Virtual-On Forums

So, I'll start off with the truth; I'm not a huge VO fan but I do love Sega arcade games, I just lean more towards Daytona USA. Anyway, me and a friend recently overhauled some fighting sticks and we were looking into doing a more advanced project. We came across a Saturn Twin Stick and a beat up and broken HRAP v3 at a game store. Snapped them up and we're plotting tings by padhacking a 360 wired pad for the 'brains'.

Firstly, looking at other projects it seems that no one else has tried to construct a twin stick that didn't just map the joysticks to digital, like the D-Pad and ABXY. The Hori Twin Stick EX seems to operate both analog sticks as digital 8 way joysticks even if the system thinks they're analog sticks. We're interested in going this route for the challenge and the circuit design we came up with doesn't seem too complicated though we'll have to swap the two terminal microswitches for three terminal microswitches. But has anyone else ever attempted this?

Secondly, does anyone out there who owns the Hori Twin Stick EX know what it actually identifies to Windows as? In Microsoft's XInput there are various subtypes for controllers, pad, arcade stick, arcade pad, dance pad, guitars, ect, but nothing specific for a Twin Stick. My going guess is that the Twin Stick EX identifies itself a gamepad and if not, an arcade pad (Because they have analog sticks, where an arcade stick subtype is digital only) I'd love it if someone had that info.

Thirdly, anyone know what kind of place I should look up to get a custom faceplate cut up for the HRAP to accommodate the controls?

Well, we're getting there, even if additional information can't be found.



This it more or less it just mocked up, the wiring isn't done yet, so it's just buttons and grips jammed in without really being put together. However the goal is to make a Twin Stick that is the most feature identical as possible to the Hori Twin Stick EX.

It'll have a proper sync button with LED ring and headset port. Has seperate ABXY buttons. The joysticks will be operating the analog pots on the 360 PCB we're using. We have the resistors soldered into there, so it's the digital buttons we need to do next. I gotta ask, I've looked around but can't find ANYONE who's actually hacked a Twinstick for use on the 360 that properly uses the analog sticks, instead they wind up with a right joystick that's operating the ABXY buttons. I'm wrong here right? This can't be the first one to do that?

I'm not quite understanding your use of the word "properly." I'm pretty sure all Virtual-On games allow the face buttons to be used as joystick directions. Considering that the joysticks are digital anyway, I'm sure most people wouldn't want to put in the extra (unnecessary) effort to mess with the analog sticks when it's much easier to just use the face buttons.

ChexGuy wrote:I'm not quite understanding your use of the word "properly." I'm pretty sure all Virtual-On games allow the face buttons to be used as joystick directions. Considering that the joysticks are digital anyway, I'm sure most people wouldn't want to put in the extra (unnecessary) effort to mess with the analog sticks when it's much easier to just use the face buttons.

It just feels like an ugly solution, which I imagine is why Hori didn't go that way. Also, for other purposes such as MAME, it leaves additional buttons free for coin in/service mode/ect. I feel it has more functionality this way.

...Analog hack... No problem! ...Lots of wires. ^_^;



And our finished product:

Looks superb. nice work!

Any tips on doing the analog hack on the analog sticks? I found it very difficult to remove the analog sticks on the Mad Catz controller I used for my mods. IIRC I tried and ended up killing the controller (I got a bunch of them for $10 each so it wasn't a big loss). I was able to hack the analog trigger buttons without a problem so my modded controllers work with one of the default control schemes in VOOT.