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Vertical Games, Spinner & Trackball
NOP:
--- Quote from: Loafmeister on August 28, 2008, 12:18:49 pm ---May be wrong but didn't the Lemmings arcade prototype support a trackball? If so, I wonder why it didn't appear in the list?
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Lemmings prototype isn't there because it's horizontal.
The controls info does say trackball though, so you're correct.
--- Quote from: u_rebelscum on August 28, 2008, 01:32:39 pm ---
--- Quote from: NOP on August 28, 2008, 11:55:45 am ---...The biggest problem is that MAME typically describes trackball games as joy8way, so there is going to be a lot of missing entries if controls.dat hasn't described them properly....
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Any examples of these TB games mame lists as 8ways? ???
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well, now that I've been called on it, I can't find any. :-[
It does list both joy8way and trackball on both cent and millipede though, and joy8way is the first control listed, so I likely saw that and then made my bold and completely unsupported claim. heh, sorry.
It does seem to me that the default MAME entry for most games is 8way stick, even if it's actually something different.
Anyway, you have to be careful in romlister to put sticks in "don't care" mode and not NOT mode, or those will get skipped over, since romlister will be looking for things that say trackball and don't say "joy8way" in their descriptions.
--- Quote from: lettuce on August 28, 2008, 12:39:25 pm ---With Tempest & Arkanoid the only games ive heard of, but then i noticed it has listed Gyruss, so what other games has it missed and why??
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Gyruss is listed as joy8way and not spinner, so it shouldn't have come up in your list (and I didn't see it in your list-is that a typo?)
lettuce:
Yeah i mean isNT not 'is' in my list. I always thought Gyruss was a spinner based game, and i thought centipede and millipede where trackbakk only?
NOP:
yeah, that's what's so wonky about a lot of mame's xml entries. it's like the developer of the driver either forgets, doesn't know, or doesn't care, that the description for that rom seems to default to joy8way, even if the game really is trackball or 4way or whatever. I think the frustration behind that oversight is how controls.dat came into existence, and now the frustration of controls.dat is that it's waaaay behind in describing everything that MAME supports.
Gyruss most certainly should have been a spinner game, and there was a patch/video of getting it converted over to a spinner, along with time pilot and some other games IIRC. There's a thread around here somewhere about that-check the software section.
Level42:
--- Quote from: lettuce on August 28, 2008, 12:39:25 pm ---Hmm, Well according to Romlister there doesnt seem to be too many vertical games that have a spinner as a control method:
Arkanoid
Arkanoid Revenge Of Doh
Arm Champs II
Atari Mini Golf
Block
Block Block
Cosmic Chasm
Imola Grand Prix
Kick
Kick man
Lady Frog
Mahjong Block Jongbou
Moonwar
Paddle 2
Quester
Razzmatazz
Riddle Of Pythagoras
Street Heat
Tac/Scan
Tempest
Tournamment Arkanoid
Vs. Host Smash
With Tempest & Arkanoid the only games ive heard of, but then i noticed it has listed Gyruss, so what other games has it missed and why??
--- End quote ---
Kick (man) has a trackball that can only be rolled left or right. Wouldn't call that a spinner (although the effect is the same of course).
u_rebelscum:
--- Quote from: NOP on August 28, 2008, 01:43:15 pm ---
--- Quote from: u_rebelscum on August 28, 2008, 01:32:39 pm ---
--- Quote from: NOP on August 28, 2008, 11:55:45 am ---...The biggest problem is that MAME typically describes trackball games as joy8way, so there is going to be a lot of missing entries if controls.dat hasn't described them properly....
--- End quote ---
Any examples of these TB games mame lists as 8ways? ???
--- End quote ---
well, now that I've been called on it, I can't find any. :-[
It does list both joy8way and trackball on both cent and millipede though, and joy8way is the first control listed, so I likely saw that and then made my bold and completely unsupported claim. heh, sorry.
It does seem to me that the default MAME entry for most games is 8way stick, even if it's actually something different.
--- End quote ---
Maybe you're thinking about MAWS showing joy8way instead of TB for games with both? MAWS currently only shows one input type per game. There's an "order" to the inputs, and MAWS shows the first type a game has, and joy8way comes "before" TBs.
As for game listed as having both when they don't, there can three reasons:
* The driver has a hack so 8-ways can work, and the hack requires a separate joy8way
* The game had a dipswitch to switch between TB & joy8way. Mame has to have both inputs for the dipswitch to work, and doesn't have a way to show "this or that input".
* The driver isn't "clean" in it's input definition, and doesn't remove the joy8way when it should.
Sadly, the last is the most common ATM AFAIK. Luckly, Fabio Priuli has been cleaning this up over the last few versions, so it's becoming less common. :applaud:
The first is one of those nice evils, that helps most people (as many more have joysticks than TBs) but add to the confusion in some cases like here.
The middle one is pretty rare, but with romlister found a few (kickoff, krzybowl, eaglshot, vbowl, borntofi) with such dipswitches (and in same query, another one, cabal joystick version, that doesn't have a TB input, but a dipswitch that includes the word "trackball").
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