Hello!

Has anyone ever encountered an issue that when using two gameport joysticks in Windows 98, the X and Y axes for joystick 2 work correctly on the Control Panel's Gaming Options test screen but are glitchy within a DirectX-based game?

So here's my scenario: I recently purchased a Sega "Twin-Stick PC" controller (https://segaretro.org/Twin-Stick_PC) for use with Cyber Troopers Virtual-On, and for anyone not familiar with it, it's essentially a generic gameport controller with 4 axes and 4 buttons, but the two sticks are digital rather than analog. The manual says to add it in Windows as two separate 2-axis, 2-button joysticks (the left-hand stick is then read as joystick 1 and the right-hand stick is joystick 2). I did this and calibrated both joysticks, and everything looks good on the Test tab. However, when I run the game and choose the Twin-stick control scheme, the right-hand stick is glitchy: basically the up and left directions work fine, but there's little to no response from the down or right directions. The game has no additional joystick configuration or calibration options to tinker with.

I've tested everything I can think of, including different sound card driver versions (my gameport is on my sound card), a different sound card I have on hand (albeit both cards use Aureal chips), different FSB speeds, and DirectX versions 7, 8, and 9, and I still get the same behavior. Of particular note, I don't believe there is anything wrong with the controller itself. I tested it in NASCAR Racing 1999 Edition, which has its own joystick calibration screen and also has both a Windows and a DOS executable. Its calibration screen consists of a horizontal line for each axis with arrows indicating the current axis positions. With the sticks being digital, the arrows should only be at either extreme of the axes or in the center, and nowhere in between. In the DOS version the controller works perfectly. In the Windows version however, the right-hand stick's positions flutter around erratically between center and ~30% right of center on the respective axes when holding it right or down, but the readout is normal when holding it left or up. There's some other quirky behavior, too, in that if I hold the left-hand stick either right, down, or right and down, then the readout on the right-hand stick is normal for all directions. In another test, I re-configured the controller in Windows as a single 4-axis, 4-button controller (specifically, I chose the 3-axis, 4-button joystick option with the Rudder/Pedals box checked), and in the Windows version of NASCAR it then actually read both sticks perfectly. Unfortunately, Virtual-On seems hardcoded to only look for right-stick inputs from the first and second axes of a joystick assigned to ID 2 in Gaming Options and won't look at the third and fourth axes of a joystick with ID 1 in the absence of ID 2 (in fact the game doesn't even allow you to choose the Twin-stick control scheme unless it detects a controller on both ID 1 and ID 2), so this configuration doesn't help there.

Oh, and one other interesting test was, when I had the controller configured as two separate joysticks, I reassigned the first one (left-hand stick) to ID 2 and the second one (right-hand stick) to ID 1 in Gaming Options. When I then ran the games (both Virtual-On and NASCAR-Windows), it was the left-hand stick that was wacky and the right-hand stick was fine. So what could be going on with joystick ID 2 specifically?

My system specs:
Windows 98SE
Motherboard: SOYO SY-6BA+ IV
Processor: Intel Pentium III 600E SL3NL (via slocket)
RAM: 224 MB, mixture of PC100 and PC133
Video Card: PNY GeForce FX5200 128MB, AGP
Sound card: Aureal Vortex 2 SQ2500, PCI
(the other card I tried was an Aureal Vortex Advantage Lite)
Other: Compaq PU2325 USB 2.0 card, PCI; U.S. Robotics 56k modem, ISA; DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive; Zip 100 drive; floppy drive; 2x hard drives

Any advice is greatly appreciated!