No worries.
I’m practicing inputs and just grinding right now, while plotting my improvements. I’m trying to get an HDMI capture card but until I do, I don’t want to put out (essentially) crap quality on Smash.
I could mod my 3DS to take a GC input (as I have a 3DS with capture card already)…but I’ve got other stuff to work on (not to mention retraining my brain to use the stick)
Tips for improvement are always welcome 
I procrastinated heavily on the video but I made it, it’s uploading right now. I’ll link it here when it’s done.
https://youtu.be/hSXUnI32fmw
Button layouts I talk about in the video, and some information on where I would recommend placing your c-stick on your stick.
Intuitive Layout
http://i.imgur.com/zpiJghT.png
Efficient Layout
http://i.imgur.com/0r9f5fj.png
This is something I forgot to cover in the video but since you use an actual c-stick; I would recommend using the ‘efficient’ layout I talked about – but place your c-stick where my c-stick down button is. That way you still have full access to your buttons and only will remove your thumb from the buttons to use the c-stick. Useful examples of this would be when you want to do a smash attack or do jumping aerials while still controlling your direction in the air with the analog stick!
For every one else, I do recommend watching the video as well since I talk about other things related to the stick. I also will make a follow up video in 2 weeks that should be edited nicely which shows how I play on the stick.
Thanks for the reply.
Yea my layout is a little more specialized for my hands and my play vs. more generic for anybody who might want to use a stick.
The other day I brought my stick to a buddy’s house and he mentioned wanting the C stick closer to the other buttons (I have big hands so it isn’t even a stretch for me. Plus as I mentioned I don’t use it much so I didn’t want accidental inputs.)
I should also mention that I didn’t play Smash until it came out for the 3DS and then for the Wii U. I don’t see myself playing one of the older games (oh god the learning curve) so I didn’t have need for a light shield button. In my current layout I have one button not hooked up to anything which could become a light shield button very easily.
I reduced the throw slightly by cutting about a quarter inch off of the top stick. It is still more than on a digital joystick, but from what it looks like in your reply, it is pretty similar to the Seimitsu throw. I’m still waiting on a spring
There are some points that I didn’t clarify on in the video. The video was a direct reply to yours but I expanded on some information I talked about previously in the thread. But I also talked about my general thoughts during the process of the stick and why I made the decisions that I did.
Your joystick looks really good already performance wise. The combo of using a harder spring and lessening the throw distance will help get an arcade feel I believe. I can’t speak too much about your joystick vs the one I’m using since I don’t know how it’s constructed (I would love to talk more and compare the process of your build vs mine, it would be really interesting and we’ll probably both learn a lot).
Now the reason I wanted the c-stick to be buttons was I felt that using the c-stick itself would minimize the ergonomics and speed at which I could play at (and be unintuitive to have 2 analog sticks + buttons on an arcade stick). Using buttons has no downside on gameplay (even taking advanced techniques into account) and has advantages compared to a physical c-stick: such as being able use the c-stick for attacks easier/quicker in combination of using other buttons compared to a controller. An example is performance instant aerials using the c-stick, it’s very easy to press the jump button and then press the c-stick up button for an instant short hop (SH) > Uair for example. I personally believe converting the c-stick into buttons is a superior option vs controller and that is a benefit of playing on a stick compared to controller.
Now if you still want to use the c-stick, I would recommend placing it under the attack button so you can use it for your thumb. The arcade stick allows you to have a “home row” hand position where your fingers have access to all buttons which the controller does not allow (unless you use a claw grip but the downside to that is its unergonomic and uncomfortable, unlike an arcade stick). Under the “efficient” layout that I made, the thumb is used independently for attacks so switching between the attack button or c-stick would be the most intuitive/ergonomic for gameplay in my opinion.
One of the main goals I had with the button layout was to make gameplay as ergonomic and intuitive as possible. Using the home row position that the “efficient” layout offers allows all 4 necessary buttons to play access to an independent finger without having to shift your hand position. I’d have to rewatch your video (I’m on break from work at the moment so it would be later tonight) to compare where your buttons are on your layout. But I laid out the buttons the way I did so you do not have to shift your hand to play and this allows you to have faster and accurate inputs compared to any other layout (in my opinion, but I’ve done lots of personal tests to come up with the layout I did). I would highly recommend switching to it so you don’t have to relearn your muscle memory for playing (which I have done many times and will have to do one more time when I switch to the new layout soon) as time goes on. I could imagine doing out of shield (OoS) attacks would be a bit of a chore on your layout currently (ex: jump cancel out of shield into a rising Bair). If you’re not using defensive techniques like that currently, you will in the future as your skill level improves and I feel you may be limited in your accuracy and input speed if you continue to use your button layout.
Now the light shield button doesn’t really have a use if you don’t play melee but if the button itself is wired as a a shield input (not using the hard press of the microswitch, only the sliding potentiometer of the gc controller trigger) it will still grant you a full shield in any smash game outside of melee (since the light shield mechanic is melee exclusive) so it’s really up to you if you want to wire it or not. It won’t effect gameplay otherwise but a second shield button is needed so you can at least quit matches (I currently cannot on my controller).
That’s it for now, I look forward to your thoughts. And I want to mention that the video I made wasn’t meant to be disrespectful in the slightest. Upon rewatching the video, I realized the ending may have sounded disrespectful towards you when I didn’t mean for it to be. The statement I said something along the lines of “I’m the only one who can give advice and know what they’re talking about” wasn’t directed towards you, it was a generalized statement since I was referring to the fact that I’m the only person who plays both fighting games and smash on an arcade stick compared to other people who only play smash on a controller or people who only play fighting games on an arcade stick. Just wanted to clear that up if you felt like it was toward you! 
Wow, this is a pretty exciting project and it’s great to see how @TheBlackHombre’s design is evolving and what @MentalMantel has also come up with.
I really like how Hombre’s setup basically translates Smash’s control scheme into the traditional Japanese arcade stick layout and feel. As a Street Fighter and air dasher player, I feel like this would be really easy and fun to transition into Smash with this sort of familiarity. I know you’re busy but I’m really, really looking forward to your tech video and any tutorials or spec sheet for the community to mimic this setup. Otherwise, I’ll probably just commission @Gummo if he’s willing to provide this service. xD
Mantel’s design is also really sick because a fully analog stick would possibly remove any awkwardness found in a shift button, but I’m sure that’s something time and practice can overcome. Mantel, how did you simply wire the Raider Pro to the GC pad and what modifications to the flightstick casing to accomplish your mod? $23 is a pretty nice price and around the range of replacing a digital arcade joystick, which can make such a mod all the more reasonable. Lastly, how were you able to detach the part of the GC PCB with the C-stick and still get it to work? I know next to nothing about PCBs and wiring besides how to solder and follow directions so any clarification would be awesome~
Keep up the good work guys!!
Yea, I should have mentioned while I don’t have a light shield button, every button on the GC controller has a button on my pad. I just threw in a PNP gate on the shoulders so they work with the arcade buttons. I then just used the mapping in the game to set what each button does, this lets me hit all the buttons for a reset (it is soooo much easier to hit them all together on the pad actually)
I’m pretty new to using a pad in general since I’m really just getting into Fighting Games but I have not found myself using my thumb on the buttons at all. My thumb is really just floating the whole time (I will try to make a video or snap some pics of how I hold my hands or of me playing some. I’m thinking I’m going to get a HDMI Capture Card for myself as a gift soon) so reaching for the C stick hasn’t been a problem. I’m definitely going to be taking your research, @TheBlackHombre , into account as I plan for the actual case though.
I am shying away from converting the C stick into buttons because, while I don’t see foresee it happening, I don’t want to go to a tourney and have an opponent cry foul about an advantage. Even if it is completely false, just having someone raise a stink would cause headaches for a TO and for myself.
@RedTag14 The Joystick was the “difficult”/fun part of the project for me.
I scrapped the original casing on top of the joystick (the molded plastic giving it the flight stick look) and removed all the wiring for the buttons. I then scrapped (I’m a packrat, “scrapping” means I keep this stuff in case I can use it on another project later) the motherboard for the flightstick.
At this point there were no wires or PCB in the Raider Pro. I used a dremel and cut away most of the base (have to be careful to not cut away the support for the pots and such. I’m working on making the mounting better, but since it is in a temporary case it is currently just hot glued on there (it has some wiggle which will be eliminated once I actually mount it). I’m working on making the mounting better.
The way the flightstick was built, the pots had a range (the base slid around to allow adjustment) and the serial software was used to calibrate. This wouldn’t work for the GC Motherboard so I had to scrap the potentiometers in the orginal joystick and find suitable replacements. I couldn’t find the exact value that matched the controller (30k ohm) so I knew I would just have to slap a resistor in parallel to bring it where it needed to be.
The tricky part was finding the correct throw length (18mm btw). I went through a couple different lengths of pots before I found it.
After that it was simply mounting the slide pot in the Raider Pro (some more dremel work and hot glue) and wiring the pins on the pontentiometers to the correct through hole on the GC motherboard. I can take some pictures of my sloppy hot glue shenanigans if you are interested.
For my final stick I want to actually make some injection molds (or simpler molds) which will eliminate all the hot glue nonsense.
So a few months ago I said I would share layouts I made. Then I forgot. Then you guys started talking in this thread again which notified me and made me remember to share.
Anyway these are some of the layouts I came up with. http://imgur.com/a/krCQQ
Some of them are doable on a normal stick with a shift key, and I remember testing them, but all of them are with an analog joystick in mind so when I was testing them things didn’t really feel right no matter which layout I did. I kind of tested the feel for things on my computer screen as I was adjusting the button placements (I used an actual arcade stick layout for the placement of things as well). I found the jump button needed to be a thumb button, probably because I play fighting games outside of Smash on a hitbox, but it also just seemed easier to press my thumb down before pressing any of the buttons in the air, no matter where it was on the stick. I felt that the shield button should pretty much always be near the A button to make hitting both of them at the same time (for grabbing) easier, I also found it easier to have the shield button be a pointer finger button for whatever reason, that’s probably just personal preference though.
I haven’t felt the layouts out in a while, but I think my favorite was probably layout 6 v.2 with 24mm buttons, most likely because the hitbox’s buttons, save for the “up” button are all 24mm. Having the buttons smaller also made it easier for my fingers to dance around that kind of weird 8 button layout. I also like the top right corner being empty rather than the top left. Something weird about reaching for that corner with my ring finger.
Anyway, blah, blah, blah, let me know what you think, and if you have questions on why any of the layouts are the way they are ask and I’ll try to answer. Chances are some of the answers are going to be “because I didn’t know what I was thinking with that one” though.
Some updates.
I was trying to adjust the spring that was in the stick and accidentally mangled it. Luckily, the spring I was going to replace it with arrived. Unluckily, I think the new spring feels like junk and it doesn’t fix the deflection problem. The spring is max force 9 lbs, so it is a little difficult to move like an actual arcade stick (using just the thumb for left movements), so I’m going to get something closer to the original that I mangled.
As I move into my final build I’m hoping I can fix the deflection problem with some improvements to the mechanical side.
I’ll still be working on this (and trying to figure out if my locals will let me use it, since most state no modified controllers), but it will be on the back burner as I focus on SFV.
So I’ll be honest, I really want to try this out for myself because I play TvC and figure that if I’m gonna mod a stick to be dual-modded with a PS360+ and a GameCube PCB, I might as well attempt to get this sort of functionality out of it - mainly, the “shift button” for walking, tilts, etc. What’s going on there?
I see the 4 potentiometers that @TheBlackHombre mentioned are wired to each of the cardinal directions of the joystick and I’m assuming the shift button unpressed leaves the pots unactivated and then activated when pressed. How is that wired? I also see some chips on the breadboard with the pots (logic gates I’m assuming) and then some resistors on the breadboard with the screw terminals for the buttons. Would just like an explanation to help me and possibly others mimic this setup for our own testing as it seems somewhat promising. Any chance I can get @Gummo, @Darksakul, and/or others to chime in? Lastly, any chance the GC PCB can be cut to a smaller size to save space inside the case (http://www.gc-forever.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=1300)?
**To avoid confusing how an analog joysticks compared to a digital joystick I going to go on this side tangent **
*Actually there only 2 potentiometers in an analog joystick, one for the X axis and one for the Y Axis.
There is no depression of pots, a potentiometer isn’t a switch. It Turns, common places to find a potentiometer is in a older TV or Radio volume knob, a light dimmer knob. Think off a potentiometer as a big adjustable resistor. A Switch operates on the concept of ON and OFF (and only On and OFF), only 2 states, which is also the basic concept of digital electronics Ones and Zeros (One = On, Zero = Off).
Analog is different, analog works on the concept of different voltage or amperage levels and is a continuous signal, analog operates like a wave.
Its why Analog was the method of choice for older era TV, Radios, video and audio recordings ect, as it was easy to modulate these continuous signals to sound coming out of speakers or how a image is drawn on a cathode ray tube (CRT) screen.
Like still to this day the last part of our audio equipment before the wiring goes to a speaker the circuity is analog, the constant modulation of voltage levels acts like a wave which effects how much the magnets and coils move in a speaker which create the sound waves we hear. *
What TheBlackHombre did was he pad hacked a Game Cube controller for stick use, as he was using a Sanwa JLF for his Left analog he had to change the digital output of the JLF to analog input the GC PCB would understand. The Sanwa JLF is digital, each cardinal direction is a ON or OFF state. The 4 potentiometers you see are so BlackHombre can adjust or dial-in the strength of how far the push is in any direction. So hitting up on the JLF is not a hard full push on the analog stick stick data as completely up on the X Axis. So dialing the Pots to 50% would equal a 50% push on a left analog stick. I think TheBlackHombre set his pots for being at 40%. The Shift button is wired up to allow for a full press in any direction,regardless of what the pots are set to. He did a similar set up for the C-stick and broke it down to 4 buttons.
There is a introductory guide on how to remove analog joysticks and neutralize them. It goes on the same method can be used to turn variable resistors into on-off switches.
http://www.slagcoin.com/joystick/pcb_wiring.html#PCB_COMPONENTS_MODIFICATION_AND_REMOVAL
As for the actual logic on the board, I am a little foggy about the details as I don’t even know what chips are used. When it came to my own projects and analog to digital conversion I took the easy ways out and just avoided the analog inputs. Like both of my Virtual-On arcade sticks are wired up as digital joysticks taking on digital inputs and setting the game to run off the D-pad and 4 face buttons instead of the analog thumb sticks.
I am sure Gummo or TheBlackHombre can help you more in this regard.
The shift button is actually functioning the other way. When the joystick is moved it registers 100% of that axis. If the shift button is held then it uses the % setting of the pot.
The chips I used were 4066 switching chips and hex inverters.
So I got it backwards, opps.
I could never remember what chips was used, I tried searching a guide on SRK and failed to find anything
It’s no big deal. I just wanted to clarify the details since I was the one who did the mod.
I don’t think I mentioned before the chips used nor why they were used. I meant to post the schematic I drew out , but found out I didn’t complete it when I was finished with the mod.
Thanks a ton @Darksakul. This was a solid run down of what I needed to have clarified. I learned a little bit of this stuff in a intro to hardware class designed for IT students and your explanation is a thousand times better than anything my professor said. lol
Thanks for clarifying @Gummo! A schematic would be really, really, really cool as I know I could learn quite a bit from this. I’m genuinely interested in getting into modding in my spare time when I graduate. I understand you’re a busy guy though so no worries if a schematic is a no go. It would help me attempt to do this mod myself, but in any case, I’ve sent you an email if you’re able to do this mod again for whatever price you fancy. I’m a visual and kinesthetic learner so getting a point blank look at the wiring, chips, breadboard(s), etc. would be an awesome experience. :3 Please let me know!
Someone mentioned cutting down the GC controller board. here is this thread. You can cut it down pretty small. Just slightly larger than the main chip from the looks of things (Especially as a stick will not need the rumble)
http://forums.modretro.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=8517
edit: Clarification
Good to know! Curious but would you be able to share how you wired your flight stick to the GC board, @MentalMantel?
Side tangent here. I was supposed to have my video done awhile back, but my friend that “said” he’ll help me out pretty much went back on his word. So I’ll be updating the video very very slowly whenever I drive 60ish miles back to my old town to visit family/friends and have my good friend edit/record video whenever I’m in the area which isn’t often. 
@RedTag14 It is actually pretty simple. I wired the three outputs of a slide potentiometer to the three inputs on the GC board.
I just looked up the layout of the board (I think on Slagcoin is where I eventually found this…but I’m not sure, I had to use some google fu). The only slightly tricky part was matching the resistance to the original pots of the controller.
Since I couldn’t find exact resistors that matched I just put a resistor in parallel to the pot. Not really tricky if you know a bit about electronics or you can google a parallel resistance calculator too and it will figure out what you need. You’ll have to play a bit to find the center.
Just do that for both axis and the slide pots will work. Mount them in the housing for the joystick and voila.
People have been asking on the youtubes for a little more in depth look in how I put it together, which I am in the process of doing since I am rebuilding the joystick to bring it more in line with standard arcade sticks
I recently got my HDMI Capture Card in so I can start making better videos now
Really cool info. Thanks @MentalMantel! Are the slide potentiometers a part of the analog joystick? I know there are some sliders for the GC triggers. I might have other questions about the resistors but I’ll do my research before sending you a PM. No pressure on the new build or video responses. Take your time! I’m sure we’re all just looking forward to what cool stuff can come about. (:
Same goes for you bud. No worries (at least for me). Take it easy and looking forward to the vid when it eventually comes out~
@RedTag14 No the slide pots were not a part of the joystick. I measured the throw and got a slide pot that was pretty close to it (18mm in my case-the actual throw was closer to 20 but I couldn’t find a potentiometer with that length)
