Playing MAME games with a steering wheel

[shroud]

I am tempted about buying a second-hand steering wheel for driving games... but how about simple old driving games such as these, do they work with a steering wheel?

 

- Sprint

- Ivan Stewart's Off Road Racing

- Badlands

 

And if you can play those old games with a steering wheel, do you think a 180-degrees wheel would work? Or did the original cabs had infinitely-turning wheels, that controlled the absolute angle instead (so that each lap, you would have actually turned the wheel a whole 360 degrees)?

[DazzleHP]

Depends really. The old old games that had a steering wheel were gimmicks mostly, such as Spy Hunter. They were just "clicks" incorporated into a wheel - a gimmick. As time went on, wheels would do more clicks per second the more you turned the wheel. Bare in mind you could still play these games just as effectively with a standard ball-stick. They weren't that accurate either.

 

It wasn't until games like Ridge Racer when things were improved, and became more precise (controls became analogued), in arcades at least.

 

To answer your question though, with those old games a 180 would be fine. With more modern (arcade) games a 180 would probably also be fine. Depends on the calibration.

 

If it were me though, and i could only buy second hand, i'd buy a modern analogue wheel! They work with both MAME and modern games,

[Draco1962]

A pretty recent conversation on the subject here...

 

[shroud]

4 hours ago, Draco1962 said:

A pretty recent conversation on the subject here...

 

Thanks! Maybe I should have added the question to the other thread...  Mostly however my question is related to how old MAME games work with a steering wheel, rather than PC games and emulators in general.

 

6 hours ago, DazzleHP said:

Depends really. The old old games that had a steering wheel were gimmicks mostly, such as Spy Hunter. They were just "clicks" incorporated into a wheel - a gimmick. As time went on, wheels would do more clicks per second the more you turned the wheel. Bare in mind you could still play these games just as effectively with a standard ball-stick. They weren't that accurate either.

 

It wasn't until games like Ridge Racer when things were improved, and became more precise (controls became analogued), in arcades at least.

 

To answer your question though, with those old games a 180 would be fine. With more modern (arcade) games a 180 would probably also be fine. Depends on the calibration.

 

If it were me though, and i could only buy second hand, i'd buy a modern analogue wheel! They work with both MAME and modern games,

Sorry for the dumb question, but what exactly is a ball-stick? Is it something that works different from a regular joystick?

 

So just to be sure I will ask the same question again in slightly different terms  

 

If I remember correctly, the old top-view MAME arcade driving games like Sprint were controlled in such a way that the steering wheel determined the absolute angle, so for example if your car was moving upward and you needed to go left, you would spin the wheel 90 degrees left and keep it there (you would not return the wheel back into its rest position at 0 degrees).

 

If that is what also MAME expects you to do, it means those games are unplayable with a modern steering wheel, because you cannot turn such wheel more than its maximum. Such maximum is 90 degrees (either side) for low-end wheels, but even the 900+ degrees of top-end wheels would work, because each time you complete one lap on those games, you have turned the wheel 360 degrees, so any limit whatever large would get in the way at some point and make it impossible to continue the race after a few laps.

 

So I guess I am looking for people on this forum who have a PC steering wheel, and would be kindly willing to give it a try with a few of those MAME games, to either verify my pessimistic expectations or instead prove that those games can be played with a modern steering wheel. It would be nice for me to know before buying a wheel myself and then find out I've wasted my money

[DazzleHP]

On 8/8/2017 at 8:01 AM, shroud said:

Sorry for the dumb question, but what exactly is a ball-stick? Is it something that works different from a regular joystick?

Sorry, it's just a normal arcade stick In Europe we had balls lol USA had sticks They are the same thing heheh.

 

EU (left) vs US (right):

That's the only reason i said ball-stick, they both have the same function.

My point was that early arcade games only mimicked these controls (using wheels) - but you could play all of the early games just as well with the above controls. It wasn't till much later that wheels became relevant.

Edited August 10, 2017 by DazzleHP
My grammar! sheesh.

[tthurman]

Oh we have balls over here in the US as well.

 

At some point however, the preference switched the battop style handle you pictured.  I'm not sure if it was the fighting games or whatnot, but regardless, battop's seemed to become more common place.

Edited August 10, 2017 by tthurman
You didn't think I was gonna let that go, did ya?

[DazzleHP]

On 8/10/2017 at 6:07 PM, tthurman said:

Oh we have balls over here in the US as well.

 

At some point however, the preference switched the battop style handle you pictured.  I'm not sure if it was the fighting games or whatnot, but regardless, battop's seemed to become more common place.

I had no idea! I think at this point we should stop saying balls

BALLS.

[Draco1962]

 

 

[tthurman]

3 hours ago, DazzleHP said:

I had no idea! I think at this point we should stop saying balls

BALLS.

Nah, I just couldn't resist a reply! 

I actually like the ball tops better, but I grew up with those being the "norm".

 

[rlswick]

they were all ball tops when I started playing.

 

[shroud]

Ok, so it appears that there are some second-hand of either of these models on sales locally:

 

- Logitech Driving Force GT (http://support.logitech.com/en_us/product/driving-force-gt) 

- Thrustmaster Ferrari GT Experience (https://support.thrustmaster.com/en/product/ferrarigterw-en/)

 

The Logitech wins in terms of rotation degrees (900 vs 360), and has an additional gear shifter stick but only sequential.

The Thrustmaster has the advantage of not needing the power supply, so one less cable around, and has better gear shifter paddles.

 

Given the same price is asked for them (35e), which one would you pick, considering we'll be mostly using it with emulators?

[tthurman]

It seems to be a toss up, but seemingly the opinion is that the build quality of the Thrustmaster is better.  I think it'll be hard to get any real perspective on this, unless you know someone that has tried both.

 

After doing a little searching, I ran across what seems to be a decent suggestion bad BadMouth over at arcadecontrols.  Based on his post, the 360 limitation doesn't seem to be a big deal.

Quote

Start out by limiting your wheel rotation to 270 degrees and marking the pedals as separate in windows controller options.

Then set your mame.ini settings as stated in the stickied thread.

Launch a game that you know originally had a 270 degree steering wheel like Outrun or Cruisin' USA (some of the 360 degree won't play correctly no matter what settings you use because the wheels need to spin endlessly without stops).

Press TAB in MAME and map the steering and gas.  Do not map the brake.  If the brake is mapped to an axis, unmap it.
(see the stickied thread about not mapping the INC and DEC options!)

Play the game and verify the gas pedal is working correctly.  If it is not, reverse the axis for that pedal in MAME's analog options (also in the TAB menu).

Once the gas pedal is working correctly, map the brake pedal. 
Play the game and verify the brake pedal is working correctly.  If it is not, reverse the axis for that pedal in MAME's analog options (also in the TAB menu).

 

This may prove useful too.....

[shroud]

3 hours ago, tthurman said:

 Based on his post, the 360 limitation doesn't seem to be a big deal.

Actually it's more like 180 degrees only, meaning 90 degrees on each side...

[DazzleHP]

It depends what you want want to use it for really. As i said before a 180 wheel will be fine for all arcade games, but if you want to use the same wheel to emulate more modern systems, and use it on modern hardware (to play games like DiRT Rally, Asseto Corsa, Project Cars etc) then accuracy will count.

That said i will give my 2 cents. Thrustmaster is overpriced junk unless you can afford their top-end stuff, and even then it's 3x the price of competitors. Logitech are known for their great affordable peripherals - they know their market and have delivered for many many years.

Look at the support for both companies.

/my2c