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Sarge Joystick Mapping ideas?

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caver01:
I'd love to play Sarge with friends, but I opted to skip tank sticks in my portable 3-sided cocktail cab. I do have 4 Supers, so I COULD map them normally, but I would need to take my hands off the sticks to fire.

One thought did occur to me: create an odd mapping for a single stick:
I tried mapping L/UP to RIGHT on my joystick, and R/UP to LEFT on my joystick. Then, both L/DOWN and R/DOWN to DOWN on my joystick. This odd configuration lets me use a single joystick, steer and reverse, but I can't drive straight forward! I guess I could do the opposite and have no reverse which might be better.

I know, it's really crazy, but if I could just get LEFT on the joystick to send the game L/D + R/U and RIGHT to send R/D + L/U, I could rotate the tank left and right as you would expect. Then, of course, LR/U for UP on the stick, and LR/D for DOWN on the stick. That would effectively translate a two-stick control to a single joystick. Does anyone have any ideas for achieving this? I use the IPAC-4 controller and I am running XP.

<EDIT>
Well, I did a little messing around simply with MAME key mapping and I now have it figured out. I am actually surprised this works, but I can now play Sarge with single joysticks using this setup:

In-Game Tank Sticks        Single Joystick (multiple key mapped)
 Right/Up                          UP + LEFT
 Right/Down                      DOWN + RIGHT
 Left/Up                            UP + RIGHT
 Left/Down                        DOWN + LEFT

This configuration gives you very intuitive movements, allows straight forward, straight reverse, rotation in place, and forward and reverse turning, although the reverse turn is not at first intuitive, it's more control-oriented and that helps you think about what you are doing.

Sorry if this is totally old news, but this odd key combination seems to make this game at least VERY playable without a special CP with expensive tanksticks. It leaves your second hand free for fire buttons. Is everyone doing this and I am just late building my own cab? Or is this news to some of you?

u_rebelscum:
Old subject, but not mentioned often, and I couldn't find the old old thread.

I'm more finicky about this, and have a more complicated map that includes nots (shown as '!').  IIRC, it goes:

R/U         U ! R or L ! D
R/D         D ! R or L ! U
L/U         U ! L or R ! D
L/D         D ! L or R ! U
Edit: see my next post.

Nots are done in mame by tapping twice in same direction.  So for mame's right_up stick, go to it in the game's input remap menu, select with enter, straight up on joystick then quickly two taps straight right, wait until mame displays up not right, then enter again, left once then quickly two taps down.

If below was a joystick, mame will output to the game's two sticks:

|^   ^^   ^|
y^   ||   ^y
|y   yy   y|

'y' is down, it's the closest I found to arrow down, '^' is up, and '|' is neutral.


There's another simpler map that swaps the two diagonal downs, but that don't make sense to me.

RayB:
No tank sticks:
;-)

caver01:

--- Quote from: u_rebelscum on February 11, 2009, 07:56:24 pm ---IIRC, it goes:

R/U         U ! R or L ! D
R/D         D ! R or L ! U
L/U         U ! L or R ! D
L/D         D ! L or R ! U

--- End quote ---

U_rebelscum,
Thanks, but it did not work for me. First of all, this 'not' configuration is something I never knew about. You are right, I don't think it comes up very often! I had no idea you could do that. It does make deciphering the logic somewhat of a mind game!

Anyway, I followed you exactly, and got the 'not' settings entered exactly as you described, only this resulted in my tank unable to do stationary rotation. I totally appreciate what this advanced setup is trying to accomplish, but I can't figure out by looking at where the problem is. My mapping matches your note, so if you are doing this from memory, I can understand if something is accidentally reversed somewhere.

My brain is melting with this config, but if I look at it long enough, maybe I can find the error. Any chance you could double-check your mapping in MAME?

Again, thanks for the details! Are there other games that work better with unique mapping (or negated input) like this?

u_rebelscum:

--- Quote from: caver01 on February 12, 2009, 08:55:58 am ---... Any chance you could double-check your mapping in MAME?

--- End quote ---

You're right, the downs above are wrong.  Fixed:

R/U         U ! R or L ! D
R/D         D ! R or R ! U ! D
L/U         U ! L or R ! D
L/D         D ! L or L ! U ! D


Or, attached is a ctrlr file compatible version of the above that I tested in vindicators.

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