MAME Rotary Controls

[Drybonz]

For games with rotary joysticks (like Heavy Barrel) are you guys just mapping the left and right turns to a button? Anyone have a more creative/elegant solution for this? I'm using an X-Arcade... thanks for any tips you can offer.

[DOS76]

I've never heard of this how does it work?

[Drybonz]

Games like Heavy Barrel and Ikari Warriors had a joystick that moved the player but also the stick rotated 360 degrees to turn the player and aim your shots while you moved. Both of those games were pretty fun... there were some others with this control scheme too.

[DOS76]

So like a joystick spinner combo.

[Drybonz]

Yeah, you could do a joystick spinner combo, but you would still need to hit your buttons. With the original controls one hand controlled the movement and turning.

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah kind of but not exactly a full analog spinner. Its more like an 8 step rotation. On an X-Arcade stick I would think the best way to do it is either use the bottom 2 bottoms for rotate left and right and activate with your thumb or maybe another option would be to use the top left and right buttons for rotation and use the top middle button for fire and another button like one of the bottom 2 for your grenades.

[Drybonz]

I've been doing the top buttons to rotate, but the seem to skip a notch pretty frequently, making it difficult to aim. I guess that may be the best option though.

[Drybonz]

Forgotten Worlds was another one with these controls. It seems to work pretty well with the buttons for turning. Doesn't skip like Heavy Barrel.

[Lordmonkus]

Forgotton Worlds was different. I know it had a spinner which if I remember correctly you pressed down to shoot. That game is not easily controlled through emulation. Edit: I just tried it out using your setup which I never thought of using before and it is actually very playable. It's much smoother than Ikari Warriors and Heavy Barrel because it was an analog dial rather than an 8 step rotary.

[Drybonz]

Oh yeah, you are right... it had a weird spinner and a joystick. I remember I didn't like that game much in the arcade because you only got one life... lol. It seems to work fairly well with the 2 buttons to turn though. I was just playing some Heavy Barrel. It took like 3 stages to get put the gun together and you got to use it for like 10 seconds... haha.

[Drybonz]

Off topic, but I was playing Space Harrier earlier and using the trackball for the analog flight stick controls and it worked really well. I may try it for some of the other flight stick games because it was pretty fun.

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah the track ball is alright for those analog control games, it even works somewhat ok with 720. Takes some getting used to and obviously not as good as the original arcade joystick but there really isn't too many other options.

[Drybonz]

I tried it for some gun games too, and if you turn the sensitivity up it works pretty well except for the reloading. It's not really fast enough to keep going off screen to load.

[Lordmonkus]

Yeah reloading is awful unless there's a way to press a button to do it (don't think there is one off the top of my head). Try out Alien3: The Gun, no reloading in that game from what I can remember.

[Drybonz]

Ok, I'll try that one... I remember it in the arcades, but I don't think I ever played it.

[NJDave71]

I used an 8 way Happ Rotary Joystick.  great Joy stick.  

[spectral]

Probably not ideal but would a flight stick that rotates for rudder controls work or is it completely the wrong kind of stick and rotation?

 

Just looked up the Heavy Barrel cab, totally different.

Edited August 22, 2017 by spectral

[NJDave71]

this is what I use.

[ListerD]

Hey NJDave71, what settings are you using to run SNK games with the Happ rotary stick through launchbox?  My arcade machine recently crashed and I've had to rebuild from scratch.  Got everything working except for the rotary part of that stick.  I've been trying combos of roto-x settings and MAME sensitivity/speed controls with no luck.  Any details on your config would be appreciated.

[NJDave71]

My rotary is managed by MAME.  Outside of that windows treats it like a mouse.