r/fightsticks

Full disclosure statement: (to just skip past the full disclosures statement search for \\\*\\\*\\\*, which indicates the skip point) I am not a handicapped gamer in the traditional sense. I mainly came about this community in the '90s when I was looking for a right-handed six button Genesis joystick, wrote to Sega, asking where I could find a right-handed six button fight stick, and they referred me to KY Enterprises in California who makes specialty joysticks.

Also I don't know where the best place to post this is, because fightstick communities deal with exclusively digital joysticks and most HOTAS communities don't usually build their own plane sticks from scratch. And I don't know any communities other than hotas that use analog sticks frequently enough,especially the ultimarc kind. Perhaps pre-crash gaming might be a community if there is such a thing. But since I'm exclusively using it for my Hori Flex for Switch and XAC, I thought this would be a good place to start to ask.

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Anyway I got an altamarc 360 mounted on a fight stick board and I added an extra thumb and index button trigger from Amazon. Of course I had to hire the work to separate the grounds to work with my Sinister system so that each button is independently grounded for it to work with potentially any system. And it works well on both the hori flex being used as a Nintendo switch PCB as well as the Xbox adaptive controller being used as an Xbox PCB.

That being said, that mod kind of made the stick rotatable within my wrist so that if there was a rotate command for like a paddle that could be used for Bally Astrocade something it might make a good paddle but a) it doesn't register the rotation and b) it's hard to find true north when my arm is tilted it's hard to find true north by feel alone and I have to look at the controller.

So these are two separate questions.

1. how do I lock down the rotation so that the buttons always face with my knuckles facing true north?

2. on the Ultimarc 360, is there a way you could measure and manipulate the rotation of your joystick along the axis of the shaft so that it can be used like a paddle for Atari 2600 and Bally Astrocade games?

Heya!

Can you recommend where can I buy a leverless controller from the EU?
I play brawlhalla with keyboard. I want to play Rivals of Eather 2 and probably a leverless controller will be a good transition. If you have any recommendations on what to get for platform fighters I would highly appreciate it.

I'm travelling soon, and I'm trying to decide on a bag that I can carry one of my sticks with. I've seen things like the victrix pro tournament bag and the qanba shield, but I'm trying to find out if either of those would be considered a personal item.

Flying with southwest airlines, stick I'm probably bringing is the qanba obsidian or obsidian 2.

Any advice is appreciated.

Hello,

Just got my Qanba Q4 Pro 8K in the mail and I have some thoughts.

Pros:

• Having a screen is nice
• Being able to adjust button assignments natively on the controller rather than have to go into a web editor or go into the guts and rewire is very convenient. Furthermore, being able to adjust other parameters natively on the controller (Polling rate/LED/etc.) is also very nice.
• The grip on the bottom of the controller is pretty good for lap play (although, on my desk it did shift around a little bit)
• The extra L3/R3 buttons are placed ergonomically and the overall button layout itself is good; when the magnetic panel is removed, it reveals 2 extra 24mm buttons next to the m1 button, which probably implies that Qanba might offer a cross up layout replacement panel in the future? Unclear.
• Inputs are responsive.

Cons:

• Overall construction feels like it's lacking. The controller itself feels hollow -and it is, which isn't a bad thing I guess- I'm going to be adding some dampening material inside mine to make it feel more satisfying to use.
• On the topic of construction, Qanba have bizarrely chosen to use the same side door design as they have on their other controllers, which has been historically one of the weakest elements design-wise on their other controllers; it even has the little hole on the side for what would have been a hard wired cable to run through. Get ready for this thing to break, and have to 3D print a replacement. Truly a shame, because the door itself is where the wireless dongle's hole lives, and i imagine that other things could have been stored inside this compartment (spare buttons/if the joystick is detachable/etc.) However, given how weak the design and construction is, this is a big issue IMHO.
• Speaking of cables, the controller does not come stock with a USB cable hardwired into the board itself, which I'm actually all for, however there is no USB cable locking function (such as on controllers from Haute42/ASI/ISTMall/Razer/etc.) So the cable is liable to be pulled out mid set.
• The detachable front plate has a frosted finish which makes reading the screen, one of the coolest parts of this controller, pretty difficult given how small the text is.

Minor Gripes:

• The controller does not feature an easy-open solution to get inside it (IE clamshell/magnetic mechanism)
• No toggle for the right switch on the front panel, only D Pad and Left Stick (I find myself using this a lot in games like Tekken where the right stick controls the camera in customization modes and fighting lounge)
• The joystick/button spacing a bit tight for my personal liking.
• The joystick's mounting system is a bit strange given the LED ring around it, and i'm unsure whether or not low collar Korean Levers would fit in the controller; will report back to test this; for now I'm assuming only flat collar levers will fit, but don't take my word for this just yet.
• No native PS5 support (doesn't really matter much to me, and if I needed that, I would just bring a brooks convertor; that being said, and again, I wouldn't throw it in the conveniently located side cavity because the door is so poorly constructed).
• Front plate is a fingerprint magnet
• Does not have similar features to Obsidian 2 / Titan (IE porthole to access the lever to make switching tops easy/storage solution for other lever tops)

TL:DR It feels like Qanba had some really cool ideas, but ran out of time or money to make this thing something really special. So many awesome features and design choices feel nerfed by other design choices:

• there's a screen with a pretty intuitive and easy to use GUI and a detachable front faceplate -> The front faceplate is frosted making the screen hard to read
• Has a nice carrying handle and is light weight -> The side door for storing the USB cable/wireless dongle (or whatever else you want because it's a large cavity) has the same poor construction as their other controllers, and is probably going to break.

This isn't to say the controller is awful or anything, but I think a few design revisions could have made this thing really great.

https://preview.redd.it/xiqs4404z5kh1.jpg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d9297d79d6f20ca3b3f2f06431332bae2ec24ab1