Food Fight - joystick troubles, solved

Riverstorm

@mahoneyt944 - Wow, you put some thought into it for sure and that's an incredibly generous gesture but I'm ok with the more "traditional" controls. That being said if it ever does end up in m3plus I wouldn't hesitate to give it a go and see how it plays! ;)

mahoneyt944

@Riverstorm yeah it's by no means necessary. I feel that "emulation" is more than just the circuits of the game and the controls it had. It's replicating the "experience" you got from playing the game in the first place. At the end of the day I just want to play games and enjoy them.

For example Food fights controls were accurately emulated in mame but the experience sucked. This was due to the special joystick that made the game play right, which wasn't something that was missed in programming the driver. Live center is an attempt to emulate the experience of using that special joystick and having that precise control back but with any ordinary controller. This makes playing the game fun again.

mahoneyt944

@Riverstorm

Live Center Rev 5 officially merged into mame2003-plus, update from source. Welcoming testers to report here.

mahoneyt944

Setup instructions.

How to use

update mame2003-plus from source to get the new update
verify "Center axis for digital controls" in the retroarch core options is enabled. This is a new default setting
delete any foodf, foodf2, or foodfc nvram files, if you previously loaded this game in the core
Start rom in mame2003-plus
once loaded, open mame menu, dip switches, live center -> on
coin up and test the game
add debounce delay as needed for your controller type.

Note
The Live Center hack must be set to "off" if you recalibrate the joystick in the service menu. More simply you can delete your nvram file and a fresh calibration will be included in the new nvram file that's automatically created at game launch.

Debounce Delay Tips
For digital joysticks I typically test to make sure I can stop on the diagonals without any trouble first. So if I'm running up and left then let go I stop facing up and left. Increase the delay if it's not stopping on the diagonal properly. Next, I test quick directional changes left to right. So I run left and quickly bump right then let go. It should recognize that I pressed right last and stop facing right. If the delay is set too high the player wont recognize that right was pressed last and will stop facing left.

On a analog joystick I have a dead zone of 15 set in the core options but this can be adjusted to preference as well. Delay can be set at 0 for analog sticks but I find it sets stops too fast for some of my controllers so a little delay here helps too. It's all about what feels good to the user.

The reason we have a debounce delay setting is because the hack is checking to see when the joystick returns to it's center value and is constantly updating it's stopping positions while not at center. On a analog joystick there isn't really an issue because your getting true values when not at center (your X and Y values move together). For a digital joystick, X and Y are separate on / off contact switches and there is no true center value which is why we artificially give it a center value when none of the switches are being pressed. This creates an issue where if I'm going up and left then let go, it's easy to release the up or left button slightly before the other and inadvertently stop facing up or left instead of diagonal. So the delay slows how quickly the stopping position samples are taken to allow some human error when releasing the joystick.

barbudreadmon

@mahoneyt944 fwiw, fbneo doesn't seem to require all those additional steps

mahoneyt944

@barbudreadmon in fbneo , and all versions of mame besides mame2003-plus, your player will face right when you let go of the joystick. This hack fixes this issue by allowing you to stop facing the direction last applied. This is a new control hack described in post #97. And post #119 describes how to setup the hack.

barbudreadmon

@mahoneyt944 ok, it seems i didn't understand the issue, i'll see if a fix can be implemented for fbneo

mahoneyt944

@barbudreadmon this hack could be ported I'm sure, but would require lots of conversions. Here's the details.

#785 - foodf.c patch

For digital controls to work, a default value has to be applied when no direction is being pressed. This emulates a analog sticks center position value. Here's the fix and patch to this fix here

#786 - digital centering correction patch
#815 - digital centering bug patch

Good luck.

mahoneyt944

New bootstrap patch to include the joystick calibration. Eliminating the setup hassles. Once it's merged I'll update the setup instructions in post #119.

#841 - foodf bootstrap patch

mahoneyt944

New bootstrap officially merged, updated instructions in post #119.