Densha de Go! Final - how to enable blind controller options

[baritonomarchetto]

Hi all,

I am at home for christmas this days and I have started working on a project I had on old for months. The proj consist in the convertion of a Densha de Go! (DDG!) Arcade controller to be used with PC DDG! ports. I will use Arduino Leonardo/Micro for this and the first tests suggest that this is a praticable way.

I will not report details in this topic (I will do when the controller will be ready ... a lot of painting and sketching work ahead) but a question to see if a problem i am trying to face could be solved easily.

Older PC DDG! versions let you select the type of controller you prefer: keyboard, joypad, DDG! controller. The selection can be done with the in-game options. The main problem with older DDG! versions is that you can select at max a 800x600 resolution (even lower in some cases, i.e. DDG! 2).

The newer DDG! Final has a wider range of resolutions, but controller type selections are not in-game options, but are handled via an external cfg program that unlock selections other than keyboard only if a joypad or a controller are connected (see attached file). In the attached file only "A" and "B" options are possible, the other are blind.

Anyone know if, in general, there's a way to activate such blind options?

Thanks in advance!

[PL1]

Have you looked through the Densha De Go forums here?


Scott

[baritonomarchetto]

Sure i took a look at that forum : unfortunately apart from some translation there's little useful infos there. Anyway, if a common method to enable such blind options is available for other games, it must work on DDG! too... is there such a way, as far as you know?

[PL1]

Hacking the software is way above my skill set.

This guy documented how he connected the Dreamcast controller via an Arduino.

The program is probably looking for USB IDs associated with the supported Densha De Go controllers and enabling the related option(s).

You may want to:

1. Find an inexpensive controller on e-bay, craigslist, etc. that will work with your software and use that to reverse engineer a custom controller.

2. Contact individuals who own the controllers like or .

Tell them you really like the games and want to document all the features/functions/details of the various controllers.

Probably not a good idea to mention to them that you are gathering this info so anyone who wants can build their own controller since that could be perceived as undermining the value of their controller collection.


Scott

[baritonomarchetto]

Thanks for the help.

It would not be an easy task actually to change FTID descriptors in Arduino, so I will give up on this (I mean, i am giving up forcing DDG! final to activate blind options, but the controller will be ready to work with older DDG versions in a week or two!).

I will resume this in the future, when a ID hack option or something like that will be possible.

I will report the full project in another topic: DDG! Arcade controller is incredibly interesting from a technical point of view

[PL1]

Drop a PM to Degenatrons.

He's probably busy fabricating a bunch of the 1000+ cables for the miniConsole+ Kickstarter right now, but IIRC he has done something similar to the ID changes you're talking about with several types of KADE encoders.

Source code for the prototype maxArcade (a.k.a. fatArcade) is here.

If you look at lines 38-47 of the "mamex4/usb_keyboard.c" file, you'll find the ID and driver info.  Lines 197-237 might also be useful.   

If the controller is a gamepad, check out the xbox source code here.

Lines 134-145 of "Descriptors.c" look somewhat promising.   


Scott