Mouse, Stelladaptor, or Analog dial for Paddle games?

[spacedueler]

I've been working on a Mame cabinet which is fully functional (but may never be complete do to constantly "testing" game play). It has a trackball and 2 arcade spinners (which plays PONG from Atari Anniversary very well with two players - splits the X and Y mouse axis for X spinner/Y spinner)..

 

I was blown away when I recently downloaded the most recent Stella and I'm playing 1 player Vid_Olympics with a spinner and Missile Command with the trackball on the Mame control panel thanks to Stella's awesome emulation. The emulation is great with that program and now I have more work getting my 2600 roms Mapped to the CP.

 

Finally my question - What should I do for the 2nd player on the paddle games (e.g. Video Olympics)? So far I haven't found a way in Stella to Map the X axis to player_1 (2nd player) Y axis goes to player_0 and works great. Is there is a way to map the X axis to player_1? That would work best since the CP is already set up with the 2 spinners to separate X and Y axis.

 

If separate X and Y aren't possible it's ok. It is a modular panel - I can easily remove one of the spinners and a new control control. If I added analog joystick support on the panel, would I be able to assign an analog axis (or more specifically an analog dial) to player_1? How do paddle games play with a usb joystick vs. the mouse emulation?

 

I could always go with the Stelladaptor and use my Atari paddles but I'd like to save the $40 - I'm way over budget on the cabinet already. To make that work with the CP I'd have to attach them to keep the arcade feel vs. holding them in hand.

 

Thanks for any suggestions.

[+stephena]

I've been working on a Mame cabinet which is fully functional (but may never be complete do to constantly "testing" game play). It has a trackball and 2 arcade spinners (which plays PONG from Atari Anniversary very well with two players - splits the X and Y mouse axis for X spinner/Y spinner)..

 

I was blown away when I recently downloaded the most recent Stella and I'm playing 1 player Vid_Olympics with a spinner and Missile Command with the trackball on the Mame control panel thanks to Stella's awesome emulation. The emulation is great with that program and now I have more work getting my 2600 roms Mapped to the CP.

 

Finally my question - What should I do for the 2nd player on the paddle games (e.g. Video Olympics)? So far I haven't found a way in Stella to Map the X axis to player_1 (2nd player) Y axis goes to player_0 and works great. Is there is a way to map the X axis to player_1? That would work best since the CP is already set up with the 2 spinners to separate X and Y axis.

 

If separate X and Y aren't possible it's ok. It is a modular panel - I can easily remove one of the spinners and a new control control. If I added analog joystick support on the panel, would I be able to assign an analog axis (or more specifically an analog dial) to player_1? How do paddle games play with a usb joystick vs. the mouse emulation?

 

I could always go with the Stelladaptor and use my Atari paddles but I'd like to save the $40 - I'm way over budget on the cabinet already. To make that work with the CP I'd have to attach them to keep the arcade feel vs. holding them in hand.

 

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

There's currently no way to remap mouse or (track)ball events in Stella; it mostly concentrates on the keyboard and joystick axis/hat/buttons instead. Adding support for this is near the top of the TODO list, and I do hope to get around to it sooner or later. But besides my complete lack of time, I also have a problem picturing how this would work, since I don't have any devices to test it with.

 

As for paddle emulation, I'd say the mouse is still probably more accurate than using a joystick axis. This is because the mouse is outputting analog data, but the joystick is outputting digital axis data (which is then sort of converted to analog data, but not very successfully IMO). Analog data is the best to emulate paddles (which is an analog device itself), but unfortunately as I said, there's no support for remapping a specific analog axis to a specific event.

[spacedueler]

Thanks for the reply stephena...

<<besides my complete lack of time>> I totally understand... My arcade project is sure to never be finish. I did manage to post a few photos:

 

The CP uses this adapter for joystick controls (pedals on the floor for right now):

http://www.u-hid.com/home/index.php

 

I just wired a 1Meg ohm pot to it to see if it is compatable and yes - works great. Mapped it to paddle_1_analog and had a good round of 2 player pong (video olympics). On the CP I can either add a D9 sub port wired to the u-hid and connect the atari paddles. Or using a pair of potentiometers build a couple more modular panels.

 

Thanks for a great emulator - I'm enjoying a lot of memories...

 

I've been working on a Mame cabinet which is fully functional (but may never be complete do to constantly "testing" game play). It has a trackball and 2 arcade spinners (which plays PONG from Atari Anniversary very well with two players - splits the X and Y mouse axis for X spinner/Y spinner)..

 

I was blown away when I recently downloaded the most recent Stella and I'm playing 1 player Vid_Olympics with a spinner and Missile Command with the trackball on the Mame control panel thanks to Stella's awesome emulation. The emulation is great with that program and now I have more work getting my 2600 roms Mapped to the CP.

 

Finally my question - What should I do for the 2nd player on the paddle games (e.g. Video Olympics)? So far I haven't found a way in Stella to Map the X axis to player_1 (2nd player) Y axis goes to player_0 and works great. Is there is a way to map the X axis to player_1? That would work best since the CP is already set up with the 2 spinners to separate X and Y axis.

 

If separate X and Y aren't possible it's ok. It is a modular panel - I can easily remove one of the spinners and a new control control. If I added analog joystick support on the panel, would I be able to assign an analog axis (or more specifically an analog dial) to player_1? How do paddle games play with a usb joystick vs. the mouse emulation?

 

I could always go with the Stelladaptor and use my Atari paddles but I'd like to save the $40 - I'm way over budget on the cabinet already. To make that work with the CP I'd have to attach them to keep the arcade feel vs. holding them in hand.

 

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

There's currently no way to remap mouse or (track)ball events in Stella; it mostly concentrates on the keyboard and joystick axis/hat/buttons instead. Adding support for this is near the top of the TODO list, and I do hope to get around to it sooner or later. But besides my complete lack of time, I also have a problem picturing how this would work, since I don't have any devices to test it with.

 

As for paddle emulation, I'd say the mouse is still probably more accurate than using a joystick axis. This is because the mouse is outputting analog data, but the joystick is outputting digital axis data (which is then sort of converted to analog data, but not very successfully IMO). Analog data is the best to emulate paddles (which is an analog device itself), but unfortunately as I said, there's no support for remapping a specific analog axis to a specific event.

[spacedueler]

Thanks for adding the feature that lets us specify to use each mouse axis as a separate paddle with the 3.5 release! Awesome!