RE: omega race drawings

At 10:17 AM 8/5/97 -0700, you wrote:
>G'day folks,
>
>I have an interesting proposition for a spin knob!
>
>Let's start with a Discs of Tron "up and down" spin knob. If you don't
>push the knob up or down, then it acts just like a spin knob....you have
>to keep spinning it to keep turning. If you push down while turning the
>spin knob, then it acts just like Clay and Al have been describing. To
>be safe, I'd suggest that pulling up on the knob stops all activity.
>What do you think?
>
> Steven S Ozdemir
> sso@dsc.com
>
>ps - If this idea takes off, I'm going to be really annoyed that both of
>my Discs of Tron control panels went to Mark J in the trade for that
>wonderful 4 player Eliminator cocktail.

Clay's last idea sounds like the most do-able to me, though I can see that
because of the free spin past the limits being ignored you can get yourself
to a point where you hand is all tweaked in one direction that is now
considered the new center.

But even if you get something working I'll bet I can kick all your asses
using <left><right> <thrust><fire> while you guys fiddle around with trying
to get a spin knob to emulate subtle taps on the direction keys, when trying
to regain control after being blasted towards the "Bagel of Death" in
Eliminator!

Just out of curiosity isn't it cheaper and easier to wire up 2 $0.50 arcade
buttons than to find and program a Discs of Tron spin knob to act like them?
:^> ?

-Zonn (the confused)

>>----------
>>From: Clay Cowgill[SMTP:clay@supra.com]
>>Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 1997 12:54 PM
>>To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com
>>Subject: Re: omega race drawings
>>
>>>actually, what I was thinking of was a zero center sort of thing, with
>>>a little dead-band near the center,
>>
>>Right, I was thinking of treating it like a "broken" analog joystick pot
>>that doesn't auto-center. (Turning a little to the left outputs some pulse
>>train on the "left" button line, turning more to the left pulls the line
>>low constantly-- remember you can't "turn" faster than holding the button
>>down all the time.)
>>
>>Zonn's right about losing the wheel position though. How about just going
>>on the direction of the knob, but with some hysteresis? Something like:
>>
>>If the knob ever moves 6 "ticks" left in a row, "push" left button and latch
>>If the knob ever moves 6 "ticks" right in a row, "push" right button and
>>latch
>>If the knob ever moves less than 6 but more than 3 "ticks" in the opposite
>>direction (from the current "latched" direction), unlatch current
>>direction.
>>
>>So, if you want to turn right, turn the knob right. You can spin it right
>>all day long and it doesn't matter. You can give it 1/8th turn right and
>>leave it and it still turns right. If you turn it a "little" left it still
>>turns right, if you turn is a "little more" left it stops turning, if you
>>turn it "yet a little more" left it starts turning left.
>>
>>Does that make sense? Basically try to tune it so that the change of
>>direction decides the right/center/left choice, but build in some "jitter"
>>factor so a little twitch the wrong way doesn't turn the ship accidentally,
>>but a little turn the other direction *does* turn the ship...
>>
>>-Clay
>>
>>Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager
>>_______________________________________________________________________
>>/\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com
>>\/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/
>>
>>
>>
>
>
Received on Tue Aug 5 11:05:45 1997