Digital Joysticks provide better control than Analog Joysticks

[Divya16]

I do wonder why the VCS and A8 didn't get analog joysticks as standard accessories... there's no reason they shouldn't have and it would have opened up some interesting possibilities.

Later you wrote:

In fact that could have allowed 5200-like controllers for the VCS or A8 sans the 2nd fire button, or with one or more added another fire button as long as you didn't press keys while holding the 2nd fire button down,

 

Didn't we argue over how bad the 5200 controllers were back in that Atari 5200 forum some time ago? Now you are arguing it should have analog controllers as standard accessories. Make up your mind. Oh, it does have paddles though although they are hardly used in any games. Most people don't want Atari 5200 controllers on their A8 nor VCS.

[potatohead]

Well, it could have just had good analog sticks.

[ledzep]

Since you love to hear it, I did play all of those games you listed in that post except one. I played all the games I could get my hands on. So much for your accusation of bias. I also answered all the points you keep repeating in self-denial of reality. The data I presented included Pole Position which uses analogicity FYI. The SuperBreakout game also uses analogicity and I played it on Flashback with digital joystick as well as with analog joystick. Neither did a good job. Same for star wars, missile command, centipede, etc. You can't mix up all types of analog/digital devices and still claim to have a controlled experiment. Majority of games use digital motion-- that's not my fault. Even games that use some analogicity have digital features which suffer because they overloaded that extra feature. Logic is superior to experimental data. We don't see people studying megabytes of data for F=MA but a few examples and understanding the science behind it is enough. If you admit that there are games that are better in digital mode then you should understand that those same frailties present for an analog joystick in those games also exist in analog games. Inherently flawed (period).

 

What I love to hear is people claiming things and then not proving those claims.

 

No one cares about how many games you've played anymore than you care how many games we've played.

 

You haven't presented any data even after stating that you used a "joystick simulator" that could record data. You have presented a few screenshots that are useless for anything beyond screen wallpapers and you've relayed to us anecdotal comments about how you perform better using a digital joystick. You've also horribly misunderstood what a scientific fact is. What is it, you ask? Why, it's this -

 

"An observation that has been confirmed repeatedly and is accepted as true (although its truth is never final)."

 

Good luck establishing that when you can't point us to where your theory has been confirmed repeatedly nor have you provided your own data that might convince people that it has been confirmed repeatedly. Damn you, English!

 

Hahaahaha, seriously? "Logic is superior to experimental data"? That's the best excuse you can come up with for repeatedly lying about having data to back up your theory? Aaawww. To quote your relief pitcher, "lame". Of course you could just be stalling long enough to cobble together some data after the fact, right? What does Logic have to say about making false claims about scientific facts and the existence of corroborating data?

 

F=MA is a math equation, not a comparison between two different types of game joysticks. If you were stating that you'd run experiments to prove that F=MA then we would expect you to release that data, too. Is there something wrong with your joystick comparison data?

 

It also doesn't matter what the majority of video games use or are coded for. Your over-generalized claim -

 

"Digital Joysticks provide better control than Analog Joysticks. It's a scientific fact; let's see who can refute it."

 

makes no stipulations or assumptions about the number of games that use or require digital motion vs. analog motion. You claim it applies across the board for all joysticks with all games. Double-damn you, English!!

 

You're inept to understand the point. A digital joystick with 8 directions and fire button or two is 100% deterministic as far as user knowing its state (no relying on feedback to calibrate your joystick as you go). Once you add the analogicity, you are looking at uncertainty as to which state your joystick is in. Let's say a game uses 4 levels from left to center then there's the probability that you got the level right is about 1/4 since you don't know exactly what thresholds a particular game uses or what state of calibration a joystick is in. Now, as you increase the levels, the probability is 1/L where L is the number of levels you want to take advantage of. Take that to the limit (use some calculus here). And the more levels you have the more uncertainty there is. In the limit as L->infinity, the probability that you know any state of the joystick is ZERO.

 

Then it should be simple for you to explain how a bass player playing a fretless bass, which has infinite levels of control, actually has ZERO control. Why argue around this? If you support Divya16's erroneous position then you (or she) should have no problem convincing everyone that

, who is in complete control of the notes he's playing, actually has ZERO control. So go ahead, explain it. If you can't, well, that would certainly qualify as "inept".

 

I mean, seriously, how lucky is Tony Franklin to accidentally hit every note he intended to hit, huh? Wow, what are the odds. Maybe you should

 

1) run an experiment to figure out how lucky he would have to be to pull that off with ZERO control,

2) come up with a theory to explain how he actually has ZERO control,

3) claim that your theory is actually a scientific fact without knowing what "scientific fact" actually means,

4) answer doubters by saying you have run experiments and have the data to prove it and then

5) refuse to let anyone see any of the data that supports this "fact".

 

You know, like what you just did with this digital vs. analog joystick theory of yours.

 

You did confuse paddles with analog joysticks, instruments with analog joysticks, digital with analog, etc. Anyway, I think Divya has your number there so I'll leave that alone.

 

I didn't confuse anything, I included POTs because you included buttons. Look at your own biased poll, you have digital joysticks, analog joysticks and buttons. Why, if this is a theory comparing joysticks? Because you know as well as the rest of us that at the root of a digital joystick's design it's simply some buttons that are activated by the leverage of a joystick pressing on them. So, too, with POTs. An analog joystick is, at the root of its design, simply (usually) two POTs that are activated by the leverage of a joystick twisting them. So, what uses one POT? A paddle. If you don't like me mentioning paddles then don't bring up buttons. You ignore this problem with your thinking over and over.

 

Divya16 may have my number if she could ever address the points I've actually voiced instead of simply retreating behind "digital wins hands down". When is she going to explain how to accurately represent 1/3 digitally? When is she going to explain how to represent the color between 125,0,0 and 126,0,0 without introducing more levels of control that she claims is bad? More stalling? Post #78 awaits a coherent, non-evasive reply. I will advise it not to hold its breath. Divya16 brought up 5 points, I rebutted them, ball's in her court.

 

Smart move to give up and punt to Divya16 since you can't seem to support your own theory or argue your way out of a corner.

[kool kitty89]

I do wonder why the VCS and A8 didn't get analog joysticks as standard accessories... there's no reason they shouldn't have and it would have opened up some interesting possibilities.

Later you wrote:

In fact that could have allowed 5200-like controllers for the VCS or A8 sans the 2nd fire button, or with one or more added another fire button as long as you didn't press keys while holding the 2nd fire button down,

 

Didn't we argue over how bad the 5200 controllers were back in that Atari 5200 forum some time ago? Now you are arguing it should have analog controllers as standard accessories. Make up your mind. Oh, it does have paddles though although they are hardly used in any games. Most people don't want Atari 5200 controllers on their A8 nor VCS.

 

Nothing wrong with having them as accessories, but having them standard was more of a problem... or rather it wasn't even their being analog that was the problem, but the general design. In any case it would have made more sense to have digital controllers pack-in and analog optional across the board (especially attractive for cross platform A8/5200 development)... though you could have a deluxe set with a selection of controllers pack-in. (paddles, analog sticks, and digital joysticks) For that matter they could/should have pushed for things like driving wheels like Coleco did.

 

But the problems with the 5200 pads were reliability of the buttons and keys (and flex circuits themselves) with the analog stick secondary (and exaggerated by aging/worn/dirty controllers) and as it was the flimsy boot issue was addressed on later models (springier and tougher, avoiding tearing -and thus avoiding dirty pots as well) and in '84 they weren't far from introducing a high-quality spring loaded short-throw joystick (more like the vectrex's stick) as well. (unfortunately the button issue had not yet been solved)

 

Even after the fact they could have released 8-way analog (pseudo digital via a simple 2-bit resistor ladder DAC) stick as an accessory or later switched that to the pack-in, but that wouldn't have solved the button issue. (that was due to cheap construction more or less and methods that were largely abandoned or substantially improved before re-use on later game systems -pretty much none ever used flex circuits again, but plain PCBs with dome switches)

 

But had the 5200 controllers been as functional and as solidly built as the Vectrex controllers that they would have been far less of a point of contention. (even the vectrex pads aren't prefect for 8-way control -thus some hommade pseudo-digital controllers work better- but they work well enough to be totally acceptable across the board)

 

 

The 5200's problems were much more than just hardware or software but integral to Warner/Atari's management issues of the time... something not starting to get addressed until fall of 1983 and halted prematurely by Warner's sale/split of Atari assets and the death of Atari Inc in July of 1984. (technically it lived on as a corporate shell for legal purposes, Atari Games was more or less the old arcade division and Atari Corp was Trammel Technologies' new name)

Edited November 4, 2010 by kool kitty89

[ledzep]

But once you've played Star Wars in the arcade, you know the power of analog control. You won't get that at home though... save for a few people with homebrew or canibalized arcade-style 2-axis yolks, though a good analog gamepad manages it OK. (with a less work gamecube pad it plays pretty well in the bonus arcade in Rogue Squadron III, the vectrex probably would have done it rather well too -some 3rd party GC controllers lack the necessary precision though given it's a position sensitive and not speed sensitive control set-up, so you can't aim where you want)

 

No, I have played Star Wars with analog joystick and digital joystick. They both don't do the job well. It takes too long to move around with digital joystick like in breakout and analog joystick is missing the accuracy. I haven't seen the contraption in the arcade, but a trackball would do well for Star Wars or a mouse neither of those are analog. A joystick can mimic the trackball for some things like using a tap vs. a full hold.

 

Haahaha, fantastic. So you have ZERO experience with Star Wars' native controller yet still attempt to make claims about what alternate controllers would work better. This is why I said that you would need to run the experiment with a control group that would play the various games as they were meant to be played in order to truly judge which home console replacement (digital or analog joystick) worked better compared to the optimum (native controller) scenario. Thanks for proving my point.

 

You state that, for you, when you play Star Wars with either a digital or analog joystick "they both don't do the job well". I don't doubt it, that's a hard game to play even with the flight yoke. The question then becomes is this because

 

1) neither controller is as good as the native Star Wars flight yoke,

2) the programmer didn't do a good job of converting Star Wars to a digital joystick,

3) the programmer didn't do a good job of converting Star Wars to an analog joystick,

4) the digital joystick you used was bad,

5) the analog joystick you used was bad,

6) you're just not good at Star Wars type games so it doesn't matter what controller you use to play it,

7) Star Wars is just a really hard game and any controller version of it will be an equally frustrating experience for anybody.

 

Now you see why you need to run controlled experiments with multiple video game players having multiple skill levels using multiple iterations and multiple controller choices, along with recording gametime data and measuring the inherent capabilities of those various controllers as well as noting how well the games were implemented by the programmers in terms of substituting a digital or analog joystick for the original controller. Just setting up a comprehensive experiment to test your theory, much less conducting it, is a pain in the ass.

 

One point people are confusing in this thread (which I addressed before) is taking things AFTER the fact. Taking a game that's written for analog joystick and then assuming digital joystick will fail there. Like SuperBreakout, if you use a digital joystick, you only have 3 positions you can go to unless it's reporgrammed for a digital joystick in which case you do get access to all the positions but lack the ability to quickly go from one side to another. Perhpas, a button to swap sides may do the trick.

 

Just because you're confused doesn't mean that other people are confused. You bring up another flaw with your initial claim. It's not just the digital or analog joystick, it's how good the programmer was at converting non-digital games to digital joysticks (Atari 2600) and non-analog games to analog joysticks (Atari 5200, Vectrex). You are absolutely correct about Super Breakout relying on a competent digital joystick implementation to be playable with a digital joystick. You also see that for games that require a speed/position component to be played optimally that a digital joystick cannot provide that output. That may make the game unplayable (Super Breakout), it may not (Centipede). But, is it still "right"? Does it feel right and play right or will people who have played the game as it was meant to be played (meaning with its native controller) going to be disappointed regardless of which digital or analog joystick is used? You know how you find that out? Conduct gameplay experiments. With multiple players having multiple skill levels. If you only play the games yourself all you'll end up with is data that proves what joystick works better for you.

 

That is what most of us have been saying this whole time. For the games that benefit from simple, exact digital joystick control the digital joystick is probably best (unless the game has been correctly programmed to interpret an analog joystick as if it were a digital joystick) and for games that benefit from in-between states and speed/position data the analog joystick is probably best (unless the game has been competently converted to work with a digital joystick's limited outputs). This of course assumes that both joystick options weren't poorly manufactured or designed by idiots.

 

This is why you cannot make a sweeping statement like you made -

 

"Digital Joysticks provide better control than Analog Joysticks. It's a scientific fact; let's see who can refute it."

 

without defining what you meant by "provide", "better", "control" (to say nothing of the secondary claim of it being a scientific fact) and also explaining that you are assuming that nobody will take the controller options after the fact (as you described above with the Super Breakout example). But by your own admissions in this post you have supported the idea that it depends on the game and the programmer as much as the controller, something that was not mentioned in your initial sweeping statement.

[Divya16]

 

Hey, I just played Choplifer and I can't even move at a constant altitude with the stock A5200 controller whereas it's a breeze with the Atari 800. I have to keep adjusting my position relying on feedback-- another headache for the user. And it also drifts -- maybe I should blame it on the wind and gravity.

 

 

Of course, lack of skill couldn't possible be the problem.

 

Or could it?

 

If you can fly at constant altitude, you are making adjustments for the lack of the controller's ability like you do for pac-man and other games when using those analog joysticks.

 

@ledzep: have you ever driven a truck? I guess not so that disqualifies you from performing a controlled experiment with analog joysticks vs. digital joysticks. Seriously, get a good definition of controlled experiment before you reply. You are mixing things up as usual. In post #183, you think it's better to "enjoy" the game rather than have complete control. And several times you compared musical instruments with their analogicity which don't even resemble an analog joystick. I think your encyclopedia/dictionary was written in some foreign language which you don't understand or your are PURPOSELY confusing things. As for your absoloute claims like:

 

"No one in the history of video game playing has been able to state absolutely what state any input device he was using was in."

 

That's rubbish. Just your mental speculation. Using a digital joystick, it's second nature that you are making exact directional movements whereas there looms a cloud of uncertainty with an analog joystick. That's why you rely on feedback, calibration, and maybe tons of practice and bias to root for it.

 

@potatohead: the analog joystick of Atari 5200 is similar to PC analog joysticks so making lame excuses like "make a better analog joystick" doesn't help your emotional attachment to analog joysticks.

[Divya16]

I do wonder why the VCS and A8 didn't get analog joysticks as standard accessories... there's no reason they shouldn't have and it would have opened up some interesting possibilities.

Later you wrote:

In fact that could have allowed 5200-like controllers for the VCS or A8 sans the 2nd fire button, or with one or more added another fire button as long as you didn't press keys while holding the 2nd fire button down,

 

Didn't we argue over how bad the 5200 controllers were back in that Atari 5200 forum some time ago? Now you are arguing it should have analog controllers as standard accessories. Make up your mind. Oh, it does have paddles though although they are hardly used in any games. Most people don't want Atari 5200 controllers on their A8 nor VCS.

 

Nothing wrong with having them as accessories, but having them standard was more of a problem... or rather it wasn't even their being analog that was the problem, but the general design. In any case it would have made more sense to have digital controllers pack-in and analog optional across the board (especially attractive for cross platform A8/5200 development)... though you could have a deluxe set with a selection of controllers pack-in. (paddles, analog sticks, and digital joysticks) For that matter they could/should have pushed for things like driving wheels like Coleco did.

 

If analog joysticks were required, people would have built them for A8 and VCS. Actually, the reverse is true-- if A5200 had the same joysticks as A8/VCS, nobody would be complaining about them. They tried to save on some digital joystick controller chip it looks like.

 

But the problems with the 5200 pads were reliability of the buttons and keys (and flex circuits themselves) with the analog stick secondary (and exaggerated by aging/worn/dirty controllers) and as it was the flimsy boot issue was addressed on later models (springier and tougher, avoiding tearing -and thus avoiding dirty pots as well) and in '84 they weren't far from introducing a high-quality spring loaded short-throw joystick (more like the vectrex's stick) as well. (unfortunately the button issue had not yet been solved)

Buttons were not an issue when the controllers were released. That's a recent issue with aging. The complaints at time of A5200 release were the analog joysticks (not the keypad). You see people releasing better joysticks for A5200 like MasterPlay but you don't see much of people using PC joysticks with A8/VCS. Because they are all inferior-- they have issues like noncentering, calibration, indeterminacy, etc. etc. And you do see various contraptions for interrfacing digital joysticks to PC (as you mentioned earlier as well).

 

But had the 5200 controllers been as functional and as solidly built as the Vectrex controllers that they would have been far less of a point of contention. (even the vectrex pads aren't prefect for 8-way control -thus some hommade pseudo-digital controllers work better- but they work well enough to be totally acceptable across the board)

The digital controllers work better because they are more deterministic and for joystick controllers controlling is the main function.

[ApolloBoy]

*lowers face on desk and cries*

[kool kitty89]

But once you've played Star Wars in the arcade, you know the power of analog control. You won't get that at home though... save for a few people with homebrew or canibalized arcade-style 2-axis yolks, though a good analog gamepad manages it OK. (with a less work gamecube pad it plays pretty well in the bonus arcade in Rogue Squadron III, the vectrex probably would have done it rather well too -some 3rd party GC controllers lack the necessary precision though given it's a position sensitive and not speed sensitive control set-up, so you can't aim where you want)

 

No, I have played Star Wars with analog joystick and digital joystick. They both don't do the job well. It takes too long to move around with digital joystick like in breakout and analog joystick is missing the accuracy. I haven't seen the contraption in the arcade, but a trackball would do well for Star Wars or a mouse neither of those are analog. A joystick can mimic the trackball for some things like using a tap vs. a full hold.

 

Haahaha, fantastic. So you have ZERO experience with Star Wars' native controller yet still attempt to make claims about what alternate controllers would work better. This is why I said that you would need to run the experiment with a control group that would play the various games as they were meant to be played in order to truly judge which home console replacement (digital or analog joystick) worked better compared to the optimum (native controller) scenario. Thanks for proving my point.

Yeah, the arcade version with the free-moving (loose) 2-axis handheld yolk is great and necessary for the very quick response needed.

Digital is either too slow or too switchy (ie if they up the sensitivity), and using a tracball, mouse or analog stick (with variable speed, not fixed position) is also a bit squirrely, even worse with a plain digital mouse/ball without analog/variable control. (be it true analog via resistance controlled by roller speed or a built-in ADC mechanism or similar mechano-optical mechanism -or optical mouse- and again, Nintendo used a mouse-like mechano-optical system for the N64 controller -nothing to do with the spring wearing issues- while most 3rd parties used pot modules -but since it was all using a serial data output with onboard ADC, it didn't matter at all)

 

The 5200 controller is a bit too long-throw to be ideal for Star Wars, but the Vectrex would be awesome (also with a vector display ), and better modern analog gamepads work fairly well too. (again Gamecube)

 

But as I said there's 2 major ways to use analog: direct position detection (as with paddled and star wars) and speed sensitivity (ie push further to move faster) and the latter caters very well to games intended for mice or track balls. Unfortunately there are a number of such games that used position sensitivity rather than speed sensitivity (Missile command especially and others like Centipede)... and games that did use speed sensitivity still only tended to use 4 speeds per axis, so pretty coarse. (and could have been done via a 5th digital "rim" input for a normal 4-switch stick as I mentioned before, though in the 2-speed analog case you would still have more range in the diagonals rather than just 8 ways with 2 speeds you could have 2x speed up plus 1x speed left as well -and I'll say that either case is far more useful than the 16-way disc of the IV, had it been 8-way+2 speed that could have been far more significant and also cause many fewer problems for plain 4/8-way games)

 

 

As to the below, I also forgot to mention in my previous response that the main comment about the 5200 controllers being possible via a normal 9-pin Atari VCS/A8 port was in the context of keeping to that standard (especially for a backwards compatible system) rather than purely suggesting that they *should* have used those controllers on the other systems. (though in all honesty the 5200's layout is quite good and the best of the generation -Vectrex is better but lacks the keypad for games like Star Raiders where it really comes in handy -would have been much more so once password saves came along; the problem wasn't the layout but the construction and they could have had digital and analog sticks using the same form factor -the one change in layout should have been 1 button per side like the 7800, but the rest was simply build quality and reliability and characteristics of the analog stick used -most of the latter could have been addressed with a better design anyway and the reliability would be solved by using normal PCB and dome switches -and button/keys were the main problem with the controller)

 

If analog joysticks were required, people would have built them for A8 and VCS. Actually, the reverse is true-- if A5200 had the same joysticks as A8/VCS, nobody would be complaining about them. They tried to save on some digital joystick controller chip it looks like.

Nope, the main reason was almost certainly due to the Intellivision's (nominally useless) 16-way control gimmick... but 2-axis analog was actually a good deal more useful than that, but like with paddles, trackball, driving controller, etc, they should not have been the main controllers used, but offered (possibly pack-in like paddles) in addition to standard digital sticks.

 

And yes, they dropped PIA (digital I/O chip), but that wouldn't have stopped them at all from using a normal 8-way controller and having it cheaper to build than the analog sticks. They could either use POKEY's key scanning to read all the digital inputs (or all sans the GTIA fire button input) just as is already done for the keys and fire button 2, or they could have used a simple resistor pull-through system like early PC gamepads which would make them seem no different than 8-way digital sticks to the end user and been simpler/cheaper/more reliable as well. (what homebrew/3rd party 8-way 5200 sticks do -actually some simpler set-ups use only 1 resistor for neutral and straight 5V and gnd for the active ranges -but that's not smart as it forces some games out of range and won't work as they weren't programmed to read inputs polled in those extreme ranges... though had Atari used that set-up from the beginning all games should have had provisions for such) In the latter case you'd have full compatibility with pot based analog controllers as well and use of the "digital" controllers for analog games (just as Gravis gamepad used as a 2-axis joystick), but it would be useless in the same cases the Wico sticks are, and less useful in others. (useless in position sensitive games, and only the fast speed for speed sensitive ones)

 

And no, they shouldn't have used normal VCS/A8 joysticks... they needed another button at the very leas and likely more than that, but they could have achieved most/all of that using the VCS ports as it was... and likewise could/should have released VCS and A8 controllers with more buttons. (the simplest would be adding 2 buttons via the pot lines to a standard digital joystick, but lots of other possibilities too, or with an analog stick or 8-way DAC set-up you could have 5 buttons or various mixes of buttons and single-press keys as I mused on before)

 

Buttons were not an issue when the controllers were released. That's a recent issue with aging. The complaints at time of A5200 release were the analog joysticks (not the keypad). You see people releasing better joysticks for A5200 like MasterPlay but you don't see much of people using PC joysticks with A8/VCS. Because they are all inferior-- they have issues like noncentering, calibration, indeterminacy, etc. etc. And you do see various contraptions for interrfacing digital joysticks to PC (as you mentioned earlier as well).

I'd gotten the opposite impression more recently with discussions of 5200 users from the time... the button wearing was a serious problem (especially the fire buttons) while the analog sticks were OK for most things though not as good as a pure digital stick or dedicated paddles for some (and great for games that properly used analog control), so again really should have been accessories and could have been much more balanced at that. (long throw and centering)

The sticks get more problematic when aged/dirty with jitter issues, but with good jitter-free controllers, they're fine for most things. (4/8-way control could have been aided further with a diamond or octagonal restrictor plate -sort of like what Nintendo did... but not the dumb cross shaped 4-way restrictor offered historicall -forcing too slow response)

 

People complain about digital gamepads/sticks as well not controlling as well as others too, so it's not a pure analog vs digital thing but an overall design issue. (try playing A8 or VCS games with a crappy clone genesis controller or a worn SMS controller -or even a worn out Genesis controller, or the Flashback 2's controllers... and some find normal genesis controllers considerably less accurate than using real VCS sticks)

 

The digital controllers work better because they are more deterministic and for joystick controllers controlling is the main function.

Yes, 8-way (analog or digital) controllers should have been standard pack-in and could have been easily released after the fact to address the issue as well (simply remove the pots and use a 4-switch digital mechanism connecting to resistors and the analog lines), but analog controllers were a great option for the time and really could have been used well for driving games and some arcade games (and as a cheaper alternative to the trackball), though paddles would be preferable in some other cases.

 

So it should have been: 8-way standard, variable analog pack-in or accessory, paddles pack-in or accessory, driving controllers, etc, etc. That and they could/should have introduced more controllers for the VCS and A8. (analog sticks, digital sticks with more buttons, maybe controllers with built-in keypads, etc, etc -had the 5200 used the VCS ports the peripherals could have been shared among the systems too)

 

 

If you could only have 1 controller for a system, it would have to be a good (short throw self centering, jitter free etc) analog joystick: it can do the job of 8-way sticks, paddles, track ball, driving controllers, plus 2-axis analog specific games all acceptably well while none of the others could. (digital control sucks for paddle based games, but analog sticks are at least acceptable if used properly -Atari Arcade collection on the Dreamcast didn't do that though and Warlords is basically unplayable and breakout not much better, a programming fault as there's neither position sensitivity or even speed sensitive control -using the d-pad is no different)

Edited November 4, 2010 by kool kitty89

[Divya16]

But once you've played Star Wars in the arcade, you know the power of analog control. You won't get that at home though... save for a few people with homebrew or canibalized arcade-style 2-axis yolks, though a good analog gamepad manages it OK. (with a less work gamecube pad it plays pretty well in the bonus arcade in Rogue Squadron III, the vectrex probably would have done it rather well too -some 3rd party GC controllers lack the necessary precision though given it's a position sensitive and not speed sensitive control set-up, so you can't aim where you want)

 

No, I have played Star Wars with analog joystick and digital joystick. They both don't do the job well. It takes too long to move around with digital joystick like in breakout and analog joystick is missing the accuracy. I haven't seen the contraption in the arcade, but a trackball would do well for Star Wars or a mouse neither of those are analog. A joystick can mimic the trackball for some things like using a tap vs. a full hold.

 

Haahaha, fantastic. So you have ZERO experience with Star Wars' native controller yet still attempt to make claims about what alternate controllers would work better. This is why I said that you would need to run the experiment with a control group that would play the various games as they were meant to be played in order to truly judge which home console replacement (digital or analog joystick) worked better compared to the optimum (native controller) scenario. Thanks for proving my point.

Yeah, the arcade version with the free-moving (loose) 2-axis handheld yolk is great and necessary for the very quick response needed.

Digital is either too slow or too switchy (ie if they up the sensitivity), and using a tracball, mouse or analog stick (with variable speed, not fixed position) is also a bit squirrely, even worse with a plain digital mouse/ball without analog/variable control.

Mouse can control the speed and go to a particular position like 2-axis yolk but neither is an analog joystick nor a digital joystick so it was a moot/irrelevant point.

 

As to the below, I also forgot to mention in my previous response that the main comment about the 5200 controllers being possible via a normal 9-pin Atari VCS/A8 port was in the context of keeping to that standard (especially for a backwards compatible system) rather than purely suggesting that they *should* have used those controllers on the other systems.

 

You are completely wrong here. They went with the standard Atari joysticks after the 5200 and before the 5200; i.e., VCS, Atari 800 and after with Atari ST, Atari 7800, etc. You are just speculating that it was just for compatibility. There was no reason to make digital interfaces for the 5200 if analog was superior. And try playing some games that are equivalents on Atari 800 and you can see which provides better control. Seems your emotions are getting in the way of your research (assuming you did the research).

 

If analog joysticks were required, people would have built them for A8 and VCS. Actually, the reverse is true-- if A5200 had the same joysticks as A8/VCS, nobody would be complaining about them. They tried to save on some digital joystick controller chip it looks like.

Nope, the main reason was almost certainly due to the Intellivision's (nominally useless) 16-way control gimmick... but 2-axis analog was actually a good deal more useful than that, but like with paddles, trackball, driving controller, etc, they should not have been the main controllers used, but offered (possibly pack-in like paddles) in addition to standard digital sticks.

 

And yes, they dropped PIA (digital I/O chip), but that wouldn't have stopped them at all from using a normal 8-way controller and having it cheaper to build than the analog sticks. They could either use POKEY's key scanning to read all the digital inputs (or all sans the GTIA fire button input) just as is already done for the keys and fire button 2,

 

This was discussed in the 5200 forum and you can't read two or more keys at the same time and you have 4 port systems. Also the keyboard is also being used simultaneously with the joysticks. They may be imitating intellivision, but that could have been done while retaining compatibility if they didn't have to get rid of the digital joystick controller chip.

 

Buttons were not an issue when the controllers were released. That's a recent issue with aging. The complaints at time of A5200 release were the analog joysticks (not the keypad). You see people releasing better joysticks for A5200 like MasterPlay but you don't see much of people using PC joysticks with A8/VCS. Because they are all inferior-- they have issues like noncentering, calibration, indeterminacy, etc. etc. And you do see various contraptions for interrfacing digital joysticks to PC (as you mentioned earlier as well).

I'd gotten the opposite impression more recently with discussions of 5200 users from the time... the button wearing was a serious problem (especially the fire buttons) while the analog sticks were OK for most things though not as good as a pure digital stick or dedicated paddles for some (and great for games that properly used analog control), so again really should have been accessories and could have been much more balanced at that. (long throw and centering)

People were into VCS or Atari 800, so they didn't like the analog sticks. Buttons weren't the main issue at that time although it is now.

 

So it should have been: 8-way standard, variable analog pack-in or accessory, paddles pack-in or accessory, driving controllers, etc, etc. That and they could/should have introduced more controllers for the VCS and A8. (analog sticks, digital sticks with more buttons, maybe controllers with built-in keypads, etc, etc -had the 5200 used the VCS ports the peripherals could have been shared among the systems too)

You are once again 100% wrong. All you did was speculate what you think shoving all the evidence of control under the rug even after admitting digital provided better 8-way control (quoted above). As I said, if they really needed analog joysticks for VCS/A8, people would have developed them like they developed digital joystick interfaces for A5200. They all should have had digital joysticks and made specialized controllers for things that require trackballs, light guns, mice, etc. The majority of games work better with digital joysticks and provide better control. Perhaps, you need to play some as you seem to be forgetting what a difference they make.

 

If you could only have 1 controller for a system, it would have to be a good (short throw self centering, jitter free etc) analog joystick: it can do the job of 8-way sticks, paddles, track ball, driving controllers, plus 2-axis analog specific games all acceptably well while none of the others could. (digital control sucks for paddle based games, but analog sticks are at least acceptable if used properly -Atari Arcade collection on the Dreamcast didn't do that though and Warlords is basically unplayable and breakout not much better, a programming fault as there's neither position sensitivity or even speed sensitive control -using the d-pad is no different)

 

You contradict yourself. You already admitted above digital does a better job. You haven't seen a digital joystick control paddle-type games it looks like. Analog does a poor job for majority of the games. And assuming there's a few games that work better with analog, you don't sacrifice the 100% predictability and control for just a few games to have some additional feature. And who is to say that those cannot be written for a digital joystick. I don't see any use for an analog joystick even for those few games given the specialized controllers (trackballs, paddles, etc.) already exist that do a better job. VCS/A8/C64/Amiga/Atari ST/etc. joystick users aren't missing out on anything except the erroneous and flawed analog joysticks. It's not a matter of doing the job-- but which does it with better control as these are joystick controllers-- meant to control. There are so many things that can do the job-- you can play some games with a Koala pad; since it also offers the 8-directions it also does the job of a digital joystick according to your opinion.

[ApolloBoy]

Seems your emotions are getting in the way of your research (assuming you did the research).

Alright, I'll bite...

 

Are you and atariksi secretly robots?

[kool kitty89]

Mouse can control the speed and go to a particular position like 2-axis yolk but neither is an analog joystick nor a digital joystick so it was a moot/irrelevant point.

Not moot as I was responding to this:

No, I have played Star Wars with analog joystick and digital joystick. They both don't do the job well. It takes too long to move around with digital joystick like in breakout and analog joystick is missing the accuracy. I haven't seen the contraption in the arcade, but a trackball would do well for Star Wars or a mouse neither of those are analog. A joystick can mimic the trackball for some things like using a tap vs. a full hold.

Hence why I left that quote nested in my response rather than cutting it out...

 

As to the below, I also forgot to mention in my previous response that the main comment about the 5200 controllers being possible via a normal 9-pin Atari VCS/A8 port was in the context of keeping to that standard (especially for a backwards compatible system) rather than purely suggesting that they *should* have used those controllers on the other systems.

 

You are completely wrong here. They went with the standard Atari joysticks after the 5200 and before the 5200; i.e., VCS, Atari 800 and after with Atari ST, Atari 7800, etc. You are just speculating that it was just for compatibility. There was no reason to make digital interfaces for the 5200 if analog was superior. And try playing some games that are equivalents on Atari 800 and you can see which provides better control. Seems your emotions are getting in the way of your research (assuming you did the research).

How does any of that contradict my statement? At no point did I claim that analog was superior or even that it should have been the standard... but only mused that they could have kept the standard joystick pinout of the VCS/A8 (and direct cross-compatibility with all controllers) in a hypothetical sense. (a tangent from the main topic)

 

Again, analog should have been there in all cases, but as an option, not the default. (the ST and Amiga dropped the pot lines in favor of more digital inputs for buttons and such, but that wouldn't have prevented an analog controller... it would have simply meant needing the ADC built into the controller rather than the console/computer) For that matter, it was still hit and miss whether analog was prominently supported or no: for PCs it was common but unfortunately CPU intensive (lacking a nice ADC like POKEY has), for the Apple II it was standard, for the CoCo it was standard (same joyports used for the Tandy 1000), etc, etc. And before the PC gameport was even surpassed by USB for controllers they were making all digital I/O based analog joysticks/gamepads (using a serial or parallel I/O protocall via the 4 digital button lines on the port and internal ADCs). Now, honestly I think several focused too much on analog support, but the original Atari set-up is probably the best balanced of such with 5 digital and 2 analog lines. (and using a simple select line set-up for multiplexing as with the Genesis, you could effectively have 8 digital lines, or 12 if the analog inputs could be used for both)

 

Nope, the main reason was almost certainly due to the Intellivision's (nominally useless) 16-way control gimmick... but 2-axis analog was actually a good deal more useful than that, but like with paddles, trackball, driving controller, etc, they should not have been the main controllers used, but offered (possibly pack-in like paddles) in addition to standard digital sticks.

 

And yes, they dropped PIA (digital I/O chip), but that wouldn't have stopped them at all from using a normal 8-way controller and having it cheaper to build than the analog sticks. They could either use POKEY's key scanning to read all the digital inputs (or all sans the GTIA fire button input) just as is already done for the keys and fire button 2,

This was discussed in the 5200 forum and you can't read two or more keys at the same time and you have 4 port systems. Also the keyboard is also being used simultaneously with the joysticks. They may be imitating intellivision, but that could have been done while retaining compatibility if they didn't have to get rid of the digital joystick controller chip.

No, they could read the joysticks as key inputs as well... There are 64 states for the keys and each controller is read separately (toggles with a GTIA select line) and with 1 GTIA button, 1 key button and an 8-way stick that uses 18 of the states (GTIA separate) and leaves 46 states for additional keypresses (as long as the additional keys were not pressed while the stick or fire button 2 were in use) and if you dropped the 6th POKEY key scan line you could still have 14 added keys.

 

But even if they couldn't do that, they very easily could have used the resistor DAC option (simpler and cheaper than pots for sure), but that wouldn't allow direct compatibility... but that comment was not meant to include direct VCS compatibility either, only my statements specifically referencing the 9-pin ports would include that, and indeed I specifically stated that reading with key scanning would not allow for the standard DE-9 ports and you need the select line to do that.

Keeping PIA would have solved that (or using RIOT had they engineered a backwards compatible hybrid -more so if they hadn't bothered with 4 ports), in which case they could even save cost by making a cut-down version of POKEY. (remove key scan lines, SIO and a couple other unnecessary lines and it should be down to 28 pins... and if you went down to a 2-port console you could cut out 4 of the pot inputs too and get it down to 24 pins -probably should have done that for the 7800 too, especially after getting stuck with only the on-cart option -in the latter case probably down to 18-20 pins as there's even more that are not useful via the cart slot -like IRQ)

Though like my suggestion of using the RIOT lines for a keypad, that would need more internal wiring/traces (or a small IC) to map all of the connections used. (unless they dropped the keypad... in which case it would be significantly cheaper than what they did)

 

It was probably a two birds with one stone sort of thing for dropping PIA (MOS 6521) though as they'd be saving some cost and they'd be one-upping the competition with analog control. However, there's many other areas they could have cut cost more than dropping PIA and given the general design it doesn't seem that cost cutting was of the utmost importance. (huge case, big carts, expansion port, many extra/reserved cart lines -many unconnected or redundant- 16 kB of DRAM -cheaper than SRAM but requiring added control and refresh circuitry -and they could have cut back to 4k of DRAM or used 2 or 4k of SRAM and removed the added control/refresh/multiplexing circuitry) It's a very inconsistent design in terms of trade-offs made, especially compared to the 1200 XL released the same year. (dropped expansion slots, dropped 2 controller ports, etc...)

 

 

So it should have been: 8-way standard, variable analog pack-in or accessory, paddles pack-in or accessory, driving controllers, etc, etc. That and they could/should have introduced more controllers for the VCS and A8. (analog sticks, digital sticks with more buttons, maybe controllers with built-in keypads, etc, etc -had the 5200 used the VCS ports the peripherals could have been shared among the systems too)

You are once again 100% wrong. All you did was speculate what you think shoving all the evidence of control under the rug even after admitting digital provided better 8-way control (quoted above). As I said, if they really needed analog joysticks for VCS/A8, people would have developed them like they developed digital joystick interfaces for A5200. They all should have had digital joysticks and made specialized controllers for things that require trackballs, light guns, mice, etc. The majority of games work better with digital joysticks and provide better control. Perhaps, you need to play some as you seem to be forgetting what a difference they make.

WTF? Why NOT have such nice accesories as analog joysticks (possibly with built-in keypads) and digital pads with 2 or 3 buttons standard.

That's like saying the VCS shouldn't have had the paddles or driving controllers. :daze:

 

I specifically stated that 8-way digital controllers were the best option for the default... and they definitely shouldn't have re-used the single button joysticks: 2 buttons at the very least, maybe in a similar form factor to the 5200/3200 pads (not the bulky/funky 7800 ones... though the fire buttons were good at least -a shame only Europe got that nice gamepad, but at least you can use Sega controllers for all the 1-button games -though some games work better with VCS sticks and Robotron is great with 2 sticks mounted in a box/rack).

And there's no reason they couldn't have done that after the fact with 8-way analog joysticks (which would seem fully digital from the player's POV). I have no idea why Atari didn't offer those soon after the release of the 5200 to address the complaints.

 

You contradict yourself. You already admitted above digital does a better job.

Nope, I said it does a better job in many cases but an unacceptable one in others vs a good, balanced analog controller (ie not the 5200, but perhaps vectrex) can do digital stuff well enough as well as the other things.

However that was a worst case where you can only have one catch-all controller (without multi-mode support) and I definitely think that they should have offered a variety of additional controllers (expanding on what the 2600 already did).

Digital would be best for the default, but if that was the only option (period) it would make many games virtually unplayable of much more awkward. (far more than 8/4-way games on a good analog stick... though probably not worse than using a dirty 5200 controller)

 

You haven't seen a digital joystick control paddle-type games it looks like.

I have, and it sucks. Again, warlords becomes unplayable and many others become hopelessly awkward or require concessions/difficulty modifications by the programmer to even start making it acceptable.

 

 

 

Analog does a poor job for majority of the games.

The 5200 or an ideal high-quality short-throw spring loaded dust-protected analog stick? (ie vectrex, many modern controllers, and the unreleased 1984 5200 replacement controller)

The stock 5200 controller if brand new or fully refurbished (replacement pots and boot) should be acceptable for most games including pac man. (frogger was ruined by the stupid added button press)

 

But again, I don't think they should have used analog by default, but definitely should have supported it.

[Cebus Capucinis]

Controlled experiment at atariksi's place......

 

 

BYOB!

[+therealbountybob]

Controlled experiment at atariksi's place......

 

 

BYOB!

Isn't it time you came back to the HSC

[Cebus Capucinis]

Controlled experiment at atariksi's place......

 

 

BYOB!

Isn't it time you came back to the HSC

 

OH YEAH! I was just playing Rescue on Fractalus and wanted to play something else on the A8! Will pop on over!

[Divya16]

Seems your emotions are getting in the way of your research (assuming you did the research).

Alright, I'll bite...

 

Are you and atariksi secretly robots?

 

I have played too many PC games with analog joysticks and too many Atari 800 games with digital joysticks to let all these fallacious claims about analog joysticks being superior go by unchallenged and blindly.

 

No, they could read the joysticks as key inputs as well... There are 64 states for the keys and each controller is read separately (toggles with a GTIA select line) and with 1 GTIA button, 1 key button and an 8-way stick that uses 18 of the states (GTIA separate) and leaves 46 states for additional keypresses (as long as the additional keys were not pressed while the stick or fire button 2 were in use) and if you dropped the 6th POKEY key scan line you could still have 14 added keys.

I guess someone more technical know-hows about Atari 5200 could tell you what the problems there are.

 

 

So it should have been: 8-way standard, variable analog pack-in or accessory, paddles pack-in or accessory, driving controllers, etc, etc. That and they could/should have introduced more controllers for the VCS and A8. (analog sticks, digital sticks with more buttons, maybe controllers with built-in keypads, etc, etc -had the 5200 used the VCS ports the peripherals could have been shared among the systems too)

You are once again 100% wrong. All you did was speculate what you think shoving all the evidence of control under the rug even after admitting digital provided better 8-way control (quoted above). As I said, if they really needed analog joysticks for VCS/A8, people would have developed them like they developed digital joystick interfaces for A5200. They all should have had digital joysticks and made specialized controllers for things that require trackballs, light guns, mice, etc. The majority of games work better with digital joysticks and provide better control. Perhaps, you need to play some as you seem to be forgetting what a difference they make.

WTF? Why NOT have such nice accesories as analog joysticks (possibly with built-in keypads) and digital pads with 2 or 3 buttons standard.

That's like saying the VCS shouldn't have had the paddles or driving controllers. :daze:

Well, you wrote above that analog joysticks should have been standard-- at least that's the way it reads. If you meant as secondary then okay. I read it as "8-way standard variable analog joystick". Yeah, specialized controllers can use the POT lines but the standard should be the digital joystick-- the way it is.

 

You haven't seen a digital joystick control paddle-type games it looks like.

I have, and it sucks. Again, warlords becomes unplayable and many others become hopelessly awkward or require concessions/difficulty modifications by the programmer to even start making it acceptable.

 

I didn't see any advantage of using an analog joystick with breakout. Paddles helped a lot. Trackball was better than the analog joystick.

 

To be continued...got go eat.

[kool kitty89]

Seems your emotions are getting in the way of your research (assuming you did the research).

Alright, I'll bite...

 

Are you and atariksi secretly robots?

I didn't even see the emotion comment the first time...

 

And I've been in enough discussions with atariksi involved to know his perspective on most things... (ie I know he doesn't like the idea of using a resistor set-up for 8-way analog to digital control or using key inputs for that due to the slow scanning for both cases compared to mapped I/O... but he has the same complaint about the ST's "slow" joystick I/O and he did concede that using the pot lines as such would be preferable to key inputs as POKEY's fast pot scan mode reads faster than the key scanning -at least when divided among 4 ports)

I've learned what things you can discuss reasonably, what are touchy, and what are pointless to even argue with him about.

 

At least I don't remember atariksi misinterpreting my posts like that...

 

 

 

 

 

I have played too many PC games with analog joysticks and too many Atari 800 games with digital joysticks to let all these fallacious claims about analog joysticks being superior go by unchallenged and blindly.

OK, but what about gamepads? Digital and analog gamepads as well as digital and analog joysticks of various makes, models and interfaces. (gameport, USB, various consoles, etc) And I know there's a huge range among analog sticks themselves (both for the controllers and the games utilizing them) and the same for digital sticks and gamepads alone.

 

However, having played a good number of emulated games and retro compilations (especially late 80s/early 90s console/arcade stuff), I know that analog sticks can be totally acceptable as well. On the gamecube the analog stick is generally easier to use for games designed for digital control than the d-pad is (due to size and placement... N64's d-pad is way better though), and the same is more or less true for the Sony and Xbox controllers. (depending on the game and specific controller, the d-pads might be preferable)

 

No, they could read the joysticks as key inputs as well... There are 64 states for the keys and each controller is read separately (toggles with a GTIA select line) and with 1 GTIA button, 1 key button and an 8-way stick that uses 18 of the states (GTIA separate) and leaves 46 states for additional keypresses (as long as the additional keys were not pressed while the stick or fire button 2 were in use) and if you dropped the 6th POKEY key scan line you could still have 14 added keys.

I guess someone more technical know-hows about Atari 5200 could tell you what the problems there are.

There would be the added cost to map all the lines to the necessary combinations, but that's about it. (namely a very simple small IC as I already mentioned)

That and the Intellivision issue...

 

But the resistor ladder thing would not have had that issue at all and (again) would have been cross compatible with the analog sticks (analog sticks would play games meant for the 8-way DAC stick and the 8-way stick could work with some analog specific games OK -only the speed-sensitive ones and only at the fast moving speed, position sensitive games would not work), likewise paddle based games could work with paddles or the analog joysticks, but not the DAC sticks. (or you'd only have 3 positions without a specific "digital" input mode).

Again, the resistor set up would be simpler in every way to the existing 5200 controllers yet could use the exact same interface and pinout and work with many of the existing games with no negative issues. (which is exactly what the homebrew 2600 to 5200 adapters and such)

 

It's rather odd that Atari didn't offer controllers built like that actually.

 

So it should have been: 8-way standard, variable analog pack-in or accessory, paddles pack-in or accessory, driving controllers, etc, etc. That and they could/should have introduced more controllers for the VCS and A8. (analog sticks, digital sticks with more buttons, maybe controllers with built-in keypads, etc, etc -had the 5200 used the VCS ports the peripherals could have been shared among the systems too)

Well, you wrote above that analog joysticks should have been standard-- at least that's the way it reads. If you meant as secondary then okay. I read it as "8-way standard variable analog joystick". Yeah, specialized controllers can use the POT lines but the standard should be the digital joystick-- the way it is.

I meant 8-way as in digital or pseudo-digital (same thing from the user's standpoint) and analog sticks as either a pack-in standard accessory (just like paddles on the VCS) or at least among various peripherals available.

I also didn't mean to imply that analog sticks should have superseded the standard VCS/A8 sticks either, but been made available. (and had the 5200 not dropped PIA and changed the pinout, they could have used intercompatible peripherals all around) Controllers with 2 or 3 buttons OTOH might have been good to push for as standard or semi-standard. (Sega didn't quite do that with the 6-button pads, but there was a significant amount of support in any cases -some bundles had the controllers too, but not all... it's a shame that the Amiga and ST didn't at least have 2 button sticks from the start if not 3 -there's support for up to 3 buttons on both without added tricks like multiplexing)

 

Again, they could be true digital (direct I/O or keys) or pseudo digital using the POT lines like simple PC gamepads/8-way joysticks do. (it's technically not digital, or rather it uses a very simple digital to analog converter, but from the user's perspective you shouldn't notice any difference)

 

And sorry, I misspoke the wico comment, I was thinking those were DAC based but they're just nice self-centering analog sticks. (well... centering if you get working ones without worn out/broken springs as is sometimes the case) However the 2-button layout wouldn't have been a bad option for a simple evolution of the VCS sticks. (I sort of like the idea of the palm held joystick more, and the 5200 controllers got the form factor just about right -compared to CV and IV- but the buttons should have been like the 7800 and the stick offered in a digital/DAC version -the later self-centering short-throw analog revision planned would have helped a lot too- and the Sega SG-1000 controllers are probably closest to that while the 7800's were too bulky and stiff, but by that point gamepads were starting to push ahead with the Famicom and then the NES and Sega had switched to gamepads by the release of their Mk.II model of the SG-1000 in 1984)

 

You haven't seen a digital joystick control paddle-type games it looks like.

I have, and it sucks. Again, warlords becomes unplayable and many others become hopelessly awkward or require concessions/difficulty modifications by the programmer to even start making it acceptable.

I didn't see any advantage of using an analog joystick with breakout. Paddles helped a lot. Trackball was better than the analog joystick.

You can get fast response with the analog stick, right? Not as good as paddles, but better than a digital stick. (not sure about track ball or mouse, but I think it would depend on the case -game and mouse/ball used)

Edited November 5, 2010 by kool kitty89

[Divya16]

I have played too many PC games with analog joysticks and too many Atari 800 games with digital joysticks to let all these fallacious claims about analog joysticks being superior go by unchallenged and blindly.

OK, but what about gamepads? Digital and analog gamepads as well as digital and analog joysticks of various makes, models and interfaces. (gameport, USB, various consoles, etc) And I know there's a huge range among analog sticks themselves (both for the controllers and the games utilizing them) and the same for digital sticks and gamepads alone.

 

However, having played a good number of emulated games and retro compilations (especially late 80s/early 90s console/arcade stuff), I know that analog sticks can be totally acceptable as well. On the gamecube the analog stick is generally easier to use for games designed for digital control than the d-pad is (due to size and placement... N64's d-pad is way better though), and the same is more or less true for the Sony and Xbox controllers. (depending on the game and specific controller, the d-pads might be preferable)

Acceptable is not good enough if question is which provides better control. And you did say that you would choose analog joystick if you had to pick a joystick so I wasn't really off in opposing you. That part I didn't address ealier so I am doing so now. If you know that digital joystick provides better control, why would you choose something that is just acceptable. Why not have 100% control (error free) for most of the games and use the specialized controllers for the others. I would say the analog joysticks are inferior and obsolete technology that people just blindly use because of compatibility and tradition with what PCs original started with. More below.

 

I meant 8-way as in digital or pseudo-digital (same thing from the user's standpoint) and analog sticks as either a pack-in standard accessory (just like paddles on the VCS) or at least among various peripherals available.

I also didn't mean to imply that analog sticks should have superseded the standard VCS/A8 sticks either, but been made available. (and had the 5200 not dropped PIA and changed the pinout, they could have used intercompatible peripherals all around) Controllers with 2 or 3 buttons OTOH might have been good to push for as standard or semi-standard. (Sega didn't quite do that with the 6-button pads, but there was a significant amount of support in any cases -some bundles had the controllers too, but not all... it's a shame that the Amiga and ST didn't at least have 2 button sticks from the start if not 3 -there's support for up to 3 buttons on both without added tricks like multiplexing)

But no one was looking for analog joysticks for all those platforms with digital joysticks. On the contrary PCs had interfaces for digital joysticks. So looks like people who got to use digital joysticks weren't looking for something better but the analog joystick users were.

 

Again, they could be true digital (direct I/O or keys) or pseudo digital using the POT lines like simple PC gamepads/8-way joysticks do. (it's technically not digital, or rather it uses a very simple digital to analog converter, but from the user's perspective you shouldn't notice any difference)

I don't know about the "key" stuff but I suspect it's too restrictive to use like normal joysticks.

 

I didn't see any advantage of using an analog joystick with breakout. Paddles helped a lot. Trackball was better than the analog joystick.

You can get fast response with the analog stick, right? Not as good as paddles, but better than a digital stick. (not sure about track ball or mouse, but I think it would depend on the case -game and mouse/ball used)

 

I don't think so. The digital joystick allows tapping the stick to get pinpoint accuracy but does not allow fast movement from left to right. Analog joysticks allow fast movement from left to right but no way to tap and get to an exact spot. Paddles offered both. Trackball offered both but a bit harder to pinpoint. However, playing Arkanoid with a mouse (breakout doesn't support it), it's better than a trackball. So I don't understand your view that you know that digital joysticks are more accurate but still think analog joysticks should be made available or be used. Even Tail Gunner, Star Wars, and similar interfaced games have same issues with analog joysticks as with breakout (it's just two dimensional instead of one). What game are you thinking of when you say analog joysticks are needed such that none of the special controllers nor the digital joystick can be used.

[potatohead]

Why can't you tap a analog stick?

Edited November 5, 2010 by potatohead

[ledzep]

@ledzep: have you ever driven a truck? I guess not so that disqualifies you from performing a controlled experiment with analog joysticks vs. digital joysticks. Seriously, get a good definition of controlled experiment before you reply. You are mixing things up as usual. In post #183, you think it's better to "enjoy" the game rather than have complete control. And several times you compared musical instruments with their analogicity which don't even resemble an analog joystick. I think your encyclopedia/dictionary was written in some foreign language which you don't understand or your are PURPOSELY confusing things.

 

Oh sweet, you're all warmed up in the bullpen.

 

Yes, I have driven a truck. Multiple times, both personally and for delivery companies. Therefore, by your own reasoning above, that certifies me as being qualified for performing a controlled experiment with analog joysticks vs. digital joysticks. Too bad I'm not the guy making the unfounded claim about digital joysticks providing better control than analog joysticks, otherwise I'd have to conduct that experiment and present the data to back up my claim. But someone did make that unfounded claim, right? I remember that on this thread. Man are we going to have to eat crow and concede defeat when that guy finally presents the data he has continuously claimed to have yet stubbornly refuses to present. I wonder what's keeping him.

 

I gave a great explanation of a controlled experiment that would satisfy this debate. It's in Post #66. If you disagree then go through it and tell me where it falls short. Don't be afraid, don't look at atariksi and ask him what you should say, you go through that experiment description point for point and tell me how it would fail to deliver an unbiased, comprehensive comparison of digital and analog joystick performance with games that natively require a variety of controls, not solely for games that were designed for digital joysticks.

 

I am not PURPOSELY confusing anything, I'm responding to your claim that you made in post #69. Which claim, you ask? Why, this one -

 

"I hope you know that digital wins hands down in the modern world."

 

If you didn't want to confuse the issue with expanding the discussion like that you should have never voiced that biased view. Once you write an over-generalizing opinion like that you have to support it. And defend it from rebuttals. Still waiting for your explanation about the fretless bass (infinite analog control) providing ZERO control.

 

All you do is make claims and then avoid supporting them. For example, your wording from Post #68 in response to JamesD -

 

"You can't read (or worse don't understand). He wrote that logic doesn't require a scientific study. And in scientific method, you perform a controlled experiment and let others repeat it. I play Atari 5200, PC, and Atari 800 games and come to a conclusion and let others try to repeat it. Many have done this experiment (except you maybe)."

 

Hahaaha, uh, no. Much like your (and atariksi's) ignorance of what is a "scientific fact", you have conveniently or naively left out a couple steps. These are the steps of the scientific method (almost all versions online conform to this list) -

 

The scientific method is a way to ask and answer scientific questions by making observations and doing experiments.

 

The steps of the scientific method are to:

o Ask a Question

o Do Background Research

o Construct a Hypothesis

o Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment

o Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion

o Communicate Your Results

 

You can read the full version in that link. I have put in bold the areas where you and/or atariksi failed to adhere to this scientific method. As you can read in that link, the experiment that you and he claim to have run should have a control group and an experimental group. Did yours? No, neither of you have mentioned multiple groups, merely yourselves. Did you construct a hypothesis (if [blank] then [blank])? No, that was never presented, only a biased assumption was presented. Did you analyze the data? No, you have no data to analyze, this is now obvious. Did you (and this is the kicker), communicate the results? Absolutely not, both of you have twisted yourselves into pretzels to avoid presenting data or to claim that screenshots and memories of high scores is the same as test data.

 

By the way, "communicate your results" doesn't mean writing "I was right", it means presenting all the data from the control and experimental group tests that support your conclusion. Damn you, Science!!

 

And finally, while logic doesn't require a scientific study, a claim that something is a scientific fact does require a scientific study. Multiple ones, in fact. Still feeling snarky about encyclopedias and dictionaries?

 

As for your absoloute claims like:

 

"No one in the history of video game playing has been able to state absolutely what state any input device he was using was in."

 

That's rubbish. Just your mental speculation. Using a digital joystick, it's second nature that you are making exact directional movements whereas there looms a cloud of uncertainty with an analog joystick. That's why you rely on feedback, calibration, and maybe tons of practice and bias to root for it.

 

I didn't say you couldn't make exact directional movements using a digital joystick (you can, I agree), I said you can't state absolutely what state that joystick is in when you're using it. You can approximate but cannot know precisely, down to the nanosecond, when one of the directional buttons (or switches) has been activated nor can you state, down to the nanosecond, when that signal completes its travel down the joystick's controller cable into the game console nor can you state, down to the nanosecond, when the game program registers the existence of that state change nor can you state, down to the nanosecond, when the program reacts to that state change and modifies the game's play. That is not one instantaneous event, those are four separate events that occur in every game ever coded. At least four, I may be forgetting an event or two. Ah yes, you can't state, down to the nanosecond, when the modified game play is presented to the TV screen. Five separate events. Can anyone think of any more states I'm forgetting?

 

You want to prove me wrong? Run an experiment where you are playing a game, make it a simple one like Pac-Man, and accurately call out those five states as they happen every time you use your digital joystick to change direction. That will prove that you are the first human in the history of video game playing who is able to state absolutely what state the input device (digital joystick in this test) she was using was in. You have to demonstrate that you can distinguish the different states in the chain in order to prove that you aren't confusing, for example, the moment when the game program reads the joystick output with the earlier moment when the joystick output a signal from the "left" button (or switch).

 

Care to double-down on saying that it's second nature? I'd love to see a video of you correctly calling out those five states, then. What would you call that? What's the word, it rhymes with "mexperiment".

 

Over and over again with your unfounded definitive statements that you could prove with experimental data yet refuse to prove with experimental data.

 

So what happened to answering my response to your question about digital music modifications? You know, Post #163, which was a rebuttal to your five points which you have done a great job of pretending you never wrote. I'll ask again, what is the sampling rate of the music to be modified? And what are the specs of the presumed digital software that will be doing the modifying of the digitized material?

[kool kitty89]

Acceptable is not good enough if question is which provides better control. And you did say that you would choose analog joystick if you had to pick a joystick so I wasn't really off in opposing you. That part I didn't address ealier so I am doing so now. If you know that digital joystick provides better control, why would you choose something that is just acceptable. Why not have 100% control (error free) for most of the games and use the specialized controllers for the others. I would say the analog joysticks are inferior and obsolete technology that people just blindly use because of compatibility and tradition with what PCs original started with. More below.

I chose it in a hypothetical situation where you could have one but not both. If you could use either on a game by game basis, that would obviously be preferable and in the real world that should be the case. (yet with some machines it's hard to find good alternat controllers)

 

But no one was looking for analog joysticks for all those platforms with digital joysticks. On the contrary PCs had interfaces for digital joysticks. So looks like people who got to use digital joysticks weren't looking for something better but the analog joystick users were.

Name one IBM PC/clone with support for digital joysticks. They were all analog with digital for buttons only, the Apple II's interface was analog, as was the CoCo (and Tandy based PCs), etc.

OTOH I agree that digital controllers should have been supported standard and had someone come along before the Covox Soundmaster with a pair of atari style DE-9 joystick ports built into a sound card (using the AY8910 for sound and I/O) they might have even managed that as a defacto standard over the IBM standard analog game/midi port. (especially with the CPU intensive analog polling on the PC)

The analog gameport was only used for pure digital interfacing very late in its life via the button lines with controllers using proprietary drivers for serial or 4-bit parallel I/O protocols. (and then the shift to USB -many such controllers supporting both USB and gameport)

 

I don't know about the "key" stuff but I suspect it's too restrictive to use like normal joysticks.

The only limit would be practically arranging the circuitry inside the joystick as I said. (and that shouldn't have been a big issue either)

However, the DAC thing would be more attractive (in controller design simplicity and cost) than either full analog or using key inputs and there's absolutely no technical reason they couldn't have been done that. (it's also the easiest way for a DIY joystick for analog ports -including the PC, and it was used commercially as well as with the early 90s gravis gamepad -extremely simple to construct and actually using fewer wires in the cable than pure digital I/O would)

 

 

I don't think so. The digital joystick allows tapping the stick to get pinpoint accuracy but does not allow fast movement from left to right. Analog joysticks allow fast movement from left to right but no way to tap and get to an exact spot. Paddles offered both. Trackball offered both but a bit harder to pinpoint. However, playing Arkanoid with a mouse (breakout doesn't support it), it's better than a trackball. So I don't understand your view that you know that digital joysticks are more accurate but still think analog joysticks should be made available or be used. Even Tail Gunner, Star Wars, and similar interfaced games have same issues with analog joysticks as with breakout (it's just two dimensional instead of one). What game are you thinking of when you say analog joysticks are needed such that none of the special controllers nor the digital joystick can be used.

Why would you need to tap an analog stick? It should be just like using a paddle with a lever rather than a dial and with a smaller range of motion. (in fact the 5200 controller is literally a hack using VCS paddle pots laid in a rather odd flat fashion and operated by a pair of shafts and some gears iirc, the late 1984 design would have been a compact pot module like the vectrex)

It should be rather like using a throttle slider.

 

And again, analog joysticks are more precise while digital is more accurate, and some games benefit greatly from the precision.

Edited November 5, 2010 by kool kitty89

[atariksi]

@ledzep: have you ever driven a truck? I guess not so that disqualifies you from performing a controlled experiment with analog joysticks vs. digital joysticks. Seriously, get a good definition of controlled experiment before you reply. You are mixing things up as usual. In post #183, you think it's better to "enjoy" the game rather than have complete control. And several times you compared musical instruments with their analogicity which don't even resemble an analog joystick. I think your encyclopedia/dictionary was written in some foreign language which you don't understand or your are PURPOSELY confusing things.

 

Oh sweet, you're all warmed up in the bullpen.

 

Yes, I have driven a truck. Multiple times, both personally and for delivery companies. Therefore, by your own reasoning above, that certifies me as being qualified for performing a controlled experiment with analog joysticks vs. digital joysticks. Too bad I'm not the guy making the unfounded claim about digital joysticks providing better control than analog joysticks, otherwise I'd have to conduct that experiment and present the data to back up my claim.

Stop the childish crap and get to the point. I already declared your reasoning as "Chewbacca defense". Just be glad someone is dealing with it. That analog applies to you and it's your reasoning. You stated that since I haven't seen the arcade controls of Star Wars, you are nullifying my controlled experiment. Here's a simplified experiment you can perform to prove whether you can know the state of the joystick or not independent of any games. Since you made a claim that you can't:

 

First for digital joystick (use one button here but easily extendible):

 

10 PRINT STICK(0),STRIG(0):GOTO 10

 

Now close your eyes and move the stick through all its states and tell the witness what numbers/directions the computer shows. Closing your eyes so you DO NOT rely on feedback. If you get 100%, you have 100% control over your joystick.

 

Now for analog joystick:

 

10 PRINT PADDLE(0),PADDLE(1),PTRIG(0):GOTO 10

 

Hook up the POTs to the Paddle lines of your PC/A5200/etc. analog joystick. Not paddles/trackball/mouse/driving paddle. Now close your eyes, and go through the states of the joystick and tell the witness what the numbers/directions computer shows. Make sure to take into account the thresholds for all the games, the various levels you use for in-between features, etc.

 

See my posts like #137, #29, etc. rather than tell me to mix up other irrelevant things with my experiment.

[atariksi]

Acceptable is not good enough if question is which provides better control. And you did say that you would choose analog joystick if you had to pick a joystick so I wasn't really off in opposing you. That part I didn't address ealier so I am doing so now. If you know that digital joystick provides better control, why would you choose something that is just acceptable. Why not have 100% control (error free) for most of the games and use the specialized controllers for the others. I would say the analog joysticks are inferior and obsolete technology that people just blindly use because of compatibility and tradition with what PCs original started with. More below.

I chose it in a hypothetical situation where you could have one but not both. If you could use either on a game by game basis, that would obviously be preferable and in the real world that should be the case. (yet with some machines it's hard to find good alternat controllers)

Which one you would choose for better control is the main point. You think games are meant for just "looks" or because they "sound good". If you admit digital joysticks have better control which you have done by applauding them initially, then you would choose the digital controller. Analog joysticks are inferior in technology and control. They came out in early 1980s when digital joysticks dominated. They have a slower erroneous interface to begin with. They just kept using them because PCs usually maintain compatibility whereas these other smaller companies kept coming up with new machines/consoles w/o caring about compatibility. Take the weighted sum of control for all games. For example, Miner 2049er 100% digital joystick, 70% analog joystick; Pac-man 100% digital joystick, 70% analog joystick; and so on. And also remember that it's just the joysticks you are choosing from since Paddles/trackballs/etc. are separate.

 

Name one IBM PC/clone with support for digital joysticks. They were all analog with digital for buttons only, the Apple II's interface was analog, as was the CoCo (and Tandy based PCs), etc.

You are contradicting yourself. You yourself have stated they used the gameport to interface digital joysticks. And they did as I have a digital joystick that works through the game port. They also had parallel port digital joystick interfaces. And you don't see the other way around with people interfacing analog joysticks to Atari 800s. Regardless, the analog joysticks are inferior. Going by experience, Atari was into gaming whereas PCs were more business type. They saw the need for the exactness that digital joysticks provide whereas PCs didn't have much gaming in the early 1980s. And many other big companies at the time followed Atari's standard of digital joysticks. It's just the inexperienced and the blind following the blind or ones that had no choice that were into analog joysticks at the time.

 

I don't know about the "key" stuff but I suspect it's too restrictive to use like normal joysticks.

The only limit would be practically arranging the circuitry inside the joystick as I said. (and that shouldn't have been a big issue either)

Wrong. Each joystick port can independently press one of two buttons on the A5200, it can move the stick in 9 possible states (for digital implementation), and it can still pause/start/reset. It cannot use the select line to switch all these out as you can have multiple joystick ports active at the same time. Only the keypad is switched out using the CONSOL bits. The number of states you need for one joystick port is 4*9*2 = 72. So for four ports, you have 72^4. Even for two port, you have 72^2 which is more than what the keyboard lines to POKEY provide. For example, Joust in two player mode would use both joysticks at the same time and still be able to pause/reset/etc.

 

I don't think so. The digital joystick allows tapping the stick to get pinpoint accuracy but does not allow fast movement from left to right. Analog joysticks allow fast movement from left to right but no way to tap and get to an exact spot. Paddles offered both. Trackball offered both but a bit harder to pinpoint. However, playing Arkanoid with a mouse (breakout doesn't support it), it's better than a trackball. So I don't understand your view that you know that digital joysticks are more accurate but still think analog joysticks should be made available or be used. Even Tail Gunner, Star Wars, and similar interfaced games have same issues with analog joysticks as with breakout (it's just two dimensional instead of one). What game are you thinking of when you say analog joysticks are needed such that none of the special controllers nor the digital joystick can be used.

Why would you need to tap an analog stick? It should be just like using a paddle with a lever rather than a dial and with a smaller range of motion. (in fact the 5200 controller is literally a hack using VCS paddle pots laid in a rather odd flat fashion and operated by a pair of shafts and some gears iirc, the late 1984 design would have been a compact pot module like the vectrex)

It should be rather like using a throttle slider.

 

And again, analog joysticks are more precise while digital is more accurate, and some games benefit greatly from the precision.

 

To move a pixel or two, you tap the digital joystick in many games. That makes a difference as in breakout-type game when the size of the "bat" becomes small. Analog joystick does a poor job in breakout as the accuracy is missing and Divya's analogy is correct that by extension of logic that same applies to games like Star Wars which is just two-dimensions instead of one. In fact the target is smaller that you move around in Star Wars.

 

And you need to be used to both joysticks to experiment properly-- that way "being used to one" doesn't make the experiment subjective. You brought up the same argument that ledzep stated-- that paddles and joysticks are the same because they both contain POTs. But the contruction makes a big difference, you can more accurately tell the state with a paddle and not with an analog joystick. Using example given earlier in the thread, you can steer a car better with a steering wheel than with an analog joystick.

 

There was no need for an analog joystick for Atari 400/2600/7800/ST(e)/Amiga/C64/Vic-20/etc. and if Atari machines had continued, you would be using a digital joystick. It's just that PCs caught on more so you end up with the inferior analog joysticks.

[+5-11under]

Okay, I haven't read the last several pages... but I'm guessing not too many people have anyway... Anyway...

 

From a practical point of view, yes, using a digital controller for a game like Pac-Man is best. An analog controller is most likely going to be inferior for this application. The problem, however, is not with analog control in itself; the problem is with the specific controller(s) being used, as well as the programming. Unfortunately, many analog controllers do not center properly, and have different springiness. Along with this, the programmers haven't properly connected with the controller manufacturers on things such as resistor tolerances/values, resistance according to angle, and center resistance. These are practical considerations that could make using an analog controller more difficult for Pac-Man. However, I think that a properly made controller, with a corresponding properly programmed game, could lead to a condition where using an analog controller would work as good as a digital controller for Pac-Man. Note that analog controllers tend to have a greater range of movement when playing, which might ideally have to be constricted to better match a digital controller.

 

Also, I think people are using the word control in different ways. An analog controller has many "degrees of control"... you can "turn" left a little, or a lot, or many places in between. The digital controller has one degree of control in each direction... on or off. On the other side, it is typically easier to "control" a digital controller... because in each direction, you only need to deal with on or off, and compared to a non-ideal analog controller, it's easier to figure out or "control" whether you're on or off in that direction. Which controller has more control depends on how you look at it.

 

Keep having fun, and see you in a few more pages,

5-11under

 

edit: calling one type of controller inferior seems silly, because each may have their own strengths, along with their weaknesses. If you don't have a decent controller that will do it all, then use a digital one for Pac-Man, a paddle for Kaboom!, an analog controller for ________, or whatever you prefer.

Edited November 5, 2010 by 5-11under

[atariksi]

Controlled experiment at atariksi's place......

 

 

BYOB!

Isn't it time you came back to the HSC

 

I think he was waiting for a reason to use digital joysticks.