rotary joystick interface suppliers

[sugarlicious]

I've gleaned some great information from these boards; such as: use Druin's rotary interface adapter for rotary joysticks.

Problem is it appears the website no longer takes orders.  Same for the MK64 website.

Are there any other suppliers for a mechanical rotary joystick interface?  Does anyone know if Druin's will be up and taking orders in the near future?

Those Ikari Warriors aren't playing themselves you know!

Thanks in advance.

[mahuti]

My suggestion... having purchased and installed and played with a druins board, etc. ....
Add an optical spinner to your joystick instead. Even with a druins board it's still not a perfect experience, and the optical rotary can play more games than the mechanical ones.

[thesmit]

I actually have a couple of these joysticks myself and when I was looking at putting them into a cab (that project is currently on hold), from what I can recall, I think there is a build specific of MAME that is actually made to support rotatable joysticks... I am not sure what it's called though, somthing like rotata-mame.... have a look around the boards...
Search for things like rotable mame, snk rotatable joystick, etc.... I think it is called an LS-30 or somthing similar to that.

Hope it helps,
Smit

[rdagger]

I built my own rotary interface.
I think thesmit is thinking of MameAnalog
I had MameAnalog working a while back, but recently when I switched computers I got a newer version of MameAnalog, and I could not quite get the settings right.  Every now and then the soldier would turn an extra click.  I probably just didn't set it up right or maybe the analog settings are off.

[mahuti]

That's the problem everyone has... they guys do extra clicks. It's maddening.

[Minwah]

Add an optical spinner to your joystick instead. Even with a druins board it's still not a perfect experience, and the optical rotary can play more games than the mechanical ones.

Ditto...

[PetitMorte]

Just above the banner ad on druin's website it says "Our Rotary Interface is offered as an upgrade option in the SlikStik line of professional arcade control panel products"

It might be worth your time to check with them and see if they have any extra Druin Encoders laying around that they're willing to part with.   

[RobotronNut]

That's the problem everyone has... they guys do extra clicks. It's maddening.

does anyone know why this happens? the rotary switch appears to have 12 physical contacts, so it would seem straightforward to get perfect information to mame. could this just be a design defect in druin's board?

[markrvp]

That's the problem everyone has... they guys do extra clicks. It's maddening.

does anyone know why this happens? the rotary switch appears to have 12 physical contacts, so it would seem straightforward to get perfect information to mame. could this just be a design defect in druin's board?

It's a MAME issue.  The devs wrote it to expect a mouse (or other analog device) instead of direct digital input.  I agree with you that it should be an incredibly easy thing to change in MAME if the devs would do it.

[rdagger]

It's definitely not the interface because Ikari doesn't play right with the keyboard either.

[Kremmit]

MameAnalog+ supported direct, Druin-free connection of the 12 way rotary switch, but only for a few games.  Not including Ikari, sadly.  Gameplay was reportedly flawless for the games it supported when the sticks were hooked up that way.

A fix in the MAME code for all the rotary games to allow direct connection of the 12-way switch is the real solution.  We have the hardware, the game ROM is listening for the input from said hardware- the MAME code is the only thing keeping them apart.

[rdagger]

Using 12 or 24 inputs on an encoder seems rather unrealistic for most people.  I think the best solution would be to fix the keyboard code so each key down event only causes a single rotation.   Then the games would work with any of the rotary interfaces and you would only need 2 or 4 inputs.  Also, the games could be played with joysticks that have 2 buttons like a Discs of Tron joystick or a flight stick.  One button could be rotate left and the other rotate right.

[Lilwolf]

analog+ mame handles the single button move... Still not perfect because it would have to be fast polled.  You might miss a click if you go real fast.  But doing this with a MK64 (which you could set the time) I came pretty close.

But I think the current best solution, if you have enought inputs, is to use both a druins and 12 direct connections.  Because time soldiers is SO MUCH BETTER when you can quickly swith 3 shoot and switch back to continue.  I do this ALL the time.

the druins is so cheap these days, its almost worth it JUST for xybots (which isn't a rotary game, but plays REALLY well with one with left and right clicks).

[rdagger]

analog+ mame handles the single button move...

Maybe I'm setting something up wrong, but analog+ doesn't seem to work any better for me with Ikari than regular Mame.  It still sometimes moves 2 times for a single press.  This is true with the rotary interface and with the keyboard.

[u_rebelscum]

analog+ mame handles the single button move...

Maybe I'm setting something up wrong, but analog+ doesn't seem to work any better for me with Ikari than regular Mame.  It still sometimes moves 2 times for a single press.  This is true with the rotary interface and with the keyboard.

You have to set the inputs differently (I left official mame's way as the default).

Unmap the dial inputs (official mame's way), and instead map the left right turns to the left right buttons.

(But don't map anything to the 12 button groups unless you're directly hooking each of the 12 switches on the rotary to the computer individually.)

[rdagger]

You have to set the inputs differently (I left official mame's way as the default).
Unmap the dial inputs (official mame's way), and instead map the left right turns to the left right buttons.
(But don't map anything to the 12 button groups unless you're directly hooking each of the 12 switches on the rotary to the computer individually.)

Sorry, I tried several combinations but I'm still missing something.
I just cleared everything to the following; which do I have to change?

P1 Up = Up Arrow
P1 Down = Down Arrow
P1 Left = Left Arrow
P1 Right = Right Arrow
Dial Analog = n/a
Dial Dec = None
Dial Inc = None
P1 Button 4 through P4 Button 10 = None

[Kremmit]

Using 12 or 24 inputs on an encoder seems rather unrealistic for most people. ...Then the games would work with any of the rotary interfaces and you would only need 2 or 4 inputs. 

How is using 12 or 24 inputs on one encoder worse than buying/building another whole encoder?

I think the best solution would be to fix the keyboard code so each key down event only causes a single rotation. ...Also, the games could be played with joysticks that have 2 buttons like a Discs of Tron joystick or a flight stick.  One button could be rotate left and the other rotate right.

While I'm still in favor of direct connection support, for complete and perfect documentation of the original game, you'll get no complaints from me if this feature is also added.  It's a hack, but a much better hack than the one we're all making do with now.  It would undoubtedly make the games playable for more people.

Maybe I'm setting something up wrong, but analog+ doesn't seem to work any better for me with Ikari than regular Mame.  It still sometimes moves 2 times for a single press.  This is true with the rotary interface and with the keyboard.

That shouldn't happen if you use the 12 button group instead of the dial or the left/right button assignments.

Unmap the dial inputs (official mame's way), and instead map the left right turns to the left right buttons.

 

Can you still get missed/extra turns connected this way?

[RandyT]

If anyone cares, the only reason the GP-Wiz49 doesn't yet have support for this built-in is because there is no proper way to implement this control the way MAME handles it currently.

I believe I can properly implement this device if MAME used a 1 input cycle per movement scheme.  It wouldn't lose movements and would consume a lot less than 12 inputs.

SO,  who's gonna fix it ?

RandyT

[MikeQ]

If anyone cares, the only reason the GP-Wiz49 doesn't yet have support for this built-in is because there is no proper way to implement this control the way MAME handles it currently.

I believe I can properly implement this device if MAME used a 1 input cycle per movement scheme.  It wouldn't lose movements and would consume a lot less than 12 inputs.

SO,  who's gonna fix it ?

RandyT

Sucks to be a noob.  If you educate me, I'll put it on the list.

[Tiger-Heli]

If anyone cares, the only reason the GP-Wiz49 doesn't yet have support for this built-in is because there is no proper way to implement this control the way MAME handles it currently.

I believe I can properly implement this device if MAME used a 1 input cycle per movement scheme.  It wouldn't lose movements and would consume a lot less than 12 inputs.

SO,  who's gonna fix it ?

RandyT

Many versions of MAME Analog Plus already support this, if you map the player rotation to buttons 4 and 5 (if I read correctly, I skimmed this thread).

Here's what I said on my page:

MC-Escher Source Files:  Here is an explanation of these files:  Source code fixes were posted by MC-Escher and are available here for MAME 0.59.   (You can use the custom 0.59 build for the rotary games and the later builds for everything else).   These files were added to MAME Analog Plus in 0.71.2 and improved through 0.74.1 and included in later builds.

Here's the problem:  In standard MAME using the keyboard, the character will continue to rotate as long as the key is depressed.  This is the best way to play with a normal keyboard.  With a standard microswitch (very extreme examples), let's say I rotate the joystick VERY slowly one click.  The character might rotate 180 degrees, because to MAME I have depressed the rotate key for 2 seconds.  Now let's say I rotate the joystick VERY quickly six clicks.  The character might only rotate 45 degrees, because, to MAME I only depressed the rotate key for 0.1 seconds.

What MC-Escher's build does is modify MAME so that if you were to press and hold the rotate key for 30 seconds (and not get killed) the character would not rotate more than one click (45 or 30 degrees, depending on the game).  This should take the rotation speed out of the equation.

Here is how to set it up:  If you have Druin's 12-way rotary interface, MK64 12-way rotary interface, or one similar; map the interface's left to button 4, and the interface's right to button 5 for each player. You also might want to disable the mouse and map nothing to the MAME "standard" Dial inputs for the specific games.

Based on BYOAC comments, the MC-Escher files work better with the MK64 interface, but I am unsure whether it or the standard settings work better with Druin's interface.

From http://www.mameworld.net/tigerheli/encoder/main.htm#Rotary_Joystick_Interfaces

Sorry if this was already mentioned.

[XtraSmiley]

^^^This is great as I have the Druin, but isn't there an easier way to get this to work with regular MAME?

[Tiger-Heli]

^^^This is great as I have the Druin, but isn't there an easier way to get this to work with regular MAME?

Not accurately.  You can just use the MAME defaults, but you may get missed clicks/double clicks

[rdagger]

Many versions of MAME Analog Plus already support this, if you map the player rotation to buttons 4 and 5...
Here is how to set it up:  If you have Druin's 12-way rotary interface, MK64 12-way rotary interface, or one similar; map the interface's left to button 4, and the interface's right to button 5 for each player. You also might want to disable the mouse and map nothing to the MAME "standard" Dial inputs for the specific games.

I can't get it to work.  I set up a clean build of MameAnalog in a new folder with just Ikari.  I'm running the latest version of MameAnalog with the -nomouse switch.  I have set P1 Dial Analog to N/A and the P1 Dial Decl & Incl to None.  I have set P1 Button 4 to 'Z' and P1 Button 5 to 'X' which are the keys I mapped my interfaces Left and Right rotation to respectively.  I have also made sure that P1 and P2 buttons 6 and higher are set to none or N/A and all P3 and P4 buttons are set to none or N/A.

When I play Ikari, pressing 'Z' or 'X' does nothing.

[spystyle]