Switching joystick from digital to analog for newer arcade games

[progets]

How are people switching between digital and analog control configurations on newer arcade systems (such as Sega Naomi)? Obviously if you use a X360 or PS3 controller this isn't a problem but if you only have one joystick then you need to program it for digital on some games and analog on other games. Is there an automated way to do this? I know it can be done using per game configurations in the emulators or using per game changes in RL. Is there another, better way? Can I easily tell it just to use digital or analog? How do you handle this on your cabinet today?

[Metalzoic]

First I suppose you would need a stick actually capable of both digital and analog like U360 arcade joysticks.

Actually those are the only ones I even know of.

Other than that for cab sticks are digital only for the most part.

[progets]

I don't have fancy, expensive analog sticks but find that many games play well even using the digital stick programed to the analog setting in emulators. I know this is less than ideal and it's the difference between 1/0 (on/off) vs. -128 to 128 (variable) but this isn't a huge factor in many games. I might consider upgrading to an analog stick like the U360 but won't I have the same issue, needing to tell it to use digital or analog, per game? I'm thinking of calling a .bat file to swap two .ini files for the emulator config to change just those four buttons (up, down, left and right). I just thought someone else might have a better trick in their hat.

[progets]

I also thought about setting up the player 2 controls to be analog and leave the player 1 controls as digital but this would have a few issues:

1. no 2 player games

2. some game don't support a player 2 without a player 1

3. others that don't come to mind

 

Also, for Sega Naomi using Demul it looks like there are controller setups for different types of games and even specific games in RLUI. I was thinking that this would be a better way to leverage RL for this type of thing. I haven't found good documentation on it and haven't take the time to do a "trial and error" type experiment. This is where I'm hoping someone might have some insight too.

[Metalzoic]

Ah, I thought you were talking about switching the joystick itself between analog and digital.

You're actually talking about the emulators themselves?

For Naomi etc... I just set up the controls on a per-game-basis. Those settings are built right into the RLauncher module. Just check the module instructions and the module settings.

For other games that can't be remapped in-game how I like I use the Keymapper tab in RL. I only use Autohotkey (and for 1 specific game VJoy) here, but it also supports Xpadder and Joy2Key I think?

[progets]

Yes, I've changed the settings in the emulators to see if it would work. Some games are still a bust but others are very playable. I'm guessing that most people with cabinets don't have analog sticks and may have come up with some type of "work-around".

 

I have also considered duplicating my Demul install and changing the config file in the copy to use analog vs digital and then using the "alternate emulator" feature in RL. The alternate emulator would really be the same emulator with a different config file. This might sound unusual but be the easiest way to accomplish this. This would also resolve analog vs. digital issues for Sammy Atomiswave and DreamCast since they use Demul in my build.