enough SRKers said if I have to write a novel to explain how I want my wiring that I should probably do it myself.
First of all I’m probably one of the most inathletic klutzes among people that i know. One thing that attracted me to video games was that I have a decent chance of beating my only childhood friend. (not the famous expert in my Sinister stick claim, he moved in the neighborhood later.)
When I originally bought my KY Enterprises joystick they were trying to do customer service by describing how to soldering over the phone, back when long-distance wasn’t free.
Since then I’ve had a little free time,. And look up YouTube videos do a couple minor video game operations. These are the ones I’ve been able to successfully pull off: installing a blinking light win on the NES,. Installing atariage name Nurmix’s intellivision external controller adapters. an inspired partly by videos I found an easy way to clean potentiometers on Atari 2600, Bally Astrocade, and NES Vaus controller paddles, that is pouring isopropyl alcohol in a chamber and turning the dial back and forth many times to clean the potentiometer.
ColecoVision super action controllers that had mixed results on. One time I fix the buttons but that was just temporary. One time I permanently messed up a Colecovision super action controller. I’ve done a couple minor things with 5200 controllers like fixing the joystick went off center,. I tried to deal with the buttons but now I know I have to get those professionally done.
That’s pretty much my history in doing video game surgery. I don’t know how to build professional boxes the hold electronic components nor do I know how to solder well.
should I assume that because it’s easier to describe how to build a box (usually a picture worked) than it is how to wire according to my standard, then the wiring / soldering should be the thing I do myself and box building I could have outsourced with some money?
I guess I could see if I could join a county vo ed class. Apparently not good enough to be a tradesman in that. But good enough to wire my joystick for the purposes of my prototype.
If it saves a lot of bad will and gives me a slightly good skill, especially considering I have more time than money and almost literally nothing to do now and not enough bandwidth to stream efficiently, why not.
Maybe I don’t even need a class. I figured out how to do those other things using YouTube videos, and 1.5 megabits in is enough to get YouTube videos. Can someone recommend a video about soldering for total klutzes? Heck, save money on going to a formal class. Assume I have zero experience with soldering, which is a fairly safe assumption.
The fact that the video showing soldering in joystick building assume you know how to solder is kind of intimidating.
Most of the theory I just felt through by stating a goal, and bouncing back with SRKers.
By the way why are over 90% of my posts about right-handed vs. Left-handed joysticks?
Why I'm known as the ambi guy at SRK
Mainly for two reasons, One is I notice results in me, and four friends, and the second is I noticed the markets went from accommodating everyone to accommodating the minority at the expense of the majority, intentionally adding extra challenge. Hence why JAMMA made left-handed sticks the standard: to decrease credit lengths on a typical arcade machine.
That is the one subject I could offer clear advice and ingormed opinion. I understand I’m fighting an uphill battle. But then again, most of the greats in any field of achievement fight uphill battles and succeed.
Most mono handed joysticks have 9 buttons and one joystick. I’m trying to arrange them so that they make a decent ambidextrous joystick. I say decent meaning good all-around for the purposes of off-the-shelf joysticks. this is probably a good chocolate design for an ambidextrous joystick that would be least offensive to most people. By chocolate i mean it’s not the number one favorite (like vanilla) but if a hundred people got together and had to pick a back up joystick that would offend everyone the least in case they’re custom stick broke, this arrangement would probably be it if there were lefties and righties in the pool.
I know most people who buy a custom joystick design it for themselves. The last great innovation design for more people than just themselves was the hitbox. Not mainstream enough be mass-manufactured but duplicated many times in custom circles.
PS I expect to be challenged on this notion. If people challenge me and have a reasonable responses, Then there’s something to my argument. If I would have slunk into a corner after people said the things they said about my most popular topic, then I would have given up, been a flash in the pan and everyone would still accept left-handed sticks as a standard.
Considering I started with zero agreement to start, I actually gained positive territory.
Some people now say Street Fighter 2 games could be enhanced by quite a few people by switching sides. Because the secret to success in those games is executing specials because of proportionately more powerful and proportionately harder to do compared to later Street fighters. If I can pull off a dragon punch in Street Fighter 4 with a left-handed stick but find it impossible on a Genesis with a left stick, then more leniency has been given to the joystick.
So enough people believe the story that the right-handed joystick was perfect that day in New Challengers. Especially when it went against a future famous TV gamer. and the only reason I advertise his identity is not to embarrass him but to show how nobodies could beat a very good and fairly famous gamer consistently with my joystick.
But people point out the number one reason why there’s no ambidextrous sticks in the mass market is because it’s too expensive to double the buttons. True: so I came up with a design that uses just one more button than the standard 8 button layout and in return gains ambidexterity. It also makes the taunt button and the fake button press easier to do.
And because few people talk about opposite-handed joysticks, literally only I talk about other problems associated with it, like how games that should have button reassignment don’t and you have to add that to your joystick in order to be worth the investment. Or how optimized contours make it bad for righthanding and I point out one extra advantage of the Street Fighter 15th anniversary joystick that no one else pointed out. Even DarkSakul agreed, that if righthanding were a goal, then that stick is probably the best joystick to righthand, even though he said it was too insignificant to mention if it weren’t brought up by me.