Playing Centipede with Mouse

[Weehawk]

I would like to start playing Centipede again, but the "gearing" for the
mouse is WAY too low. I have to move it the width of a mousepad
more than twice to get from one side of the screen to the other. This
is unacceptable.

Is there a way to adjust this?

I've tinkered with some of the tracking options, but nothing seems to work.

Thanks,

John

[LN2]

Weehawk, you adjust it as you can adjust any analog control.

Launch the game...hit the TAB key.

From the menu select Analog Controls.

Then you will see where you can change the sensitivity.

Adjust it til you get what you want...

Then hit TAB key to get out of the menu area.

All games that have analog controls have that menu option.
You will fine you need to fine tune each game separately. there isn't some magical setting that is consistent for all.

[Weehawk]

From the menu select Analog Controls.

Then you will see where you can change the sensitivity.

I tried that and it didn't seem to change anything.

But I will try again and report the results.

Thanks much,

John

[LN2]

For the mouse you want to adjust the Track X sensitivity and Track Y sensitivity. The rest of them don't really matter.

Perhaps you only adjusted the key sensitivity which would affect how the cursor keys control.

For centipede I have both of those set to 50%. Depending on your OS mouse tracking settings etc. you might need a totally different number.

Do drastic changes at first to find the other extreme....so try 100% first and see if that's too fast...or still too slow..if too slow then try 150% or 200%.

If you see no changes from those settings then perhaps you just need to quit and relaunch the game. I thought those changes were "live" but perhaps you need to reset the game at least.

All of this is also assuming you aren't using some other 3rd party thing with your mouse or using the inputsprockets joystick cfg area in the GUI to set the mouse...if so, then trash your macmame preferences and try it again so those sprocket settings can't be interfering.

[Weehawk]

For centipede I have both of those set to 50%. Depending on your OS mouse tracking settings etc. you might need a totally different number.

You're not suggesting that the OS mouse settings affect the settings on the
shooter in the game are you?

Wouldn't that screw up playback for anyone with different mouse settings
on their OS?

If you see no changes from those settings then perhaps you just need to quit and relaunch the game. I thought those changes were "live" but perhaps you need to reset the game at least.

The situation is a little more complicated than I realized. Upon setting the
tracking sensitivity to the max 255, I found that a relatively small movement
of the mouse made the shooter move all the way across the screen, but
only if I moved the mouse very slowly. If I move it with any real
speed (as I would playing Centipede), the shooter lags behind, as if the
shooter's speed is severely restricted.

I'm beginning to wonder if this is just a weakness in the emulator. On the
arcade machine there was no detectable limit to the shooter's speed, that
is the faster you moved the trackball, the faster the shooter moved, to
the extreme that it seemed to move almost instantaneously if you made
a really quick jerk on the trackball.

If the shooter moved the way my cursor moves in Windows, everything
would be cool.

Anybody have any suggestions?

Thanks,

John

[The TJT]

Hi there, firstly when fast mouse movement freezes your centipede, it's a case of moving too fast and having mouse acceleration in your OS.

Yes, you are right, OS mouse options DO affect mouse speed at Mame. So you have to find right settings for your your OS, and Mame.

Windows has two kind of settings for mouse/cursor movement: speed and acceleration: (...oh man this is hard to explain)...
Acceleration example:If you move mouse 10centimeters(at the table) and fast, cursor moves 20 centimeters. If you move mouse slowly same 10cm -cursor moves less distance at your desktop. If you don't have acceleration, cursor moves allways same distance, no matter how slow or fast you do it.

Speed controls amount of distance, but how fast you move the mouse does not matter

So your task is to DISABLE ALL MOUSE ACCELERATION in your OS, then you have only left Windows and Mame mouse speed to play with. I believe mame options(atleast those that LN2 mentioned)are only about adjusting speed.
I have disabled acceleration at Windows simply using mouse options at control panel, my mouse drivers have option for that, I use same drivers for trackball too. Previously, when I played only DOS, had another utility to kill accel in DOS(which came with trackball).

Have fun, TJT

P.S. I don't think arcade trackballs or spinners had any acceleration programmed, it makes control much harder.

[LN2]

You're not suggesting that the OS mouse settings affect the settings on the
shooter in the game are you?

yes they do...for example if your mouse was twice as sensitive in your OS settings then it also would be twice as sensitive in MAME as well...or most other games you play...or software you use. The in game controls are secondary to what the OS settings are...so both are convoluted together for what your actual sensitivity is. That might sound odd but that's how it is for many games...including mame..well at least macmame. I assume PC mames are similar behaving...but maybe not cuz it might be coded to temporarily override the OS mouse settings...which some games do.

Wouldn't that screw up playback for anyone with different mouse settings
on their OS?

Not at all...cuz when you play back an input file the magnitude of the control for the game input is already determined and read from the inp file...and just played back...so it works. The same value of input is read in regardless what the person's sensitivity settings are for the game.

The sensitivity you set etc. will affect what values for the input for the game are generated from your mouse movements. Changing the sensitivity isn't changing how the game responds to the actual input. It's changing what input your mouse results in (the middle man). Only the final result is saved in the input...as it is fed into the game CPU for determining how you actually are moving.

The situation is a little more complicated than I realized. Upon setting the
tracking sensitivity to the max 255, I found that a relatively small movement
of the mouse made the shooter move all the way across the screen, but
only if I moved the mouse very slowly. If I move it with any real
speed (as I would playing Centipede), the shooter lags behind, as if the
shooter's speed is severely restricted.

Oh yes...I forgot to note that...you can "overload" the input..where it gets out of range so then has that kind of result for many games. It makes it hard for some games...for example in centipede...if I move the mouse smoothly and not too fast then it tracks very well..but if I extremely quickly move from left-to-right for example, the result is the control actually goes a little to the left or just stays in pace and jitters.

if you are getting that then that is a sign your sensitivity is too high...so try a lower value. As I said it takes some playing around with to find a good value for you...depending on how you want to move the mouse.

So..you really need to experiment trying 5-10 different values from 25-150% then 5-10 more in between what seems to work best.

I try and find values where my natural mouse movement tendacies fit the game quite well yet when I want to move fast I'm not moving the mouse so quickly where it overloads the input and results in that jittery motion where you don't move or slightly move in the other direction.

Also as mentioned above make sure mouse acceleration in the OS is disabled. I think mame32 in the options has a option to deactivate that for mame32...the other mames likely have some command line arg to do that. MacMAME doesn't do it as of the latest release...but I use a utility called USB overdrive and turned off the acceleration for macmame.

I'm beginning to wonder if this is just a weakness in the emulator. On the
arcade machine there was no detectable limit to the shooter's speed, that
is the faster you moved the trackball, the faster the shooter moved, to
the extreme that it seemed to move almost instantaneously if you made
a really quick jerk on the trackball.

yes, and no....most arcade games do have some ceiling limit for how quickly you can possibly move regardless how fast you spin the trackball. The electronics of the controller itself would have this. The "controller" in mame seems to lack this...where you can generate input values that are out-of-range for the game code so the input ends up being misinterpreted.

Given this varies from 1 analog game to another...it's hard to likely impossible to implement this type of "ceiling" of input from analog controller like a mouse...cuz each game would need a different ceiling...figuring out how much input a game can actually handle.

I guess you could always do that though but it would perhaps require some controller file included in each rom set that mame would use to assign a clip-point/ceiling in the input from your mouse to trim it down to for inputting to the game.

I hope the above makes sense to you.

it gets really frustrating for games like Marble Madness..where the object is to move as fast as possible through mazes...yet if your input gets too high your ball will stop and jitter or actually go back the other way..losing momentum and precious time. I just had to train myself in playing that to not move the mouse beyond a certain speed....but try and be as close to that max as possible at all times.

[The TJT]

Rick, it sounds like you have too high sensitivity values at Mame for Marble...or acceleration not disabled(OS). Roll as fast as you can, find the limit when "jittering" does not occur, use that or lower...You know, at arcade when I wanted to go full speed..I had to roll like a madman...not like a gentleman -I mean rolling softly and going full speed is NOT like playing at arcade. But neither is playing with mouse

BTW, if rolling exactly right with max speed and too much sensitivity, ball goes first left a little and after that right normally....?

Maybe that has something to do with how mouse movement is recognized, if rolling too fast..opposite direction? Hmmm...strange

Tested with Mame sensitivity 255(max), Original Tron spinner hooked into PC mouse circuit, no accel(OS), and Marble.

Marble Man

[LN2]

Rick, it sounds like you have too high sensitivity values at Mame for Marble...or acceleration not disabled(OS).

I believe I just explained all that in my above post to help the other player...so why are you preaching to the choir?

I know..but I also don't want to have to move my mouse 10+ feet to do 1 long continuous movement in 1 direction in a maze. There is a compromise of the space you have to move your mouse around in(not like trackballs where it's essentially infinite) and having subtle and slow control and being able to move fast but not too fast where it overloads.

I ended up for Marble Madness just training myself to find my own ceiling for how fast I could also move the mouse for that game...so for movement I could complete entire mazes just running my mouse around on my desk without ever having to reposition it...so my sensitivity was quite high so I could negotiate the entire mazes in Marble Madness in about a 2 foot x 3 foot area on my desk.

if you check scores here for Marble Madness you will see I did quite well with it. It took quite a bit of playing and tuning of the sensitivities to find the optimal level for me. It's much easier setting up games like centipede cuz you aren't having to go the same direction for very long.

Roll as fast as you can, find the limit when "jittering" does not occur, use that or lower...You know, at arcade when I wanted to go full speed..I had to roll like a madman...not like a gentleman

if you have a trackball device on your PC then I agree...roll that trackball as fast as you can and find what sensitivity you need to set where that isn't overloading the input value for the game. That doesn't work with a mouse for many games though cuz if you do that then you end up having to use the entire floor of the room you are in for a mouse "pad". Good luck doing that...I see it now...a roller skate device....big screen display for MAME....you skate around a big room to control where the marble goes. That actually would be pretty cool! hehe

[Weehawk]

Okay, back to Centipede

Yes, you are right, OS mouse options DO affect mouse speed at Mame

Sorry, but my observations on several PC's tell me the opposite.

...but maybe not cuz it might be coded to temporarily override the OS mouse settings...

That certainly appears to be the case to me.

Windows has two kind of settings for mouse/cursor movement: speed and acceleration

Not all mouses/drivers have acceleration. Mine does not. I have tried tinkering
with these settings on PC's that do, however.

I tried all extremes of acceleration and speed in the OS, and they appear to me
to have absolutely no effect on the shooters reaction to mouse movement
in the game. This makes me believe that MAME does not use this information
at all.

I also went back to the game Snakepit, where I thought I could move the sprite
as fast as I wanted to with the mouse, but I was mistaken. If I try to move the
mouse too quickly in that game as well, the player lags behind. It just so happens
in that game that you are moving around in a much more confined area, and
not making the fast striking type motions that a Centipede expert makes when
playing the game in the traditional fashion, and so I didn't notice the problem
when I play Snakepit.

I am convinced that this is a weakness in MAME's interface between the mouse and
the game.

If anyone can demonstrate the contrary, I would very much like to see an inp
made with a current version of MAME which demonstrates the shooter being
moved back and forth with the same kind of speed with which one can move
the cursor in Windows, or the shooter could be moved in the arcade game.

I'm assuming it's not possible, and that this is why the high scores on MARP
for Centipede and its clones are so mediocre. No disrespect intended to those
who achieved them (I certainly don't think I could beat them with the control
available to me now), but except for the 711k on "centipb2", none of these
games have scores recorded for them which I would have had any trouble
beating on the arcade machine, playing in the traditional fashion, and the player
who did the 711k stated that he used the "blob method" which does not require
the hectic pace that playing the game straight up does. The only way I got scores
higher than that in the arcade was to trap the centipede and hunt spiders. Using
this method I scored 999,999 many times, and accidentally went over, going back
to zero a couple of times

I'll ask in a separate thread what the MARP community would do with high scores achieved
using this method.

Anyway, thank you guys for your input, but I think that MAME just doesn't mimic
the trackball control well enough to satisfy me.

[LN2]

I tried all extremes of acceleration and speed in the OS, and they appear to me
to have absolutely no effect on the shooters reaction to mouse movement
in the game. This makes me believe that MAME does not use this information
at all.

Ok, so perhaps in your case your OS settings don't affect the game...fine..doesn;t matter. What's that got to do with changing the sensitivity in the game in MAME as instructed above? Try a setting of 25% for xand y...then perhaps 60%...between those 2 for centipede you should be able to notice a difference. If both of those seem exactly the same...then something is wrong with your mame. Trash your cfg...trash your preferences...I don't know...but something is wrong if adjusting the in-game sensitivity does nothing for you.

If I try to move the mouse too quickly in that game as well, the player lags behind.

We explained that. It means your in-game sensitivity is TOO HIGH! Lower it...geesh.

If anyone can demonstrate the contrary, I would very much like to see an inp made with a current version of MAME which demonstrates the shooter being moved back and forth with the same kind of speed with which one can move the cursor in Windows, or the shooter could be moved in the arcade game.

First, moving an object in a game in MAME isn't related to how fast you can move your cursor at all. It's not a valid comparison.

However, with proper tuning of the in-game analog control sensitivities as explained above...you can find a value that works for you....where yes you can reach the maximum speed of movement the game allows. If your sensitivity has you go "beyond" that...then you get the opposite effect...which is what you are seeing....so lower your current values step by step until with typical mouse movement that doesn't happen for you.

All analog games have a real max though....think of a trackball..the result of this in arcade games is 2 voltages... one for the x movement and one for the y-movement. The game code reads that voltage and plugs it into some equation that then results in your player movement in the game.

Those controllers have a maximum of voltage output...which means if you spin it faster than a certain level...you are at max voltage for both and moving same for both. The controller or card has a max value. This varies from game to game. One game might be +5V to right and -5 V to left....yet another only be 3 v either way..and another perhaps 10 v....others perhaps 1 volt. There wasn't a standard where all the games have the same voltage output from the analog controller.

MAME therefore doesn't set a ceiling for the simulated voltage. I guess it's possible as I said above to set a ceiling for each game separately and store that in a separate file in the ROM set perhaps...that the MAME code would read in and use to chop the input down to max magnitude allowed if your input is beyond that magnitude prior to feeding it to the game code.

This would vary from game to game. Research would be needed to see what max values each game needs...release totally different rom sets and a new version of mame to handle that info etc.

I hope you get it this time. We have answered your question 3 times now. If it still doesn't work right for you then the problem is on your end. It isn't a MAME thing other than the max value for input issue.

who did the 711k stated that he used the "blob method" which does not require the hectic pace that playing the game straight up does.

What exactly is the blob method?

The only way I got scores higher than that in the arcade was to trap the centipede and hunt spiders.

This technique is not allowed for MARP scores and Twin Galaxies scores. It's not too hard to setup once you know how to do it and as you said you can hunt spiders forever

I'll ask in a separate thread what the MARP community would do with high scores achieved using this method.

It's banned so the score wouldn't be accepted.

..although I see no special rules for this game....so if it is still allowed then I would quickly start a poll to disallow it once someone submits an inp using that leeching technique. TG has long banned that trick and removed all scores that used that technique.

Anyway, thank you guys for your input, but I think that MAME just doesn't mimic the trackball control well enough to satisfy me.

Well, given you still haven't tuned it correctly yet how can you make any conclusion? Watch inps like the best ones for Marble Madness(although for mine you will need a Mac to view them). or watch millipede...or other trackball games.

Watch Crystal Castle inps. You will find amny other examples where the players have excellent control using a mouse.

[Weehawk]

Ok, so perhaps in your case your OS settings don't affect the game...fine..doesn;t matter. What's that got to do with changing the sensitivity in the game in MAME

I didn't mean to suggest that it did. I was responding to assertions that the OS settings
did affect the MAME control, and was in the hope that some different settings
in my OS might solve the problem of the shooter's poor speed potential.

but something is wrong if adjusting the in-game sensitivity does nothing for you.

I'm sorry, I didn't intend to imply that it did not. I tried everything from 0 to 255 and while there was a difference, it did not solve the basic problem.

We explained that. It means your in-game sensitivity is TOO HIGH! Lower it...geesh.

Geesh yourself...it only goes down to zero.

First, moving an object in a game in MAME isn't related to how fast you can move your cursor at all. It's not a valid comparison.

Unfortunately, it isn't related to how fast you could move the shooter on the arcade
machine either. If you have access to a real Centipede machine, try it. Take the
trackball in your fingertips, and without losing your finger-contact with it, move it
back and forth as fast as you possibly can. You will see that the shooter onscreen
moves back and forth just as fast. Now admittedly getting all the way across
the screen was different because it took two or three full spins of the trackball to
get from one side of the screen to the other, and while there was no limit to the
shooter's speed on the screen, there was a physical limit to how fast the
trackball could be free-spun.

I hope you get it this time.

I don't think my ability to comprehend is a problem here.

Well, given you still haven't tuned it correctly yet how can you make any conclusion?

I've tried everything I can think of on several PC's and nothing has had any effect
on the basic problem. As I suggested, if someone can demonstrate that they can
move the shooter back and forth as fast as in the arcade game, I will admit that
my assumption was incorrect and devote more time to trying to set mine to do the same.
Until then, I can't think of anything else to do, and still believe that it is a "MAME thing",
as you put it.

What exactly is the blob method?

(Deep breath..)

At higher levels of play, maybe 90% of an expert Centipede player's energy is
spent keeping the bottom of the field clear of mushrooms. This is in order to prevent
the centipede segments from reaching the bottom of the screen and triggering the
side-feed, which in its latter stages is impossible to survive. The field is cleared by
killing the falling fleas which leave a trail of mushrooms or, failing that, destroying the
mushrooms after the flea has left them. The fleas fall on any wave when the centipede
does not come out "whole" unless there is a minimum number of mushrooms
in the bottom portion of the screen. Once the fleas have corrupted the players portion
of the screen badly enough, they stop falling. Some creative players (Eric Ginner may
have been the first) came up with the idea of deliberately keeping a formation
(blob) of mushrooms in the bottom portion of the screen to prevent the fleas from
ever falling. This allowed them to clear the upper portion of the screen
of mushrooms, thus making it take much longer for the centipede to go back and
forth across the screen on its way down. The players would kill the centipede
in this fashion, kill any spiders which might threaten to "eat" too many
of the mushrooms, and keep the pace of the game much slower. At one time this was
how the highest scores on the game were achieved. The centipede-trap method
was discovered later, and eventually some players may have gotten good enough
to play the game forever in the traditional fashion, I'm not sure. The highest I ever
witnessed was over 800k, I never broke 700k myself, except using the trap.
The "blob method" never particularly appealed to me.

I appreciate your time LN2. I know what I am talking about with respect to the
real Centipede machine, and so far, similar control response in MAME does not
appear possible. I hope someone can show that I am wrong, but I am not going to
hold my breath.

John

[The TJT]

You can allways check my Marble Madness inp, and tell me if I get maximum speed with trackball or not

I have Win98, Logitech PS/2 mouse, which has driver cdrom that says: Mouseware 9.24 for Windows Millennium, 2000,98,95,nt4.0,3.1 and macos8.6orlater. Atlest for win98 ver I can kill acceleration, I would assume for other OS too...Go to shop, mice don't cost much.

OS settings surely do affect speed at mame...try change cursor speed at you os to minimum/maximum with same sensitivity settings at mame.

If you use old mame versions for DOS only, and play Mame at DOS...changing Windows settings does not change a thing. There are DOS drivers for your mouse too, like chmouse.exe etc

[LN2]

was in the hope that some different settings
in my OS might solve the problem of the shooter's poor speed potential.

Don't change your OS settings to affect MAME. That's why MAME has those sensitivity settings. The only reason I mentioned it is cuz someone that uses a very high OS sensitivity likely won't need quite as high of sensitivity in MAME....someone with a low OS mouse sensitivity will likely need a higher sensitivity value in MAME. Those 2 cases the end result can be exactly the same even with different OS settings.

I'm sorry, I didn't intend to imply that it did not. I tried everything from 0 to 255 and while there was a difference, it did not solve the basic problem.

Can you get specific on what you tried? It sounds like you just tried a few extremes...instead of trying a range of realistic sensitivities for centipede. I had suggested trying in the 25-60% range.

Note you might need to reset the game after changing that...not sure.

Geesh yourself...it only goes down to zero.

Are you saying at zero you still have that same odd effect of barely moving the mouse results in it zooming and faster movement you get the jitters or opposite direction?

Have you turned off your OS mouse acceleration as suggested above? If you are using mame32 I think it has an option to do this. For others...perhaps a command line or something in your mame.ini file will do that. I play on a mac so I'm not that intimate with pc-mames.

First, moving an object in a game in MAME isn't related to how fast you can move your cursor at all. It's not a valid comparison.

Take the trackball in your fingertips, and without losing your finger-contact with it, move it back and forth as fast as you possibly can. You will see that the shooter onscreen moves back and forth just as fast.

Well, do you admit that you can move your mouse or in your terms...your OS cursor a lot faster than you can move that Centipede man? The trackball in the game is limited. It might seem to go as fast as you can do it...but there is a ceiling....plus..the way that trackball was you really can't go all that fast anyway.

I've tried everything I can think of on several PC's and nothing has had any effect on the basic problem. As I suggested, if someone can demonstrate that they can move the shooter back and forth as fast as in the arcade game, I will admit that my assumption was incorrect and devote more time to trying to set mine to do the same.
Until then, I can't think of anything else to do, and still believe that it is a "MAME thing", as you put it.

First, can you stop hitting return at the end of each typed line? The text will soft-wrap.

If you make the same flaw or mistake on different PCs...of course you will get the same results. Try 10%, 25%, 355, 50%, 60A% and 75% and actually PLAY the game for a minute or so to see how each behaves. You definitely should see a difference. If not then that tells me your OS sensitivity must be ridiculously high so even a slight movement of your mouse has the input out of range. Again, turn off your acceleration as for Centipede and similar games that really screws things up.

(Deep breath..)

Ok, you didn't need to write a novel about the game. I'm very familiar with the game. I once met Eric Ginner and knew of his many scores.

All you had to say is that's where you have a small group of mushrooms together to keep the fleas from dropping and together so it minimizes the affect on the centipede segments.

It also helps if you have them where the spider won't take them away.

This means you could have 3-4 in each corner.....that the spider won't run over and swallow...and for most that's enough so no fleas....perhaps a couple more for the last few levels before it resets back to one string centipede coming out.

I hope someone can show that I am wrong, but I am not going to
hold my breath.

We have pointed you to some inps here at MARP. Download them...download that version of mame also if you don't already have that version installed...then view them. You can see for yourself how decent the gameplay is with a properly tuned sensitivity.

We can't say anymore more...those inps are worth 1000s of words.

[JoustGod]

Ok, you didn't need to write a novel about the game. I'm very familiar with the game. I once met Eric Ginner and knew of his many scores.

All you had to say is that's where you have a small group of mushrooms together to keep the fleas from dropping and together so it minimizes the affect on the centipede segments.

I understand why Weehawk felt compelled to give a lengthy explanation. Most any Centipede player of 20 years ago that was very capable has heard the term "blob strategy", "setting up the blob" or any such other references to "blob". Even though you seem to understand it in a subsequent post, it wasn't readily apparent initially. I think it may just be a term that wasn't used that much in your area of the country during the "golden age". I still come across terminology myself to this day that all others seem to have been using for years, yet I seemed to have missed it!

And sorry...had to chuckle when you of all people bring mention to someone else that they "...didn't need to write a novel...".

[/quote]