Mission for Ppera : Software Joystick Tester

[techie_alison]

Heyo Ppera,

We have a little mission for you.

What is required (and would be helpful for quite a few people) is a small ST program which shows on screen what the joystick and mouse counters are doing.

UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, BUTTON1, BUTTON2 etc.

And in the program, the mouse counters would also be displayed. Such that it effectively allows one to test joysticks and mice. It's all very well loading games, but that method can be a bit cumbersome and isn't too analytical.

Methods, source code, and capabilities, are a must. The source code for example, would help someone like me who would like to be able to create small programs like this myself. There just aren't the examples out there to read through.

Please can you write this program Pera? It would be a brilliant contribution. Just a little window that opens up, and tells you what the inputs are doing in real time. That's it! And documented so that people can see something created today and how it's created.

Aly

[Nyh]

What is required (and would be helpful for quite a few people) is a small ST program which shows on screen what the joystick and mouse counters are doing.

UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, BUTTON1, BUTTON2 etc.

And in the program, the mouse counters would also be displayed. Such that it effectively allows one to test joysticks and mice.

I have just such a program among my C-files. I use it as starting point for programs needing mouse or joystick. Biggest disadvantage is all comments are in Dutch.

Hans Wessels

[techie_alison]

Ooooh.

Hi Hans,

That's brilliant. Thank you. Dank u.

Ppera!!! Can you document this, and provide the various bits so that people can change it and compile it? What they need etc.

[techie_alison]

What would you compile this with Hans (so I can play with the code) that's readily available on one of the ftp sites?

[Nyh]

What would you compile this with Hans (so I can play with the code) that's readily available on one of the ftp sites?

Oh, sorry, it is Pure C.

Maybe Ppera can give you an assembly version. You need to recompile it if you want to switch from mouse to joystick at port 0. I am still too busy playing with square root routines to fix this quickly.

Hans Wessels

[Zorro 2]

You can use some informations to release the ASM proggy with the Wiki, here are links to do something :
http://www.atari-forum.com/wiki/index.p ... utorial_12
http://www.atari-forum.com/wiki/index.p ... d_Protocol

// 1773

[ppera]

As I remember Sysinfo prints out current mouse position. Don't remember about joystick, tough

Well, I made couple similar programs - for instance accurate floppy RPM testing - sources are on my site.
This with joystick should be deluxe version with nice Competition Pro on screen, and flashing buttons, 3D animation of movements OK: 4 arrows for movement, 2 circles for buttons. And 2 numbers for mouse pos, + 2 squares for mouse buttons. Piece of cake with RSC and AES showing/hiding icons/objects.

OK. I will do it in weekend likely. Now making some new 'releases' of Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back for people which don't like to mess with AUTO folder, plus cheat modes.

[ppera]

Here is it ...

All done with system calls. No direct HW access, no supervisor mode. Source is commented more than I use
Tested with TOS 1.02, 1.04, 2.06, 4.02 .

P.S. updated, so displays alternate fire button pressing (right one for joy.) - only when joystick is attached to port 0, as on port 1 pin 9 is not connected.

joymout.png

[techie_alison]

Gosh. That's rather good actually.

Only issue I can see is if you switch to Joystick 0, it then drops the mouse. And you lose the ability to change or exit.

[ppera]

Only issue I can see is if you switch to Joystick 0, it then drops the mouse. And you lose the ability to change or exit.

When joystick is connected to port 0 mouse can't be plugged in (port 1 supports not mouse). Not loosing ability to change - in TXT file it is described. Back to mouse mode with key '1', exit with Enter. Just need to press them little longer.

[MiggyMog]

How would this detect if autofire or the like was being used?

I think an addition to record the stream of data with the timing would be useful.

E.G.

1.00s 1.25S
| |
LRUDDDDDDUUUUUUUUUUUUFFFF

Another additon to detect response time may be useful.

E.G

ready! press fire! you took 0.05 seconds etc.

How about a broken cable check?

Push button and shake cable, if goes low then 'Break detected'

What are the specs for response times on the ports?

Ali, could a packet handler type thing be set up in your PSX interface so that button pressing on the PSX contoller could trigger a unique sequence depending on which button is pressed with spaces with no generated in between? I am guessing the ports can handle switching far faster than a person could change them and this could be possible?

E.G.

D-Pad U SUFS
D-Pad D SDFS
D-Pad L SLFS
D-Pad R SRFS
Pressing square SLFFS
Pressing Triangle SRFFS
Pressing Circle SDFFS
Pressing Cross SUFFS
L1shoulder SFLS
R2 shoulder SFRS
L3shoulder SFUS
R4 shoulder SFDS

[ppera]

Well, as usual - more requests
AES based program is not really suitable for some accurate time measures. It is possible to do some counts in background, so can display fire button hits during some period (10 secs). But reaction time measuring would be likely not accurate - error in range of some 0.2 secs, I guess.

I don't know about port response time specs. As IKBD chip does most of job, it depends of it's microcode. KB ACIA works with some 7800 bauds, what means roughly 1KB/sec, what is far enough. Probably response is not worse than 1/100 sec .

[samf]

Here is it ...

All done with system calls. No direct HW access, no supervisor mode. Source is commented more than I use
Tested with TOS 1.02, 1.04, 2.06, 4.02 .

P.S. updated, so displays alternate fire button pressing (right one for joy.) - only when joystick is attached to port 0, as on port 1 pin 9 is not connected.

joymout.png

Ppera, you are just friggin amazing!!