An arcade joystick is a particular kind of joystick. Max natively supports USB gaming joysticks. Most any gaming joystick designed to work with PC or Mac will do.

Joysticks are great fun - easy to set-up. I have a standard X-Y logitech job but I'd love one with the Z axis as well. I think it would be a lot more versatile.

Yeah I started looking at the standard joysticks.. and as long as it has a bunch of buttons, it would do. But I noticed that the layout of an arcade one would be more interesting.

left hand on the joystick, right hand on the buttons, I want to control which parameters I will be sending the joystick message to by holding one of the arcade button.

As long as it's usb and meant for pc/mac can I conclude that it will work with max? I'm on pc btw.

Hmm thinking of it.. that joystick might not send the proper message, I'm scared it might only send the direction you are aiming the joystick at.. hmm

That particular joystick is xbox not PC - there might be an external to connect it up but I do not think it will be supported natively through the HID object.

Get a lend of one or buy a cheap logitech and see what you can do. You can get the Logitech Attack for about 15e.

http://www.xgaming.com/store/arcade-joysticks-and-game-controllers/product/x-arcade-dual-joystick/ - looks sweet - ask them if it is HID standard - it should be and if it is it will work.

The only problem with joysticks is that they spring back to the middle. Mostly you would like to leave the parameter where it is and have it ignore numbers from when it springs back to zero. I do this with a patch based around a few [change] objects.

Yes I know that image is a xbox controller, there are similar ones that work with PC..

I am currently looking at the logitech attack, I think it's the best deal to get started, I will see if I can upgrade if needed later..

As for the spring back to original position, I thought about this and my idea was that I can hold a button with 1 hand and use the joystick with the other... the buttons will act as a gate controlling where the message is sent. If I release the button before releasing the joystick, it will stay at the last value that was sent... Also, if that's even possible with the buttons on the joystick, I can hold more than one and output to more parameters.

I recently spent quite a bit of time creating a custom patch for joystick interfacing. Thread here: http://post.monome.org/comments.php?DiscussionID=14507&page=3#Item_29 I've also added it to the toolbox and projects pages here but the updates are on the monome.org site for now. It was custom designed for a logitech extreme 3d pro but could be modified for other joysticks relatively easy if I know the hid elements for each axis/button. Most will be the same so you might just try the patch.

While I will probably buy a couple of non-centering joysticks for a custom controller, I actually just made a mode to split the joystick between different cc numbers for each half of the axis.

Since the attack is logitech it will likely line up. The extreme 3d is only $30 and is a pretty solid stick that I like for this type of control.

Cool thanks a lot, that's a great way to get started, I'll take a look at your patch.

This arcade joystick is USB and has an 8 button inteface.

I can confirm it is seen as an hid device by Max.

Oh thank you gavspav! and it sends a x/y message as well, this is neat.

Hmm it is out of stock though and it's 59$ for the joystick alone.. and I need to build a case. This seems to be a project a bit too big for now but I really good option for later.. Thanks!