Denial

I have a pair of VIC-20 paddles but no games to play with them. Can somebody recommend some good paddle games (preferably two player). I found this pong port but the download link is dead http://antoninoporcino.xoom.it/Vic20/pong.htm

Thanks in advance!

My favourite Paddle games are Clowns and The sky is falling. You can play Omega Race with paddles, but I prefer joystick there.

You can try my Break-Out! clone uses paddles or joystick, for 1 or 2 players.

necroing this thread - i am also looking for a couple games that support the paddles the C64 has about two dozens, i would expect the VIC having at least as many, if not more perhaps - can you name some, and perhaps even provide a link for download? that would be awesome!

Everything mentioned above is about all I can think of here! There are not very many...

Pixels arukanoido (arknoid clone) supports paddles but it's not finished yet..

Alien Soccer has a paddle version or option, iirk.

mmmh i'm surprised there are so few.... here is my list so far.... anything else?

My Mega Cart says the following are also Paddle Games:

Space Snake
Star Post

Oh, and if you want to solve a mystery: find out why almost every VIC-20 suffers from bad paddle jitter even with brand new paddles. I've checked three pairs of paddles on the C64 and VIC-20, and while they work fine on the C64, they suffer from bad jitter on the VIC-20. It even seems like the jitter is the same on different VIC 20s.

I am starting to suspect that it has always been this way and that the VIC-20 has always had the jitter problem. However a solution to the problem would be really welcome...

Tokra, You could try adding a small ceramic capacitor on that pin to the VIC chip...the fact is that the line from the joystick port has to travel a very long way across the board and this could cause some inductance. Placing a cap near the chip between that pin and ground may help with the jittering. I'm no expert but that would seem to me to be the cause.

As for paddle games...I have several in my cartridge collection and no paddles! Which is why I always kept them separate. I have never gotten to play any of them. Which sucks because clowns actually looks like a lot of fun. Given that the Vic 20 only has one joystick port, 2 player games with paddles would be possibly the only good way to do multiplayer other than the library of all zero games that use modem .

Here are some cartridge titles which use paddles:
Mole Attack
Super Smash
Clowns
Pinball
Sea wolf

Beyond this, if you are into basic programming at all, you can always replace the joystick routines in some paddle fitting games with paddle routines. Especially some of the games which have 2 players snuggling/fighting over a keyboard.

Forbidden64 wrote:Tokra, You could try adding a small ceramic capacitor on that pin to the VIC chip...the fact is that the line from the joystick port has to travel a very long way across the board and this could cause some inductance. Placing a cap near the chip between that pin and ground may help with the jittering. I'm no expert but that would seem to me to be the cause.

Interesting idea, if one did this what would have to be done about the existing two capacitors for the paddle-lines near the joystick-port? Do you just take them out or replace them as well?

added Space Snake and Star Post to that list...

tokra: try replacing the two existing caps. perhaps try larger values (two or three times as much or so). adding one near the VIC may help too. what you can also try is adding a cap in parallel to the poti inside the paddle (in fact, some paddles already have these). thats probably what i'd try first, since you cant really mess it up this way

Forbidden64: the mole attack you meantioned, is it this one? it doesnt seem to support paddles at all, but keyboard and joystick

tokra wrote:

Forbidden64 wrote:Tokra, You could try adding a small ceramic capacitor on that pin to the VIC chip...the fact is that the line from the joystick port has to travel a very long way across the board and this could cause some inductance. Placing a cap near the chip between that pin and ground may help with the jittering. I'm no expert but that would seem to me to be the cause.

Interesting idea, if one did this what would have to be done about the existing two capacitors for the paddle-lines near the joystick-port? Do you just take them out or replace them as well?

Neither. If these capacitors aren't doing the job, you need a wider range of bypass capacitors. I'll let good 'ol Dave Jones explain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcJ6UdDx1vg

In short, my hypothesis is that due to the physical size of the die, and in addition, due to the extremely long travel distance, you have the worst of both worlds in terms of inductance and resistance. Adding more bypass capacitor ranges would in theory provide the lowest impedance across a wider frequency range, thus enabling the VIC chip to compensate for MOS trying to stuff everything into one chip in an era which precluded such a practice. Think about it...what other chip company stuffed all of the sound, video, and IO into one chip die in 1976? The answer is no one did!

I for one, would welcome Eslapion's opinion on this...he is frankly, the last word on electrical engineering matters...since he has on so many occasions demonstrated his extreme mastery of electrical engineering, and added so many great hardware contributions to the commodore community over the years...even in the face of weirdly extreme criticism by the community which benefits therefrom.

[I sent him a pm and hopefully he will reply.]

Forbidden64 wrote:Tokra, You could try adding a small ceramic capacitor on that pin to the VIC chip...the fact is that the line from the joystick port has to travel a very long way across the board and this could cause some inductance. Placing a cap near the chip between that pin and ground may help with the jittering. I'm no expert but that would seem to me to be the cause.

...

I for one, would welcome Eslapion's opinion on this...he is frankly, the last word on electrical engineering matters...since he has on so many occasions demonstrated his extreme mastery of electrical engineering, and added so many great hardware contributions to the commodore community over the years...even in the face of weirdly extreme criticism by the community which benefits therefrom.

Thanks for the positive comments but I have to admit even with all I (try to) know, I did put my foot in my mouth a couple of times over the years. I'd say the more I know, the more I realize I really don't know much.

Here's my take on this:
An avenue to look into for clues is how paddles operate on the C64 which has a very special accessory available to it which doesn't exist on the VIC-20, the 1351 mouse. Now, the 1351 generates incredibly stable paddle signals.

Both the C64 and the VIC-20 use pulses to charge a capacitor and then check how many pulses are required to achieve a threshold voltage then abruptly discharge that capacitor to restart the process. The 1351 mouse doesn't work on the VIC-20 because a counter inside the 1351 checks for those pulses and they are generated at a totally different rate on the VIC-20 vs the C64.

Try to think of everything that can affect the number of pulses required to achieve that threshold voltage:
- The resistance value (the paddle itself)
- The capacitor being charged
- The RF noise captured by the wires between the 6560/6561 and the paddle
- The threshold voltage itself, usually an internally generated reference voltage derived from Vcc -> if the 5Vdc fed to the VIC-I has ripples then so has this reference voltage

The 1351 bypasses pretty much all these variables by mimicking a completely empty capacitor as long as the target number of pulses hasn't been reached then abruptly mimicking a full capacitor once this target is reached. It uses a small digital system instead of an analog RC system to achieve this.

I think nowadays, it should be pretty simple to make a 'perfect' or 'ideal' paddle for the VIC-20 using tricks similar to those employed by the 1351.

I think nowadays, it should be pretty simple to make a 'perfect' or 'ideal' paddle for the VIC-20 using tricks similar to those employed by the 1351.

totally. in fact, i have implemented this for the upcoming micromys v5 adapter - and its rock stable.