Arkanoid II (FC) 2-Player using Vaus

Started by daskrabs, October 02, 2020, 05:05:18 pm

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daskrabs

Is there a trick to getting the "daisy-chain" of Vaus controllers to work? I have 3 Vaus: 2 Ark2 and 1 Ark1. All work fine in 1-Player mode. When I chain them together in any configuration and choose 2-Player or VS mode, only the pads work. Tested on AV and OG Fami. Any ideas? Anyone have a scan of the Ark2 manual?

UglyJoe

I don't have any controllers to test with, but looking at the nesdev wiki article for how the data is read from the Vaus controllers, it seems like more than one controller would not work.

If you daisy-chain the controllers and then start a 1 player game, does the game respond to all two (or three) Vaus controllers or only the first one in the chain?

daskrabs

The answer is that you need to use the pad's SELECT button to move the cursor and use the vaus' button to start the game. Only Vs. mode against "friend" supports daisy changing. Standard 2P game both players use the first Vaus only.

P

So to summarize: pressing START starts a game using the controller and pressing the Vaus trigger starts a game using the Vaus, and if you have two paddles it will use both paddles in the VS FRIEND mode (the only mode that is 2-player simultaneously) and one paddle in all other modes.

This seems to work in FCEUX, the mouse X-axis controls both paddles in this case. You just need to plug in a Controller 1 on the title screen so that you can push SELECT to move the cursor (FCEUX can't have both a paddle and a controller plugged in at the same time it seems). Mesen can have the 2 controllers and a paddle in the expansion port, but doesn't seem to support two paddles.


The Famicom version of the paddle uses D1 of both $4016 and $4017 (for trigger and potentiometer respectively), but the Nesdev wiki doesn't say how a second paddle is read. I guess it could just be read serially through the same two input ports as the first paddle though.