Ooops, forgto to ask my question in the prevous post. :) I'll just repost here.

It looks like I'm going to have a controller problem with centipede. I tried playing it last night at home and there is not enough room on my mouse pad to get good control, I end up pausing every 3 seconds to get my mouse back near the center of the pad. I tried it at work (win32 version as I have NT)where I have a much bigger desk, when I move quickly to the left, it moves to the right instead, wierd. It looks like I may have better control with the keyboard.

Will it be acceptable to submit a keybord recording of centipede (if its in the tournie) instead of a mouse/trackball played recording?

-- Dave Kaupp (info@kaupp.cx), September 27, 1999

Answers

I would consider ALL recordings to be done on keyboard for the tourney. At least, you prevent autofire (which is available on certain joysticks/gamepads), and not everyone has a joystick/trackball to use. If I had to use my mouse for Centipede, I wouldn't even be able to beat 700pts. (I AM NOT KIDDING, MY MOUSE IS THAT BAD!)

-- Chris Parsley (cparsley1@hotmail.com), September 27, 1999.

Well, I stink bad at Centipede with any controller, but with my mouse, it's really really bad. I use the keyboard too.

How did Martin and John Rhodes play Centipede???

A tracball with certain sensitivity settings?

-- Mark Longridge (cubeman@iname.com), September 27, 1999.

Mark, all I used was a Microsoft 2-button mouse on a very mundane, regular small mousepad. My sensitivity settings are usually in the neighborhood of 25-30%. Seems to work fine for me. The higher, more frantic stages of the game will require greater movement accuracy than a keyboard can give you. An example of this is my Millipede recording where there seemed to be countless close encounters and subtle manuevering...something that I don't think could have ever been done with a keyboard. Hope you guys can resolve this in time for T2 (the second MARP tourney!) in case it becomes one of the picks. ;)

JoustGod...errr...John Rhodes

-- JoustGod (pinballwiz1@msn.com), September 27, 1999.

I have also played a little bit with the mouse sensitivity to gain the best control. It is still a fact that the trackball emulation is not perfect in Mame, causing the pointer not to move or to move in the wrong direction when you are moving the mouse too fast. When centipede is in the tournament I recommend using version 35 beta 13, because ever since 35 rc 1 the trackball emulation has become worse.

-- MvdV (cypr135@knoware.nl), September 28, 1999.

Hell yes you should be able to use trackball or joystick. If a game is originally played with trackball, of course you play it with mouse or trackball. Isn't it allmost cheating when someone uses keaboard in trackball game? -(answering myself) In my opinion "original" controls seem to have best effect, so use anything you want except autofire(you are welcome try to beat my Marble Madness score with any controlling method you like...). I bought a trackball for Marble and haven't regretted it a single moment-It really isn't so expensive and I use it as a spinner also...furthermore Marble is ten times more fun with a trackball.

Emulation for trackball is perfect, problem is to find right analog- settings. If sensitivity is TOO HIGH marble seems to stop or go wrong direction, when rolling fast. You should experiment with analog settings, changing sensitivity and that other prosentage value (something like delta x prosentage). Normally I use final-versions for recording, and trackball works just fine. I've noticed that later versions analog settings look different compared to older ones, but they work just the same. It's my lazyness,that makes me still use M35b2 for marble-since I found right settings with that version and don't want to experiment for few ours with later versions.

Tommi 170 540(arcade)

-- Tommi (tiihoto@hotmail.com), September 29, 1999.