Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

Here's a strategic question:

How would you most like to be able to invoke and control accelemymote? There are various possible ways of making it more user friendly. Keep in mind that the design goals of the utility are

1. Enable support for joystick control in apps that aren't aware of accelemymote;
2. Make the accelerometer control in supported apps completely optional even when installed.

The processor usage is not insignificant, so it can't just be started up when the game is started. If it was possible to detect when an app requests access to the joystick device, the daemon could be set to run on system startup and throttle down to nothing until there is a need for it, but i wasn't able to find a way to detect that. Maybe someone knows...

The best plan i've come up with is to have a GUI app that is run before the game that starts the accelerometer driver and lets you tweak the settings. Then you exit the GUI when you are done with the game and it shuts down the driver.

What do you think?

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

Well don't all talk at once. :P

accelemymote (0.0.4) unstable; urgency=low

* Refactored to simplify loading cfg file.
* Watches cfg file and reloads when altered.
* Desktop file, icon, and user category removed to make invisible
to HAM and make room for accelemymote-gui.


accelemymote-gui (0.0.1) unstable; urgency=low

* Initial release of project. Codename: chewy brownie (GUI goodness)

The "gui" is currently just a bit of text on a blank canvas, but it's a start. You run the gui, run your game, and then quit the gui to shut down the joystick driver.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

id like to be able to set movements to either joystick or keyboard

left=left key or joystick left
right'right key or joystick right
up=space or joystick b1
etc..

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

i dont see version 0.0.4 or 0.0.5 yet??

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

Well, there is no version 0.0.5 yet, and i haven't quite cracked the time travel problem. What i can offer you is:

accelemymote-gui (0.0.2) unstable; urgency=low

* Package now in user/system instead of /user/system. :P

There was a little typo in the control file. :) It made it through autobuilder and will probably pop up in packages in an hour or so (you can always use the package page in the first post to check).

You just need to install the accelemymote-gui through the repo and the daemon will be installed as a dependency. If you have trouble, uninstall 0.0.3 first before installing accelemymote-gui.

This isn't directly in the scope of the app. It takes accelerometer readings and converts them into joystick events available at a generic joystick device node.

However, control mapping and joystick support is already available in all the apps it's specifically targeted to, so it can already be done.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

I installed the accelemymote-gui from the repo and it works fine. I believe this to be at a point where it is possible for almost anyone to at least try it out without too much trouble, and to be useful as an alternative controller for the target games.

Please give it a try and give feedback. See the first post for instructions.

Next up is to add configuration widgets to the GUI so that the settings can be easily changed; it will probably be a while before i get to that.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

that will be great, greeaaat work man..!

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

Installed PrBoom (comment on that thread).

Installed Accelemymote GUI from repo -- not sure if it was -testing or -dev - had both active :D

Download script from PrBoom thread, installed.

Changed offset to 55 deg.

Works great, nice work, thanks! :)

One thing I can't figure out (please forgive my lack of linux experience) is how to change the settings in the config file? Could you give me an example of what to type in Xterm to get it open and be able to change the values.

I was specifically after changing the values that you suggest to make the response better for PrBoom, it's a bit on then off, I guess changing the max_roll and max_pitch will make this smoother and I won't have to tip the device as far to get a response.

Even two commands lines just to change this would be great, as I am not good enough to mess around with Linux myself yet, but am confident enough to follow instructions and re-flash if nessecary :D Thanks again for the great work.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

d/l mc from extras repo, and edit config file

mc is file manager, you can edit config file with it like notepad

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

Wow, that is a handy bit of kit!! :D

BTW: I set mine to 35 for offset, 7 for max_pitch and 7 for max_roll and zero for both thresholds and it works really well :)

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

Ok Flandry, I've tried it out. I tested Outrun on SDLMAME, and all I can say is - wow. Simply superb, Fland. At the moment I can't tell if it's just due to the low framerate, but I have to say, the sophistication of steering is unparalleled - I feel like I've never had better control of the steering in Outrun! And can I tell you how I felt when I realized that acceleration/deceleration were controlled by tipping forward and back - I almost wet myself! Really, really responsive in this game in MAME.

(If you would only allow disabling of sound in SDLMAME, we might be able to get some faster framerates and have a REAL test! 8^)

In other games, though, there was no control at all - like 1944, for example, a solid shooter, I was very much looking forward to moving about the screen with accelerometer, and just firing with a button - but no control over direction at all. Why?

(One other off-topic point while I've got your attention - any chance of touchscreen buttons in SDMAME, like VGBA has? I've finally gotten used to it and it adds huge amounts to playability and enjoyability. I'd love to see it in SDLMAME as well.)

Thanks for the accelometer app, though - I'm looking forward to putting it to use in creative, unorthodox ways.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

i tried outrun, and OMG its unplayable!!

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

I already responded to that request in the SDLMAME thread. Basically, the processor that handles the sound was often used for other important tasks (like a coin counter), so it is always emulated in SDLMAME. Disabling it in a meaningful way would have to be a ROM-by-ROM basis, and i don't know off the top of my head how it would best be done.

In Ikari Warriors (my favorite arcade game, and never properly cloned due to the extra rotate-control in the joystick), the joystick behavior in SDLMAME does a weird combination of move a direction/rotate character. Basically, this is a mapping problem where the default mapping for "joystick 0" is not what you'd like it to be.

I suspect there's a way to change that within the gui, or at least in a config file.

Thanks for testing it out.

I'd love to add on-screen buttons and all kinds of nifty features to the apps i maintain (plus i have a half-dozen cool projects i haven't even had time to start). I believe the next in the queue to work on is Gweled, then SDLMAME, then UQM, then PrBoom. Meanwhile i have two other non-game projects and a accelemymote.

However, i also have the minor task of finishing the Ph.D. and finding a job...

sigh.

All i can tell you is... patience. :D

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

You, Sir, are no Outrun fan!

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

I tried afterburner 1 and 2 and they ran fine apart from game speed,also tehkan world cup that worked ok but it had a bug where the football would suddenly just go off screen(only does this when using accelemymote), marble madness worked perfect and my last test was outrun and again worked great apart from game speed.

oh just tested space harrier works fine.:)


edit

i've lost my manners... great work Flandry by the way...

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

I'm not sure I understand what you mean here, other than Ikari Warriors having a nonstandard joystick, which I'm familiar with.

What I meant was, shouldn't scrolling shooters be able to be controlled by accelerometer? Since they're just 8-way joysticks, right? I'm not talking about anything as fancy as an Ikari controller. Just something straightfoward like UN Squadron, a personal favorite.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

never heard of it b4, but i mean its too slow to play :D

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

Vertical or horizontal shooters are so difficult to use properly with motion control.
It is a good way to test motion control but hey you must admit it 3D shooters,driving games and marble madness would certainly benefit from motion control better than 2d shooters.;)

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

That was painfully obvious. I bet you didn't try and play past the checkered flag, huh? It gets to rolling along quite smoothly for the patient among us.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

I'm not saying yea or nay, I'm just wondering why it won't work for those games. I'd certainly be willing to try, and judge for myself - unless it's an issue of it not working for them at all. That's why I asked my Q.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

oh ok,

i may test ikari and other 2d shooters just to see if they work.;)

It was just an example that some ROMS don't seem to be set up to make the best use of the SDLMAME joystick (one that makes sense in the game's context). I'm guessing with the example you gave, the joystick is simply not mapped properly to the controls for the game. It might, for example, only control player 2 and not player 1.

See if there are any joystick control options in the menus for now. I'll look into it when I get a chance.

Minor update for better MAME compatibility:

0.0.5 * Zero axis on exit. davidfalkayn@gmail.cmo 2010-03-13 18:37

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

New version:
Updated cfg file info in first post:

; Turtle makes the driver sleep when upside-down. Also, flipping the phone on its face activates/deactivates joystick events.
; 1 is enabled
; 0 is disabled
; -1 is active (start in turtle mode)

turtle = 1 ; Toggle joystick by turning the N900 upside down. [1]

; Turn off event generation and slow frame_rate to 3.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

I was wondering... would an option to use the proximity sensor as an enable/disable switch be too much of a bother to ask ? I often find it difficult to hold a direction with the various sensitivity settings (especially in games that expect alternating joystick/mouse + keyboard input) so would be super-cool if I could just go to ’neutral’ by covering the prox sensor...

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

Is there a way to set up a dead zone so that I can fly straight in descent? without holding the device in 1 very specific tilt/yaw?

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

Wow, PR1.2 finally was released. Maybe it's worth revisiting projects that were on hold "just a bit" until PR1.2. :rolleyes:

I'm polling anyway so might as well check that. I was considering making it a button option, too. I'll put it on the list. :)

That's what the max pitch and roll settings in the config file generally do, depending on how the game interprets joystick input. I originally designed the config file on the misconception that most games use analog input but the actuality seems to be that most games are digital, in which case the max_roll and max_pitch are probably exactly what you need.

Let me know if changing those doesn't have the desired effect.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

Is it possible to use the app for mouse emulation? Would be cool for Browser and Lxde...

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

Houston, we have button. It's actually kind of cool. :D

Default settings for accelemymote 0.7 (accelemymote-gui 0.0.3) have been updated to include the proximity sensor as joystick button A. Cover the left side of your phone to "press" the button.

An alternative setting, available in the main.cfg file documented in the first post, is to have the proximity sensor deactivate/reactivate accelemymote. In this mode, you can cover the sensor to switch it to turtle mode, cover it again to make it start working as a joystick again, or keep it covered to put it in a deeper sleep mode.

The turtle mode functionality is still accessible by turning the phone upside down by default.

I have tested it with PrBoom with good results. Let me know how it works for you.

Not as things are now. It would require registering the input device as having relative axes instead of absolute and probably also titan's kernel (just guessing about that part).

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

I'm wondering what to do next with this. Who is using it, how do they use it, and what would make it more useful?

I intend to make the gui actually change settings and stuff at some point but that's going to require me to learn something (horrors!) and do some rejiggering.

Moar feedback, please.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

is there any way you could make it possible to work on the SNES and GBA emulators? would be nice to play mario kart with it :D

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

They'd have to support joystick input. Do they? I can't see any option for it in Dr. NokSNES and don't have GBA emu installed. Post a request in the threads for those and see what the devs have to say. Any emu that was written by scratch for Maemo is probably better off just adding tilt support directly; this is most useful for ports of emus and games that already have joystick support.

I'll do what i can on my end to support them, though.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

As I mentioned in the TechnoballZ thread, this app works really well for controlling that game -- thanks very much for your work on this, Flandry :)

I'm curious about something -- is it creating analogue joystick commands, digital, or some combination?

The reason I ask is because the controls in TechnoballZ seem to be basically on/off (suggesting digital), but the config file mentions 'analog' as the default profile, and analog would make that game much easier to control (it supports mouse input via touchscreen, so it would seem like an analog joystick should work)..

Maybe this question is better placed in the TechnoballZ thread, but I'm curious about what kind of control is possible with Accelemymote in general, and that just happens to be the game that got me wondering (it's a shame you say mouse control doesn't seem like something you could implement)

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

From the config file (found in the first post): Accelemymote sends fractional values (i.e. emulates an analog joystick) but the range is rather small by default (32 degrees roll, 28 degrees pitch). What i discovered is that many or most games treat joystick input as digital (either on or off in each axis). It may be that TechnoballZ is the same. You can try increasing the max pitch and roll and see if it helps. If not, it's probably a poor implementation of joystick control in TechnoballZ.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

You may install xorg-joystick driver and make it simulate keypresses.
This is what I did in sixaxis-support package.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

PS. An GUI app for editing .fdi file mapping would be useful for both projects.
I hesitate though to write one, because I have no good idea how to enable user editing root-owned files.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

Ahh ok -- thanks for the explanation.

If I remember correctly, the Amiga only supported digital joysticks, so I suppose it would make sense that TechnoballZ is interpreting Accelemymote's input that way.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

Hi I noticed that the icon for Accelmymote is Icon wanted. So I made a few that I think would suite this project.

I made a tilted crosshair in space. I think it suits the app.

In the zip file there is a 48x48 and 64x64 colour icon, and a 48x48 and 64x64 black and white icon and a 64x64 + 48x48 transparent icons. Here are two screenshots:

Transparent:
http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/5...0070511334.png

Colour:
http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/5...0070511240.png

I updated the zip file too.

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

New version in repo. It is now possible to set the origin ("zero the axis") with accelemymote. To do this, click the button in the GUI and hold it at the desired neutral tilt until a banner informs you it has been updated (about 5 s).

It can also be done by changing the value of the offset_pitch in the config file to 900 and then saving.

Also available now is a "dead zone" setting. This is a fraction of the maximum tilt that should be considered neutral before the joystick starts to send input.

Version 0.1.0 breaks automation compatibility with some scripts (that for prboom) as well as apps (MAME). Until those apps are updated, you should start accelemymote manually (using the gui) before starting the app to get accelerometer control. Note that it should still work with those apps, just not automatically as it did before.

Accelemymote 0.1.0

• Moved trigger file to /tmp/ to not survive reboots: /tmp/accelemymote-live
  ==Breaks compatibility with some apps using accelemymote!==
• Now supports setting offset. Setting offset in config file to 900 will cause current pitch value to be added after 4 s.
• Added deadzone parameter to cfg file. This is the fraction of the maximum pitch and roll angles from the neutral position that will not register as joystick input.

Accelemymote-gui 0.0.4-0.1.1

• Add "Set origin" button (only works for pitch).
• Update to work with accelemymote 0.1.0.
• Add icon by pantera1989.

Known issues:

• The set origin feature will keep updating for a second or two. Make sure you hold it where you want it until the banners stop.
• "GUI" is still a huge exaggeration. :P

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

With no reports of Accelemymote killing any babies or kicking any puppies in the months it has been around, i think it's time to promote it to testing. If you have found it useful, please consider comparing it against the Extras-testing Quality Assurance Checklist and giving it a thumbs up or down accordingly.

The package page will be here momentarily. Thanks for your help!

Re: [Maemo 5] Accelemymote: making your accelerometer more joy-ful
 

if you add support for psx4all it would be a bomb!!!!
PLEEEASEEEEE!!!!