Analog controls have their place but I don’t think the software developers have figured out how to make them work well with fighting games… Nor does it appear they really add anything to fighting games any more than vibration does. It harder to do dash moves and “tap, tap” inputs with analog sticks than a digital stick.
Analog functionality is better for other types of games like racers (the BEST sporting games to incorporate both analog and vibration functionality) as well as flight sims/arcade flying games.
There have to be some good reasons besides cost for why both analog and vibration features were dropped/never added to most joysticks. Notice that neither Hori nor Mad Catz are putting vibration into their current joysticks. Even the L/R switches (for the analog sticks) on their joysticks are really only there (for the most) part to help you get through your console’s Xcross Media Bar. You’re not going to play most FPS games with an old-style digital joystick anyway…
In that case, it’s probably more than likely that you will NOT be able to get an analog stick working on your Hori V3.
The only way you could get actual analog joysticks is if your controller supported it to begin with (or you hack in something that does). If you *really *wanted pad-hack your stick to support actual analog sticks, you’re pretty much going to end up re-building the controller board’s chip from scratch.
I suppose a decent analogy would be: If you have a car with automatic transmission, just putting in a stick shift won’t make it manual-transmission. There are many other components that need to be in place for it to work that way. So you’d have 2 choices: either get/build a whole new car entirely, or gut-and-replace a crapload of components in your existing one.
That may not be necessary. I think people already have made fight sticks for shmups, or perhaps they are called STG games. Obviously they are called something else. What the name is, I know not.
I do plan in the future to make a complex fight stick that can switch between analog and digital, i figure just getting a dedicated analog stick for shmups would be ideal. Now that I know they may exist, I might be better off asking in a place like that.
Although, just to at least try:
Does anyone here know of a good place to buy a bullet dodging Shmups stick?
Well, that depends on whether or not the analog stick would register pressure sensitivity in the SIXAXIS D-Pad. It may work…
If it actually did work, then the only other problem would come from whether or not software actually recognizes D-Pad inputs as pressure sensitive (analog) or not.
Yes, people have made sticks for shumps, that I wouldn’t doubt. Most of them, though, modify the existing sticks (whether they be Sanwa JLFs or Seimitsu LS-XXs) to have shorter throws/engages, so that the stick becomes more sensitive by activating the direction with less of a joystick movement. I haven’t seen any recent customs of analog-stick equipped shump sticks, though; and those who have made them, I’m 100% sure they didn’t pull a retail stick and slapped in an analog stick with the stock PCB.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: Yes, you can make a stick with an analog joystick that’ll be great for shumps. It’s just that you WON’T be able to do it with the PCB that you’ll find in retail arcade sticks.
That’s exactly what I’m trying to say, though: an analog joystick MIGHT work if you padhack a controller’s PCB that supports analog sticks. The PCBs inside stock retail arcade sticks (Hori or Mad Catz ones, for example), will generally NOT have this kind of support, and it seemed to me that StreetFighterQualityTest was hoping to pop in an analog stick into his Hori V3 and have it work…
And this is on top of the question of whether or not the games themselves recognize the analog input as well; I’m not much of a shmup guy myself, but I do know that many of the ones I’ve played with recently don’t actually use any type of analog control…
Haha. it was just a first idea. I’m willing to go through any lengths to have a quality shmup experience with a stick. I couldn’t bare playing PixelJunk Sidescroller with a ps3 controller, it feels like I’m wasting a quality game.
I’m under the assumption that analog = a control that lets you move your ship around the screen slower if you move the stick slightly, and move the ship faster if you push the stick all the way to any edge.
Is it possible for a digital stick to do this same thing?
I’ve made a post in a prestigious Shmup forum’s hardware section too about this, hoping to find more information in time.
That’s pretty much what should be what analog controls are defined as.
However, I noticed, that for some games, say Ikaruga, the analog stick works, but it doesn’t change the speed at which your ship moves. It just moves like a digital pad.
To answer your question, it isn’t possible with a digital stick. I mean, that’s the whole thing about it being digital: it’s either on (ie, pushed all the way) or off (not pushed). There’s no in-between like analog controls, hence the actual difference between digital and analog sticks.
Yeah, but this is Sony; do we actually listen to what they say? j/k
But back to that, I’m 100% sure the D-pad on the Dual Shock 2 is analog. But as it was brought up, I don’t think anything other than MGS2 or Gran Turismo used it properly. Thought actually, I’m not sure if it’s as far as being “analog”, as it was just being able to detect several levels of pressure.
No, they aren’t. The entire pad is analog. Every button with a rubber cup actuator is pressure sensitive, except start, select, home, and L3/R3 which both use tact switches which have either on or off signals.
If you really need to see it in action for yourself, boot up MGS3 on a PS3 and test out a DS2/SIXAXIS/DS3 during a cutscene, all the controllers will have a pressure sensitive zoom feature using the D-Pad.
It actually has a full analog range, if you’re REALLY careful, you can do a smooth seemless zoom during a MGS cutscene, but it can be difficult because you don’t have a large range of motion to do so.
Actually all those LS-Semitsu sticks are a scam because they don’t give true analog. The only one in existence after doing plethora of research is this one: http://na.suzohapp.com/joysticks/50287600.htm
No analog joystick is real unless it has potentiometers, period.
Why do you need an analog control for Sidescroller? Just use the digital controls like the d-pad. Everyone’s played SHMUPs off digital controls already so I don’t see why it suddenly needs to be analog controls.
That or you can attach a joystick directly to the left analog stick on the controller and do the rest of the padhacking from there.
DS1, DS2, Sixaxis and DS3 are all motion sensitive on all buttons + D-Pad but Start, Select, Home and L3/R3
also if you hook a DS1/2/3 to a linux PC and run jstest (joystick test program) in a terminal you’ll see that it registers something around 32000+ different values of pressure
For some reason Sine Mora, new a shootemup, uses analog controls for slower movements and doesnt have a way to slow down your ship’s movement in any other way… got me thinking about this kind of thing. i’d buy one if it were available
I played brawl semi-competitively for a while, and I hate to tell you, but you are wrong in that last statement. When using certain attacks in brawl, you can break them down to more than the base directions. Smash Wiki has an article on tilts and the second paragraph explains that they can be aimed to an extent. Jumps can also be precisely aimed, unlike digital fighter’s three possible jump directions(up, forward, and back). Also of note is the use of DI, or Directional Influence within the game, you can push against an attack, and it can cancel some of your momentum. Also of note is the fact that in every smash game movement speed is determined by the distance the analog stick has moved(but this is rather obvious). However, the remark that it isn’t perfectly analog is correct, as that requires much more scripting and allows for greater potential of bugs within the movement engine.
I still think you are wrong, it is the Square, X, Circle and Triangle buttons and the L1, L2, R1 and R2 that simulate analog, as it operates on High/ Low Logic system.
The High/low logic can tell the difference between a soft push and hard push, but not true analog as no pots or hall effect sensors are used.
Its like the buttons have 3 settings, All the way, half way and OFF. Actual analog will have more than 3 positions.
The d-pad is still largely all Digital, and dose not even operate on High/Low Logic
By the way I did boot up MGS3 as I have the PS2 version of the game. The D-pad Still do not behave as you suggest, and that was tried on a Six Axis, a Dual Shock 3 and a Dual Shock 2 + USB adapter.
