- Harder was a poor choice of words. Slower, more difficult, whatever. Same difference. The spring isn’t that much less tense. It may take a tad bit longer to fully pop back to neutral with a spring that has less tension, but not to deactivate. See below:
As you can see, the spring is still nearly under full compression and tension when the switch is deactivating. It still has plenty of force behind it to pop the ball out of the circuit creating a negative edge.
The distance required for the switch to travel is negligent in this case. Neutral, maybe, but not deactivation.
- I’m sorry, I don’t understand any of that. What do those other types of switches have to do with the kind that are in Sanwa? Look at the illustration, the switch is a momentary contact switch. When deactivated, the circuit is broken, as soon as the metal ball comes into contact with the metal plates the circuit is complete and it sends the signal. As soon as you let go, contact is broken immediately and the signal breaks, along with the circuit. The game sees this as a negative edge. Regardless of the tension of the spring between a Sanwa and a Seimitsu, they’re going to deactivate at nearly identical speeds. If the spring couldn’t release that small of a distance fast enough within 16 ms (1 frame) then it wouldn’t even be able to hold the plunger up as it rests on the switch’s actuator. There is more than enough tension on the spring to release the ball from contact within that time frame. If you were to put your formula into my illustration, you’d see that d is negligible. Between a Seimitsu and a Sanwa, there isn’t going to be any difference. Popping back to neutral, there will be, which is what I should have written instead of deactivation travel (poor choice of words there
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I believe your formula is a little flawed. Lets say that the total travel distance is 3 mm, and that activation is 2.5 mm. That means x is actually the throw, extra travel that the silver ball may slide along the contact plates. That means there is .5 mm of throw, but as you can see from the illustration, the deactivation distance is as soon as the ball loses contact with the places, which is even smaller of a distance.
- The activation distance shouldn’t be that different between the two switches, they’re builds are pretty similar enough with very minor differences. The main difference is the spring. If you took out the spring from a Seimitsu/Hori (manufactured by TKC) and placed it into a Sanwa, then it would feel just like a TKC switch.
Lets consider something else. I’d wager that a Sanwa is actually faster to activate, since it requires less force than a Seimitsu. So you should be able to activate and deactivate faster on a Sanwa since your fingers require less force to push the switch into activation, and if you put more force, it would do it faster since it offers less resistance. Since deactivation is nearly instantaneous, the only factor left is returning to neutral, which will be a little bit slower than Seimitsu. However, since you can simply reactivate it before it pops back into neutral, this point is moot, and a Sanwa is functionally just as fast, if not faster than a Seimitsu.
Thus I mention player error. If you can’t move your fingers fast enough, then you will have more problems on a Sanwa since slow fingers will keep it in activation longer because of the weaker spring in the switch. However, a button with a spring that has more tension may be able to force your slightly heavier touch back to neutral faster, so rapid fire presses may be easier to do in this case, and may be why you can rapid fire faster on buttons of higher tension. There is nothing wrong with admitting this, and I personally prefer buttons with higher tension for more tactile feedback and because I accidentally activate Sanwa’s when my fingers are simply resting on them. Obviously, if I really wanted to play on Sanwa, I could, it would just take more practice and self awareness to correct the issue. I don’t even like Sanwa buttons, but from a technical standpoint, with a lighter touch or forcefully snapping your fingers off them faster could potentially be faster than Seimitsu simply from the fact you can activate them faster with less force.
- Doing 1 frame links certainly demands timing, and most people use plinking to do so because most humans aren’t capable of consistently hitting 1 frame links without pianoing. I’m sure you’re aware this is a form of piano method to get more inputs per hit via input and neg-edge to increase your chances of landing those 1 frame links, just like how in ST you piano to increase your chances of landing the 1 frame reversal window. My friend who I play locally with can do this consistently on Sanwa so I know the buttons are perfectly capable of 1 frame neg-edging.
Anyway, unless there is some very hard data to support the idea that Sanwa can’t do 1 frame neg-edging, then I’m going to remain a disbeliever on this topic.
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