Re: omega race drawings

At 04:45 PM 8/4/97 -0700, you wrote:
>
>i'll scan them in tonight. they are the usual weird extra long drawings
>so i'll have to scan them in pieces.
>
>if you had any extra space in the encoder, it might be interesting to
>have a mode where the spinner could emulate rotl and rotr buttons so
>if you didn't want to have them on the panel, you could still play
>emiminator and space fury with a spinner knob...

It's much easier to write a program that allows rotl and rotr buttons look
like a spin knob than it is to have a spin knob look like rotl and rotr buttons.

Without feed back from the game as to how far the object has spun, there is
no way to keep the spin knob and object in sync. The spin knob can be spun
at any speed, the rotl/rotr buttons move the object at a set speed so you
can end up with buffered "rotates" where you move the knob back and forth
fast, then watch as the game object catches up with your moves. One
alternative is a "move while you spin" algorithm which gets pretty old as
you have to keep the spin knob constantly spinning to keep the object
moving. Another alternative is a joystick mode, where anything past a
certain distance cause a move until you back up to center, the problem with
this is accidently letting go of the spin knob and losing center. It all
depends on how you write the program, but at it's best it's still pretty
clumsy -- and it never does have the feel of the original game.

-Zonn
Received on Mon Aug 4 17:20:49 1997