Simple joystick?
guyrocket@kbin.social to 
Hello retrogaming!
I'm looking for advice on a simple joystick that will work well on my Win PC for arcade games in MAME and other games like Road Redemption.
I tried this: https://www.8bitdo.com/arcade-stick/
but didn't really think it is worth $90. And more complicated than I need.
Thanks in advance for any ideas.
Make one with a bunch of arcade buttons and an RP2040 running the GP2040 firmware:
https://gp2040-ce.info/
However, having done this, you will learn NOT to cheap out on buttons. Cheap Chinese clone buttons absolutely suck. Once you buy a set of proper arcade buttons or keyboard switches, plus a bit of wire, you'll have spent as much as the 8BitDo stick costs anyway.
@guyrocket i'm planning to go the DIY way: bought a joystick and a bunch of buttons on aliexpress, then the plan is to install DaemonBite (https://github.com/MickGyver/DaemonBite-Arcade-Encoder) on a arduino pro micro and stuff everything inside a wooden box.
Very interesting. I am sure many would appreciate whatever documentation you can provide of this project.
@guyrocket Well, for the arduino part, the github link i provided should cover most of the required info.
For the actual box, i was going to follow one of these 3 projects:
* bambooarcade.com (down for good but it's been backed up by archive.org)
* https://slagcoin.com/joystick/example2.html
* https://slagcoin.com/joystick/example3.html
Slagcoin.com is full of super interesting info.
Actually i just found out another project that could replace DaemonBite: https://gp2040-ce.info
I think the general instructions are pretty simple: it's just a matter of flashing the software on the board of choice, wiring everything as per the diagrams and shove everything inside a box (cardboard, ikea plastic boxes, wood, 3d printed cases... there's plenty of options)
Thank you.