How is the control scheme going to work?

[ThreeSon]

The original arcade cabinet had an 8-way joystick with lateral rotation. Is this going to be modified to fit a twin-stick control scheme, like what was done for the Ikari Warrior games in the SNK collection on Steam?

[Firehawke]

That was the big question I had as well and what I came here to post!

That's a very important question, since the Data East titles also have a tendency to eat twist inputs just like the SNK ones do with the result that sometimes you need to tap the 'twist left' or 'twist right' two or three times to get a response in current emulations of these types of titles.

[Firehawke]

Well, seems extremely likely this is the same software as the Switch releases.. and probably will be about the same quality:
https://twitter.com/Foxhack/status/1361758382118428672
https://twitter.com/gosokkyu/status/1361787560662421506

[cowbell]

They give you unlimited continues, so I will keep it. I have the NES version, so this is fine too. The turning is not totally reliable and you are better off holding down the button to register the turns. There are tons of enemies all the time, so you have to keep shooting no matter if you turned too little or too much. Got to get good. Having a second player would make things much easier with us both shooting forward the whole time and rarely turning.

Aside from the controls, it runs better than the NES and its awful slowdown. The boss man told me to die and runs away giggling like a school girl.

[thedetails]

So it's got twist left and right buttons and not twin stick controls?
If so, that's disappointing. The Wii version has twin stick controls and it plays great because of it. I was really hoping it would be the same.

Can you edit the controls? And can you assign twist to mouse wheel? If so, maybe I'll finally get motivated to build a proper stick with rotation.

[cowbell]

You can assign the mouse wheel by pressing on it. You can use M1 and M2 to turn in their directions. Feels weird to use the mouse that way. I am liking it.

[rehtroboi37]

Even Forgotten Worlds' satellite rotation on Capcom Arcade Stadium was mapped to the right thumbstick. It works very well IMO!

They didn't do that with Heavy Barrel. Odds are they never will.

[Firehawke]

Yeah, that's basically the minimum needed to even make me consider buying it here-- right analog direct mapping for directional shooting.

The Switch version doesn't even support vertical correctly-- it stretches the whole game to 16:9 when run vertically! Not sure about this one, but I wouldn't be surprised if it used the exact same rendering system based on what has been said about the display options so far.

[BloodHawk]

So I played around in Steam's Controller Config tool some more and found a way to create buttons to only rotate your character an 1/8th of a turn similar to that of Hamster's Arcade Archives ports of Ikari, Victory Road, and Guerilla War (which also used the rotatable LS-30 Stick):

You have to enable activators while binding the button, then change the "Activation Type" to "Start Press" then move the sliding bar under "Fire End Delay" to 0.144 (the indicator will almost be directly under the "n" in "End" above it, just hover your mouse cursor over it to see the exact measurement). This will release the button press at a consistent time on each activation. It isn't perfect, as about every 15-20 presses it rotates too much to a 1/4 turn, but 0.142 doesn't register a turn more often than that so it's the best I could come up with.

That combined with activating turbo for autofire helps a lot. As I mentioned in my other post going over the emulation in more detail, while setting up the turbo button you have to leave the speed setting at Steam's default, as if you change it at all it won't mesh with the game's refresh rate.


Here is my controller setup now (Xbox Controller):

Left Trigger - Grenade
Right Trigger - Fire (bound to the space bar with turbo activated)
X - Rotate Left 1/8th Increment (using the method above)
A - Rotate Right 1/8th Increment (using the method above)
Y - Rotate Left (without modification, so if held down it will continue to rotate)
B - Rotate Right (without modification, so if held down it will continue to rotate)

In order to exit the game with a controller I made the following binds:
Back Button - Esc
Left Stick Click - "N"
Right Stick Click - "Y"


I don't think there is a possible way to set up right stick aiming similar to the Arcade Archives or SNK Collection ports, but at least with this setup the game is more playable.

[thedetails]

Originally posted by cowbell:

You can assign the mouse wheel by pressing on it. You can use M1 and M2 to turn in their directions. Feels weird to use the mouse that way. I am liking it.

Are you saying you can use the mouse wheel up and down for rotation?

[rehtroboi37]

Originally posted by thedetails:

So it's got twist left and right buttons and not twin stick controls?
If so, that's disappointing. The Wii version has twin stick controls and it plays great because of it. I was really hoping it would be the same.

Can you edit the controls? And can you assign twist to mouse wheel? If so, maybe I'll finally get motivated to build a proper stick with rotation.

If G1M2 could make HB with twin-stick controls, and Digital Eclipse and Hamster can map loop levers to the right analog stick, 612 games should do that with this or any other loop-lever games that may come.

Good on 612 Games to pick up the rights to Data East's arcade catalog. Hope they'll finally do them some justice.

[rehtroboi37]

I've sent a message to [e-mail], suggesting the twin-stick mapping for Heavy Barrel. In the message I politely pointed out to them that this was done on the Wii version on Data East Arcade Classics a decade ago. Not sure if that will work, but nothing beats a trial but a failure. Please send them a similar message if you're concerned about Heavy Barrel's control.

In time, we'll see how they are with listening to constructive inputs from those of us willing to pay for the ability to legally play these games.

[sitebender]

Not sure how they are on PC, but Switch controls were awful. I expected dual stick shooter. Nope. I'd even accept the game taking a while for the character to turn around to face a direction.

[rehtroboi37]

Originally posted by sitebender:

Not sure how they are on PC, but Switch controls were awful. I expected dual stick shooter. Nope. I'd even accept the game taking a while for the character to turn around to face a direction.

Only Hamster thus far has succeeded in mapping loop-lever controls to the right stick on their SNK arcade ports. Digital Eclipse has also done so but inputs are messed up. Sometimes either move or shoot gets locked into position and you have to shake the thumbsticks to reset the inputs.

Maybe that's why no one else has tried that. Although Capcom Arcade Stadium (Forgotten Worlds) was able to do a great job mapping the spinning fire button to the right stick and it works very, very well.

[Bavanity]

Originally posted by rehtroboi37:

Even Forgotten Worlds' satellite rotation on Capcom Arcade Stadium was mapped to the right thumbstick. It works very well IMO!

They didn't do that with Heavy Barrel. Odds are they never will.

SNK 40th collection did all that properly and is another example of a superb arcade set.

I like Heavy Barrel as well, it's the underdog vs Ikari but I actually prefer HB, however since this is an awful release, at least with the SNK stuff you have Twin stick options for every single run and gun in the collection. You might like it.

[rehtroboi37]

I'm hoping Hamster resumes with the G-Mode license soon. I remember seeing years ago that M2 had acqired the Data East license and was going to start with a shoot-em-up collection. But that was years ago-no follow-ups since.

IMO Data East retro games have been poorly represented these days (except for one nicely-done Evercade 10-arcade game cartridge). Hopefully some other company decides to bring these games out in far better form. I just don't believe they've sold enough to be worth any company taking a gamble on. If I'm wrong I will correct myself.