Joystick irony

[AmigaHope]

Honestly the vast majority of Atari/Amiga joysticks were absolutely terrible and deserve to die in a fire. Now that genuine quality arcade parts are easily accessible to the average consumer, there's no excuse for the crappy joysticks of old.

I remember when I used to think my Wico Boss was the shit. :: cringe ::

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by roondar

That makes me wonder, does a DB9-to-USB dongle get better results? Or is it more to do with the fundamental difference between a wire (more or less) directly connecting to a chip vs a driver stack getting in the way?

It's down to the combination of the USB device and the driver stack, and in emulation, you also have the lag between the host OS presenting the control signals and the corresponding signals showing up in the emulated machine.

A DB9 adaptor is just a standard USB controller with the button switches on the end of a removable cable instead of in the housing. It's also fairly trivial to add support for a DB9 connection to almost any USB controller. I've done it before, so that a standard joystick can be plugged into a wireless USB controller, mapping the joystick to the pad and buttons 1 and 2. It might be possible to reduce the lag on the hardware side by using higher end parts, but the software stack is pretty much a done deal for any controller you connect.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Daedalus

It's down to the combination of the USB device and the driver stack, and in emulation, you also have the lag between the host OS presenting the control signals and the corresponding signals showing up in the emulated machine.

A DB9 adaptor is just a standard USB controller with the button switches on the end of a removable cable instead of in the housing. It's also fairly trivial to add support for a DB9 connection to almost any USB controller. I've done it before, so that a standard joystick can be plugged into a wireless USB controller, mapping the joystick to the pad and buttons 1 and 2. It might be possible to reduce the lag on the hardware side by using higher end parts, but the software stack is pretty much a done deal for any controller you connect.

Thanks for the info. This is what I kind of expected, but it's good to know for sure. It's also logical, but still kinda cool that you can add DB9 plugs to just about any USB controller

It does make me wonder just how much lag is added prior to what the emulator adds. Has this ever been measured?

I ask this because I wonder whether or not the perceived lag using emulators is mostly emulator induced (i.e. most emulators only show an image after a full frame is drawn, which would essentially create about a frame of lag), or USB driver induced (where I honestly can't really imagine modern controller software adding anything even close to a frame).

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

A lot of joysticks use leaf springs.

I found that out after I spilt a cup of sweet tea over my joystick, and it was ruined. I opened it up to find the entire interior lined with fine sugar crystals.

[Devo]

I've morphed into a couch-blobule-like-being so I only use a Sony DS4 bluetooth controller for all my retro gaming. I actually yearn for the days of my ancient Atari 2600 joystick with the protective rubber all over the big glorious stick even though it was such a cheap and nasty beast. I even used it for my old Commodore 64. But... I need mah buttons, especially for emulators like VICE x64 for Retroarch! Buttons, buttons, who got the buttons?

[005AGIMA]

great continued discussion guys. and my thoughts exactly on KB+mouse being for FPS, but lots of games suffer. Driving games included.

I do use my PS4 controller for EMU on my Android Tablet, or an Xbox360 controller on PC.

Oddly, while Win-UAE is happy to use the dpad OR the analog stick, Amiga Forever 8 only passes signal from the analog stick...and yes I'd prefer the D-Pad. GGGRRRRRR.

My KX Lite Amiga Forever build is progressing nicely but this does not see my Xbox 360 controller (no windows drivers at play here of course), despite having added Joy0 (and I tried Joy1) to the config file, so I think I need a simple USB stick / pad to make that work. That really is just a hobby rig though to turn an old beige PC into an Amiga for LOLs.

Oh the topic of pulling joysticks apart though.....

I did "customize" a couple of joysticks.......
I took the SHAFT from this:


and added it to the base of this:


Pointless? Yes. But it felt awesome at the time
From memory some functions "may" have stopped working lol. BUt everything that mattered worked fine. Was probably the top autofire switches or something. Can't recall. I know it wasn't "perfect" that's for sure lol.

I do know that last look in my parents loft, there is still a box for a Quickshot II Turbo up there, but I'm pretty sure it just has spare parts in it.

[Foebane]

I can barely remember it now, but I was given an analogue joystick apparatus with no case or anything, it was just the shaft and the potentiometers, and I had to wire it up myself. It was also non-centreing, so I had to push it back to the middle after I'd gone in the direction I wanted to go.

I had an Atari 800XL at this time, and as it turns out, I was able to use this joystick to play games that would normally use digital joysticks. I also fondly remember making a steering wheel out of cardboard, fixing it to one of the potentiometers and using it to play Pole Position. It worked very well indeed, although there was no gradual turning as with an analogue joystick (Pole Position used digital joysticks only, it seems) but I did have to centre the wheel again after turning, as you would with a real car.

As for the general joystick thing, I used a small cardboard box to secure the apparatus to the top and so I was able to get better comfort and control. It was quite the electronics adventure.

[edge-records]

Originally Posted by roondar

It does make me wonder just how much lag is added prior to what the emulator adds. Has this ever been measured?

I've done that test with my own built joystick. It's a V-USB based HID Joystick. I've had 2 windows open, one with the joystick calibrator of my OS (Ubuntu 18.04 on a new Dell XPS13), and with VICE with a loaded joystick tester program. I didn't need measuring devices to be able to tell that VICE added a lot of lag. The OS was instant, like it should be, but VICE had an easily perceivable lag, about a blink of an eye long, enough to move the eyes from one window to the other and see the movement light up twice. Not sure if it's just a VICE on Linux thing, will have to test against FS-UAE as well, and against VICE on Mac OS.



My joystick can be connected to both USB and to DB9, so I'll do a video at some point to have all 3 in view at the same time. A classic computer via DB9, OS via USB and emulator via USB. Here's the joystick, in case the OP fancies to build his own: https://gitlab.com/edge-records/joyweiler