Cannonball Axis Invert?

[Namco]

I'm working on a driving setup and one of the first games I setup was Cannonball, the enhanced OutRun engine.

My driving pedals are a little strange in that the brake axis is reversed (the accelerator and brake are close together so the pots are on opposite sides of their levers). With nothing pressed, the brake shows full signal, pressing it lowers it to 0. In MAME and M2 emulator the brake is the only one I have to invert under analog controls and everything works fine.

For some reason in Cannonball the brake works fine, but the accelerator in inverted. So in order for me to drive I have to release the accelerator. To slow down I have to hold the brake and accel. I can also map accel to my brake pedal and brake to my clutch pedal and that works okay.

I've tried recalibrating in Windows, and putting "-2" for the accel axis instead of a "2" in the config.xml but it didn't help. No mention of inverting an axis in the settings menu, the nicely documented settings.xml, or the manual webpage either.

Anybody know how to invert the axis in Cannonball?

[Namco]

Opened up my pedal set to find that all the potentiometers are wired exactly the same. It's just Windows wanting to show brake (axis 3) inverted. I swapped the 5v and ground leads on that brake pot and put everything back together. Windows is happy. Both accelerator and brake are showing correctly in Windows. I start up Cannonball. ... now I have to hold down the brake to drive. My problem is worse.

So I guess I'll wire up my pedals with accelerator inverted and brake as it was before to make Cannonball happy. Then I'll reconfigure all my MAME games and Daytona to un-invert brake and invert accl.

Anyway, why the hell does Cannonball want gas inverted and brake uninverted?

[Namco]

Probably the last post on this thread. I pity the guy 6 years from now who googles "cannonball" and "inverted axis" and comes up with this thread.

After rewiring the pots in my pedals, this is what it looks like in Windows device properties calibrated with nothing pressed down. You will not be able to play unless your brake and gas are both inverted as shown here.


It irks me that there aren't any settings to invert an axis like every other game/sim that uses analog controls. I know nothing's stopping me from learning programming and editing the source code to change it myself... or waiting more than 8 hours for a response    but this problem kind of sucks.

I'm sure everyone else is using a DFGT or a G27 or an xbox controller to play this, but there needs to be some consideration for those of using fringe devices like me-- a Thomas Superwheel I gutted the gameport out of and connected it to an arduino.


It's ugly and obsolete but well suited for arcade racing since it's so heavy and indestructable.

Anyway, rant over, I figured it out.

[Howard_Casto]

Don't take this the wrong way, but a proper wheel that isn't hacked will come with software allowing you to invert the axis on a per game basis.  Also if you have it hacked to an Arduino then you have full control of the wheel... you could have inverted it there or added function to allow inversion on the fly via the serial connection. 

I'm just saying, I'm not sure what you are ranting about. 

[Namco]

Don't take this the wrong way, but a proper wheel that isn't hacked will come with software allowing you to invert the axis on a per game basis.  Also if you have it hacked to an Arduino then you have full control of the wheel... you could have inverted it there or added function to allow inversion on the fly via the serial connection. 

I'm just saying, I'm not sure what you are ranting about.

Yeah, I hacked this thing like 8 years ago and I don't have the original sketch. My bad there, but my Frankenstein monster aside, there are plenty of fun control options that use just the HID joystick interface that are out the window because of the lack of an in-game setting. How about a NeGcon controller connected via a Playstation USB adapter? Thousands of DirectInput compatible off-brand controllers or accessibility controllers? Jamma to USB adapters? Every single Thomas Super Wheel (granted that company is garbage, I can't believe they're still in business). You can't invert an axis using the HID joystick dialog, so you can go buy a $1500 TSW setup and not be able to use it here.

Anyway, it's petty and annoying on my side, I know, but also I spent half a day rewiring pots for one emulator. One that just got ported to a Libreto core.

Now that I think about it, it’s expecting a split axis. So positive values for the gas and negative direction for the brake. The catch-all fix for Logitech is to mimick the way that Xbox 360 controller triggers work in DirectInput, as split axis. I get why it is the way it is.

[Howard_Casto]

Yes it's totally annoying that the completely free software that you didn't pay anything for doesn't meet your needs.  The dude reverse-engineered the source code of outrun from scratch over a period of multiple years.  If he gets tired of messing with it that sucks but you really shouldn't complain.  He made it open-source, so it's up to us to add features now. 

[baritonomarchetto]

That wheel and those pedals rocks! Supercool looking

[Namco]

That wheel and those pedals rocks! Supercool looking

Yeah, the ONLY reason I've hung on to them all these years was to use them in a driving cab of some sort. It's legit about 270 degrees of rotation so it's not much use to me in iRacing or anything else modern.