Can't tune in Ultimarc Rotary Joystick Interface

[jasonbar]

Hi-

I'm having trouble getting my Rotary Joystick Interface (http://www.ultimarc.com/rotary.html) configured correctly.

I plugged it in, & if I pull up notepad, I see the correct characters appear when I spin my 2 joysticks: [ ] / \

I can spin them really fast & I get a character to appear for each rotation detent, so I know the hardware's working fine.


I went into Ikari Warriors in MAME to set up those controls.  I set up the Positional Dec & Positional Inc properly, so that I see [ & ] for P1 & / & | for P2.

However, when I play the game, the response of rotating the sticks is almost non-existant.  After tons of spinning, I'm lucky to get 1 rotation increment on my on-screen warrior.


The page linked above suggests: "You may also want to go to the Input (General) settings in MAME and set the positional delay to zero and the positional sensitivity to 100% for best response."

I think that must've been written for an older version of MAME, as I can't find those settings anywhere in the Input (General) settings.  The closest I could find was these items in the Player 1 Controls section, and these don't look like what I want:

    Positional Analog
    Positional Dec
    Positional Inc
    Positional V Analog
    Positional V Dec
    Positional V Inc


Thanks for any help you can provide!

-Jason

[u_rebelscum]

"You may also want to go to the Input (General) settings in MAME and set the positional delay to zero and the positional sensitivity to 100% for best response."

I think that must've been written for an older version of MAME, as I can't find those settings anywhere in the Input (General) settings. 

You're close.  (You'll have to do this game by game. )

Start game with rotary joystick (ikari)
tab
Select "Analog Controls" (this is where it's different from what you were doing)
Adjust the postional's digital speed and sensitivity to 0 & 100%.


Note: some changes in the input code have occurred over the last few versions & before, so let us know if this works or not, and what version # mame you have.

[jasonbar]

Thanks once again for your help, URS.

Well, it's better, but still funky.

I'm running MAME 115.  I did find the Analog Controls menu & the position digital speed & sensitivity entries & set them to 0 & 100%.

I tried out Ikari 1 & Ikari 3 & got better behavior, but the game still misses many of my twists.  It seems to respond quickly to a whole lot of stick-twisting, but if I do the occasional 1-detent click, it sometimes gets every click or sometimes takes up to 5 or 6 clicks before my dude will rotate a notch...  :[

Thanks,
-Jason

PS--what's this doing in the "analog controls" menu anyway?

[u_rebelscum]

what's this doing in the "analog controls" menu anyway?

In general, digital speed is how fast mame fakes "increasing" the analog value when translating digital to analog, while sensitivity is the percentage of mame's internal analog value mame sends the game.

Example: sensitivity is 50%.  If you have an analog joystick, and it's all the way to the right, and the game input type is analog stick or paddle, mame will send the game that it's half way to the right (assuming mame is set to emulate the stick/paddle at 100%).  Dial/TB/spinner is a little different in that at 50%, mame sends the game that it's turning half the rate that mame gets it (think TT2's 1200 cpr, tempest had 72 cpr, so set sensitibity to 6% mame sends the game 72 cpr of TT2).

Digital speed, and it's related centering speed, is only for digital to analog translation, the former for when the digital button is pressed, the latter when it's not pressed and the input type in mame is set to autocenter.  Example: if set to 10, and button pressed, mame changes the analog value by 10 per frame until the button is released.  Important: this is assuming sensitivity is set to 100%; sensitivity changes this, so if sensitivity was at 50%, the delta would be 5 instead of 10.

Positional input type is a special analog input type that could be like a spinner, or like an analog stick, or a combination of the two, and has other special properties, and is still WIP.  One property is that when the digital speed is set to 0, mame changes the value by one the first time it sees it pressed, but doesn't change the value after that (until button released and then pressed again of course).

How do all these add up in mame in ikari type rotary games? 
If sensitivity was less than 100%, then mame would change the value by less than 1.  But mame work in integers, so you can lose info.
If digital speed was not 0, the player will continue to turn as long as mame sees the button is held down. 
If the positional type code inside mame is broken, things wouldn't work as they should.


So....

How current is your RJI?  It was fixed, but for a while the RJI would send the pressed button signal so shor mame would not detect the press, as mame uses a "current state" method of viewing inputs, not the normal "event based" method.  From your symptoms, it almost sounds like it's just barely too fast for mame to constantly poll when the "button is pressed".

Another possibility, how tight is your CPU speed to run those games?  If it's a borderline computer, that might be the cause instead.

 

[jasonbar]

Rebel-

Thanks for the dissertation!  That's good wiki stuff there, that is!

A quick "computer power" check revealed that I can run Ikari 1 & 3 at well over 200% speed if I turn off throttling, so my PC's not the culprit.

I've also been e-mailing w/ Andy @ Ultimarc--he's been very helpful.  My RJI was bought around Dec 06 as part of my SlikStik Quad.  Andy says that falls under the older chip that puts out the short pulse.  He's going to hook me up w/ a new chip.  I'll report back here after I try it out.


Thanks,
-Jason

[TPB]

My RJI was bought around Dec 06 as part of my SlikStik Quad.  Andy says that falls under the older chip that puts out the short pulse.  He's going to hook me up w/ a new chip.  I'll report back here after I try it out.

Please do report back.   

I'm planning on buying one of these interfaces, to use with an LS-30 stick.

I'm interested to know how you go.

[XtraSmiley]

Andy also mailed me a new chip, but I still couldn't get the rotary games working right.  It pisses me off to since I have two rotaries on my panel....

[jasonbar]

Well, I've got good news & I've got bad news.

Good: Andy sent me a replacement chip promptly.  It took a little while to get to California from London, but not bad.  It was packaged well & included a nice little note describing how to make the chip swap.

After setting up the 3 Ikari Warriors games, I was able to play them just great (0 & 100%).


Bad: No other rotary games would work.  Off the top of my head, I browsed to & set up Heavy Barrel, Time Soldiers, & Gondomania.  In all 3 games, I seemed to get just 1 rotation & then absolutely no more rotations at all.  I did a quick check by mapping the decrement & increment to other buttons on my panel, & my on-screen dudes still didn't rotate.  So, I fear that it might be a MAME problem for those 3 games.  Darn--I really like those games.

Fearing that perhaps I'd blown the chip, I went back to Ikari 1 & it was still working fine.


Comments?  Anybody have those 3 games working fine?

-Jason

[TPB]

Bad: No other rotary games would work.

Expanded upon here ...

Refer to isucamper's post :

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=76828.msg823437#msg823437

[jasonbar]

Thank you *very* much for that link--I missed that thread.   

I'll continue posting in that thread now, as it's got much more detail & technical discussion over there. 

-Jason