STICK

Returns current information, as an integer, about a joystick

Implemented by: Atari, GWBASIC, MSX, QBasic, VBDOS, FreeBASIC

With variations:

Also written as:

The joystick interface is far from being a standard among BASIC implementations. In the 8-bit era, there were analog and the Atari-standard joystick. Some machines supported both, most only one, and some just had no BASIC support for joysticks.

In the MS-QuickBASIC family, STICK returns one of the current coordinates of one of the joysticks, according to the given numerical argument:

• 0 - Joystick A horizontal position
• 1 - Joystick A vertical position
• 2 - Joystick B horizontal position
• 3 - Joystick B vertical position

Oddly, for any other argument but 0, a previous call to STICK(0) is required in order to record all joystick coordinates.

In MSX BASIC, STICK returns the current state of an Atari-standard joystick or the keyboard cursor keys. The STICK argument tells the device to be scanned:

• 0 - keyboard cursor keys
• 1 - joystick A
• 2 - joystick B

The return value of STICK will be one of:

• 0 - no direction
• 1 - up
• 2 - up-right
• 3 - right
• 4 - down-right
• 5 - down
• 6 - down-left
• 7 - left
• 8 - up-left

• STRIG