Has this been explored by any of the major manufacturers or community made PCBs from Toodles?
My PC mouse has 8kb of onboard memory for saving DPI settings without the need of a software interface. Plug it in to any device, it remembers my settings.
I was thinking something similar would be a benefit to arcade sticks. Onboard memory that remembers the mappings of different layouts for different games to eliminate the constant button checks before every match and speed up tournaments. The most elegant solution would require software side support from game developers to recognize when a stick that has ROM is plugged in and automatically load the corresponding profile that the player has set up for that particular game.
But realistically, that would never happen, as most studios suck ass at any type of community support/post release patching. So the more likely option would be a hardware toggle switch on the stick itself, with maybe 6-8 positions that the player would have to flip to for his particular games.
The latter, although slightly cumbersome, I think would be doable. It'd just be a matter of the player memorizing/labeling which toggle setting is which game. I don't know how this would need to be set up technically, but I guess it would require some type of middle-man switch/circuit board that re-routes signals for each button regardless of how the wiring is physically mapped to the PCB. But that's open for discussion among the more technical individuals on this forum.
This would probably even be useful for gamepads in general, and not just arcade sticks. If Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo thought this would be worthwhile they could easily start adding ROM to their controllers so that profiles can be saved and loaded even on people's pads, so that no matter what friend's house they went to, or what console/PC they hook up to, their settings will be loaded automatically for whatever game is being played.
Maybe some enterprising individual here can mock something up and sell it as a pre-packaged solution to all the major companies. I promise not to hound you down for royalties.
My PC mouse has 8kb of onboard memory for saving DPI settings without the need of a software interface. Plug it in to any device, it remembers my settings.
I was thinking something similar would be a benefit to arcade sticks. Onboard memory that remembers the mappings of different layouts for different games to eliminate the constant button checks before every match and speed up tournaments. The most elegant solution would require software side support from game developers to recognize when a stick that has ROM is plugged in and automatically load the corresponding profile that the player has set up for that particular game.
But realistically, that would never happen, as most studios suck ass at any type of community support/post release patching. So the more likely option would be a hardware toggle switch on the stick itself, with maybe 6-8 positions that the player would have to flip to for his particular games.
The latter, although slightly cumbersome, I think would be doable. It'd just be a matter of the player memorizing/labeling which toggle setting is which game. I don't know how this would need to be set up technically, but I guess it would require some type of middle-man switch/circuit board that re-routes signals for each button regardless of how the wiring is physically mapped to the PCB. But that's open for discussion among the more technical individuals on this forum.
This would probably even be useful for gamepads in general, and not just arcade sticks. If Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo thought this would be worthwhile they could easily start adding ROM to their controllers so that profiles can be saved and loaded even on people's pads, so that no matter what friend's house they went to, or what console/PC they hook up to, their settings will be loaded automatically for whatever game is being played.
Maybe some enterprising individual here can mock something up and sell it as a pre-packaged solution to all the major companies. I promise not to hound you down for royalties.