Posted by Torgo on September 13, 1999 at 04:46:34:
Ok, I know some of you folks out there gotta be driving game fans. How many quarters did you pump into that championship sprint machine at your local arcade just to get that last wrench which would give you that final level of extra acceleration or traction?
Someone has to be thinking about ways to connect driving pedals to their cabinet. Well I am, especially now that I know how to connect dual steering wheels (see optimame threads) You could of course get pedals from happ with microswitches and call it a day. This would be semi-acceptable. But wouldn't it be better if you could connect pedals with pots to your machine. Here's my theory:
Wire the pots in the pedals to the pots in an analogue joystick (are there pots in an analogue joystick? I've never taken one apart, but I imagine something has to be turning for each joystck axis.) Then modify mame (A.Geezer I'm talkin to you here) so that the x axis on the joystick=gas and the y axis=brake. Currently, in games like the Sprint games, both axis (what is the proper plural spelling?) on an analogue joystick do the same thing as the mouse (x=turn, y=nothing).
Maybe this is overkill. Was the gas pedal on these games a simple on/off switch? Or was it a variable control? If it was the latter, my theory applies. If the former, The microswitch style pedals would be perfect. However, this does not deal with all the other driving games like Outrun where you definately would need pedals that had pots.
Do comercial, PC-style wheel and pedals work with MAME? Even if they did, I'm sure they couldn't match the feel of real arcade controls, but maybe you could hack them and connect happ parts to the circuitry (ah, theory #2)
Thoughts? Anyone? Andy?