Arduino based massive game controller, feasibile?

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello arduino community,

i'm a student game design&development from holland, and i want to build a simulator.
Some of you might know the Steel Batallion controller:

But obviously, it just has way too little buttons!
The finished thing will be a cockpit with a ton of buttons, dails and doodads, hopefully connected to a PC as a HID or even better, a game controller.
Specs:
at least 20 buttons/toggels.
at least 6 potentionmeters.
The more the better.

I was planning on using an atmega2560 chip becouse it has tons of inputs, but i'm afraid my skill level is rather low.
I'f done some looking around, and looked at CreateUSB and AVR-USB, but i can't find what i'm looking for, so my question(s):
Is this feasible for a beginner?
Should i choose another microcontroller?
Where would i start?

Thank you.

2

The finished thing will be a cockpit with a ton of buttons, dails and doodads

Maybe if you quantify things, we could help.

3

We'r not sure about the exect numbers yet, but it would be nice to have as many availible pins as possible to wire inputs to.
Unused inputs will simply not be assigned to controls at the software level.

4

We'r not sure about the exect numbers yet

I'm not sure of exactly how to help you.
"a ton" isn't a common measure of quantity of controls and doodads.

5

Updated with:
at least 20 digital inputs.
at least 6 analog inputs.

6

Unless you want to wire your controls as a matrix, I'd probably recommend a Mega.

7

I was planning on getting a mega :slight_smile: but the problem is the arduino board being a serial device.

I'f seen examples of people using them as joysticks, but those are usually either PS2 keyboard emulators, or are using an Uno.
I dont know if it's hard to adapt the code for a Mega.

I need some pointer on where to start with this, or what software to use on the chips, anything.