Games you WISH used a paddle controller

[kjps86]

For me it has to be Space Invaders. One dimension of movement and one fire feature for your weapon? Come on, it was made to be a paddle game!

 

Anyone agree?

Edited April 9, 2015 by kjps86

[accousticguitar]

I never thought about it, but it sounds like a good idea.

[Tinman]

Space Invaders would be awesome as a paddle game. Any vertical shooter I think would be fun to try with a paddle.

[TwentySixHundred]

Decathlon for sure, it was one those games that destroyed controllers. If it were paddle and a had a precision timing aspect is in fluent motion rather then as fast as you can go it would be brilliant.

 

The further the turn the longer/faster the stride however must start off slow then build up to longer stride and faster pace, it would add precision challenge without breaking controllers.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Tony The 2600

[Gorfy]

Off the Wall

 

It's a Breakout style game, so why the joystick

 

 

http://atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=330

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

Centipede and Millipede would be great with it despite you could use the trak ball controller. Only exception though is moving up and down though.

Edited April 9, 2015 by Retrogamer81081

[TwentySixHundred]

Looking into bB's kernal settings there is limitations when using paddles, you loose the use of missile0(player ones missile).

 

Also you loose both missiles if multicolor sprites are used, most likely the reason why shooters rarely used paddle controls. Pong/breakout like games only use player sprites and the ball, so obviously missiles are not needed.

 

Interesting

 

EDIT: Come to think of it anyone know if that's just a bB limitation or hardware?

Edited April 9, 2015 by Tony The 2600

[K.Michael]

Haha Asteroids, if the controller just rotated my ship. I barely move around in that game anyway XD

[Atarian7]

I agree with space invaders. Galaxian would be nice too.

 

 

[Gaztee]

Enduro

[S1500]

(slightly OT)

Idea: Use the paddle as an iDrive-ish control. Have a row of icons at the bottom, and a pointer icon above or below it. Turn the dial to pan the pointer over the icon, and a button chooses that icon.

[VectorGamer]

Bouncin' Baby Bunnies comes to mind.

 

 

Decathlon for sure, it was one those games that destroyed controllers. If it were paddle and a had a precision timing aspect is in fluent motion rather then as fast as you can go it would be brilliant.

 

The further the turn the longer/faster the stride however must start off slow then build up to longer stride and faster pace, it would add precision challenge without breaking controllers.

 

Can you use the Track & Field controller or Starplex controller for Decathlon?

[TwentySixHundred]

Can you use the Track & Field controller or Starplex controller for Decathlon?

 

I believe it does although i have never tried it out as never owned one, would actually probably work really well

[+SpiceWare]

Looking into bB's kernal settings there is limitations when using paddles, you loose the use of missile0(player ones missile).

 

Also you loose both missiles if multicolor sprites are used, most likely the reason why shooters rarely used paddle controls. Pong/breakout like games only use player sprites and the ball, so obviously missiles are not needed.

 

Interesting

 

EDIT: Come to think of it anyone know if that's just a bB limitation or hardware?

 

 

Paddles are more complicated to read. To read joysticks, both of them, you just do this:

 

   lda SWCHA

 

To read a single paddle you have run this bit of code, say 100 times or so, while the screen is being drawn:

   lda INPT0 ; 3 - always 9
   bpl .save ; 2 3
   .byte $2d ; 4 0
.save sty Paddle1 ; 0 3

Because you have to do that while the screen is being drawn, you don't have as much time to draw the other screen elements. If you want a multi-player paddle game it takes even more time.

 

So that's 4 cycles of CPU time to read 2 joysticks vs 900 cycles of CPU time to read a single paddle. This is why paddle games have simpler graphics than joystick games.

 

Note: neither of these examples read the fire buttons, but the time difference for that is negligible.

Edited April 9, 2015 by SpiceWare

[Cynicaster]

Crackpots is a great game, but it would be so much cooler with paddle controls, IMO.

 

Bouncin' Baby Bunnies comes to mind.

 

 

 

Can you use the Track & Field controller or Starplex controller for Decathlon?

 

The T&F controller works great with Decathlon.

[WolfAmongWolves]

Enduro

 

I was thinking about that too, but it wouldn't really work because you wouldn't be able to brake, and being able to incrementally adjust your speed both up and down is crucial in Enduro. I guess you could use the button on the second paddle controller to brake, but that would cancel out any advantage of using paddles. Most racing games wouldn't work with paddles for that reason. Grand Prix, maybe, because there you mostly just max out the speed until you crash instead of braking.

[Torr]

Looking into bB's kernal settings there is limitations when using paddles, you loose the use of missile0(player ones missile).

 

Also you loose both missiles if multicolor sprites are used, most likely the reason why shooters rarely used paddle controls. Pong/breakout like games only use player sprites and the ball, so obviously missiles are not needed.

 

Interesting

 

EDIT: Come to think of it anyone know if that's just a bB limitation or hardware?

 

Astroblast and some other shooter used paddles. I guess they found some way around the limitation if it IS there. I was sure it was Demon Attack that used them, but according to the box art here on AA it uses joysticks... I have the game at home, but unfortunately I'm away for a while.

 

*Edit: After a bit of searching, it's Warplock I was thinking of!

Edited April 9, 2015 by Torr

[WolfAmongWolves]

 

Astroblast and some other shooter used paddles. I guess they found some way around the limitation if it IS there. I was sure it was Demon Attack that used them, but according to the box art here on AA it uses joysticks... I have the game at home, but unfortunately I'm away for a while.

 

You're probably thinking of TacScan, it uses paddles and is an awesome shooter. I'm not sure if it uses multicolor sprites, but you and the enemy can certainly shoot at the same time, so you're right, they must have found a way to work around the missile limitations.

[+SpiceWare]

 

You're probably thinking of TacScan, it uses paddles and is an awesome shooter. I'm not sure if it uses multicolor sprites, but you and the enemy can certainly shoot at the same time, so you're right, they must have found a way to work around the missile limitations.

 

There's no specific limitation with the paddle and the missiles. The issue is you have to spend time in the kernel (the screen generating part of the program) reading a paddle - time that in a joystick game could be spent drawing something else. That something else could be a player (sprite), missile, ball, color change, playfield(background) data, etc - it doesn't have to be a missile.

 

When programming a game in assembly, the programmer gets to choose what that tradeoff is. When programming in bB, the tradeoffs are predetermined - if you want to use a paddle, you lose a missile.

[WolfAmongWolves]

 

When programming a game in assembly, the programmer gets to choose what that tradeoff is. When programming in bB, the tradeoffs are predetermined - if you want to use a paddle, you lose a missile.

 

Ah, mystery solved. Thanks for clarifying for us non-programmers.

[Mister-VCS]

Off the Wall and Pole Position

[mikey.shake]

Crackpots is a great game, but it would be so much cooler with paddle controls, IMO.

 

Just picked this up few hours ago, in fact, and I couldn't agree more on both counts. Lots and lots of surprise fun (bought it on impulse), but paddles would only improve it.

 

Agreed on the "vertical space shooters" overall vote as well. Megamania and Spider Fighter both get my heartiest vote. Something about the way they feel -- more.. fluid? Something about their physics and speed. Even though I haven't had it long, Demon Attack feels like a "slam on the stick" game to me for some reason.

[TwentySixHundred]

 

 

Paddles are more complicated to read. To read joysticks, both of them, you just do this:

 

   lda SWCHA

 

To read a single paddle you have run this bit of code, say 100 times or so, while the screen is being drawn:

   lda INPT0 ; 3 - always 9
   bpl .save ; 2 3
   .byte $2d ; 4 0
.save sty Paddle1 ; 0 3

Because you have to do that while the screen is being drawn, you don't have as much time to draw the other screen elements. If you want a multi-player paddle game it takes even more time.

 

So that's 4 cycles of CPU time to read 2 joysticks vs 900 cycles of CPU time to read a single paddle. This is why paddle games have simpler graphics than joystick games.

 

Note: neither of these examples read the fire buttons, but the time difference for that is negligible.

 

Great explanation, it makes sense so assembly you chose the tradeoff and in bB it's predetermined. Cheers

[TwentySixHundred]

 

Astroblast and some other shooter used paddles. I guess they found some way around the limitation if it IS there. I was sure it was Demon Attack that used them, but according to the box art here on AA it uses joysticks... I have the game at home, but unfortunately I'm away for a while.

 

*Edit: After a bit of searching, it's Warplock I was thinking of!

 

Yeah back in the day they used assembly so something else other then missile0 could be sacrificed.

 

bB is a homebrew IDE developed by Batari mainly so you dont need to learn assembly to program a 2600 program i believe.

 

So there still is hardware limitations it's just bB chooses the missile0

Edited April 10, 2015 by Tony The 2600

[+Omegamatrix]

Crackpots is a great game, but it would be so much cooler with paddle controls, IMO.

I'm pretty sure I looked into this before. It seemed pretty easy to add paddle support (especially if the game was expanded to 8k), but I seem to remember there was a logistical display problem if pots got launched one after the other too quickly. The problem is the kernel isn't set up to handle multiple copies of the pots on the same line. So you would either has to pause a bit to before dropping another pot (undesirable), or rewrite the kernel to specifically handle multiple pots on a scanline. The second choice more involved, but is the better solution.

 

 

Still a great game to add paddle support for. I'm not looking to take on anything more at the moment though...

 

 

Edit: I looked at it about the time I did my CrackBats hack.

Edited April 10, 2015 by Omegamatrix