RETRO The Spectrum - Page 37

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Adjusting the settings of a program
There were several vendors of joystick interface, each having its own way of
communicating with the ZX Spectrum, but broadly they fell into three types: those
compatible with the Kempston joystick interface, those that simulate the pressing of
the cursor keys, and those compatible with the Sinclair Interface 2 (the two port joystick
and cartridge interface released by Sinclair a few years after the original launch of the
ZX Spectrum). Games usually support one or more of these joystick interfaces.
The Game settings menu allows you to specify the interface type through which you want
your joystick or game controller to be connected to the game, so you should choose
one that the game supports and select it in the game also. Note that the Kempston was
the rst interface produced for the ZX Spectrum and so is the most widely supported
and may work by default at the same time as using the keyboard.
Mapping the controls
If you wish to use a gamepad or joystick when playing a game you own, you can map
each direction and button of the physical controller to either a keyboard key or traditional
ZX Spectrum joystick function.
For example, if you are using a gamepad and congure the Player 1 joystick to set
the D-Pad to be that of joystick-up, down, left and right, and set the Joystick type to
be Kempston, then when the D-Pad is pressed, the game will see those directions
as coming from Kempston joystick. Equally, you could congure the directions of a
gamepad D-Pad to be the keys Q, A, O and P, such that when the D-Pad is pressed it
will appear to the running game as though those keys were being pressed.
The eleven most common gamepad buttons can be congured to Spectrum joystick
or keyboard actions. The HOME or Start button is reserved.
The Spectrum allows two player joysticks to be congured, but note that if the second
joystick is congured with directions being joystick up, down, left, right and re then
these inputs will only work when the Joystick type is set to Sinclair IF 2, since this
is the only ZX Spectrum interface that supported two simultaneous joysticks. You
can however congure the Player 2 joystick to press keyboard keys for each of the
directions and other buttons, allowing 2-player games that do not support the Sinclair
IF 2 interface to be played with two controllers which act as a real joystick and keyboard.
The controller mapping for the game can be viewed and edited by selecting the Map
controls option. This will show a diagram of a game controller and label each button
with the current assigned action.