Latching fire button input

[+rbairos]

I notice the fire buttons leading to the tia can be configured to be latching.

 

My question is, is this used much in practise?

 

I assume most games would sample the joystick once per field.

Is 16.6ms too long for quick action play?

 

Thanks,

Rob.

[+rbairos]

Is it safe to assume by the lack of replies, that this is a rarely used feature?

[Omegamatrix]

It's not needed in practice if you check the firebutton once a frame.

[Nukey Shay]

...but it's there if you need it (likewise for TIM1T, I guess).

[AkashicRecord]

...but it's there if you need it (likewise for TIM1T, I guess).

A TIM1T timer would expire fairly rapidly; this could be used as a good realtime random seed, unless I'm mistaken, as the counter decrements from $FF each clock cycle after timer expiration.

Edited February 24, 2019 by AkashicRecord

[Nukey Shay]

All of them do, according to the Stella programming specs (to represent how many cycles the underflow went regardless of which timer interval was used). This underflow variance can only be checked once, tho...as reading from INTIM will automatically reinstate the original interval.

[+rbairos]

Ironically, I wrote some code a few months ago that can only access the fire button every 4th field, so this latching option is actually useful.