Virtual On Twin Sticks

[TJ_Kat]

How hard would it be to make one of these for Saturn, or Dreamcast, or both.

I'm curious because not only are they expensive (which I would pay) but the shipping charges are very high, and just put them out of my price range.

I'm concerned that since these are non-standard controllers, they might require some proprietary parts.

[kendrick]

Believe it or not, the Saturn Twin Sticks use the same decoder as the standard Saturn digital gamepad. I'm absolutely stumped as to how the console detects the difference, but in theory the only proprietary parts you would need would be for the trigger and thumb buttons.

At risk of clearing out their stock before I have a chance to buy, I have to point you to the only online retailer I know of that still stocks both types of Twin Stick controllers. Here's a link:

http://www.toysnjoys.com/access_dc_2.html

Toys N Joys is a retailer located in Hawaii, which means they have access to a large volume of import game hardware and software. Not a testimonial, I've never actually bought from them and I don't have $100 to blow on a set of Twin Sticks right now, else I wouldn't be sharing the link. If you order one and pull it apart, let us konw what you find out.

-KKC, who doesn't understand the appeal of Rave Master. People are gonna remember this show twenty years from now the way the general public remembers Speed Racer...

[TJ_Kat]

It's still too much =(
If I could walk into a store and pick them off the shelf, the price would be manageable... but I can expect proably close to another $50 in shipping charges.

It would be nice if you could canibalize a saturn pad, and combine it with a couple of 2 button joysticks.

[NFG]

It IS the same encoder as the saturn pad, and the system cannot tell the difference.  You have to select the control type within the game.  It's dead easy to make your own set, but of course the sticks used are quite a bit more expensive than normal joysticks.

[Yod@]

Toys N Joys is a retailer located in Hawaii, which means they have access to a large volume of import game hardware and software. Not a testimonial, I've never actually bought from them and I don't have $100 to blow on a set of Twin Sticks right now, else I wouldn't be sharing the link.

This was posted on another forum I hang out on about 3 months ago:

"anyone living on (or going to) hawaii that wants to pay this shop a visit and collect some money they owe me? f*cking thieves."

Might be wise to tread carefully if dealing with them.

[TJ_Kat]

It's dead easy to make your own set, but of course the sticks used are quite a bit more expensive than normal joysticks.

So, you couldn't just use a couple of cheap 2 button joysticks?

Ideally, I'd like 2 of these, and I'd like them to work on both the Saturn and the DC.

[kendrick]

Well, to use a couple of two-button joysticks one would have to rewire the appropriate switches to the right inputs on the Saturn pad decoder, and remember to include an extra button for the 'Start' function. But other than that, there's no practical reason why any set of normally-open swtiches wouldn't suffice.

I actually went searching for other homebrew Twin Stick hacks, and if my browser hadn't crashed I'd be able to give you some links. But the most interesting one involves lifting the Twin Stick control mechanism whole hog from a broken arcade console and wiring the switch outputs from one of those. Expensive and excessive, but you can't argue with the pleasant results.

-KKC, tired after a long day of shopping. Girlfriend now makes 33 percent more than me, and can now afford to pay for all sorts of neat stuff! Like... uh, new bedsheets and curtains. Dammit.

[TJ_Kat]

Well, if we're going super expensive, ideally, I'd like to buy a working virtual on arcade machine. =p

Of course, until I'm filthy stinking rich, my saturn will have to do =)

I'm starting to feel like if I'm going to go through with this, I'm going to need my hand held the whole way =\

[NFG]

Saturn twinsticks are dirt cheap, I had a bunch in Japan no one would buy at $25 brand new (shipping was ~$35).  It's a very economical solution, you can get two units for under $125 shipped.

Checking Sanwa's page real quick I see new arcade sticks - considerably more robust than the home units - are Y8500 new each.  

[TJ_Kat]

Ack! Had I known, I would have bought 2 from you for that price. And if you know anywhere else selling them dirt cheap, I would appreciate the info. The best I can find them for is about $70US with another $50-$80 for shipping =\

[dj898]

since when saturn ts sell that much? o_O
I have three saturn ts - don't ask me why - and for each one I paid $19 plus shipping which was $29 for ems.
that was in 2002/2003 thru ebay though

imho getting saturn ts with tc3 would be still cheaper than dc ts and you can use it on both saturn and dc... (saying that i did picked up dc ts for 6300 yen...)

[TJ_Kat]

So, what are the odds you want to get rid of one or two of them for a not-stupid price?  

and, yeah, I don't really want DC sticks unless they're practiacally free. I'd like 2 that I can use on both Saturn and DC, so my obvious preference is toward the Saturn sticks.

[kendrick]

As a public service, I spent some time with both versions of the Saturn release of Virtual On and mapped out how the standard pad input corresponds to the Twin Stick controls:

Left stick: Up/Down/Left/Right is normal. L-trigger is left-side weapon, R trigger is left dash.

Right stick: X for left, Z for right, Y for up, B for down. A is right-side weapon, C is right side dash.

Start button remains unchanged.

Now I'm inspired to go and actually build a set of sticks. Maybe out of some old Realistic-brand clicky NES joysticks, or some old Wico hardware. This is cool!

-KKC, who isn't sure about the dash button mapping and would appreciate some independent confirmation on that...

[TJ_Kat]

Really? The pad controlls directly correspond to the twinstick controls like that? I confess, I have yet to play the Saturn version (I've bought it twice, and it's gotten lost in the mail twice =\ ) so I don't actually know much about this.

[NFG]

The saturn twinsticks include, strangely, a button mapping diagram indicating which stick switch corresponds to which pad button.  I don't know why, except to possibly encourage hacking.

I don't have any of these sticks left, though I could probably find some easily enough.

[kendrick]

My instinct is that I got the dash button mappings right, but I'd buy you a beer if you could dig up a copy of that chart. Sega used to have PDF versions of all their hardware manuals up on their website, but then they cleaned house and got rid of anything pre-Dreamcast.

-KKC, who's still mad at eBay and wishes Sega wouldn't point people there who are looking for a Broadband adapter...

[kendrick]

Never mind, confirmed it. The R trigger is definitely the left dash button, and the C button is definitely the right dash button. The way I know is that the manual states that you should hold the right weapon and dash buttons down while pulling back on the right stick and hitting start to do a soft reset of the game. This is equivalent to holding down A+B+C+Start. :)

Oh, about the button mapping chart? Now that I've had 300 seconds to think about it, I realized that this is for the purpose of using the Twin Sticks for other games that permit custom button maps. I believe that it was possible to apply the Twin Stick mapping to games like GunGriffon. And now that the last piece of the puzzle is in place, I now know why the Twin Sticks aren't detected as a different type of controller, since Sega must have intended to make them useful in other games for the Saturn.

-KKC, who has no money to spend on joysticks to pull apart and rewire...

[TJ_Kat]

Another project I'm finally coming back to. I even (finally) have a copy of virtual on now to test it on.

Anyway, on to the technical stuff. I just got my first set of joysticks. To wire them to the Saturn pad, all I actually need are the switches the buttons/sticks throw, right? I mean, what I will be doing is basically making the joystick into a very large d-pad/button substitute, correct? I should just need to break all the paths on the pcb's so that the switches are isolated?

[NFG]

You've got it.  You don't even need to isolate the existing switches, just wire up the new ones and go nuts.

[TJ_Kat]

The fact that all the directional switches are interconnected, as are the thumb and trigger won't pose a problem to that? It won't screw up the signals on the saturn pad? I mean, running a knife through a circuit path isn't really difficult =p I imagine removing all the other no longer required components from the pcb would be a good idea... I'm sure they can be put to a better use elsewhere. I've got to clean up these solders anyway, talk about overkill.

Anyway, moving on, any recommendations for what to mount them to? I was figuring a piece of 1 x 8 plywood would make a fairly sturdy platform.

[NFG]

The buttons are the same, there are no new buttons or unused buttons on either controller.  I'm not sure what you mean by 'interconnected', maybe you're referring to the shared ground which is of course a necessary thing...

Plywood's nice, metal's nice, plexi scratches, and cheese is really more fun that useful.  Also denim is bad.  Stylish, but bad.

[TJ_Kat]

Okay, if the shared ground is necessary, it should already be on the saturn pad. So, if I leave the shared ground on the joysticks, that means I have to connect them to the saturn pad the "right way". If is isolate them, then it doesn't matter which way I connect them. Whatever, either way, not importants.

I also just remembered, I need to make some kind of guide for the sticks so they can only go one direction at a time (ie: only up, down, left, and right; no diagonals). I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do that...

And, how about cheese wrapped in demin! Fun AND stylish! lol

[kendrick]

TJ, diagonals are not a problem for the Virtual On software. There's some logic that takes conflicting input and defaults to one or the other (I think left and right take precedence over up and down, but I don't remember for sure.) For my money, the use of a physical guide to limit the motion of the stick seems like it would feel unnatural. If you're building the stick mechanism from the ground up, I would suggest four additional 'pressure' points to the bottom of the stick, located at diagonals and then positioned lower than the pressure points that activate the switches. That way, you get a natural rotation around all 360 degrees, but you're only physically able to hit one direction at a time.

Can you tell I've thought about this quite a bit? :)

-KKC, finding new and exciting ways to crash Morrowind.

[Adeptus]

4-way arcade sticks use a diamond-shaped guide... this means that you sort of slide off where the diagonals should be, and into a straight direction.

[TJ_Kat]

*points at Adeptus' post*
That's what I'm looking for! Thank you. It will give the illusion of full range of motion while still limiting things to one direction at a time... and now that I think about it, that's exactly how the vo arcade sticks work.

And no, I'm not building from the ground up. I found a bunch of NES Quick Shot sticks cheap and I'm going to be using them.

Of course, now I have to figure out how to build/install this diamond guide... I should have enough left over computer cases from other projects that I can cut up...

[NFG]

The VO sticks may work like that in the arcade but they do NOT work like that in the Saturn or DC sticks.  Be sure you have a good reason to limit your stick's functionality before you make permanent changes.

[TJ_Kat]

I guess the easiest way to approach this is to make a non-permanent guide. However, I can't see it being a problem. Diagonals don't have a place in the control scheme for the sticks in VO, and the sticks I'm using are fairly sensitive.

Actually, the more I think about it, the less I'm sure the diagonals aren't used... but then I think some more and see the complications diagonals would add to things... dammit... I don't know where to find one anymore to go see... last time I saw one was... 3 or 4 years ago...

[Seven7]

Hello all,

Kinda new, and gave the thread a bump,  but i was wondering if this could be done with a dreamcast pad.  I'd rather not go through a saturn pad and a converter (mostly because i can't find a reliable source for the converter) and go directly to a dc pad.  Just wondering if anyone knew any button layouts that might work.

-Seven7-

[SAM]

I am now building on a VO twin stick. As far as I know the system would detact what kinds of controlling device is connecting to the console.

I really don't want to guts a DC twin stick for the project. Is there any ways to mod a DC pad or joystick PCB to trick the system to believe it is connected to a DC twin stick?

FYI, I am building the VO twin stick with the following parts:

Sanwa JLJ-PL2-8V x2
Sanwa OBSF-40RG x1
Sanwa OBSF-24 x1
The case of Hori Real Arcade Pro Joystick x1

By the way, the Sanwa JLJ-PL2-8V got a square gate.

==================================

Using such a custom stick, connect the DC to a 29" Chassis in VGA mode. Connect the system to another DC for Vs game. You would got a system as close to the Arcade counterpart. Just 4M video RAM less?

[Seven7]

I think all sanwas come with square gates.  But i've never seen that part no. before.   Pics?  Anyway, iam just gutting 2 Saitek usb joysticks, ended up going through a saturn pad, still can't find a reliable source for a converter though.  Are total controll 3's that rare?  Anyway, mine should come out cool looking, but i'd rather buy the twinsticks, its a lot less time consumeing, but my end result should look nice anyway, if anything else!
Anyway, the easyest way is to go through a saturn pad and a converter.  These pads where MADE for hacking into.  If you have problems with the start button, do what i did, Krazy glue :lol:   Just don't get any on your hands, not fun.

-Seven7-

[SAM]

Stock photo of Sanwa JLJ-PL2-8V can be seen at the following link to the Sanwa's Page.

http://www.sanwa-d.co.jp/p_joy-stick4.htm#jlj

[Seven7]

Just wondering if anyone made any progress round here.  I'am re'doing mine (came out looking like junk) and also re-wireing it to support the saturn (dreamcast through converter) and PS2 (MARZ rules).  Just wondering how successful you guys have been.

-Seven7-

[o-o]

What (circuit) would be required to allow the pots of a regular analog flightstick to act as digital on/off button connects (and disconnects) at certain ranges?:  Being off/disconnect (like normal), until you move the stick past a certain degree/angle, then its simply on/connection (for the contacts of the digital pad/button its connected to)... Something that only allows signal/electricity to connect/pass after a certain voltage or ammount of resistance is surpassed?  How simple could that be?  Could the range be set with a variable resistor/pot?

If that would work, could use a Y connector (2 gameport plugs to> one 25pin plug) to connect two gameport flightsticks to an adapter module (containing a Saturn or DC PCB) [or something similar]?

[kendrick]

OO, what you're referring to is an Analog-to-Digital , or A-D convertor. This is a catch-all term for a circuit that takes analog data (like an RF signal or the voltage gradient out of a potentiometer) and turns it into a digital output suitable for use in logic circuitry. In this particular case, an analog joystick encompasses two potentiometers and therefore would produce two distinct analog outputs. There would be some additional logic after the conversion to translate that into four switches (and add the restriction of not allowing certain output conditions, like UP and DOWN at the same time.)

Not to discourage what you're trying to do, but in my opinion an analog flight stick would be a poor substitute for a Twin Stick controller. Given the amount of twitchy, jumpy reactions in the Virtual On games, I would prefer an audible click or some other tactile feedback to let me know that I've reached that contact threshold. For Virtual On, analog would definitely not be better than digital, which is why the PS2 controls for Marz don't quite feel right.

-KKC, who hasn't gotten anywhere building anything lately. Still trying to source a real Model 2 cabinet.

[o-o]

>
>(and add the restriction of not allowing certain output conditions, like UP and DOWN at the same time.)
>

but the VO stick and saturn pads dont need to, right?



>
>I would prefer an audible click or some other tactile feedback to let me know that I've reached that contact threshold.
>


if adjustable it (the on/off point for the switch) could be set to be at the far end of the sticks movement, so youre hitting something solid every time


>
>There would be some additional logic after the conversion to translate that into four switches
>

(or do it separately for each pot?)


How complex/simple is it, what exact parts are needed? (is external power source or an IC even needed?)


[just something which by the level of resistance set by one pot, allows/tells a transistor to make or break a connection between two points, based on when another pot is moved past the range/resistance set by the first pot?]

[kendrick]

I offer to you these links, handily extracted from Google with an exact phrase search on "Analog to Digital" --

http://ltl13.exp.sis.pitt.edu/Website/Webr...APaper/ADDA.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital#Analo...ital_conversion
http://physics.usask.ca/~angie/ep414/labma...nual/node5.html

Some of those pages are kind of academic, and none provide example circuits. If you're willing, there's enough information there for you to create some experiments and produce a working solution after a few tests. Hope that helps you out.

-KKC

[o-o]

thanks, I did search and found things like that.. but thats not quite the info needed.. (is very general/theory related and/or about complex A-D encoding..). This is actually much simpler, no encoding is needed it seems.

Closer specific info needed is related to the concepts:
"voltage controlled gate" and "comparator"
(simple 'linear' IC's consisting of op amps / gates, as opposed to digital encoding type..)


Comparator:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase...nic/compar.html

"The LM239 is a quad, single-supply comparator.
Quad: Can compare four different pairs of voltages."
(scroll down to the picture)
http://www.robotroom.com/Comparator.html