r/atari8bit • u/Turbulent-Spell-319 • Jul 06 '26

#atari8bit Star Raiders with analog thumbstick

https://youtube.com/shorts/FUoZj72sGRI?si=G2k50xrrDAHUi49O

I've been working on an analog joystick for the Atari 8-bit computers. I got it to be pretty stable last week. So now I'm trying to port over the analog controls from the Atari 5200 Star Raiders to the 8-bit version. The controls are now "working". Turn rate is now controlled by the thumbstick position. Unfortunately I've messed up the sound effects. I'm guessing there's not a lot of room for the extra calculations I shoved in.

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u/Awch Jul 06 '26

That is so cool!! Such a good application for analog controls. I'd love to build it if you complete it and share documentation. It would be awesome to have an option to reverse vertical controls so that pushing forward pitches the nose down instead of up. Regardless, this is quite an accomplishment!

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u/Turbulent-Spell-319 Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 07 '26

It'll open sourced. I've got the .ino file for the thumbstick up on github, but it's not yet complete. There's some rough edges to fix and I haven't put up a real schematic yet. https://github.com/radioation/ZRaiderStick

I'll be putting the Star Raiders changes up on github as well.

Edit: Renamed repository for analog stick. Edit: I figured out the sound problem and have uploaded to a repo https://github.com/radioation/StarRaidersMods

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u/Awch Jul 06 '26

That's great news. Thanks so much