RARusk

I've heard a lot of music in my 30+ years of gaming but my favorite theme right now is the main title to "Hitman 2: Silent Assassin" by Jesper Kyd.

Speaking of "Axel F", I just downloaded a cool remix of it (tbo_axel.xm) plus a nifty mix of the music from "Zak McKracken" (zak.it) from The Mod Archive.

You may want to try The Mod Archive. Plenty of chiptunes there.

To help out Pete5125: When you start up the game and you see the names of the pinball games, press Option. There you will see the Game Options Menu. You can see the Joypad option near the bottom. There are three Setups: Setup 1 ****** D-Pad - Left Flipper A - Nudge Table B - Right Flipper C - Pull Spring Setup 2 ****** D-Pad - Left Flipper A - Right Flipper B - Pull Spring C - Nudge Table Setup 3 ****** D-Pad - Left Flipper A - Pull Spring B - Nudge Table C - Right Flipper As you can see, the use of the D-Pad in any direction will activate the Left Flipper. For my hack I used D-Pad (Right) for the Left Shoulder Buttons to simplify things.

While I am trying to get my rotary controller working again I went and did another hack I've been meaning to do and make it work with the joypad interface I built in this topic. I found this nice little Gravis joypad at Goodwill Computerworks. It is a PlayStation joypad clone for PCs. I wanted to make a joypad for the game "Pinball Fantasies" so I can use the shoulder buttons with my forefingers similar to the action you do when playing a real pinball machine. I opened it up and stripped off all of the components, rewired it to mimic a Jaguar joypad, and added a 25-pin plug to the end of the cable so I could attach it to the joypad interface. In a stroke of luck it turns out that the joypad cable contains exactly ten wires which is the number you need for the Jaguar joypad. For "Pinball Fantasies" I wired the two left shoulder buttons to become D-Pad (Right) and the two right shoulder buttons to become the B Button when the game is using the Setup 1 control scheme. The pad can also work with any other game as long as you don't use the shoulder buttons. After doing the work and testing it out it works great. I tried it out on both "Pinball Fantasies" and "Tempest 2000". Ironically, I got a 200,000+ high score on T2K which is the highest score I've ever achieved in a Tempest game. The first picture is the joypad itself with the new 25-pin plug to the right. The Select button is Pause and the Start button is Option. The Blue button is the C Button, the Red button is the B Button, and the Green button is the A Button. The Yellow button is not used. The second picture is of the rewiring that had to be done to get the pad to work with the joypad interface. Messy, but it works. Not as impressive as the cardboard controller but I do what I can.

"Indeed, he'd never even played it properly until he used one of my rotaries at a retrovision, he was like "woah, so thats how it should have felt", which made me more than a little proud." Awesome Tyrant. It's nice to know that he had a chance to play around with one of your controllers. Even though he never had a real chance to build upon the rotary feature at least we found ways to make use of it and to play the game as it was meant to be played. I wonder why the rotary feature was put in at the last minute instead of it being in the design in the first place. After reading on where you make your connections I have a suggestion to make. Solder three wires to the encoder and then solder the other ends to where the ribbon cable is soldered to the lower board so you won't have to do the extra work of hacking up the ribbon cable and not having to worry about fixing up traces on the upper board. As for optical encoders, it doesn't hurt to play around with them and learn from them. I may still be able to get this thing working perfectly and it opens up options for those who want to build their own rotary controllers. I did a little more surfing at the CUI website and I like a lot of the encoders they have. Who knows, I may find some in the wild on my outing tomorrow as I try to find parts to repair my controller.

I live in San Antonio and I've never heard of FX until now. Where are all their locations and do they have a website? Down here it's all EB/GameStops. For my independent gaming fix I have to go to Austin and hit the GameFellas and Game Over stores.

Wow. Kinda makes me wonder what his version of a rotary controller has got to look like.....

Did some research on mechanical encoders and found this website www.cui.com. Lots of encoder options there. Might be very useful for this type of project.

There are three games that hooked me on a particular console or computer to the point that I would either buy the unit or have it given to me as a gift because of it: "Defender of the Crown" (Commodore Amiga) - First saw the game in 1985 and it blew me away. Would later acquire the Amiga and game in 1990. "GoldenEye" (Nintendo 64) - Kept playing the game at a nearby Best Buy during my lunch break and wanted it badly. Got the console and game for my 31st birthday in 1998. "Grand Theft Auto III" (PlayStation 2) - After playing it at a gamestore I just kept raving about it to my family. I got the system and game for Christmas 2001.

Thanks for the info Tyrant. Being that this game came from the Tramiel run Atari I'm not surprised about the circumstances. Given enough time I'm sure that Jeff would have perfected everything. Tonight I decided to find alternate points on the mainboard to acquire signals and in the process I knocked it out of commission (hopefully temporarily). I had tried several points without success. I was trying to attach one of the wires to one of the chips. I was trying to apply a little solder to the end of the wire so I could attach it to the chip. However, a small blob of solder fell onto the mainboard. To compound my careless error the mainboard was on. Luckily, the blob didn't fall on any major components. But a small part of it crossed the +5VDC with one of the sensor wires and before I could do anything I blew out one of the optical sensors. Yeah, that was really stupid of me. But I may be able to replace it and I will take the optical board to some of the electronics shops here in San Antonio to find the right sensor part. I may also go to Goodwill Computerworks to get a cheap mouse and get them from that. By the way Tyrant, where specifically on the joypad do you connect the left and right wires leading to the encoder?

Interesting. I will try to find alternative points on the main board since I am getting them raw just off of the optical device. It's possible that the circuit that you posted, or a similar version of it, may already be on the main board. I think the plug area where the joystick cable is connected would be a good spot to try since that is where the signals leave the main board to go to the computer. If that doesn't work I'll get the necessary parts next week and build the circuit. I also think that using a switch on the +5VDC line heading to the main board would work just as well for switching between normal and rotary modes. Turn off the power and you turn off the main board and the signals cease. I also wonder what they built to test out the rotary controller code during quality assurance of "Tempest 2000". I am curious what they used. I also built a simple 9-pin to 25-pin adapter to try the Indy 500 driving controller to see what it did. It worked nice at the main menu but it was terribly slow in gameplay. Still no keypad function. I am beginning to wonder if the reason the rotary option was hidden was because any rotary device would cause problems with the keypad functions. But, this is also not just a hardware problem but a game design flaw. If T2K did not use any keypad functions at all there would never be an interference issue. If they knew about the keypad problem than they should have programmed around it by taking away the camera and sound toggles from the keypad and allowing the rotary controller to have the keypad all to itself thus removing the need for you to use it during gameplay. They could have programmed T2K to let you to pause the game and allow you to switch camera modes (without the threat of losing any lives) using the main firebuttons as well as turning on or off the music and sound effects. A little lack of foresight there.

I just recently acquired a PBC and the only game that I have that works on my SMS but doesn't work on the PBC is "Alien 3". When I put it in the PBC it comes up with a blank screen and single tone noise. But when I put it back in the SMS it works fine.

"I hope the modifications you made to the encoder are reversible, since you just degraded its performance... Why did you do this ?" Yes, the modification is reversible. The reason I did it was because I felt that there was too many "poles" sending back too much information which I thought may be a partial cause of the interference. I was wrong of course. As for degradation, I don't think I degraded the performance at all. Before, when at the menu screen, if you barely tapped the paddle, the cursor would go nuts. In this case, the controller was too sensitive. In the gameplay, I didn't have any problems but I could see that if I barely moved the paddle I would move the shooter. With the modification, even though the cursor would bounce around a bit, it was less than what it was before. I also found that I had a little bit more control over the shooter during gameplay. In essence I tweaked the sensitivity down a bit by blocking out half the windows. "The "interference" is an electrical incompatibility that isn't fixable with mechanical tinkering -- besides, if I understood the way the encoder is currently connected, you may even damage it in the long term, since pressing buttons short-circuits the outputs." Are you meaning to say that there is an actual current, in addition to the signals, going back to the interface? What buttons are you referring to? The firebuttons or the keypad buttons or both?

I had a look at the replies in my "Optical Rotary Controller Project (Sneak Peek)" topic concerning the keypad interference issue and I will try to play around with the proposed solution to it. I will also continue to look for other potential solutions to this particular problem. I opened up the main unit again tonight to try something to solve the interference issue. Using a combination of masking agent and black paint, I went and blocked out every other window on the encoder wheel. It didn't solve the problem but it managed to make the controller a little less twitchy and improved the control a little. Well, I'm done here for the night. Let me know what you guys think of the project.

The final picture is what the setup looks like. The rotary controller, which is on my Xbox, would sit on my lap as I play the game. The joypad is used to set things up and make gameplay tweaks. The Jaguar is attached to my RGB box using the PlayStation AV plug I hacked into it eariler in the year and displayed on my NEC MultiSync 3D monitor.

The first picture in this post is of the stand for the joypad interface. It used to be a NES Advantage joystick. This was originally going to be used for a stand for my PlayStation joypad interface (a picture of that, a project done years ago, is the third picture) but I never got around to finishing it. The reason I was using the Advantage was because it has a solid metal base which gives it weight and keeps it from being moved around. I resurrected the stand for the Jaguar joypad. the two posts go into the screw holes near the 25-pin plug. The piece of velcro is used to attach the top end of the joypad because the screw posts there are too shallow. The second picture is the joypad interface on the stand. The third picture is of the PlayStation joypad interface I was going to use the stand for originally.

The next couple of pictures show the joypad interface to the rotary controller (plus any additional homebrew controller projects). The first picture is of the joypad interface itself. You can clearly see the 25-pin plug on the bottom. You can use the interface like a regular joypad if the need arises. The second picture is a closeup of the 25-pin plug. The pinouts, going from left to right, is as follows: Row 1 ***** 1 - Keypad Row 1 (Pause) 2 - Keypad Row 2 (A, B, C, Option) 3 - Keypad Row 3 (Right, 1, 2, 3) 4 - Keypad Row 4 (Left, 4, 5, 6) 5 - Keypad Row 5 (Down, 7, 8, 9) 6 - Keypad Row 6 (Up, *, 0, #) 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 - Not Connected 12 - Rotary Controller (Left) 13 - Rotary Controller (Right) Note: I decided to give the rotary controller its own pins just in case I may need to do something special. Row 2 ***** 14 - +5VDC 15 - Not Connected 16 - Keypad Column 1 (Pause, A, Right, Left, Down, Up) 17 - Keypad Column 2 (B, 1, 4, 7, *) 18 - Keypad Column 3 (C, 2, 5, 8, 0) 19 - Keypad Column 4 (Option, 3, 6, 9, #) 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 - Not Connected 25- Ground

Although I still have some minor issues to work out here my optical rotary project for "Tempest 2000" is essentially completed. I made the pictures a bit large to allow for a better look so I apologize in advance if this causes any problems. The first picture shows the finished main unit. The case used to be a fighter stick made by Capcom for the Super Nintendo that I had sitting in a closet for a few years. The rotary controller taken from the Logitech Wingman Warrior joystick is on the left. The three main firebuttons, from left to right is C-B-A, is on the right. The red and black mottled stuff is arcade laminate. It has also been painted with two layers of flat black model paint then buffed with a rag to give it a mattish look. The second picture is of the 9-pin plug that a custom built cable, that will link it to the joypad interface, will be attached to. The pinouts are as follows (going from left to right): Row 1 ***** 1 - Rotary Controller (Left) 2 - Rotary Controller (Right) 3 - Keypad Column 1 (Firebutton "A") 4 - Keypad Column 2 (Firebutton "B") 5 - Keypad Column 3 (Firebutton "C") Row 2 ***** 6 - +5VDC 7 - Not Connected 8 - Keypad Row 2 (Firebuttons "A", "B", "C") 9 - Ground

I got the firebuttons working correctly and did a runthrough. Played a couple of games and the rotary controller works well. However, there is a new issue that has cropped up and this may take some time to solve. On the standard encoders a signal is sent when the center contact touches a pole. On this optical encoder a constant signal is being sent through the two wires heading back to the joypad. This constant signal is interfering with the main keypad. In short, when the rotary encoder is connected to the joypad interface, the keypad will NOT function. I can't change the camera, turn the music on or off, or reset. I also found that I can't change the lettering around when I enter a high score on the Tempest 2000 game itself (can you enter your initials when using a regular encoder?). What I need now is to find something, a buffer or a filter, that can make the signals from the optical encoder more compatible with the joypad interface so I can regain use of the keypad, and the ability to enter my initials, without screwing up the optical encoder output. But, despite this new problem, everything is pretty much finished. I will start taking pictures tomorrow and write up the stuff to accompany it. I will ask around a bit to see what I can do to fix the signal problem.

Actually, since I have made quick progress since I started this topic, I will wait until everything is finished before taking more pictures and then will start a new topic showing off the finished product. Tonight was rather frustrating. I figured out that the keypad used a row/column method of input and did some rewiring. I now have the keypad working but I couldn't get the damn firebuttons to work properly no matter what. I was getting pissed off so I decided to look at the JagFAQ to see if I could find any answers. It turns out that everything is mapped like a giant keypad. I am used to having the firebuttons use ground for their power. But the three firebuttons don't use ground but a keypad row for "power". Now it makes sense. Nasty little paradigm shift I am having to make here. I will need to make a minor revision to the main unit. The firebuttons are currently attached to ground. I will need to remove that line and attach it to one of the unused lines and attach it to Keypad Row 2. This should fix that problem. This also reduces the number of wires used in the joypad hack. I will also designate two pins as Rotary (Left) and Rotary (Right) for rotary controllers and place them on the wire strip (like I had in the picture in the topic about wiring up the Logitech device) as a precaution. Hopefully I will get this damn thing working correctly tomorrow now that I've seen the schematic on how everything is mapped out.

"Cool. I'll send you my address so you can send me a unit for ...uhhh ... a review for a major website. You'll get it back. I promise. Eventually." Uh-huh. Sure you will..... Anyway, during the wire-up process I've hit some snags. The Up and Down pins on the plug don't want to work properly (they are spazzing out T2K - the Left and Right pins are no problem). The other buttons seem to work fine. And I've just realized that I am going to need to add more wires to get the keypad pins to work. It seems that when you press a key on the keypad the signal goes to two places not just one so I have to run two wires from each pin (I currently have just one wire per key). I'll get everything to work.....eventually.

"I think you need to send this to me for, ummmm .... quality control purposes. Yeah." I used to be a gametester so I know a thing or two about "quality control". Can't blame you though. This is the single most ambitious controller project I've done to date. And probably the coolest. All of the painting is done. The stand is completed and I am done with the joypad case. Tomorrow, after work, I will wire up the 25-pin plug into the joypad and test everything out. If everything checks out, I could have this all finished up by Sunday.

The main unit is completed. I put on two layers of flat black model paint on the sides and buffed it with a rag to give it a matted look. After some trimming I then wired up the components to a 9-pin plug which is where the cable will be attached to. I am mostly done with the joypad case. I just need to paint the bottom area where the plug holder is. The stand is mostly completed also. The cable will be the final stage of the project.

"Soul Calibur" "MDK2" "Sonic Adventure" "Sonic Adventure II" "Dead or Alive 2" Those are some of the titles that immediately come to my mind. By the way, I don't know if you guys know this, but on some of the DreamCast games, if you stick them in a PC or Mac, there are folders with all kinds of goodies in them. "MDK2" has a lot of stuff on it (pictures and MP3s), "DOA2" has pictures of the girls in bikinis, and both Sonic Adventures have wallpapers you can use. I don't know if anybody has made a list of what games have bonus material. And, no, "Soul Calibur" doesn't have any bonus stuff. To find if a game has bonus stuff place it in your PC or Mac and look for a folder that says "Bonus" or has the game's title.