"New" Roller Controller Game Complete in Box - Interest Check

[+Swami]

I am happy to announce a new controller hack game in production with Cote Gamers that should have been around from the beginning of the ColecoVision. This game is welcoming back our favorite 100-legged enemy and his friends the spider, scorpion and flea with the ability to use speed proportional trackball control, just like in the arcade, and at three different speeds. I have tested this out myself. 

 

With the standard controller version in joystick mode on the roller controller, whether you roll the ball half of a turn slowly or quickly, your Bug Blaster will move the same distance on screen. With speed proportional roller controller mode, your Bug Blaster can move up to three times as far for that same half turn of the trackball compared to joystick mode. If you want a similar maximum speed as joystick mode, but with the arcade trackball experience, you can choose half-speed or quarter speed for 1&1/2 or 3/4 maximum joystick mode speed. The slower modes will also help you when USB mice become available for use as a roller controller substitute on ColecoVisions to slow down the faster movement by high dpi mouse speeds.

 

Although Centipede would seem like a natural match for true trackball play with the Roller Controller back in the day, the game was released the year before the Roller Controller with no "true" trackball option. So, after spending a few hundred to make the Roller Controller version, I have paired with Cote Gamers to release a special Big Box version of the game with lots of game related extras, in order to make it available for anyone who would like a new in box version of the game. 

 

My goal with this project is to make this missing cart-in-box ColecoVision game available for all to purchase, like it would be back-in-the-day. It will be sold in runs until interest is meager. I will not be releasing the rom for a while, so it won't be used by whomever to make small numbers at high prices with others not wanting to cross into their lane or shabby eBay carts, since that is not my particular disposition. However, the rom will be released freely in a couple years. Cote Gamers will be doing this boxed game not-for-profit and any adventitous profits will be given to charity. I also donated a couple hundred toward the packaging of the game. The game will contain an instruction manual along with a history of arcade games related to this one. We are also taking a poll for interest in the game, what we will name the game, and in bonus items such as keypad overlays, an embroidered patch and fridge magnets. We probably won't include all, just to keep the price better, so, voting for your preferences is important.

[+Swami]

I just realized I decided at the last minute to make the poll single choice for the first poll, but forgot to remove "choose all you like" from the "name choice" question. I fear changing it will erase the poll question due to AA's software, which really dislikes you editing a poll. Sorry about that. We will have another poll, if needed, to sort out any 2nd or 3rd place choices if needed.

 

Also, to clarify "arcade style" vs "console style"

 

Arcade Style is this guy:

 

Console Style is this guy

[doubledown]

Are there to be any graphical or audio improvements/enhancements made to the game, or is it just the addition of Roller Controller "Roller" mode compatibility?

[+Swami]

55 minutes ago, doubledown said:

Are there to be any graphical or audio improvements/enhancements made to the game, or is it just the addition of Roller Controller "Roller" mode compatibility?

It is the classic game with just the addition of true roller controller. Only a controller hack. Not a graphical or audio one. It is similar but somewhat the reverse of New Coleco’s controller hacks of several games. I personally like the original, but always wished it had the true trackball compatibility and paid for the programming myself, so, I was limited in that sense to additionally making an alternative graphical/audio hack. 

[doubledown]

So this is how I thought a "true" proportional Track-Ball works...please feel free to educate me if my understanding is wrong:

 

Say you rotated the track-ball 1 degree, and that 1 degree of ball rotation rotated the encoder disc enough to output 1 pulse, and that 1 pulse was programmed to move your on-screen character 1 pixel in that direction...for every 1 degree of ball rotation your on-screen character would move 1 pixel.  (I'm not saying that this degree - to encoder pulse - to pixel movement ratio is correct...just for the sake of easy numbers).  Then if you moved the ball 30 degrees of rotation, your on-screen character would move 30 pixels...the difference being, that if you rotated the ball slowly, your character would move slowly...and if you moved the ball quickly, your character would move quickly...but still the same amount of on-screen movement (30 pixels) for the same amount of ball rotation.  Is this correct or incorrect?  Is the ball rotation, to encoder pulse, to pixel movement ratio changing based on the speed at which the ball is rotated?  With Slither being one of the original games that actually can use "Roller" mode on a Roller Controller...how was it done for that game?  

 

Please note, that these are not snarky or condescending questions/comments at all...I am genuinely curious.  

[+Swami]

1 hour ago, doubledown said:

So this is how I thought a "true" proportional Track-Ball works...please feel free to educate me if my understanding is wrong:

 

Say you rotated the track-ball 1 degree, and that 1 degree of ball rotation rotated the encoder disc enough to output 1 pulse, and that 1 pulse was programmed to move your on-screen character 1 pixel in that direction...for every 1 degree of ball rotation your on-screen character would move 1 pixel.  (I'm not saying that this degree - to encoder pulse - to pixel movement ratio is correct...just for the sake of easy numbers).  Then if you moved the ball 30 degrees of rotation, your on-screen character would move 30 pixels...the difference being, that if you rotated the ball slowly, your character would move slowly...and if you moved the ball quickly, your character would move quickly...but still the same amount of on-screen movement (30 pixels) for the same amount of ball rotation.  Is this correct or incorrect?  Is the ball rotation, to encoder pulse, to pixel movement ratio changing based on the speed at which the ball is rotated?  With Slither being one of the original games that actually can use "Roller" mode on a Roller Controller...how was it done for that game?  

 

Please note, that these are not snarky or condescending questions/comments at all...I am genuinely curious.  

No offense taken. 

 

Let me preface this with a “to the best of my understanding” as I know the broad strokes I discuss below are correct. The Quadrature encoders measure speed and direction, so the faster you move through those 30 degrees of rotation, the more pixels you move per frame. The joystick mode goes through the joystick inputs and you have a 1:1 correspondence between distance the ball moves and pixels moved with a maximum of six pixels per frame, which I believe is the speed that the joystick moves at for constant joystick pressure in a given direction.  For instance, in this game, if you move the trackball slowly in trackball mode, it will move about the same number of pixels or less as the joystick for the same 30 degrees of movement. If you move the trackball very fast in trackball mode, it will move 3x the number of pixels as in joystick mode for the 30 degrees of movement. Those are the observable differences. The programming and electronics are beyond my field of knowledge, though. 

[Pixelboy]

1 hour ago, doubledown said:

Please note, that these are not snarky or condescending questions/comments at all...I am genuinely curious. 

Is someone considering making a custom trackball controller at some point in the future...?   

 

[+Swami]

6 minutes ago, Pixelboy said:

Is someone considering making a custom trackball controller at some point in the future...?   

 

I’ve been slowly working on a usb mouse adapter. A couple of kinks to work out and someone else would have to do all the commercial production and distribution cuz I don’t have time for it. Also, trying to combine the joystick and trackball modes could be a hassle. 

[Pixelboy]

I was talking to doubledown.   

[doubledown]

48 minutes ago, Swami said:

No offense taken. 

 

Let me preface this with a “to the best of my understanding” as I know the broad strokes I discuss below are correct. The Quadrature encoders measure speed and direction, so the faster you move through those 30 degrees of rotation, the more pixels you move per frame. The joystick mode goes through the joystick inputs and you have a 1:1 correspondence between distance the ball moves and pixels moved with a maximum of six pixels per frame, which I believe is the speed that the joystick moves at for constant joystick pressure in a given direction.  For instance, in this game, if you move the trackball slowly in trackball mode, it will move about the same number of pixels or less as the joystick for the same 30 degrees of movement. If you move the trackball very fast in trackball mode, it will move 3x the number of pixels as in joystick mode for the 30 degrees of movement. Those are the observable differences. The programming and electronics are beyond my field of knowledge, though. 

I see, I didn't have any knowledge that it had to do with the encoder pulses read per frame, creating the difference between the faster/slower speeds.  As I don't do any software programming...I have no knowledge of any of that type of sorcery. 😃 

 

28 minutes ago, Pixelboy said:

Is someone considering making a custom trackball controller at some point in the future...?   

What!?!  Me!?!  No!!!  Wait, actually the artwork for Centipede is already done (low res. sample):

 

 

This would just give me the kick in the pants I need to move forward with the project, as I have nearly zero love for Slither.  😉

 

[Pixelboy]

4 hours ago, doubledown said:

This would just give me the kick in the pants I need to move forward with the project, as I have nearly zero love for Slither.

Y'know, perhaps a similar controller with a rotary dial would be fun. It could be used with several CV games, such as Carnival, Destructor, Flipper Slipper, Gyruss, Omega Race, Pitstop, River Raid, Skiing, Space Fury, Star Trek, Strike It, Threshold, Turbo, Victory, as well as CollectorVision's Arkanoid, and perhaps even Team Pixelboy's Asteroids. But all those games would have to be hacked to support the rotary dial (even Turbo, for tweaking purposes). Galaxian and Beamrider could be adapted too, but they'd likely play a little weird compared to the originals. Sorry for the slight highjack of this thread, just thinking out loud. 

 

Edited February 22 by Pixelboy

[chart45]

13 hours ago, Pixelboy said:

Y'know, perhaps a similar controller with a rotary dial would be fun. It could be used with several CV games, such as Carnival, Destructor, Flipper Slipper, Gyruss, Omega Race, Pitstop, River Raid, Skiing, Space Fury, Star Trek, Strike It, Threshold, Turbo, Victory, as well as CollectorVision's Arkanoid, and perhaps even Team Pixelboy's Asteroids. But all those games would have to be hacked to support the rotary dial (even Turbo, for tweaking purposes). Galaxian and Beamrider could be adapted too, but they'd likely play a little weird compared to the originals. Sorry for the slight highjack of this thread, just thinking out loud. 

 

you dont need to hack all these games .. use an arduino   to read ps2  trackball than output with  optocoupler to the coleco in joystick pulse  this way only one port is needed ... you could have 2 player game ..or you could use the  code from evg2000 paddle project with the attiny85 his project read encoder and translate to pulse... his code take care of the speed too .. ( doubledown love old arcade parts) 😉.... i did a mouse to coleco with an arduino....read mouse data convert it to joystick movement... plenty of option no need to hack the games...  

 

you can see a video of the mouse to cv playing operation wolf ....  

 

[doubledown]

Or create a single axis spinner using original Roller Controller hardware/electronics, set it to "Roller" mode for Victory (arcade accurate), or set it to "Joystick" mode for any other games that you'd want a spinner for (Omega Race and Star Trek would be arcade accurate with a Spinner).  If I'm not mistaken, the Roller Controller uses both joystick ports because each port can only read one axis of the two-axis track-ball, so this would only need to be connected to 1 joystick port as well...if I'm correct.  

[+Swami]

53 minutes ago, doubledown said:

Or create a single axis spinner using original Roller Controller hardware/electronics, set it to "Roller" mode for Victory (arcade accurate), or set it to "Joystick" mode for any other games that you'd want a spinner for (Omega Race and Star Trek would be arcade accurate with a Spinner).  If I'm not mistaken, the Roller Controller uses both joystick ports because each port can only read one axis of the two-axis track-ball, so this would only need to be connected to 1 joystick port as well...if I'm correct.  

The TOM+ adapter has both usb mouse to pin 1-4 quadrature and usb mouse to joystick, but, in my experience and from others, it is easy to kill, probably from ESD. Too bad, as it also has a joystick pass through that could be used for a keypad source. Of course, it would have to be  part of an overall larger adapter. The Smalleymouse2 is a very good usb mouse to pin 1-4 quadrature adapter, but you would have to add on the usb mouse to joystick adapter and, as far as I know, all of them except the TOM’s are PS/2 only (mostly but not always usb compatible). 

 

Such as device that could do both usb mouse to quadrature and joystick could serve for both usb mice and spinners in optical encoder and joystick mode. You would, however, have a brick there for the adapter and a power line piggy backing on the CV power input or wall outlet (or batteries). 

[chart45]

43 minutes ago, doubledown said:

Or create a single axis spinner using original Roller Controller hardware/electronics, set it to "Roller" mode for Victory (arcade accurate), or set it to "Joystick" mode for any other games that you'd want a spinner for (Omega Race and Star Trek would be arcade accurate with a Spinner).  If I'm not mistaken, the Roller Controller uses both joystick ports because each port can only read one axis of the two-axis track-ball, so this would only need to be connected to 1 joystick port as well...if I'm correct.  

yes 1 port per axis .. 

 

my steering use an rotary encoder 

 

 

 

 

you can see the signal is clean .... 

 

 

 

 

[doubledown]

So I don't have any idea of how the "magic" of the encoders work in either the Steering Module, or the Roller Controller (and/or how their software reads them)...I just know that they work for the software selections that they were made to work with, and that were programmed to work with them.  I'm sure that there are things/ways that "this adapter" plugged into "this adapter", which is then plugged into this Arduino...can be made to possibly work similarly...but it's nothing I'm looking into.  If somebody can, or wants to develop, the perfectly functioning electronic equivalent, to replace the original electronics (with 100% perfect compatibility, and reasonable reliability)...I'm sure I could make use of it...but anything that I currently have plans for at this moment (single axis spinner for an arcade controller for Victory, and an arcade accurate Turbo controller), would be built with original Coleco electronics.  If somebody has gotten a mouse working on the ColecoVision...and point-and-click type games are made available for it...hey, great, but I don't want to play Operation Wolf with a mouse, as I've played it in it's original form in the arcades...and I'm satisfied living with those memories.  I know I've read where people talk about playing Missile Command on system "x" with a mouse that they got working...and it's so much easier than playing with a Trak-Ball...and to that I say...yes it is easier...and yes it's cheating...and yes it's wrong...and I don't want anything to do with it...and I could care less.  I'm not attempting to diminish the efforts of those attempting to get PS/2 or USB mice (or whatever) working on a ColecoVision...I'm just saying it's nothing I'm interested in, again, unless "appropriate" games are programmed for it, or that mouse interface would allow me to use a legit arcade track-ball (USB or PS/2) on the ColecoVision....and it worked just like the Roller Controller does in "Roller" mode, for those couple of games that it can work with.  For the paddle controller that was made, as there aren't any "paddle" games made for the ColecoVision (as there were for the ATARIs, wherein the engineering/software specifications were defined by ATARI and then adhered to by the programmers)...it wasn't that useful of a controller...from what I remember reading.  So if somebody wants to define the specifications for a paddle controller for the ColecoVision, and programmers are on board to program games with that controller in mind...great, and I can't wait.  

 

**Please note the above ramblings are those of one cranky old man, and do not reflect the views of the parent website!  😃

[+Swami]

1 hour ago, doubledown said:

So I don't have any idea of how the "magic" of the encoders work in either the Steering Module, or the Roller Controller (and/or how their software reads them)...I just know that they work for the software selections that they were made to work with, and that were programmed to work with them.  I'm sure that there are things/ways that "this adapter" plugged into "this adapter", which is then plugged into this Arduino...can be made to possibly work similarly...but it's nothing I'm looking into.  If somebody can, or wants to develop, the perfectly functioning electronic equivalent, to replace the original electronics (with 100% perfect compatibility, and reasonable reliability)...I'm sure I could make use of it...but anything that I currently have plans for at this moment (single axis spinner for an arcade controller for Victory, and an arcade accurate Turbo controller), would be built with original Coleco electronics.  If somebody has gotten a mouse working on the ColecoVision...and point-and-click type games are made available for it...hey, great, but I don't want to play Operation Wolf with a mouse, as I've played it in it's original form in the arcades...and I'm satisfied living with those memories.  I know I've read where people talk about playing Missile Command on system "x" with a mouse that they got working...and it's so much easier than playing with a Trak-Ball...and to that I say...yes it is easier...and yes it's cheating...and yes it's wrong...and I don't want anything to do with it...and I could care less.  I'm not attempting to diminish the efforts of those attempting to get PS/2 or USB mice (or whatever) working on a ColecoVision...I'm just saying it's nothing I'm interested in, again, unless "appropriate" games are programmed for it, or that mouse interface would allow me to use a legit arcade track-ball (USB or PS/2) on the ColecoVision....and it worked just like the Roller Controller does in "Roller" mode, for those couple of games that it can work with.  For the paddle controller that was made, as there aren't any "paddle" games made for the ColecoVision (as there were for the ATARIs, wherein the engineering/software specifications were defined by ATARI and then adhered to by the programmers)...it wasn't that useful of a controller...from what I remember reading.  So if somebody wants to define the specifications for a paddle controller for the ColecoVision, and programmers are on board to program games with that controller in mind...great, and I can't wait.  

 

**Please note the above ramblings are those of one cranky old man, and do not reflect the views of the parent website!  😃

Usb mouse includes trackball mice in my mind, as a few have pool ball size roller balls. Other trackballs are one inch. Others like arcade style are not mice, but can be be USB or PS/2. May not be for the more “cranky.” 😉

[doubledown]

Yes, there are PC mice (of several hardware variations and connection types), PC track-balls (PC mouse alternatives with ~1" thumb actuated balls, and those larger types with larger finger tip actuated balls usually used by graphic designers and engineers), and then there are "arcade" track-balls, or a "Trak-Ball" as ATARI called them.  I personally have used some version of a Logitech PC track-ball (currently the M570) on every computer I have owned or used at work, for probably the better part of the last 15 years.  And like I said...if point-and-click type games (old Sierra "Quest-esque" games, Lemmings type games) are made available for the ColecoVision...I'm happy to use either a PC mouse, or a PC track-ball for their gameplay...if its possible.  But if I want to play games like Missile Command, Centipede, Millipede, Crystal Castles, Marble Madness, and/or Atari Football...then I only want an open-frame, enclosure mountable, 2-1/4", 3", or 4", true arcade track-ball...again if possible.  There are currently a couple of arcade track-balls made/sold (normally for MAME use), that feature USB and/or PS/2 connectivity...some cheap, and then also the nicer HAPP 2-1/4" and 3" track-balls...both also available with USB & PS/2 connectivity.  And if those can be used for appropriate games, with true proportional control, not simply like using a Roller Controller in "joystick" mode...then I'm all for it, again if the electronics required for their use are robust and reliable enough to last.