New Controller for homebrews

[BigO]

Synthcart uses keypads. Thrust+ has a driving controller option. My unfinished game uses driving controllers, actually a hack that accesses the unused joystick lines to switch gears.

 

I assume that means the driving controller plus the unused lines on each controller port. Cool. Do you know how you'll physically be accessing those? Y-cable with both the driving controller and a joystick plugged in?

[mos6507]

Synthcart uses keypads. Thrust+ has a driving controller option. My unfinished game uses driving controllers, actually a hack that accesses the unused joystick lines to switch gears.

 

I assume that means the driving controller plus the unused lines on each controller port. Cool. Do you know how you'll physically be accessing those? Y-cable with both the driving controller and a joystick plugged in?

 

First I cobbled together a Y-cable. Later I had it going with the footpedals that AtariAge sells, which already has a Y-cable built-in. Unfortunately to get it working properly required an internal modification as the stock unit prevented the ability to pass through two joystick signals at the same time. The two-bit gray-code of the driving controllers needs that, whereas standard joysticks do not.

 

The separation of joysticks and paddles is largely artificial. For instance, Atari could have very easily added a second fire button on the opposite ends of the paddles which would have enabled more complex paddle games. (Imagine Warlords where your guy could catch the ball and shoot missiles like Arkanoid or something.) If you look at the ports purely at a low level you can visualize all sorts of interesting combinations of buttons, sticks, and paddles.

 

I was hoping someone could come up with a little doohicky to hang off the controller ports which would arbitrate the signals for you. So you could mix and match controllers in various combinations. It's something Richard Hutchinson could probably do. Then you could have all sorts of oddball control schemes without having to invest in anything besides that one doohicky.