18 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
18 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: B1.13 BIT.TRIP Arcade Style
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date: 2011-04-05
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location: /B1.13
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tags: Pro Tanto
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---
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# BIT.TRIP Arcade Style
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I love the retro stylings of the BIT.TRIP series. I wouldn’t call myself their biggest fan; I started playing the series with RUNNER, I haven’t finished any of the games and I haven’t even played FLUX. But I do love the series. One of the things I love the most is the control scheme for BEAT (and presumably FLUX). To a lot of people, twisting the Wiimote to control your paddle feels weird and unintuitive. But it’s an awesome replication of the old Atari paddle controller. The only thing better would be a real paddle controller.
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As it so happens, I own a “real” paddle controller (for a given value of “real”). It’s for a TV game, and is smaller than a proper paddle controller, but it looks and feels like a real one to me. I want to hook it up to BEAT and see how it plays, but I don’t know how. The controller connects to a battery-powered box (which in turn connects to the TV) via a 2.5mm audio jack, with three bands instead of the normal two for stereo audio. Not being very electronically minded, I’m at a complete loss as how to get input from the paddle to the computer. If I could get that far, I’m sure I could use GlovePIE or similar to map it to a mouse axis and use it to play BEAT on the PC from Steam.
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Another option I read about which I think I will try is to rip apart an old ball mouse. The ball generally turns two shafts to move the cursor on each axis. In theory, I just have to stick something on the end of one of those shafts to use as a knob and hey presto, a homebrew paddle controller. Of course, I could also buy an old Atari paddle controller and an adapter to connect via USB, but I’d rather do it myself without forking out any cash.
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Thinking about “building” a new controller for BEAT got me thinking about new controllers for the other games too. Especially my least favorite of the series: CORE. I read an interview with Gajin Games which stated that CORE was their least favourite also. It also mentioned that there was a big toss-up between how to hit the beats: tap the right direction at the right time, or hold the correct direction and tap to fire. The latter won out, which some of the devs still regret. That article got me thinking about the “tap the direction” controls, and how that kind of reminded me of Dance Dance Revolution. Then the idea struck me to hook up a Dance Mat to CORE. If each direction press emulated a press of a directional button AND the 2 button, CORE gets transformed into an unusual representation of DDR.
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The question then becomes: how to do it? There’s plenty of software to connect your Wiimote to other devices, but I couldn’t find anything to let you use other devices in place of a Wiimote for the Wii. Surely it’s just a matter of sending and receiving the correct Bluetooth data, just like communicating with a Wiimote? If I can crack that, I can again go the GlovePIE route to convert dance mat presses to Wiimote controls, and dance to CORE. I think that would be an enjoyable way to re-experience that particular game.
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