29 April 2024, 15:53 | #41 | |
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For PC i have a Qanba arcade stick, works great when emulating Amiga games, maybe not so great with Turrican pixel perfect jump up & right or left mechanics but great for the majority of Amiga arcade style games. |
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29 April 2024, 15:57 | #42 |
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Good to have the precisions. Thanks.
And interesting to see such controller that is finally a big keyboard with less keys. Like we say : "no stick, no joy" |
30 April 2024, 05:59 | #43 | |
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however, the Amiga joystick port supports 3 independent buttons which can be programmed easily for use in any game The Amiga 500 should have been sold with some cheap pad and 3 buttons, this would have encouraged/forced the game programmers to use them in games instead using only 1 button for most of them |
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30 April 2024, 06:09 | #44 |
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There is this in diy/maker ... https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2416808 ...
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30 April 2024, 08:22 | #45 |
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Since the CD32 pad also works for the A500, I suppose that we can say that there is now an official solution for the multi button problem.
Bubble and Squeak OCS even have an original CD32 pad controlling option. Not a whdload patch. |
30 April 2024, 11:05 | #46 | |
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There were hundreds of them available when I bought them... a photo what I bought attached |
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01 May 2024, 20:03 | #47 |
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Never knew that Master System controllers could be used as two-button Amiga controllers. I can understand why Amiga games weren't generally designed around two-button controllers though - many people kept the same joystick they'd used on the C64 / Atari 8-bit / Amstrad (Spectrum needed a different connection type, though lots of joysticks had both ports), and of course most early Amiga games were developed alongside versions for systems with no two-button controllers.
We got set in our ways on home computers, we were used to home computers having one-button controllers and consoles being multi-button - was it snobbery on our part? When developers did release games designed around two-button controllers (such as Kick Off 3 and FIFA), reviewers slagged them off as uncontrollable, and FIFA especially has a low average on LemonAmiga from people who clearly haven't played them on the recommended system |
06 May 2024, 13:23 | #48 |
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@Photon
I've just post an Amos conversion of your little code to read button 2 and 3 of joysticks. The Amos source is available here : https://github.com/alain-treesong/am...rdwareJoystick Thanks for your article Aghnar / Agima |
06 May 2024, 14:01 | #49 |
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^ Nice idea
Maybe others knowledgeables coders could post code for blitz, c, etc. as well. |
08 May 2024, 00:28 | #50 |
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In Blitz anyway, buttons 1 and 2 are supported by the standard Joyb() function, and CD32 buttons are supported by the Gameb() function. Reading the 3rd button / middle mouse button would be done the same way as the AMOS example, setting the potgo register and then reading the relevant bits. For "politeness", particularly if you want to multitask or restore the system as it was before suspending multitasking, it might be a good idea to allocate the relevant bits using potgo.resource, as banging the hardware directly without it will interfere with anything else that might be using those pins, e.g. a scroll wheel driver, middle mouse button commodity etc.
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08 May 2024, 15:23 | #51 | ||||
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Yep, awesome Alain and great to see so many answers!
I've also chimed in with field3d in his WHD slave tutorial request thread. I promise to not put all the burden on "someone else" to see this idea come through but want to contribute some work myself as well. On 18 May I will also show how to convert your favorite joystick to 3 button on my Twitch livestream, to show that it's not so daunting. E.g. Megadrive, MSX, USB sticks and pads. Quote:
There were certainly multi-button joysticks even before the Amiga. The MSX would be a great example, and Quickshot joysticks were not expensive, but unfortunately MSX didn't follow the Atari standard. OTOH, the simplest mod is very simple: move 1 wire inside. During the heyday of the C64 and Amiga, there were several options for multi-button joysticks compatible with both systems: Competition Pro, Speedking and similar hand-held ones, and arcade style sticks from Germany and Greece advertised in magazines. And of course Megadrive pads as you mention (and third party pads and sticks for it). Quote:
I bring up the subject of shared controls because this is the real reason why e.g. Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands, Rodland, Parasol Stars (and Turricans, Gianas, Beasts, etc) didn't feel good to play. Snow Bros is an early-ish supporter of native button 2 to jump, and it makes the game more playable enjoyable - both with stick and pad. I'd rather say that game ideas that did anything at all special, like shoot a bomb or missile, open a box or activate a shield, even simple stuff like this, were forced to these shared controls on the 1 button and became worse games for it. Prime examples would be Super Cars 1/2, any car game with accel AND brake (often brake was made auto, and forget about gearboxes, even just Hi and Lo...), Paradroid 90, and many more. It's also up to the difficulty of the game and whether you want to complete it or just play for a few minutes and not care. As soon as good controls are required to avoid mistakes, such as in these cases or in competition, you quickly notice which games have bad controls. I propose that we can fix this now and retro-improve those games! (And closer to arcade, which went through the same 1, 2, then 3 button evolution during the years 1983-87. For those, the task was harder - you needed to make a new panel or cabinet, we can do it much more easily than that!) Quote:
I say maybe because the problem is that you are then forced to use a pad or slaughter one and put inside a joystick, and it's a little more complex and time-consuming to add CD32 support, which could then cause stutters (you address this below). And if we skip the already built in support for 3 buttons in a normal joystick, emus and games that support button 2 but not 3 won't get that support, which means the wrong wouldn't be righted! If you know what I mean. There's a great chance here to say to Master/NES/Megadrive users who tout their pads, that of course you can play games with 3 buttons on Amiga with a stick or pad that follows the standard, instead of their custom not so good pads! Quote:
I think it would be good if the "main/latest" did this i.e. support both controller types and therefore button 3 on standard Amiga joysticks. I'm assuming button 3 for pause requires a recompile to map to a game control? Megadrive controllers are modded similarly to MSX - just connect button 3 to pin 5 wire. I don't know if MD converters support button 3. Even better might be something like this USB to Amiga converter, but again - IDK if it supports button 3. If so it would be great, because this would give you tons of options for pads, sticks, and reissues-for-USB. I've ordered one, let's see. Nice to see sentiments echoed by many e.g. Dreadnought and TCD. First step is to add button 2/3 "hooks" to a few slaves, for emu and real Amiga to have actions to map inputs to. I have also shared my joystick routine on Coppershade, although slaves should already have something like it. But just for completeness. |
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08 May 2024, 15:44 | #52 |
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amazing that is 2024 and some people still defend joystick+1 button operation it wasn't good by 1992 it is awful to still have it nowadays
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08 May 2024, 15:50 | #53 |
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I still don't really get it. It's a problem that has long been fixed already. 2-button controllers are relatively common, as is support for them in games. And there are two standard that already exist for multi-button controllers and have controllers readily available: CD32 and Megadrive (with simple adaptor), along with a third standard being introduced by Abstraction for twin-stick, multi-button controllers that's already supported in a couple of games. If another, incompatible standard is used for new games or WHDLoad slaves, it seems silly to have to go get or make yet another different, incompatible type of multi-button controller.
If you need multiple buttons with a joystick, you don't even need to gut a CD32 or Megadrive pad - both have primitive logic that is easy to solder up on a bit of stripboard. There's no need to destroy any existing controller for the sake of £2 of parts. And because there are no 3-button controllers without modding anything, you'll be soldering and replacing cables anyway, so it's not that big a jump. Yes, reading a CD32 pad is a little more complicated. But if the timing of the game is really that tight that simple reading the pad causes frame drops, then the Megadrive scheme is much quicker, reading all 4 buttons in less time than reading the first 2 buttons of a CD32 pad. And building the adaptor required is no more complex than modding an existing controller. I would be very surprised if the various USB->Amiga adaptors support the 3rd button for game controllers, even if they do for mice, simply because the 2-button and CD32 methods are standard, and the CD32 scheme matches the standard controller layout quite well. To be clear though, I have no problem with any amount of different control types as options in games or slaves, so long as it's not at the expense of other established options, i.e. certain controller functionality is only available with 3-button controllers. It just seems like a lot of effort for no significant gain. |
22 May 2024, 13:16 | #54 |
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Jus saw in its manual that Hired Guns is playable with a 3 button Megadrive pad after modification (like Flashback).
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22 May 2024, 13:58 | #55 | |
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Deadalus, that's a lot of nope in one go. I won't address it all, but I definitely think establishing a userbase with more than one button will help make games better.
I usually argue this using Asteroids, which by all accounts is a simple game idea, yet it's still limited by stick+fire. You need to thrust, that's button 1 gone. You need to shoot, so add button 2. And then there's shield or teleport... and you don't want to put any of these on a stick direction, because you will mistrigger them sometimes. There are of course many racing games that simply lack a brake button due to stick+fire, and many platformers that use up to jump. Look no further than Turrican II for a game that uses button 1 to fire, 2 to curl up into a ball, ...and this leaves up to jump, unless you add support for a third button. Quote:
Since posting I spent an evening converting 3 joysticks. The MSX one took the longest, and I must mod it further due to its player 1/2 multiplexer. The Megadrive clone pad was tight and therefore fiddly, but I could keep the autofire function (which was seriously OP in Silkworm!). And the easiest one was an arcade stick - connect the two disconnected wires to button 2 and 3 and done. I've also received a firmware update for HID2AMI which will use the button currently mapped to "down" as fire 3, which I will test today. |
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22 May 2024, 15:33 | #56 | |||||
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So please don't confuse what I'm saying in that way, or dismiss my arguments by telling yourself that I think one fire button is enough. Quote:
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Last edited by Daedalus; 22 May 2024 at 15:41. |
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23 May 2024, 08:07 | #57 | |
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Apano Sin not only native support 3 buttons but it was also sold with 3 buttons joy. Also some WHDLoad games supports 3 buttons, e.g. Hybris, Aladdin, and some more. Latest WHDLoad slave supporting 3 buttons is Turrican 3. So, answering to question in topic: Yes, I know. Even more, I have this 3 buttons joystick: https://arsoft.netstrefa.pl/joycart.htm |
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23 May 2024, 13:53 | #58 |
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Daedalus: a lot of nope against the simpler way. Really, a single line of code enables the third button.
But it's good with discussion, because this is about awareness, and this could speed up the transition to multi-button joysticks in most Amiga users' hands, which has been the main obstacle for devs (i.e. targeting multi-button joysticks reduces the userbase). CD32 mode comes with a few problems:
With regards to 3. though, I don't see requesting CD32 support as a bad thing for a new game or WHD slave. I.e. in software, I don't see my suggestion "competing" with CD32 support; both can be added and depending on the game, users can take their chances with slowdowns and it will be NP for emu users, who have maybe already found a favorite USB joystick or pad, to increase chipmem speed or tick Instant Blits to fix it. Solo Kazuki: Hehe, awesome. Maybe I will make a ruckus in the WHD 2-button thread and ask for button 3 to jump in Turrican II. And that joystick looks sensible, not huge like fighting sticks and with an option for right-handed players. Does it support 3 buttons on Amiga with the right adapter, and can you still buy them? I might add it to the article and give AmigaLive another link for their page then. Last edited by Photon; 23 May 2024 at 14:47. |
23 May 2024, 18:14 | #59 | ||||||||
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Ah, my apologies. I thought you were saying nope as a curt dismissal of my points.
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23 May 2024, 23:37 | #60 | ||||||
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Let me stop you there, because I think you got it the wrong way around? - you say games should support CD32, the very real problem this poses is that there are no Atari DB9 multibutton converters to CD32 DB9. So, people throw away their favorite joysticks or pads? An Atari 3-button standard converter to CD32 would make CD32 (input only) conversions of WHD (only, mostly) very attractive! [QUOTE=Daedalus;1686174]USB is what I had in mind There's a huge variety of USB arcade-style sticks[QUOTE] Show me the huge variety. All I get for USB is fighting sticks. Sanwa sticks are not precise enough, and I recommend them to no-one. Just one source of a Happ controls arcade stick with blade switched buttons would make me feel there's hope left in the world. <3 Quote:
The only thing that stays the same from my previous post is that emulation *can* fix everything. I don't say every user finds the right settings. Quote:
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But I also share how to think about controls and remapping in the article, so that real games can be adapted to the wishes (or ergonomics) of the player on a real Amiga, even without a 3-button or CD32 routine anywhere in the code, and without adapters or emulation. (This will also help those with adapters and emulators, because if the real problem of shared controls is met and weathered, there will be fewer "hard to hit combos" like fire+make a circle, and fewer things like no brake button for racing games or no turning midair for Defender/thrusty games.) We can agree on one thing though, and that is that if you have an active input device such as a pad or joystick with autofire or LEDs, I wholeheartedly recommend an adapter. This is not because it's impossible, but because multiplexing and serialization, "just a chip" requires more time than it's worth converting it to a straight controller. Because that stick or pad is very likely mechanically unreliable in ways that electronics can't fix. With our different views on some things though, I think we something in common, or at least I think increased multi-button support is a hell of a lot better than doing combos or reaching for the keyboard for critical triggers. |
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