opti-pac advice

[heinekenlvr]

Hey folks,
need some advice. I have a driving cabinet(POLE POSITION) which I use an opti-pac and a a-pac (for the gas pedal). I want to get rid of the keyboard all together so I need to figure out how to get an 'ENTER' and 'ESCAPE' function so I can switch games. Looking at the opti-pac I don't think this is possible or is it? Is my only option to use an Ipac ( for these two functions only) in addition to the optipac?
Any tips or help would be most appreciated.
Thanks.

[BadMouth]

If you're only running MAME, go into the menu in-game where you remap controls (usually TAB).

I'm at work and don't have access to MAME at the moment, this is from memory so the menu titles might not be correct.

Select the option to set controls for All Games, then Other Controls.
Look for the option that says UI Cancel.  Remap that to one of the buttons on your ipac or apac.
That will now function to exit MAME.  (map it, then immediately map it again to ESC and then either will work)

You can do the same thing with UI Select for enter, but if you're launching games from a front-end, you'll need something that works outside of MAME.
If you're using Mala, you should be able to map one of the Apac buttons to start the game.

If not,  Autohotkey can post keys when you press the apac buttons.
I haven't used it for a gamepad before (which the apac shows up as), but I don't think it's that much more complicated than remapping keys.
After a quick search, it looks like it would just be:

Code: [Select]

Joy1::Enter
return(looks like joy1 is button 1, joy2 would be button 2)
Install autohotkey, post that in notpad, save it as joyenter.ahk(all file types), throw that in your startup folder(google it) so it runs every time windows starts, and every time you press the joystick button, autohotkey will post Enter.

I wouldn't use the mouse buttons for this because the script will still be running when you're trying to use a real mouse to do stuff in windows.
Having it press enter every time you click could be bad.  You might get away with the middle button (Mbutton::Enter).  I'm using the middle button on a trackball to post ESC and haven't come across any issues yet.

Since MAME gets its inputs directly instead of through windows, autohotkey doesn't work inside MAME.

[heinekenlvr]

Thanks for the reply. Before I go monkeying with things...I am running Mamewah as a FE. I will check later tonight if Mamewah has a way for me to map a button on the a-pac to 'select' the game. If this is the case, then I wonder if I can do the same thing to 'exit' the game and go back to the game menu simply by using Mamewah to map another key on the a-pac as an exit button?? I am not trying to exit mame all together, I just want to exit the game and go back to the front end menu to choose another game. Does this require me changing the menu in mame itself??

[BadMouth]

Thanks for the reply. Before I go monkeying with things...I am running Mamewah as a FE. I will check later tonight if Mamewah has a way for me to map a button on the a-pac to 'select' the game. If this is the case, then I wonder if I can do the same thing to 'exit' the game and go back to the game menu simply by using Mamewah to map another key on the a-pac as an exit button?? I am not trying to exit mame all together, I just want to exit the game and go back to the front end menu to choose another game. Does this require me changing the menu in mame itself??

To exit the game and pick another game, you do exit MAME.
Remapping it in MAME is the easiest way.