joysticks

[Michiel Spape]

Hi David,
Thanks for the clarification. The ambiguity isn't really helped by manufacturers of 'arcade style' joystick parts (c.f. http://www.ultimarc.com/ultrastik_info.html) who promise analogue style sticks "for today's games", but yes, I do require one that provides a biaxial vector rather than merely a direction. As such, a 'flight simulator X6000 mega supersonic pro XP' or whatever would be a better choice than a C64 joystick, but the latter just seems more appropriate for any self-respecting lab! Sadly, my technical abilities are rather limited when it comes to actually fiddling with screwdrivers and components (my new IKEA desk at home was quite the failure), but I'll have a chat with the lab technician.

As for C=64: it's brilliant, I also did my first programming on those machines (though badly, of course, I'm no Mozart!), although I was 8 or 10 or so. These days, with consoles and whatnot, I doubt kids will learn programming as being closely related to games... Oh, and speaking of Donkey Kong, I believe it was 'Super Mario's ('Jumper', in Donkey Kong, if I'm not mistaken) 25th birthday this week...

Cheers,
Mich

Michiel Spapé
Research Fellow
Perception & Action group
University of Nottingham
School of Psychology
www.cognitology.eu


-----Original Message-----
From: e-prime at googlegroups.com [mailto:e-prime at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David McFarlane
Sent: 17 September 2010 15:09
To: e-prime at googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: joysticks

Mich,

OK, I will jump in here if only to clarify the 
discussion a little for myself.  By "joystick" do 
you mean a pointing device that indicates both 
direction & distance (i.e., how *far* one moves 
the stick), or a pointing device the indicates 
only direction (e.g., only whether the stick 
moves up, down, left, or right)?  As you know, 
modern gaming-style joysticks are of the first 
variety, whereas older arcade-style joysticks are 
of the latter.  I find that users confuse these 
two all the time -- the last time someone asked 
me about a joystick here, after a lot of 
questioning I figured out that they needed only 
an old-fashioned 4- or 8-way joystick (based on 
simple microswitches), which we could read very 
simply through any digital I/O port (e.g., 
lpt).  So I bought one on eBay and rigged it up, 
it was very solid and worked great.

(BTW, love your story about the Commodore 64, I 
still have mine and, at the request of my 12-year 
old nephew who has an interest in old computer 
games, bought a Donkey Kong game on eBay and ran 
it for him on the C=64.  Did a lot of lab 
programming on that machine through the early 
1990s, wrote my first assembly code hardware 
interrupt service routine on it.  Those were the days.)

-- dkm


At 9/17/2010 09:48 AM Friday, you wrote:
>Hi,
>Thanks for your input! I used the XBOX360 
>controller before (for one, because it can 
>easily connect to a pc via USB, but more 
>importantly, because there are some very 
>convenient SDKs provided by Microsoft for it), 
>but its sticks aren't all that brilliant - 
>they're quite small and not very smooth in the 
>operation. Also, I looked at the entire range of 
>sidewinder stuff, but compared to someone who 
>last used a joystick to do Winter Games on the 
>Commodore 64 (ahhh, does that bring back 
>memories to anyone? Langlaufen, running, 
>whatnot, all by moving the joystick as fast as 
>possible left and right, thus ruining your wrist 
>for life... beautiful), simple isn't exactly the 
>way I'd describe it. Closest possible I got was 
>coming up with 'arcade style' controllers (my 
>C64 joystick is, apparently, a 'lollypop' style 
>one... is it me or are game-controllers 
>seriously off in their naming conventions?). I 
>hope I can get our technician to work something 
>out using such parts, rather than getting a 
>cognitive 'fmri-compatible' 'precision timing' 
>unit at the price of a small island in Fiji...
>
>Cheers,
>Mich
>
>Michiel Spapé
>Research Fellow
>Perception & Action group
>University of Nottingham
>School of Psychology
>www.cognitology.eu
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: e-prime at googlegroups.com 
>[mailto:e-prime at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Matt
>Sent: 16 September 2010 21:12
>To: E-Prime
>Subject: Re: joysticks
>
>I know people have used joysticks/gamepads from Microsoft and Logitech
>successfully with E-Prime.  Some of the Microsoft joysticks are pretty
>simple and only have a couple of buttons.  Logitech makes some
>gamepads with a similar layout to Playstation 3 or XBox, which might
>be more familiar for some subjects.  I believe these are all USB-
>driven and should be really easy to set up.

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