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yeah, you could dice up the 4 axii any way you wanted really.
- well, I guess I just wanted to specifically recommend that you allow both trackballs, and 4 spinners to be wired up at the same time, and on the same ports. The reason, is that if you have dual trackballs (rampart, marble madness), you might also wish to have spinners as well. Rather than getting another encoder, or swapping things out... some sort of cycle pin might be a nice way to control how the user selects which controls are active... yet not actually needing 22 optical input pins, because most of the pins would be shared.
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If MAME throws an output, I'm sure they could be integrated. I wouldn't so much be concentrating on powering items like that, but I could very easily throw out trigger lines to support external relays. PWM controlling is also possible
- I had a feeling you would say that. Its a shame too, because a game like T2 isnt the same without the powerful kick of a real coil. I can only hope Someone makes a plug-n-play coil board. If it were as simple as wiring up a relay to a larger coil, it would be cake. However, you cant find affordable power supplies that do like 30v... so that leaves you with needing to know how to step up the voltage. I think that means using a transformer... but thats beyond me. It also means you need to diode the thing with the correct diode, to protect the controller from burning out. Ive seen people hack things together, however, none of them seemed 100% sure or confident of the things.
Time Crisis, T2, Point Blanc, Qbert, Pinball games, and many many more, utilize coils. I think it would sell quite well, if only for T2... let alone Time Crisis... and all the pinball builders out there would flip for the added realism to put into their virtual pinball tables.
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I'm not sure where you get all of those pots from, shifter and clutch pedals were generally digital inputs on most racing games. I could probably handle up to 24 independent pot inputs with some creative muxing, but that is something I'd really have to work with carefully.
- I used to repair games in an arcade. Race Drivin actually uses all analog pots on their inputs. Not digital. Most arcade drivers use analog gas, brake, and wheel. Even most console games are all analog. Shifters and Clutches are usually digital... with exception to the sitdown versions of Hard/Race Drivin. There are also games like Afterburner, which use an analog thrust lever controller.
I think 12 is a decent number. As I dont remember any game that used more than that, even when both machines were linked.
The 10-Turn pot is obviously a special case, as only Race/Hard Drivin uses that. However, I think its really important to make support for such classic games to have their proper controller abilities. Race Drivins wheel is Epic. From center, its about 3 full turns in either direction, to full travel. (or 6 turns from far left to far right)
I think some new-er PC games support 900 degree wheels... and while that may not be compatible, its possible that the larger turn ratio could be scaled using software, so that the Race Drivin wheel could be used in them.
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My thoughts are to have all the input settings hot flash-able via a GUI, so as long as you don't mind chewing up 10 inputs or so per controller it would be completely possible.
- Sadly, Mame does not allow for True 12 way controller support as it Should. In order to get around this crippling limitation... hardware MFGs have had to make a system which virtually sends a single keypress when you turn the knob, and the key sent would depend on the direction you turned. The big problem, with this, is that mame will never know which way is what. Your dial could be facing down.. but your on-screen character is facing up.
Another problem, is digital Shifters. Mame again does not support shifters accurately in the drivers. Most arcade shifters are either held on, or held off. All they would have to do is simply allow gamepad only input for that.. and we could have perfect shifter support without effecting their hacky 'click key to toggle' mode.
So, in order to do this, the same kinda thing has to be done.. where the encoder has to be programmed to send one keypress when held on. One one keypress when held off.
Digital Multigear shifters are even more of a mess.
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Just a thought. Might be worth it for smaller setups, and with the rising popularity of HTPCs
- I understand. However, and maybe Im wrong.. but I think checking and sending that much data wirelessly without any lag or problems, could be costly and difficult.
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This ~would~ be the coolest farking thing in the world, but would require ungodly amounts of tech if you were going to make it even partially universal. Kinda like a programmable Ne-Wumpf, right?
- I dont know what a Ne-Wumpf is. Google didnt help either.
Most pinball logic is very simple. Just a bunch of loops and minimal logic. I cant imagine it being too difficult to simplify the creation process. Just like with website creation.. you can type it all out by hand in code... Or, you can use a drag and drop editor, and tweak a few parameters. Weather it be hardware Risc based.. or a windows program that takes your data and compiles it into a more machine-friendly language.. is not a big deal. Its the user end result that counts. Ease and speed of creation.
If someone can develop the hardware, Im sure I could spend some time making a logical framework for how the system could work.
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