08220: arcade driving games: Feature request: Visual steering wheel position indicator

ID	Category [?]	Severity [?]	Reproducibility	Date Submitted	Last Update
08220	Interface	Feature	N/A	Feb 20, 2022, 06:21	Feb 21, 2022, 16:04

Tester	CYBERYOGI -CO-Windler	View Status	Public	Platform
Assigned To		Resolution	No change required	OS
Status [?]	Closed			Driver
Version	0.240	Fixed in Version		Build
		Fixed in Git Commit		Github Pull Request #

Summary	08220: arcade driving games: Feature request: Visual steering wheel position indicator
Description	Please add a graphical steering wheel position indicator to arcade stunt driving games with steering wheel. Games like "Hard Drivin"/"Race Drivin" are hard to play when the center position of the steering wheel can not be seen. While on the arcade machine the player intuitively sees and feels if the wheel is centered, with mouse/trackball (or unmarked homemade spinner) the car handling becomes much more difficult. Particularly when jumping over ramps, to land on a narrow 2nd ramp (like the drawbridge and split loop-the-loop in "Race Drivin") the car wheels must be straightened in mid air to land without falling off the track, thus an optional graphical display (like the gear shift indicator) should be added. The indicator does not need to be a full drawn steering wheel (which disturbs visual appearance); a simple dot on a thin horizontal line with center mark (like on the dashboard of "Hard Drivin" 16-bit homecomputer versions) would be sufficient to indicate the internal steering wheel angle of the emulation. It may simply look like this: -------^------- Those home versions have a small blue bar at the top of the dashboard center: https://www.myabandonware.com/game/hard-drivin-ii-1f9
Steps To Reproduce
Additional Information
Github Commit

Flags
Regression Version
Affected Sets / Systems	arcade driving games

Attached Files

No.19813 Tafoid Administrator Feb 20, 2022, 10:13	Very unlikely you will see this happen. Not all steering wheels are made the same or work the same way.
No.19820 AJR Developer Feb 20, 2022, 22:54	It could probably be done with a layout, but harddriv and racedriv don't have one yet. Tafoid is correct, though: probably it's only feasible for true analog steering wheels, not those which are just oversized paddles like in Super Sprint.
No.19825 CYBERYOGI -CO-Windler Viewer Feb 21, 2022, 04:50 edited on: Feb 21, 2022, 04:54	The Hard Drivin platform AFAIK uses a digital encoder (light barrier with cog-like disc, like in a spinner or ball mouse sensor) with a separate 2nd such disc having only 1 slot as the center mark, so the arcade hardware knows when the steering wheel passes its center position. MAME should have a little indicator that gets centered by this signal. There is already a bargraph in the MAME analogue controls settings menu, hence it shouldn't be technically difficult to support this. The indicator is only necessary in games where centering the steering wheel matters (i.e. jumping over ramps with landing on a narrow platform). See here at time 5:23 and 20:17 for the steering wheel mech inside the compact version:
No.19827 cuavas Administrator Feb 21, 2022, 16:04	You can already do this with artwork or Lua scripts. You can animate the size/position/colour of an artwork element with no scripting at all. Lua scripts can draw text and rectangles to screen containers or the UI container.