Did you know all Amigas support 3 buttons? :)

[malko]

^ That's . Thanks for the link

[stx2199]

Originally Posted by Tigerskunk

Couldn't even the C64 support two buttons?

.

yes the C64 support 2 buttons but no commercial game in the era used them
It wasn't until recently that some fans modified some games to use them with a Sega or Amiga 2 button pad.

and fact is I have a dir here with C64 tapes modded to support 2 buttons

some of them are

green beret
commando
wizball
ikari
gryzor
choplifter

and many more

[Torti-the-Smurf]

Back then, when the Amiga arrived, one Button Games where VERY common.
There where also TONS of Atari and C64 Joysticks out there.

The Competition Pro was one of the most reliable Joysticks, so it became pretty much the Standard for the Amiga.
A blessing and a curse.....

I always got Hand cramps from it.

So i was always using a 3 Button Sega Mega Drive Pad instead.
To this day, my favorite Amiga Joypad. (the one with the Godlike D-Pad. Model Nr. 1650-50)

The Best Joypad for Amiga (for me at least)
Made a simple A=UP Mod to the Mega-Drive Joypads.

So all the 3 Mega-Drive Buttons: A,B,&C can be used

To change all the slaves could open a whole wormhole of trouble.... don´t think thats worth it.....

Just add UP to one button (in emulation or on a 3-Button Mega-Drive Joypad) and your fine .

It´s one of the biggest misconceptions online.. or in general, that so many people think:
"the Amiga has only one button" .. which is simply not true....

Besides .. there is also the Keyboard; so Amiga supports certainly more than "one button"

[jotd]

most whdload slaves that have CD32 joypad support also support 3 buttons. By default, 3rd button is mapped to "pause", but can be mapped to something else if useful in the game.

button 1: normal fire
button 2: second button (on sega controllers, also right mouse button)
button 3: middle mouse button.

Unfortunately, last time I checked, the 3rd button is not the same 3rd button as sega joysticks 3rd button. So maybe a HW modification is required on those to work. Or my sega joystick had a problem? Not sure.

CD32 buttons aren't read with the same code: it can read all 6/7 buttons but it's a serial read with a small delay (which consumes some CPU), as opposed to 2nd / 3rd button read that just need 1 read and 1 write to POTGO.

[stx2199]

button 3 on the amiga is ground+ pin 5
of course in a sega pad such 3 button don't exists, you have to mod it and rewire it to button A because button B and C are joy 1 and 2 buttons

anyways the button 3 is used in some whdload games just for pause only
It's not worth making any modifications

as someone said in a CD32 pad button 3 is pause

[Geordie-Jedi]

Yeah, I wish more Amiga software utilised 2-3 (or more) buttons within games.

I also remember using a Megadrive gamepad on my Amiga (A600 & A1200).

When I got my CD-32 I quickly stopped using the default (God awful) pad that came with the console.
And got myself a Competition Pro 32 (much, MUCH nicer to use)
IIRC I think I still have that kicking around somewhere.

I've never really liked using "Up" to jump (although at the time, it was "normal" on an Amiga).

But once you used a console (SNES or Megadrive) with their game pads, it just made
so much more sense to have a dedicated button for jumping.
As it made controlling the character / sprite, that much easier.

[jotd]

Originally Posted by stx2199

button 3 on the amiga is ground+ pin 5
of course in a sega pad such 3 button don't exists, you have to mod it and rewire it to button A because button B and C are joy 1 and 2 buttons

Are there some native amiga joysticks with 3 buttons? (no hardware mods)

anyways the button 3 is used in some whdload games just for pause only
It's not worth making any modifications

A few games need 3 buttons, specially with 2nd button jump and say, 3rd button for special weapon. Turrican 2 maybe? But the great majority only needs 2 buttons, then 3rd button is pause.

as someone said in a CD32 pad button 3 is pause

There's no such thing as a 3rd button in a CD32 pad. There's a "play/pause" button though that most games use for pause.

[phx]

Originally Posted by Tigerskunk

But even these days you would get more people with 1000+ euro turbo cards than using a 10 euro two button joystick on the Amiga.

Maybe because they are happy with their joysticks and can control all Amiga games just fine, like decades ago?

I am not completely against two buttons, but I would be looking for a joystick, not a gamepad. And its design should be very close to the Competition Pro. Maybe some kind of "shoulder button" for the index or middle finger is an option. But using the existing right button would be unergonomic.

Originally Posted by Geordie-Jedi

Yeah, I wish more Amiga software utilised 2-3 (or more) buttons within games.

Why? Good game design has simple controls.

I've never really liked using "Up" to jump (although at the time, it was "normal" on an Amiga).

Using "up" is the most natural and effective control in jump&runs, if you use a joystick. Not so much if you prefer a gamepad.

[jotd]

While I completely agree with the fact that up for jump is okay with joysticks & sucks with joypads (I completed Gods & other platformers like that with my Wico and I didn't see any issue), in the arcades, there were joysticks and yet most of the time a jump button. The only arcade game I know which uses up for jump is "Green Beret", because 2 buttons are already taken for knife and special weapon, and 2 buttons was the standard, since... 1980.

Plus, in a platformer with ladders, if you use up for jump then when you jump on a ladder, then the character goes up the ladder... which is highly infuriating specially when the game is a port where the jump button originally existed (Ghosts'n'Goblins, Toki). In Toki, it's even worse, as you can shoot and direct the shoot, but if you move the joystick up before pressing fire, you jump and collide with the birds you were trying to shoot...

In Tearaway Thomas, the character can't shoot or whatever, and they wisely used the fire button to jump. Which is way more accurate than trying a diagonal.

[malko]

Still happy with it : https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=91035

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by phx

Why? Good game design has simple controls.

These simple controls held back Amiga gaming and no amount of good design could help with that.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by jotd

Plus, in a platformer with ladders, if you use up for jump then when you jump on a ladder, then the character goes up the ladder... which is highly infuriating specially when the game is a port where the jump button originally existed (Ghosts'n'Goblins, Toki). In Toki, it's even worse, as you can shoot and direct the shoot, but if you move the joystick up before pressing fire, you jump and collide with the birds you were trying to shoot...

Both problems (ladders and shooting up) are good examples why a second button instead of up is a good idea. It is always quite interesting to read that having more buttons isn't an improvement. Only Amiga...

[Minuous]

A serious gaming system needs a dozen or more buttons per player :-D

[modrobert]

I recently modified a modern PC keyboard (tenkeyless) with micro switches and use that as an Amiga joystick which currently supports two buttons (WASD, Enter, Shift). Removed the USB cable, soldered in a ground lead wire between the keys on the PCB then using a long ribbon cable soldered to each key and a DB9 connector. It works over expectation, beating my old high scores from the 90s.

[jotd]

For some games, keyboard is the best. I play my arcade remakes almost exclusively with keyboard (except maybe for shooters like Xevious, when there are 4 "free" directions it's less interesting)

[Tigerskunk]

Interestingly enough, a lot of professional Fighting Game players used some weird kind of keyboard setup until it was forbidden a year ago because it was just too OP compared to Joysticks.

[malko]

^ That kind of restriction always intrigued me. If you master a controller (by yourself, without any external help - meaning a driver or application allowing1 key combo, which is also possible with pad or joystick) why does it have to be OP compared to other controllers ? This is nonsense.
That in a competition there are categories is fine (playing with joystick, playing with pad, playing with keyboard, etc.) but restricting to a sort of controller over others is even more unfair.

[jotd]

if you can program your keyboard to issue perfect combos that's kind of cheating though. Otherwise, yeah, unless they impose the controller.

[Daedalus]

To add some detail:

- Yes, the C64 supports two buttons (and three buttons), but unlike the Amiga and Atari 8-bits, the C64 uses a reversed polarity on the extra button (pin 9 needs to be set to 5V to be detected, not ground like all other inputs), and thus it isn't 100% compatible with the Amiga/Atari/Mastersystem 2-button design. I don't know if many/any games support 3 buttons, but a third button can be read in the same way with the C64 (pin 5 to 5V).

- 3-button Megadrive pads can easily have all 4 buttons (A, B, C and Start) read by the Amiga with a simple, small adaptor to correct for the difference in pinout. This needs additional, explicit support in the game (or WHDLoad slave), but the code is relatively simple, as is the adaptor required. Reading all 8 buttons on a 6-button MD pad should also be doable with the same adaptor, though I haven't tried it.

- Play/pause on the CD32 is button 7, not button 3.


Personally, while the Amiga has always supported 3 buttons directly on individual pins (as used by 3-button mice), I don't really see the need for such support because a) there aren't many (or any?) controllers available that use the direct 3-button setup, and b) there are already two suitable multi-button methods that can provide more buttons - CD32 and Megadrive. Introducing more, incompatible standards only means more work and fragmentation depending on whether developers bother supporting all the different controller types.

[Tigerskunk]

Originally Posted by malko

^ That kind of restriction always intrigued me. If you master a controller (by yourself, without any external help - meaning a driver or application allowing1 key combo, which is also possible with pad or joystick) why does it have to be OP compared to other controllers ? This is nonsense.
That in a competition there are categories is fine (playing with joystick, playing with pad, playing with keyboard, etc.) but restricting to a sort of controller over others is even more unfair.

Now that I am on my desktop i can give further info...

This is the thing in question.


Input with those buttons was so much faster that the players using regular joysticks were completely lost.

Seems a lot of fighting games could be exploited by holding more than one direction at once and then just releasing one for instance.

Seems it wasn't outright banned, but a few rules put in place:

See, here's the problem. Fighting game controllers that are leverless, like Hitbox and other controllers like it, allow players to seamlessly perform inputs that users with fight sticks would have issues performing. Complex motions such as Charge inputs (where you hold down one direction before moving the stick to another direction and performing an input) become much easier thanks to leverless controllers like it.

The new Capcom Pro Tour ruleset change has maintained studies and reviewed the advances that the fighting game community has made thanks to the adoption of leverless controllers. While not outright banning the controllers, Capcom has made a few adjustments to the controller usage rules to ensure the highest level of fairness. This new rule allows all leverless controllers to operate at a universal standard for Street Fighter 6's tournament season.

This new rule change will force players to either reject or maintain dual direction inputs (so, for example, if you hold up and down or left and right at the same time, you won't be able to perform a motion input in the opposite direction). Thus, whatever controller can register an input when two directionals are pressed will have to be adapted to this new rule. Since this is a change that will radically affect how players play the game in the Capcom Pro Tour season, the announcement has been made in advance to the official full ruleset, which will be published at a later date.