X Arcade Tankstick & Hyperspin

[rastan]

If anyone has a tutorial or any information on using X Arcade with Hyperspin.. please share.

I've been thinking about getting a X Arcade tankstick because my Hyperspin is pretty much 100% as far as I can't see myself adding anymore systems and to be honest I've become a little bored and the tankstick looks like it will give me the urge to fire it up more. obviously I'll be using it with mame.. and while I've read up on the information posted on X Arcade's official website and even a few youtube videos.. I rather get some advice/feedback from people from the actual Hyperspin community because as you guys know... the community truly knows whats going on and have been thru all the trial and error... so if anyone is using the X Arcade Tankstick (or any of their units) please point me in the right direction when it comes to setting it up with hyperspin and mame.

The basics I have so far is when you get the tankstick.. use their utility program to make sure it works, go into MAMEUI and set it for the X Arcade, and as far as hyperspin go into HyperHQ and set it up there.... I'm sure thats all I need to know but knowing how things normally work.. I'd like to know about any hiccups now before I actually order the thing.

 

[AgelessEddy]

Hee Rastan, I use the tankstick only for mame games and pinball games and it plays like a dream, only thing i did i used hyperHQ to setup controls for the tankstick and my xbox360 controller.

so i think your good to go.

grtz

 

[Mark Norville]

I have an x-arcade but need to order parts from America, to see if I can get it going. Firstly look on eBay as you can pick up a bargain sometimes, I brought mine for £40 plus with the parts I need brought mine for £70.

Which is fantastic as I was looking at £100 plus what I would have paid for one.

I would not use it on a cabinet, it looks shocking and out of place. If you are getting a cabinet, and you can spare some time to wire I would use proper buttons and control panel layout.

The x-arcade is best for mobile gaming such as using retro pi. Upgrades to play on xbox one etc are very expensive when you can get cheaper.

For the same money you can buy a pandora box controller with enough games to keep you occupied and no work needed.

However, all the info that I have seen from various sources rate x-arcade very highly so you will have no problems using for hyperspin.

Regards

Mark

[32assassin]

could not of said it better my self Mark Norville

if you don't have the tools or the know how to make your own cabinet or know how to wire up a custom controller

the tankstick is great for you.

their is one major drawback to the tanks tick, and it s that it was not designed for arcade cabinets.  what is worse is that the default keys don't work on many emulators.

if you only run MAME and Retroarch,  you will probably not find any problems but they do exist.

it causes allot of problems with Visual Pinball, and that is because the Tankstick wants you to use the 3 and 4 key as your flipper inputs,  but Visual Pinball has the 3 and 4 key HARD CODED to be

coin 1 and 2.

the tankstick does not have all the required buttons to completely remove your keyboard.

as is

you will have to assign button combination inputs in Rocketlauncher in order to exit your game, 

the default RL exit script will give you problems,  when you are playing a 2 player fighting game because a combination of key presses exists your game.

 

if I was you and wanted to use the thankstick I would drill more holes, add 3 more buttons to be exact.

credit 1

credit 2

exit button

 

you should not have your credit buttons assigned to the tanksticks default locations and you definatly need a dedicated exit button.

and you should remap your pinball flipper keys to 

Left and right Control  NOT the 3 and 4 key.

[rastan]

On 6/9/2018 at 3:11 AM, Mark Norville said:

I have an x-arcade but need to order parts from America, to see if I can get it going. Firstly look on eBay as you can pick up a bargain sometimes, I brought mine for £40 plus with the parts I need brought mine for £70.

Which is fantastic as I was looking at £100 plus what I would have paid for one.

I would not use it on a cabinet, it looks shocking and out of place. If you are getting a cabinet, and you can spare some time to wire I would use proper buttons and control panel layout.

The x-arcade is best for mobile gaming such as using retro pi. Upgrades to play on xbox one etc are very expensive when you can get cheaper.

For the same money you can buy a pandora box controller with enough games to keep you occupied and no work needed.

However, all the info that I have seen from various sources rate x-arcade very highly so you will have no problems using for hyperspin.

Regards

Mark

yeah from the pics I've seen on cabs.. it looks way out of place. I only plan to use it with my TV and at most set it up on some type of stand that gives it a game room arcade feel. 

[Mark Norville]

I might be joining you soon then. I won an ebay auction last night for the parts that I hopefully need.

I paid a bit more than i was expecting or wanting too as I only needed the cable to go to the PC, but ordering from x-arcade and delivery to the UK would have been £23, I paid £40 on ebay, but I also got a keyboard encoder with it as well, so will be handy if mine is actually broke.

So total spend £80 for a tank stick is pretty good, I just need to sort out a Pi now but that can wait until I have built my cab.

Regards

Mark

[rastan]

Something I haven’t thought too much about but how do you guys deal with 4way games being that the x arcade is a 8 way. I believe you can switch the c arcade to 4way (some people have said its a pain or inconvenience) other same MAME will automatically know which games are 4way and I guess allow the 8way joystick to emulate a 4way?

how are you guys dealing with 4way games?

 

[Mark Norville]

Most original games are of course four way up, down, left and right it is only the newer games that are eight.

Switching between four and eight way is just by moving a plastic bit the technical term for it, so that the joystick only moves in those directions.

I will plug my stick in tomorrow and give it a try on my arcade computer, and play something like frogger, donkey kong or puckman.

I will try to report back tomorrow, but England are playing in the World Cup tomorrow, so that of course is my main priority, even though it means drinking at 1pm

Regards

Mark

[Mark Norville]

OK although a couple of days late, but I just hooked up the x arcade and had a try at the following games

puckman, donkey kong and also gunforce 2

Two are four way control and the other is 8 way control. 

I was using MAME 0.188 64 bit version standalone, no frontends etc etc.

The four way games were pretty good with not much frustration about not being able to move properly, or moving the joystick in a diagonal manner and then having problems.

The switch to the 8 way game was smooth and worked well, no issues at all with this, I was shooting literally in 360 arcs as soon as I moved the joystick.

My only negative is that on mine, the joysticks seem a bit stiff and I am cack handed, even though I am right handed, I prefer the joysick to be on my right, and the buttons on the left. 

I never saw why they never done it the other way around, it is a lot easier for me to control and move a joystick with my right hand, and use my weaker left side to press buttons.

Am I going to use it a lot? No, I shall get a pi for it and then if I ever go for a gaming night, then shall take it along. I shall use my cab for games, and this for a novelty.

The next thing to test it on, is an xbox one, to see if I could use it for certain games. 

Overall a well built controller, is it worth buying? Mmmm maybe, maybe not when you can buy the pandora box controllers with 960 games for near enough the same price.

Regards

Mark

[rastan]

i thought about getting a pandora's box 5... but i heard some of the games have aspect ratio problems (screen cuts off) and some of the games are bootleg versions? also the fact that with a full mame rom set... I'll have tons of games that aren't on the pandoras box. I will say that pandoras box wins as far as one unit that just works out the box.. no fuss and actually makes for a decent arcade setup in the house. I will buy a cab or build one.. one day but right now my plan for a arcade setup is I have my TV on one of those VIVO TV stands (basically a pole style stand with mount) and I plan to use one of my on-stage (Music) keyboard stands to hold the X arcade in front of the TV/stand. it won't be a cab but it will have a game room feel to it like a gaming station at some VIDEO GAME STORE.

[Mark Norville]

You can purchase arcade controller kits where you build your own controllers, similar to x-arcade and then you can use a pi inside if you so wish. I purchased mine a while ago, as I was going to use it on a cab, but the cab that I was going to use it on, is smaller than the control panel itself.

I now have a cabinet kit, but I am waiting for artwork, before I put it all together, I could see if I could make the tankstick work with the cabinet, but then I don't think that it would look the same, but it would save more money.

I would advise against getting a pole stand, the reason why they are in the shops for, is just to demo, it is not there for comfort, unlike a cabinet.

I am not sure what Country you are in, but usually there is a cabinet kit that you can buy reasonably cheap to get the proper thing. The only problem is then deciding upon artwork for the cabinet, as that would be a pretty permanent thing and needs to be right for the kind of cabinet you want.

Regards

Mark

[rastan]

I finally ordered my Tankstick from X-Arcade... ordered it on Friday so it should be coming within the next few days. 

I downloaded their config file already so hopefully I'll have it up and running in no time when it arrives. I already watched a few youtube videos as far as using it with mame and setting up the trackball. It comes with a license for Maximus Arcade but I never really liked that front end... it's cool that it comes with a license for it.

 

[rastan]

 the tankstick is here.

getting it up and running was easy since I already installed the x arcade config file to my Mame ctrl folder and set it up in MameUI as well as changed my .ini file manually.

setting it up with hyperspin was straight forward in hyperHQ

The one hiccup was the player 2 joystick wasn’t moving up (no input) and up left and up right we’re having issues.. I put a ticket in with x arcade and as always their tech support only told me the crap that I already read on their website but I just went ahead and opened the tankstick up and noticed one of the wires wasn’t connected so I connected it and everything was working after that. 

I have to admit and I’m not a arcade controller elitist so I don’t judge them like other people..  but for what it is.. the tankstick is pretty good so far.. I only played Mario brothers and centipede but I enjoyed playing them way better than I did with a usb game controller. Nothing beats a joystick with arcade games and the trackball is a bonus.