🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 30 Sep 2005 18:02:42 GMT, "Richard Cooper"
<spamandviruses@rr.com> wrote:

>
>I bought this gamepad from Wal-Mart, it's a "Gemini Game Elements GGE908"  
>and it sucks so don't buy one.
>
>However, before I take it back, I thought I should determine if it sucks  
>worse than anything else I'm likely to find.
>
>The problem I have with it is its analog controls.  The don't work  
>correctly at all, at least with respect to how I believe they should work.
>
>My previous experience is with connecting two cheap 2-button joysticks to  
>a normal sound-card joystick port (via a special cable that allows you to  
>do this) and using that to play Descent.  Using that method I then became  
>so good at Descent that I had to restrict myself to using only
>the flare as a weapon, otherwise my friends wouldn't play against me.   
>Using this gamepad, I can't play for shit.
>
>To investigate the problem, I used a program that displays a little dot on  
>the screen showing where the joystick is pointed at, something like this:
>
>   +----------+----------+ +127
>   |          |          |
>   |          |          |
>   |          |          |
>   |          |          |
>   +----------+----------+ 0
>   |          |          |
>   |          |          |
>   |          |          |
>   |          |          |
>   +----------+----------+ -127
>-127         0        +127
>
>There're a couple of problems with this gamepad.
>
>First, you've got the stick, which in ascii art looks like this:
>
>        /XXXXXXX\
>        XXXXXXXXX
>            X
>          _.X._
>        /XXXXXXX\
>------/XXXXXXXXX\------
>
>This thing can only be tilted about 40 degrees in each direction.  I would  
>expect that -40 degrees will report -127, and +40 degrees will report +127.
>
>Here's a graph of what I actually get:
>
>
>                   |+127
>                   |              ****
>                   |            **
>                   |           *
>                   |         **
>                   |       **
>                   |      *
>                   |    **
>--------------*********--------------
>-40         **    |               +40
>            *      |
>          **       |
>        **         |
>       *           |
>     **            |
>****              |-127
>
>Basically, there's a huge area in the center where the gamepad reports no  
>movement at all, and a similar area at the extreme positions where no  
>movement is reported.
>
>This has the effect that I try to turn a little in Descent by moving the  
>control about 10 degrees, then I see very little movement on the screen,  
>so I move it another 10 degrees expecting to get two times very little  
>movement, and instead get half of full speed.  Very annoying.
>
>Ordinary PC joysticks don't do this, with them there is a straight  
>diagonal line from (-40, -127) to (40, 127) which is how it should be.
>
>The other problem is that once the control is moving in one direction, it  
>has to move about 15 degrees back in the other direction before any  
>movement in that direction is reported.
>
>I set up the program to leave points drawn where the stick has been, and  
>then tried to draw a box in the upper-right corner.  This is what I ended  
>up with:
>
>   +----------+----------+ +127
>   |          |          |
>   |          **    *    |
>   |          |     *    |
>   |          *     *    |
>   +----------*******----+ 0
>   |          |          |
>   |          |          |
>   |          |          |
>   |          |          |
>   +----------+----------+ -127
>-127         0        +127
>
>Basically, starting at the origin and going right, it draws a dot at every  
>point going to the right.  Then it does the same going up.  Then when I  
>begin going left, it ignores the left movement until I've moved about 20%  
>of the range back to the left, at which point the dot jumps over to where  
>it should be and begins moving correctly again.  It does the same thing  
>going down.
>
>It basically does that wherever you move the dot, whichever direction the  
>axis last moved in, it has to move 20% of the way back in the other  
>direction before movements in that direction are reported.
>
>This makes movement a real pain in the ass.  Say I want to turn to the  
>right at a certain speed, and so I move the stick, but decide that I went  
>just a little too far.  I can't just move it a little back to center,  
>because that won't register, I have to move it much further than that so
>that it registers, and then begin moving it to the right again, but then  
>that doesn't register until it's gone it's 15 degrees, and so it skips  
>over where I want to be again, and so then I figure out that I've got to  
>just move it way over to the left, then slowly back to the right, and make  
>damn sure not to pass the point where I want it to be at or else I get to  
>do it all over again, and by then I'm too pissed off to want to play a  
>game.
>
>Anyway, I can't find a comment anywhere on the internet about this sort of  
>problem, which means one of a few possible things:
>
>1.  All game pads with analog controls work like this, and in fact,  
>everyone but me actually prefers it that way.
>
>2.  No one else can play games well with this thing either, but they don't  
>have any idea what it's doing to make things so difficult, so they don't  
>post about it on the internet.
>
>3.  When people buy a bad gamepad, they don't post about it on the  
>internet, but instead they just throw it in the closet and go buy a new  
>one.
>
>So anyway, hopefully someone has experience with several gamepads and can  
>tell me if this is usual gamepad behavior or if I've just bought a piece  
>of shit.  If they're all like this then I'm just going to keep this one  
>and wire it up to go through the ordinary joystick port (thus fixing it's  
>problems, but limiting me to only four buttons), otherwise I'll take it  
>back and get a different one hoping that it doesn't suck as bad.


Fascinating.

The useful part of your post was:

"I bought this gamepad from Wal-Mart, it's a "Gemini Game Elements
GGE908 and it sucks so don't buy one."

Just a hint.

Lemming
-- 
Curiosity *may* have killed Schrodinger's cat.

Richard Cooper wrote:

The graph you describe is actually pretty normal for most cheap 
joysticks. Only very few offer linear response.

As far as the missing dots go however that more sounds like a broken 
device to me.

--
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
[Delete the karl after the @ to avoid my spam trap]