Thinking about trying retropie - will 49way joystick work?

[quarterback]

Hi all,

All my mame cabinets are now running on really really really really old computers and I thought I might change them up using a rasberry pi.  One of my cabinets uses a GPWiz49 for my 49-way stick.   I've seen some discussion about 49-way sticks but I'm not sure it it'll work or not.  Anybody here with an answer willing to help this old man out?

thanks
qb

[Titchgamer]

No idea if a 49 way would work, I would guess not.
But I would just buy a 2nd hand PC for the same money and just upgrade your current rig with that.

[Mike A]

Using the Pi is the same as using a really old PC.

[quarterback]

I hear what you all are saying, except that my current PCs are running WindowsXP, which wants to do updates, and have motherboards with dying/dead lithium batteries, so they are always having time/date issues, and are huge electricity hogs, so I have to shut them off and reboot them all the time, and they have loud fans, and old IDE hard drives that are on their last legs etc.   I'm not looking for something that'll be faster or more powerful than what I have, but having a small, cheap, single-board computer would be preferable for a number of other reasons.   

Of course, the one big possible downside is not being able to use the 49-way on one of my machines, because I like playing Sinistar     I may just buy a rasberry pi and test it out, I just figured somebody else might have already figured out if it'd work or not with the Gpwiz49
 

[Titchgamer]

I would say get something running Windows 7 64 bit with sata HDD’s and turn off the internet.

Thats what I have and I have 0 problems with it.

[ark_ader]

Have you tried interfacing your 49 way with a KADE?

It has to be like a trackball so map it like an analogue controller.

KADE works great with my Pi3+

[PL1]

Have you tried interfacing your 49 way with a KADE?

How would you do that?

AFAIK there are no KADE firmwares that interface with the many data lines (6 or 7 per axis IIRC) of a 49-way stick.

It has to be like a trackball so map it like an analogue controller.

LOL WUT?    



A trackball has nothing to do with it.

Perhaps you meant to say that a 49-way stick encoder should show up and be mapped as an analog stick, but the output is limited to 49 possible positions.


Scott

[ark_ader]

Have you tried interfacing your 49 way with a KADE?

Perhaps you meant to say that a 49-way stick encoder should show up and be mapped as an analog stick, but the output is limited to 49 possible positions.


Scott

FIFY

This guy seems to have more information on the subject and he does mention analogue.  So I am not that off target as your response suggests.  So maybe you can add this feature to the next revision of KADE?

[PL1]

FIFY

No you didn't.   

The part where you said that a 49-way stick "has to be like a trackball" is 100% wrong, aside from the fact that both use optical sensors.

The corresponding type of USB HID device is different.
- A trackball directly corresponds with a mouse.
- AFAIK a 49-way stick doesn't directly correspond with any type of USB HID device, but a specialized firmware can translate the 8 data line values (side, low, med, and high for each axis) into a 49-position analog stick output on a gamepad.

MAME is often able to translate one type of input into a completely different type of input, such as playing Star Wars with a trackball (mouse) instead of a yoke (gamepad analog joystick) -- that doesn't mean that the input types are similar at the encoder level.

mouse =/= gamepad

This guy seems to have more information on the subject and he does mention analogue.

The only mention of analog on that page is a link at the bottom to urebelscum's very old MameAnalog+ page (backup copy here) that mentions raw input using MameAnalog+ (via Player 5 Buttons 1-8) and a "49-to-analog" circuit to translate the 49-way stick to a 49-position analog stick.

I haven't looked into how well 49-way and/or analog sticks are supported in current MAME or on the older versions used on a RasPi.   

So maybe you can add this feature to the next revision of KADE?

Randy already has it covered with his GP-Wiz49 MAX 49-Way Joystick and GP-Wiz49 Eco 49-Way Joystick encoders.

Given the tiny number of games that used 49-way sticks and the similarly small number of instances where these sticks might be used in a build, I doubt that Bruno will be interested in investing the considerable time and effort to add support for them.

One thing that might convince him is if GP-Wiz49's don't work for RasPi, Mac, etc. despite the fact that the product page points out that they, "Will most likely work with other systems that comply with the the HID specification."

If 1500points or someone else with analog controls already enabled in Retropie doesn't chime in first, I'll try to de-brick my Retropie SD card and see if analog controls will work for some of the 49-way games on that old version of MAME, Quarterback.   


Scott

[quarterback]

Thanks for the replies, but it looks like it's a no-go.

What I decided to actually do is to test run RetroPie in a PC environment on an old laptop.  I figured that would let me know if I even wanted to pick up a RaspberryPi or not.     I eventually got RetroPie installed last night and so I figured my next step would be to hook up my GPWiz49 to the laptop and see if it'd work.   

Maybe I should have known that the controller setup is very console gamepad oriented, asking for bumpers and analogue sticks even when setting up the keyboard as the controller, but that was a surprise to me.  I thought this might be a good sign, plus the fact that GGG GPWiz49 showed up on screen when I started to configure it, but it wasn't.  I hooked up my GPWiz to the laptop and went through the controller configuration but, when I tried to set it up as one of the analog sticks, it doesn't accurately register the joystick movement.  When I move it up, down right or left, it just moves to the next option without setting anything.  If I move the joystick all around, I can sometimes get it to pop up an Axis 0+ or Axis 0- as two of the analog stick directions, but it just doesn't work in gameplay.

So that's all I know for now.  The gamepad structure for even controlling the emulationstation UI is unintuitive to me but if I decide to continue with it, I guess I'll just remap all the buttons like bumpers, and triggers to something on my CP.   But, if I want to play sinistar, I guess I'm going to have to figure out a different solution.

Thanks again for the replies, everybody
qb