticks were closer together. 

I did a quick Google search and best I can tell the sticks on a Robotron cabinet are ~11" apart (can anybody confirm?). 

I think that spacing would make it pretty uncomfortable for two full grown men to stand side by side and play a game. 

Obviously general purpose cabinets are riddled with compromises, so something in between what I have now and the actual Robotron dimensions would probably be optimal. 

I was just wondering--has anybody attempted to address this conundrum, and if so, what did you come up with for spacing? 

Thanks

Interesting! The 2 sticks on my HotRod SE cp are 11.5" apart. One benefit of having a smaller 24" 2-player cp, I guess. No problem with 2 full-grown men playing at the same time.

[Cynicaster]

Interesting! The 2 sticks on my HotRod SE cp are 11.5" apart. One benefit of having a smaller 24" 2-player cp, I guess. No problem with 2 full-grown men playing at the same time.

Forgive my ignorance, but what is a "HotRod SE" control panel?

[shponglefan]

Another good reason for using a modular CP.

+1

[eds1275]

Interesting! The 2 sticks on my HotRod SE cp are 11.5" apart. One benefit of having a smaller 24" 2-player cp, I guess. No problem with 2 full-grown men playing at the same time.

Some men are more full-grown than others. Keep your mind out of the gutter.

[Dcpmark]

Interesting! The 2 sticks on my HotRod SE cp are 11.5" apart. One benefit of having a smaller 24" 2-player cp, I guess. No problem with 2 full-grown men playing at the same time.

Forgive my ignorance, but what is a "HotRod SE" control panel?

It's a ready-made CP that was sold some time back. Just google "HotRod SE", and you'll see pics of it.

[1500points]

the sticks on my real robotron with original control panel overlay are exactly 10 inches apart.
(11.5inches would be that typical conversion of adding 1.5 inches to everything......)

you can actually get away with 9 inches without noticing any major issues when playing a long time.
(but again, that will vary depending on style. do you like to firmly palms the balls from the top, or do you like the more delicate 2 finger grasp from the side technique......)

oh my.

[Nephasth]

the sticks on my real robotron with original control panel overlay are exactly 10 inches apart.

I was curious what they were on a dedicated Robotron. On the Beast, my joysticks are 10 1/8" apart... so close.

[1500points]

I'm going to guess that they probably took the bell curve of shoulder widths and came up with a decent average.  Everything was about optimizing the coin-op experience during that era.

If you are using light action joysticks about any width is just fine.
it's when you have real wicos with stiff grommets, or wico 360s with the heavy spring action that you have to start muscling it and the physics of leverage come into play.

[CheffoJeffo]

Everything was about optimizing the coin-op experience during that era.

Don't let Donk hear you say that ...

(In case the reference isn't clear, I agree 100% with you and had a bit of a tiff with someone over this notion and Robotron in particular).

 

[1500points]

Larry and Eugene were solidly bred into the coin-op culture which is why they did so well in the industry.

For example, This fall I asked Eugene about Defender (baiters were modeled after the tiny saucer in asteroids they called lil b@$trds)  his reply for adding them. "time is money!"

And when asked about the choice in verbage in the defender manual here is Larry's recent reply:
Difficulty Label History (Larry DeMar Jan 2013)
  Hard for the player is a conservative setting by the operator.
 Easy for the player is a liberal setting by the operator.
 The manual and operator settings were created for the game operator’s point of view, with setting history going back to electromechanical pinball machines with jumper wires that changes the settings.  Often there were tags next to jumper blocks showing “Cons” or “Lib” to help guide these selections.


So back to Robotron.....the hulks are modeled after evil otto in berzerk which forces the game forward without milking time.

[Gray_Area]

I have a 35" wide panel, and I don't notice any difference in my playing on that versus a real machine....um, except that I've done better on my panel. Like, millions better.


On 1500points' remarks: it would seem at least Larry had a rather top-down method to creating game features, versus many others who just 'tried to come up with something cool', and didn't possibly because of it.

[1500points]

Here is a tidbit for you.  Mame 148 has a complete re-write of the blitter emulation coming in near future.
I just did a field test and think it is PERFECT.  I'll be curious to know what you guys think when it is released.



http://www.seanriddle.com/blitter.html

[Cynicaster]

I have a 35" wide panel, and I don't notice any difference in my playing on that versus a real machine....um, except that I've done better on my panel. Like, millions better.

Really? 

Like I said, on my setup, I can play twin-stick games and still have fun.  It's not that the wide spacing is physically "uncomfortable".  It's just that I have a hard time being mentally "in tune" with both sticks simultaneously when they're so far apart, and my precision suffers tremendously as a result.

I actually play both left-handed and right-handed, depending on the game.  For shmups, beat em ups, and games that use multiple buttons, I like to use my right hand for button duty and left hand for joystick.  For maze games and early 80's 4-way games like Burgertime and Zoo Keeper, it's vice versa.  Not sure why that is--probably because I grew up playing the older-style games on Atari 2600 (which uses a right-handed controller) and the late 80's and 90's style games on NES and Genesis (which both use left-handed controllers). 

Anyway, I mention this because it would be nice to have the left- and right-hand joysticks in a dual-stick setup to be in the same position relative to me as they would be if I were using either one individually--or, at least, as close to that ideal as practical.  I don't know about you, but if I take my "natural" standing position for a frantic game like Zoo Keeper, and force myself to stand several inches to the left, it's going to affect my scores because it's a bit awkward.  It's all the more important in a game that requires the pixel-precision movement of Robotron.     
       

[1500points]

I actually play both left-handed and right-handed, depending on the game.  For shmups, beat em ups, and games that use multiple buttons, I like to use my right hand for button duty and left hand for joystick.  For maze games and early 80's 4-way games like Burgertime and Zoo Keeper, it's vice versa.  Not sure why that is--probably because I grew up playing the older-style games on Atari 2600 (which uses a right-handed controller) and the late 80's and 90's style games on NES and Genesis (which both use left-handed controllers).     
     

hmmm, I never really thought about that phenomena.  Now that I think about it I play Donkey Kong with the normal control panel setup, but it feels extremely uncomfortable to play with the same joystick hand on pacman.  and trackball for centipede feels really odd using left hand.  weird.

[secret80sman]

Here is a tidbit for you.  Mame 148 has a complete re-write of the blitter emulation coming in near future.
I just did a field test and think it is PERFECT.  I'll be curious to know what you guys think when it is released.



http://www.seanriddle.com/blitter.html

Wow, thank you for that! Should make a huge difference in game play once I dust off my skills. Very cool read too.

[Cynicaster]

Here is a tidbit for you.  Mame 148 has a complete re-write of the blitter emulation coming in near future.
I just did a field test and think it is PERFECT.  I'll be curious to know what you guys think when it is released.



http://www.seanriddle.com/blitter.html

I've never  heard of this "blitter" stuff before.  I tried to read the technical write-up, and I think I got the gist of it, but I'm still kind of unclear on what the real-world implications are to the gameplay, other than the vague statement that "MAME has less slow-down and therefore is harder".  How much harder?

Based on some of the commentary in that video, it sounds like the tanks and enforcers spawn much more quickly in MAME than on original hardware... am I getting that right?  It would make sense... sometimes when I play that tank level it's totally holy chit ridiculous, even for a classic arcade game. 

 

[1500points]

Basically, and I'm no developer mind you....in games like Defender the processing of video objects is done on the CPU.
BUT a game like robotron is so intense that the CPU couldn't manage it alone.
SO they developed an off-board "special" set of chips to manage the video (blits....blitter concept).
those special blitter chips are wicked fast at what they do.
therefore you get an awesomely intense gameplay experience in 1982 such as Robotron.

well along comes emulation of the real hardware and it is all guesswork making software that acts like that real hardware. things like how much time should the emulation take to do things like access RAM and ROM.  and how fast should all those blitter objects be processed.  it is all guesswork.  especially since the Special chips were a unique design. you'd have to crack them open and view with a microscope to really understand the hardware theory... (ie not likely to happen anytime soon)

soooo on the early attempts mame didn't have proper time for the cpu OR the special chips.  and the guesses were way off of accurate.
what you'd see would be enemy projectiles processing way too fast, shots would blister across the screen, or hulks moving really fast, or grunts overtaking you way too fast..

the real hardware would only do a few of those enemy behaviors at a time, but new computers and emulation were trying to process all the objects at one time which is untolerably hard to deal with for the player in a game like robotron.

so it has been an ongoing process of trial and error development and gameplay feedback to try to "dial in" the gameplay of williams games with blitter (robotron/joust/bubbles/etc, not defender/stargate) so they were fun.  And finally it is in the very final stages of someone getting it just right.

If you want to see what I mean first hand. go buy midway arcade origins for xbox. the emulation is terrible and the game is brutally hard.
try a 19-1 board and your scores will be terrible.
then try mame 148 when the updates are released, or if you are lucky to play a real machine. and you'll find you are a lot better at robotron than you realized! 

PS- I got immersed in this accidentally...i had a 19-1 board and the xbla version of robotron. i was never a robo player in the golden era. so i practice and practiced and still couldn't crack half a million. it was soooo frustrating.
then one day i visited a friend with a real robotron and BAM I'm rocking 1 million. holy crap. wave 42 was easier on real machine than wave 12 on the 19-1 board!   which led me to a lot of internet research and whining...sean riddle listened and came to the rescue....yada yada yada. here we are!

[Gray_Area]

I think the Robo talk should be remanded to a different thread.

@Cyn: people have different fondling experiences, capabilities, and needs. You can learn differently - or build differently.

[RandyT]

I'm definitely going to try this out.  I've gone over 600k on emulated code and I'm now genuinely curious how that translates to the update.

One thing which has always annoyed me was the visual (or lack thereof) when grunts overlapped, but I didn't see any of that happening on your video.  I tend to think the blitter emulation has something to do with this as well, so I have high hopes for the re-write.

BTW, the Midway style 49-ways, with a replacement ball-top shaft, work great for Robotron

[Cynicaster]

I play MAME v122 on my cabinet and I can’t crack 300k in Robotron.  The game just kicks my freakin’ arse 6 ways from Sunday.  I can’t believe I’ve not heard about these gross inaccuracies in emulation until now—thanks for sharing. 

[1500points]

this isn't joysticks but I'll drop one last thing that you might find interesting.  that mame emulation we've been talking about.  Here is what the inside of one of the blitter chips looks like.  crazy to think software can emulate that physical sliver only 1/10th inch wide: