Conference 501clb::pcdoom

175.0. "Spaceball Avenger" by KDX200::ROBR (Who wants to live forever?) Wed Apr 26 1995 13:44

    
    I figured this note will eventually catch on, so why not...
    
    I just got my Spaceball Avenger (from Spacetec Inc) last night. 
    Haven't gotten it running with Heretic yet, but got it working with
    Doom 2.  I gotta say, this thing is STRAGE, but I can see how it will
    eventually be the controller of choice.
    
    For those of you who have never heard of it, its a game controller that
    plugs into a serial port, has 5 buttons that can be used for game play
    (as well as a pause and a calibrate), and 6 axis of movement. 
    
    The controller is just this rubber ball that doesnt really move but
    senses torque.  For example if i apply torgue to rotate the ball left,
    i spin left, if i apply torque to push the ball right, i SLIDE right.
    pull forward, move forward.  THe cool thing is you can combo all these,
    so i can slide right while pivoting (and looking up in the case of
    heretic once i get it working).
    
    It's pretty tricky to get the hang of, i keep overcompensating, and
    right now i think i would still kick butt with the keyboard vs. this
    thing, but i'm guessing that will change.
    
    to use this though, there has to be a driver for the game.  right now
    it supports doom, doom2, heretic, descent (where the 3d of movement
    will REALLY work!), rott, xwing, system shock, wolfenstein (oh boy),
    blake stone, and a half dozen other games.  they are also coming out
    with an windows-NT driver for the thing as well as adding support for
    new games all the time.
    
    the unit itself is list priced at $179.  for more info, the company is
    on the web at http://www.spacetec.com